Sales resumption, Home World Transfer resumption, and Oceanic Data Centre announced

Key points:
* Oceanic data centre opens Tuesday, January 25, 2022*. It will have 5 worlds.
* Sales to new players resumes Tuesday, January 25, 2022*.
* Home world transfer service resumes Tuesday, January 25, 2022*.
* Registration of new Free Trial accounts to remain suspended until further notice ("after monitoring server stability a while longer").
* JP region to be reconfigured into 4 data centres around July 2022. Number of worlds remains unchanged at 32. Configuration change will be 10:11:11 -> 8:8:8:8.
* NA region to get a 4th data centre. 4 worlds will be added in August 2022, with another 4 in spring/summer 2023. Configuration change will be 8:8:8 -> 8:8:8:4 -> 8:8:8:8.
* EU region to get 4 new worlds, 2 in each data centre, in July 2022. A third data centre with 8 worlds will be added in summer 2023. Configuration change will be 6:6 -> 8:8 -> 8:8:8.
* Data centre travel will come in 6.1x. You can visit other data centres within your own region.
* Additional upgrades expected later, i.e. with the next expansion (7.0).

*Dates and time will vary depending on your time zone.

Source for the information in the post above:
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...08732633c1ae13

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Further detail on the Oceanic Data Center (Materia):

There will be five new worlds, all named for primals from the Warring Triad questline (and the two linked EXes):

• Bismarck
• Ravana
• Sephirot
• Sophia
• Zurvan

There will be bonuses for creating or transferring characters, as listed in the news release:

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...ecdda8ce042b5c

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Please note the ability to use the Home World Transfer Service to transfer to the new Worlds will not be available immediately after the opening of the Data Center, but will begin Wednesday, 26 January around 6:00 (GMT) / 17:00 (AEDT).

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Residential districts and housing purchases will not be available until Patch 6.1.

No cross region travel is incredibly disappointing. GG to us hoping to both move and continue playing with Americani friends we've been playing with the last decade. I won't be moving my main, it seems.

Yoshi has said differences due to "game economy and values". If they're so concerned about people going to the Japanese servers, just wall them off. I'm sure the rest of us don't really care.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

No cross region travel is incredibly disappointing. GG to us hoping to both move and continue playing with Americani friends we've been playing with the last decade. I won't be moving my main, it seems.

Yoshi has said differences due to "game economy and values". If they're so concerned about people going to the Japanese servers, just wall them off. I'm sure the rest of us don't really care.

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I can't belive some people still find stuffs to complain about amid the new servers going up. For some the cup truly is never full.

Tonberry and Kujata will not be moved to new oceanic data center to jumpstart the population there? Sad :(

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

No cross region travel is incredibly disappointing. GG to us hoping to both move and continue playing with Americani friends we've been playing with the last decade. I won't be moving my main, it seems.

Yoshi has said differences due to "game economy and values". If they're so concerned about people going to the Japanese servers, just wall them off. I'm sure the rest of us don't really care.

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please keep reading

"We’ll be paying keen attention to the opinions of players as we consider whether or not to introduce cross-region travel in the future."

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Originally Posted by Garet

Tonberry and Kujata will not be moved to new oceanic data center to jumpstart the population there? Sad :(

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its would not be fair for those who don't want to move and now are forced to.

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Originally Posted by Garet

Tonberry and Kujata will not be moved to new oceanic data center to jumpstart the population there? Sad :(

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Why would you move Japanese servers and make all the Japanese people on those servers mad and have to deal with worse ping?


The transfers are going to be free, there is no need to "jumpstart" population.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Why would you move Japanese servers and make all the Japanese people on those servers mad and have to deal with worse ping?


The transfers are going to be free, there is no need to "jumpstart" population.

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It will discourage a huge number of oceanic players in jp worlds from moving to the new datacenter though which will slow down population growth there. Why would people move to an empty datacenter unless the ping is unbearable for them in the jp datacenter.

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Originally Posted by Garet

It will discourage a huge number of oceanic players in jp worlds from moving to the new datacenter though which will slow down population growth there. Why would people move to an empty datacenter unless the ping is unbearable for them in the jp datacenter.

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No queues, better ping, Xp bonuses, nearly guaranteed housing.

There's a few things.

Those two servers are Japanese servers that were unofficially designated, there's NO reason to move them.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

No queues, better ping, Xp bonuses, nearly guaranteed housing.

There's a few things.

Those two servers are Japanese servers that were unofficially designated, there's NO reason to move them.

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probably longer wait time on dungeons, raids etc though or will they be connected to other datacenter populations? otherwise unless the ping is unbearable on your current server there is no incentive to move to an empty datacenter unless you like playing like a single player game

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

No queues, better ping, Xp bonuses, nearly guaranteed housing.

There's a few things.

Those two servers are Japanese servers that were unofficially designated, there's NO reason to move them.

