Can we please get some more options in choosing server location?

Why can't we have more variety? I find it absolutely ridiculous that my connection has to travel through 3-4 ISPs before reaching the servers(west coast). What makes that even worse is the connection taking routes that are known for packet loss. I have seen and heard numerous people complain about this issue. What makes or breaks an online experience is having a reliable connection to the host, and SE isn't helping by placing their servers in locations in which the game is inaccessible for a huge chunk of the population.

It has been recently announced that SE has plans to move the EU data center to Europe. Is there anyway SE to dive in deeper and give us even more server locations? For starters, data centers in: Oceania, Japan, Pacific Coast, East Cost, and Europe. With these locations, it would make the game accessible for a hell of a lot more people, and fix the majority of connectivity issues.

someone need to fund this

for now you can choose between Montreal and Tokyo.

Give them more money and they'll probably be happy to give you more servers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AskaRay

Give them more money and they'll probably be happy to give you more servers.

---

The intention of this post is not for more servers, but for a migration.

you did say more in the titles

When is the EU server supposed to come out anyways? I havent heard anything regarding it since fan fest. I was hoping we'd have heard something considering how close Heavenward is.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vespar

When is the EU server supposed to come out anyways? I havent heard anything regarding it since fan fest. I was hoping we'd have heard something considering how close Heavenward is.

---

My guess is they will reveal new information on it in an upcoming live letter before Heavensward. But who knows, just look how long it is taking them for dx11 and add on support.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rina_inverse

you did say more in the titles

---

I said "more options". All the servers are either located in Japan or Montreal. What I am saying is move them(not all of them) to a new location.

and after moving them, countless similar topic will be made, request to move em back

Well, there are quite a bit of servers which are in 2 data centers; JP and Canada. You want the to move servers...but they would need to create another data center for that (which they are going to do for EU, I think?). So you want another data centers located in US? That would probably be a while though, since you see it still take them ages to even consider the EU one.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rina_inverse

and after moving them, countless similar topic will be made, request to move em back

---

And how do you know that? People want something that is accessible. Having all the servers at only 2 specific locations just makes it that much harder for people to access the game.

by compromising

like what I do when leaving Sargatanas. Ive been there since it still Lindblum back in 1.0. then merged with another server. ive made lots of friend there
i have to leave them because playing no longer bearable (they move/designated it as US server)

so try compromising

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rina_inverse

by compromising

like what I do when leaving Sargatanas. Ive been there since it still Lindblum back in 1.0. then merged with another server. ive made lots of friend there
i have to leave them because playing no longer bearable (they move/designated it as US server)

so try compromising

---

Do you realize that there is no compromise for those of us west of the continental divide? From this side of the mountains, pings and lag spikes from the us servers are similar to those on the JP servers... Horrible.

Edit to add: also, in reference to your comment about giving them money... You know we all do that already, every month.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rina_inverse

by compromising

like what I do when leaving Sargatanas. Ive been there since it still Lindblum back in 1.0. then merged with another server. ive made lots of friend there
i have to leave them because playing no longer bearable (they move/designated it as US server)

so try compromising

---

How is it making it no longer bearable if you are confining the North America servers to be in various locations in North America. Your argument makes no sense. I am not suggesting moving servers between NA and JP data centers. That would be complicated and dumb. What I am suggesting is spreading the servers throughout North America(2 locations) to resolve the issue of players having to go through 3-4 ISPs before reaching the server.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JohnMccain

The intention of this post is not for more servers, but for a migration.

---

Moving servers still requires more resources, thus, money.

If you're on the west coast try the JP servers? Who knows.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AskaRay

Moving servers still requires more resources, thus, money.

If you're on the west coast try the JP servers? Who knows.

---

Maths:
7.99-14.99 per month x 500,000 active accounts = plenty of money to improve the service that we pay for

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Taliph

Maths:
7.99-14.99 per month x 500,000 active accounts = plenty of money to improve the service that we pay for

---

You give the input but you never mention any output. If you can give a breakdown on how much SE has to pay to others (not just their own staff), perhaps you can give a better number on how much they have left to migrate servers. How much is this "plenty" you mention after all the cost they have to pay.

even if you said splitting, it still a sizeable sum of money to invest
building
resources
staff
etc

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SecretCrowds

You give the input but you never mention any output. If you can give a breakdown on how much SE has to pay to others (not just their own staff), perhaps you can give a better number on how much they have left to migrate servers. How much is this "plenty" you mention after all the cost they have to pay.

---

You are also forgetting the cash shop that was according to Yoshi P "the profits used as something to give back to the community." The fact that SE has been double dipping these past few months leads anyone to see that they have plenty of money to upgrade their servers. You don't need to be a financial analyst to see it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JohnMccain

Is there anyway SE to dive in deeper and give us even more server locations? For starters, data centers in: Oceania, Japan, Pacific Coast, East Cost, and Europe.

---

Ignoring the considerable ongoing cost of each data centre, how would the players get to these data servers?

