Info on EU Preferred Worlds?

Just wondering if there has been any further word on EU preferred worlds. Its now been a week since the changes and nothing. Wanting to start a fresh on an EU server (so have 1 on Light and Chaos) but is stupid too until the preferred worlds are back.

Got to be many new EU players in a similar limbo.

Probably when the free transfer ends and SE knows which servers are empty.

What further word? They just recently removed the Preferred label from the EU worlds which had that label.
There is usually a few months between each such status change, so if you are waiting you may have a long time to wait - I wouldn't expect any changes in world status before the release of Shadowbringers.
And even then there is no guarantee they will mark any EU servers as Preferred. The servers marked as such are those with unusually small populations. If no world in a datacenter has an overly small population, then none of the worlds will be marked as Preferred.
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The last times there have been any changes in which worlds are considered Congested/Preferred have been:
Apr 2, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Nov 6, 2018
Sep 18, 2018

Well it's possible the new worlds being created for the EU centres may well have Preferred status to entice players to populate them with new characters, but that's not going to happen till the expac releases. Keep an eye on the Lodestone though as they would announce it there.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

Well it's possible the new worlds being created for the EU centres may well have Preferred status to entice players to populate them with new characters, but that's not going to happen till the expac releases. Keep an eye on the Lodestone though as they would announce it there.

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Well, "New world" is a separate status that has all the bonuses of a Preferred World and then some

Idk, they might update just prior to SHB, with the intent of hoping new recruits on expansion release may be intentionally or unintentionally funneled to the servers that will be able to handle the extra load.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Idk, they might update just prior to SHB, with the intent of hoping new recruits on expansion release may be intentionally or unintentionally funneled to the servers that will be able to handle the extra load.

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The world servers themselves are usually not the problem come expansion time. The load in the open world areas isn't that huge.
No, the weak point tends to be the instance servers - the special servers handling all the instanced duties including dungeons and the like for a data centre. The data center splits are almost certainly made with the intention of reducing the load on the instance servers, by reducing the number of worlds each of them will need to handle.

Naturally. But, the need for instancing The Lochs as well last expansion suggests that they may also take world load into consideration.

Or, perhaps not, and they'll hope the world visit system may be able to take care of that issue. Why trouble themselves with additional instanced zones when they can just encourage players to hop to a world less congested for a time.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

What further word? They just recently removed the Preferred label from the EU worlds which had that label.
There is usually a few months between each such status change, so if you are waiting you may have a long time to wait - I wouldn't expect any changes in world status before the release of Shadowbringers.
And even then there is no guarantee they will mark any EU servers as Preferred. The servers marked as such are those with unusually small populations. If no world in a datacenter has an overly small population, then none of the worlds will be marked as Preferred.
.

The last times there have been any changes in which worlds are considered Congested/Preferred have been:
Apr 2, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Nov 6, 2018
Sep 18, 2018

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So what you are saying is that new players are best to avoid playing on the EU servers then? Started a character on one of the NA preferred worlds to kill time, but guess this will end up becoming my main if there won't be any EU preferred servers any time soon. Seems silly as created a NA toon in part because of all the talk of low populations on EU, but to not encourage further growth on the EU servers seems counterproductive.

I might be mistaken, but i thought there was some sort of restriction about transfering on or off preferred servers. In my mind once you get on a preferred world you arent supposed to be able to transfer off for like 90 days. So its possible they lifted the preferred status just for the free transfer window to make moves easier to accomplish. Then as Laphael suggested they could re-instate preferred status on the servers that wind up with lower populations.

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Originally Posted by noisydog

So what you are saying is that new players are best to avoid playing on the EU servers then?

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Not at all. I would not recommend a Preferred world for new players anyway.
The big Exp bonus you get there really messes up the leveling pace and leveling experience unless you know how to handle it - which new players won't know how to do. Rushing to level cap is not the point of the game anyway.

Keep in mind that they don't just slap the Preferred label on worlds at random. It is used for those worlds whose population is unusually small and which need more players. Ideally all the worlds would have about equal population, and then there would not be any need for Congested or Preferred servers at all.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

I would not recommend a Preferred world for new players anyway.
The big Exp bonus you get there really messes up the leveling pace and leveling experience unless you know how to handle it - which new players won't know how to do.

