Region Change Policy: Hurting Players

I can only hope that the developers of FFXIV see this thread. Recently, I lost my account of two years. I didn't lose it to a hacker, or poor behavior; I wasn't banned for RMT or some other inconceivable action against the ToS. I lost my account because I am an American who had an EU account.

Two years ago my friend, who lived in Ireland, bought me a copy of FFXIV. He accidentally purchased the EU version of the game. Not wanting my friend to spend any more money, he had already spent quite a lot for my birthday - I said it was fine! It wouldn't be that big of a deal. Even though I usually paid up to $4 more every month to play the game, I swallowed that fact and happily supported a game I came to love. Even if it was $4 extra. I had to pay in Euro, rather than USD.

However, recently SE began to IP block my account on the mogstation. While I was able to put crysta onto my account from PayPal to pay for the account, it would IP block me from making any further purchases. I couldn't purchase a subscription, I couldn't buy anything on the store - not without signing into the mogstation from an entirely different IP.



When I contacted customer support I asked if I could just use a VPN to bypass the block. I was warned that if multiple IPs were continued to be used to sign into the account, it could and would be banned for suspicious/fraudulent activity.

I had no choice but to buy an NA account and start all over. I am losing a house, I am losing three level 70 characters, an omni-crafter and an omni-gatherer.

This affects more people than you would think. Any service members who go overseas have run into this problem, anyone who moves out of the country, experiences this problem. SE currently does not allow region changes whatsoever - not even a one time life-time change.

Devs: Please consider allowing players who move out of the country to change their region, or to allow 'IP flagging' (To flag our different IP's as safe IP addresses.) Please stop IP blocking people just for adding money onto their account from another country. I don't want anyone else to lose all of the hard work and beloved characters like I have - not to mention hundreds of dollars worth of mog store purchases. Thank you.

While I personally am not affected by this, this is absolutely lame. There should at the very least be a feature that many companies make use of; disable purchases temporarily, sure, but send an e-mail about a suspicious login, and saying something like "We have noticed unusual purchases on your account. If this wasn't you, please reset your password. If this was you, please change your region in ACCOUNT>SETTINGS>WHATEVERITWOULDBECALLED."

Granted, this would require the ability to change your region in the first place. I understand that SE (FFXIV division to be specific) can't manage all of the systems that go on behind the scenes of an MMO by themselves, but if anything, a more direct path to the services which you may or may not be purchasing from another company seems prudent.

Have you asked your bank if it's possible to get a European credit card? I know it's possible to get a US credit card in Canada if you do transactions often so there's probably something like that for US <-> Europe.