It's one thing for them to move the Europe servers actually to Europe, but if they start moving NA designated servers around they risk causing problems for the many players on them (myself included) who don't have a problem (heck I'm in the UK, Europe and I connect to Sargatanas in Canada, but if they move it even somewhere in the US who knows what'll happen to it?)

Likewise although they can create new servers and offer people free/paid world moves etc because people would be reluctant to leave friends and a lot of things like houses can't be moved, if the servers don't populate fully you'd end up with a lost of ghost town servers. Sure they could look into house moving etc too, but what I'm trying to say is adding new locations would just cause a lot of new problems.

So, say your idea goes through and the North American servers get split up into East and West servers. What if mine (Cactuar) becomes a West coast server and I live on the East coast? I'd really like to not have to leave my FC and static just because I'd have bad ping to the server now (as well as the other people in my static/FC that live on the East coast/Midwest). Would I just need to suck it up and cope or move?

moving the servers means 2 options:
1) buying new servers and moving those, then switching during a maintenance. This is expensive. VERY expensive. They'd have to buy space at a new data center and the new servers. And people would still complain.
2) actually moving the new servers. They'd STILL have to buy the new data center location AND pay the fees to transport the servers AND you'd be unable to play on those servers until it happens. And people would still complain.

Unless you can give a more cost effective solution that doesn't involve the division going into the red for the quarter, it's just not happening.

Some time ago had read that server location is fine as is and players needs buy a better internet, when EU players complaining about being constantly slided by Titan EX.

But now, if the problem is within the U.S., then servers needs be moved. How the irony.

SE has offices in Los Angeles....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dhex

SE has offices in Los Angeles....

---

Offices are not data centres.

The short answer is there really is no problem.

Montreal is "close enough" for West coast, East Coast and Europe. However because West Coast and Europe have to go through significant numbers of routing points, and those points can change over time.

The Speed of Light and the lack of optical switching along these paths is the real problem. Every hop involves being converted from optical data to semiconductor data, and then back to optical data.

From my location to the server I play on, I get 80ms. That's actually decent. But it's not ideal (Another MMORPG I played I got 20ms, because it was in southern California) It goes via Cogent.

If I trace from a northern California to the same server, same 80ms ping. It goes via
Telia and as6453.net

If I trace from Arizona, it goes via Level 3, same 80ms ping

If I trace from Montreal, it goes via Ormuco, 1ms ping.


So as you can see, short of putting the server in someone's backyard, you're always going to have some latency.

If they move some servers to San Jose (where many of the West Coast data centers are) that would improve the latency for those in the Western time zone, but it will make the latency worse for those who were already playing on it and don't live over here. Plus California has more expensive energy and taxes. But Vancouver BC would be more expensive because they lack Carrier Hotels, and it costs thousands of dollars to colocate a server in Vancouver versus hundreds for San Jose.

Literately, the cost difference is like 500$ in San Jose, 2500$ in Seattle, and 10000$ in Vancouver to host the exact same thing.

That's why VM's are so popular, and have such awful performance, because you can just shuffle VM's around data centers depending on who offers you a better deal that month. But games suck on VM's, having twice as much overhead as running on native hardware... but "oh look I can move stuff around at a moments notice".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JimboTCB

Offices are not data centres.

---

Yes but you tend to need an office space to house a server...

also, which NA server group should SE move?
To choose the servers that get moving to EU is easier, because they were designed for EU players since launch. But there is no seperation between east coast players and west coast players on the NA servers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dhex

Yes but you tend to need an office space to house a server...

---

office space =/= data center space.

Data centers are generally in secure, environment proof buildings, with lots of fault protection and a load of infrastructure. Every datacenter that I have seen was essentially a building made of steel reinforced concrete, and with internal air systems and internal power generators, designed so that a natural disaster could strike the area around the building, and the datacenter would never skip a beat.

Data center space is also roughly 50-100 times more expensive as office space, as well. a company that I worked as a help desk analyst for, had recently constructed and migrated into a new data center. It was a medium sized one in Oklahoma, and cost ~$120 million to construct.

In the world of big business, $12 million a month in income isn't a whole heck of a lot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dhex

Yes but you tend to need an office space to house a server...

---

I think you're sorely underestimating how much space is required to house a data center. These aren't PC towers you can stack in a broom closet. Each server IS a broom closet. Stuffed with electronic goodies.

must be nice to have a ping less then 300 lol but yeah your right we need more us servers so everyone there can get 1ms ping </sarcasm>

would make sense to have an oceanic server(service for uk too maybe?) but im just an aussie so dont matter lol

I kind of roll my eyes at these threads as after years of playing games with servers located on the West Coast, and having terrible ping, for once us Midwestern players have a game's servers actually relatively close to them (Montreal).

I'm from a small town in Northwestern Ontario, I don't even have 5 MB up/down on good days. This is the only game I've ever played where my ping has ever been below 100 despite my actual up/down rate being so horrific

I love the Montreal servers, with all my little heart. <3 QwQ