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No login queues. Getting into actually content via Duty Finder is a different matter entirely. Granted, I suspect OCE will have enough interest to make them relatively okay. NA, on the other hand, I wonder. There's very little incentive to transfer off Aether, Primal or Crystal. Whether you're a roleplayer, raider or whatever, you'll have the smallest pool of players with similar interests. I can only imagine they'll have cross DC available by this point. With that said, I'm extremely thankful because I feared a new NA Data Center would be shuffling around the current worlds. Been through that once and would rather not have to choose between friends and static.

I'll wait til near the end of the free transfer period once new NA is added before checking out whatever server is lowest pop. Almost makes ya feel bad for OCE and JP. They'll (likely) only get one period of free transfer incentives, NA and EU will (likely) get it twice.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

No login queues. Getting into actually content via Duty Finder is a different matter entirely. Granted, I suspect OCE will have enough interest to make them relatively okay. NA, on the other hand, I wonder. There's very little incentive to transfer off Aether, Primal or Crystal. Whether you're a roleplayer, raider or whatever, you'll have the smallest pool of players with similar interests. I can only imagine they'll have cross DC available by this point. With that said, I'm extremely thankful because I feared a new NA Data Center would be shuffling around the current worlds. Been through that once and would rather not have to choose between friends and static.

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This is my fear as well. Unless the new oceanic datacenter is connected to the jp datacenter for duty finders etc. The low population of the new oceanic datacenter will be a big problem. For new players it will be probably be ok since they will be busy with MSQ for a while but for those that are already at endgame and wants to do stuff with other people it will be harder unless you move with a big group of people that you do static dungeons and raids with. This is why when they opened the EU datacenters they moved some old populated world with lots of EU players into that datacenter to jumpstart the population.

I will also probably wait a few weeks or months to see how the population grows before deciding I guess.

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Originally Posted by Garet

This is my fear as well. Unless the new oceanic datacenter is connected to the jp datacenter for duty finders etc. The low population of the new oceanic datacenter will be a big problem. For new players it will be probably be ok since they will be busy with MSQ for a while but for those that are already at endgame and wants to do stuff with other people it will be harder unless you move with a big group of people that you do static dungeons and raids with. This is why when they opened the EU datacenters they moved some old populated world with lots of EU players into that datacenter to jumpstart the population.

I will also probably wait a few weeks or months to see how the population grows before deciding I guess.

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I will guess that the numbers and feedback the FFXIV team has received that necessitated an entire new DC comes along with confidence there will be enough players to support DF. You don't invest in that kind of infrastructure lightly and you especially don't move it up if you don't expect players to migrate in large amounts.

Great news. :)

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

No cross region travel is incredibly disappointing.

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I guess, cross data center travel is a challenge, which can be solved with programming. This news describes things where new hardware is needed.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

I guess, cross data center travel is a challenge, which can be solved with programming. This news describes things where new hardware is needed.

Cheers

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No, they know its possible, but they held back on developing it it for now because they want the player markets to stabilize and to see the reception of DC travel in general.

I am very glad that Materia is getting pushed up, I just really hope that the team listens to people outside of JP in terms of cross-region, otherwise it's probably not very likely to happen.

I'd be happy for NA/OCE cross DC... and leave JP alone, if there are concerns about culture as Yoshi says.

Possibly bring in EU too as so many Europeans are bilinguals and polyglots.

The limiting of dc travel has nothing to do with JP. But continue to not read properly and jump to conclusions people..

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

The limiting of dc travel has nothing to do with JP. But continue to not read properly and jump to conclusions people..

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Do you think the value differences are gonna be between NA, EU and OCE?

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Originally Posted by leezard

Do you think the cultural issues are gonna be between NA, EU and OCE?

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Think you should read the letter and waste your time trying to find the word culture in it.

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

The limiting of dc travel has nothing to do with JP. But continue to not read properly and jump to conclusions people..

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Do you know Occam's razor? ;)


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

Do you know Occam's razor? ;)


Cheers

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Do you know assumption is the mother of all screw ups :D

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

Think you should read the letter and waste your time trying to find the word culture in it.

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I am curious, how do you read "different values"?

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

No cross region travel is incredibly disappointing. GG to us hoping to both move and continue playing with Americani friends we've been playing with the last decade. I won't be moving my main, it seems.

Yoshi has said differences due to "game economy and values". If they're so concerned about people going to the Japanese servers, just wall them off. I'm sure the rest of us don't really care.

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https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...89/560/b85.gif

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

Do you know assumption is the mother of all screw ups :D

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The Vorlons would disagree with you. :)


Edit:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

I am curious, how do you read "different values"?

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I have read the german version of this news:
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b96051384b793e

They mean game economy and market prices. I guess, this is meant with "values".


Cheers

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

The Vorlons would disagree with you. :)


Cheers

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Vorlon were childish so were the shadows both got told GTFO!!

have to say it's going to take a bit longer than I thought it would by the time the new data centres arrive we'll be gearing up for the next expansion, I'm not really bothered as I have little trouble logging in these days but I can imagine some people not being too happy about this. That said though I'm sure they're doing the best they can and this is the quickest the can do it, hopefully the world additions in july will do something to remedy the issue.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

I have read the german version of this news:
https://de.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b96051384b793e

They mean game economy and market prices. I guess, this is meant with "values".