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To elaborate a little on that pacing issue MistakeNot mentioned: It can be overcome by leveling several jobs in tandem, alternating quests and dungeons between them to spread out which ones get the XP. For players who want to level multiple jobs and would likely be alternating them like that anyway rather than focusing on one first, Preferred worlds can actually be a good place to do so.

But too many new players don't know to do that, so start doing all or most of the content on one job until they drastically over-level where they're at in the Main Scenario. That can completely trivialize both the story quests (which can kind of ruin a good story) and to a lesser extent the instance content (and particularly its rewards) that doesn't get unlocked until you reach it within the main story. Then, if the player is pretty far into the game, and their level pretty far past their quest level, before figuring out they should have been alternating jobs from the outset, switching patterns to do so can become quite a hassle to get their quests (and other jobs to do those quests) caught up with where their first job is. We see a lot of complaints about pacing from players stuck at that point.

For players who want to focus on a single job, or at least want to start off focusing on a single job (maybe going back to level others once their main is at endgame): I really would NOT recommend playing on a Preferred World. Even on a regular (non-preferred) world, they're going to have issues with over-leveling their story progress unless they make a point of avoiding all optional content until after they've gotten their main job and story completion to endgame.

But for players who can't choose a single favorite job and want to level several of them together, alternating between them, a Preferred World can be a good place to do so.

how do I know what worlds are new?

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Originally Posted by Demaskus

how do I know what worlds are new?

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Right now, none of them are considered "New". New worlds aren't added very often. Last time was in June 2017 when Omega and Louisoix were added.

In general you can follow the link from the launcher decribing the status of Congested/Preferred worlds - as well as New and Standard worlds.

Was kind of hoping they would re-add them today, but nothing. Hope they don't delay them till after the US moves, or even worse the new expansion. Tried starting chars on none preferred but the crafting slog is a real slog, and the lag on US servers makes gathering painful at times.

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Originally Posted by noisydog

Was kind of hoping they would re-add them today, but nothing. Hope they don't delay them till after the US moves, or even worse the new expansion. Tried starting chars on none preferred but the crafting slog is a real slog, and the lag on US servers makes gathering painful at times.

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It is usually some 2-3 months between each time they change the status of any worlds, so I wouldn't expect any further changes in the world status until the release of Shadowbringers.
No guarantees that there will be any Preferred EU worlds in the forseeable future anyway - that all depends on how the world populations change.

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Originally Posted by noisydog

Just wondering if there has been any further word on EU preferred worlds. Its now been a week since the changes and nothing. Wanting to start a fresh on an EU server (so have 1 on Light and Chaos) but is stupid too until the preferred worlds are back.

Got to be many new EU players in a similar limbo.

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If i were you i would have waited for Shadowbringer expansion.
They promised to add 2 new Worlds to EU.

And Character Creation Bonuses on New World:

Bonuses awarded at character creation

• Double EXP bonus (until level 60 is reached)
• Gift of 10 silver chocobo feathers, exchangeable for low-mid level gear to improve the leveling experience

Bonuses for characters created during bonus period that attain level 30 in any class

• Gift of 1,000,000 gil (*1)
• Gift of 15 days of free play time (*2)

*1 Limited to once per data center on a single service account.
*2 Limited to once per service account when creating a new character on either a New or Preferred World.
Link to the source: https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...ion_balancing/

Now a few days after the US moves and still no Preferred Worlds on EU or now NA. Does seem I choose a bad time to join the game. Likely going to unsub and hope they re-add something in on SB release, already paid for the expansion as I like the game but the crafting grind is really significant without that boost.

I guess I never understand the problem others have when leveling things to the point where they need a boost that's outside of their control. Concerning there's a lot of ways to get xp to zip through levels like leve and gc turn ins, the crafting xp boost manuals, crafting focused beast tribe quests. Just actually crafting things. The only slow parts I've ran into while just doing non housing items to craft on was the bump to get the first set of HW recipes. Along with Crp, Alch and Cul sometimes not having enough to craft to stay in the same range as the others. If we're just talking strictly about crafting as there are some slogs in gathering.