Thinking about transferring from EU to NA

I'm a returning player (might as well be new based on how much i've forgotten :confused: ) and i've gotten the vibe that the game is having a rough/less active phase of late.
I'm wondering if my server/datacenter (Chaos-Omega) is just quiet, or are 20-40min+ dps queues for dungeons or trials normal nowadays?

I do also tend to play rather late for EU time, so I've been wondering if hopping to NA would be worth a try? Primal likely, since Dynamis is new and the other two seem to be fully congested.

Or do I just need to find a large and active FC and forget about transferring if I want at least a little bit faster queues?

If anyone with an active FC on Chaos that's accepting new people reads this, let me know? :')

You are correct that the game is having a quiet period, for a number of reasons.

We are 1 month away from the next major patch. Typically, in the final month before a patch, activity has really died down from the previous one and everyone's off playing other games, so it appears dead. Many will return next month for the raid patch, between December and January.

It's also the holiday season, so there will be people visiting family depending on where they live and what they celebrate.

A feature called World Visit was implemented in 2019, so you can click the aetheryte at Ul'dah, Limsa or Gridania to visit other worlds temporarily. A few years ago, Data Center Travel was implemented so you can switch to other data centers. This means you can travel to Light (the other EU data center) or Materia (the Oceanic data center).

A consequence of Data Center Travel is that everyone traveled to whichever data center had the highest statistical success in raiding. Light's raid success was slightly higher, so everyone visited or even did a paid transfer to the Light data center, significantly impacting Chaos player population and activity.

I've still found Chaos active but admittedly, to level a character recently, I just visited Light so my party would fill faster and queues would be faster.

Whether a queue takes 20-40 minutes is going to depend a lot on the timeframe. If you queue during the morning or night hours for the region, or on a Thursday/Friday, it very well could take that long. Higher level duties can take longer to get a queue for as well. In order to avoid these queue times, you can clear Main Story dungeons with NPCs using Duty Support but their damage isn't good so it takes twice as long. However, taking that long is probably faster than waiting for a queue. Most trials aren't available with NPCs but a few are.

You can also try recruiting for help clearing MSQ things in Party Finder, which again would likely fill quicker on the Light data center if you're trying to do it during the night. If you do transfer to NA, I can say that Aether is regarded as the "raid" data center there and a similar scenario happened where everyone tries to go to Aether and congest it.

Thank you so much for such a thorough reply!
I must've completely missed unlocking the data center travel, I thought it was within your center only. That does help a lot, but I can see how it effects the congestion levels in a not so good way :/ (Feels kinda funny now how I transferred along with my old FC from Light to Chaos when they added it, hah. Can I get a free return ticket please :'D)

I wasn't sure when the next big patch is dropping, but it being that soon explains a lot as well! That's good to know.
I think I'll travel to Light for a bit to get a feeling on the difference. I do also need to find a more active FC and/or linkshells again at some point, but it would be ideal to be on the same server as those since they seem to have limitations while visiting. Hence I've thought about transferring first.

I've been utilising the npc party system for dungeons, its actually been quite nice to be able to practice playing a tank without feeling like I need to hurry or pull wall-to-wall. Probably not for everyone, but I don't mind the slower pace when it's for a story clear or when i'm in there for the first time and know nothing about it. Good for learning but perhaps not for grinding.

Thanks again for the reply, really appreciate it!

I forgot to mention that to switch data center, you logout and then right-click your character to visit another data center. A full guide with all the restriction is at https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...acentertravel/

There aren't a lot of restrictions, so being able to have an FC, a house and sell on the market board there are the few remaining selling points for actual paid transfers.

They added the Community Finder for finding an FC. If you login to the lodestone and choose your character, it will find your current world automatically and you can comment on the FC pages to ask for an invite if needed. It's at https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...inder/?type=fc