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That would be pricing, not values. Values are more personal held beliefs and traits.

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the principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong, and how to act in various situations

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https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...english/values

However, it's good to see that they only poorly translated the English word and correctly did the German.

Hopefully they can change the word "values" to pricing, because as you can see a lot of native English speakers are reading values with the more common personal-trait meaning. It's a bit offensive written that way, especially with "and" delimiting the phrase into two ideas.

"differences in game economy and values." --> "Differences in marketboard prices." maybe - considering economy and marketboard are the same thing there is no need to be redundant and say it twice.

Well it's certainly going to be busy this summer with the new data centers being set up and into next year. Look forward to see what the new announcements are at the next live letter.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Why would you move Japanese servers and make all the Japanese people on those servers mad and have to deal with worse ping?


The transfers are going to be free, there is no need to "jumpstart" population.

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It's wouldn't be the first time they've populated new DCs with existing world servers.

Players with FCs and houses will be hard pressed to find a reason to jump ship and transfer to another server.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

It's wouldn't be the first time they've populated new DCs with existing world servers.

Players with FCs and houses will be hard pressed to find a reason to jump ship and transfer to another server.

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Maybe not the first time for DCs in the same region, but if people were srsly thinking they were gonna fly the physical servers from Japan to wherever the new OCE DC is while the game is still running and in this current climate, they probably didnt think too hard about the logistics of why that would be not the best option.

Remember, when they created Crystal and Light, they didnt ship the servers to other places, they moved them around in the buildings the servers already existed in. The total number of worlds in each region never went down, they were simply reorganised, just as is the plan with the JP servers in the coming year.

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Originally Posted by MrThinker

Maybe not the first time for DCs in the same region, but if people were srsly thinking they were gonna fly the physical servers from Japan to wherever the new OCE DC is while the game is still running and in this current climate, they probably didnt think too hard about the logistics of why that would be not the best option.

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As someone who has done it innumerable times in other industries, a database dump onto new servers could likely be done well inside the 24 hours of maintenance. The servers wouldn't have been moved.

However I am ok with the defacto servers staying in Japan. I am less ok that the marketboard, fresh and new and completely empty, will have hugely inflated prices over the other regions.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

As someone who has done it innumerable times in other industries, a database dump onto new servers could likely be done well inside the 24 hours of maintenance. The servers wouldn't have been moved.

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Then what is currently the plan is basically this but actually giving people the choice.

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However I am ok with the defacto servers staying in Japan. I am less ok that the marketboard, fresh and new and completely empty, will have hugely inflated prices over the other regions.

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Your second statement on the other warrants more in depth discussion. But not by me.

Double exp, eh? I may transfer there for a bit if able.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

Double exp, eh? I may transfer there for a bit if able.

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It's one way free, then there is a 90 day time limit you must remain, and pay US$18 to return.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

As someone who has done it innumerable times in other industries, a database dump onto new servers could likely be done well inside the 24 hours of maintenance. The servers wouldn't have been moved.

However I am ok with the defacto servers staying in Japan. I am less ok that the marketboard, fresh and new and completely empty, will have hugely inflated prices over the other regions.

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Yep they don't need to move the actual server. They should move 2 old world into the new datacenter like they did back with the EU datacenter when they opened it to create a more stable foundation. Otherwise the population growtth might be much much slower since an empty server is really not appetizing to move in at the start. I imagine a lot will wait for it to grow before moving there which will further add to the problem of getting the population to grow faster.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

It's one way free, then there is a 90 day time limit you must remain, and pay US$18 to return.

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I'll just free transfer when they open up a new usa server in August.

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Originally Posted by Garet

Yep they don't need to move the actual server. They should move 2 old world into the new datacenter like they did back with the EU datacenter when they opened it to create a more stable foundation. Otherwise the population growtth might be much much slower since an empty server is really not appetizing to move in at the start. I imagine a lot will wait for it to grow before moving there which will further add to the problem of getting the population to grow faster.

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You can't compare the oce dc to europe though.

the servers your quoting are jpn servers. from the jpn dc people from other regions joined them knowing there jpn servers. if thy moved them there main target audience (japanese players) get effected.

the Europe's dc shuffle did not massively hinder the main target players bar those who changed for statics.

They are not going to massively inconvenience the priority player target for those two worlds.

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Originally Posted by Kogekigami

You can't compare the oce dc to europe though.

the servers your quoting are jpn servers. from the jpn dc people from other regions joined them knowing there jpn servers. if thy moved them there main target audience (japanese players) get effected.

the Europe's dc shuffle did not massively hinder the main target players bar those who changed for statics.

They are not going to massively inconvenience the priority player target for those two worlds.

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It is technically similar. Europeans joined NA servers knowing they are NA servers as well. When they moved those two world to the new Euro Datacenter from NA they also brought NA players there to Europe. I think they offered free transfers for both ways, in and out of the new EU DC, for those that wanted to go back to NA servers from EU.

But yes the big difference here is that the japanese is their main customers so their voices understandably carries more weight than NA players.