Why are the servers transfers free only for US players?

[BreathlessTao]

An excellent question, OP. Not quite in that form, but yes.

And please - stop with BS that for EU players on NA servers the situation is unchanged. Ping to actual EU servers now is essentially a quarter of that to NA servers, I'm sure it's much more "desirable", to use the official wording. Refusing to admit this is just bigotry. And if it wasn't offending enough from SE to ask for European players to pay extra to transfer to European servers, something that was (finally, two years after launch) done for European players, everyone and their grandmothers are abusing the free transfer from Chaos to "yay finally" have characters on Balmung - because Aether, and especially that server has not been way too overcrowded for as long as we can remember, so much so that new characters can practically never be created on it............. Yes, just peachy and perfectly alright.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

An excellent question, OP. Not quite in that form, but yes.

And please - stop with BS that for EU players on NA servers the situation is unchanged. Ping to actual EU servers now is essentially a quarter of that to NA servers, I'm sure it's much more "desirable", to use the official wording. Refusing to admit this is just bigotry. And if it wasn't offending enough from SE to ask for European players to pay extra to transfer to European servers.

because if you are on the west coast, its DOUBLE the distance to the EU servers now than it is from the EU to the servers in CA. If you are in Australia, its even further.

[Interstella]

It would have been nice to allow free transfers both ways.

I also feel it would have swayed some people who were sitting on the fence between their investment on their NA/JP server and better ping on the EU data center.

But I also think this would have made a negative impact on their earnings; if FFXIV is being used to fund other SE projects, I think we're lucky we got free transfers on one side.

[Sakuraluna]

I don't know where, but I'm sure I read somewhere at some point prior to the announcement at the EU fanfest last year that there wasn't enough resources/funding to consider relocating the EU data center to Europe. Before the cash shop was announced even, which is why cash shop apologists on these forums claim that the cash shop paved the way for the relocation. If this is so, then no, EU players are not any more at fault for choosing an NA server than NA players are for choosing an EU server. They simply chose a server that they felt was the best fit for them based on the information on hand at the time.

[Kietsu]

The way they look at it is this:
Connection quality for EU players on NA servers hasn't changed with the server move.
Connection quality for NA players on EU servers just got a hell of a lot worse, so as compensation, they're allowed to move to an NA server.

Basically, it's your fault for playing on an NA server even though there was absolutely no difference between them and an 'EU' server, just like it's your fault you didn't buy more retainers because your inventory can't hold all the new 3.0 stuff.

[Zojha]

Not really the same, because NA players that were on the EU servers are involuntarily negatively impacted by the data center move, while EU players currently on NA servers are unchanged.

Using the argument from before, they are not in fact involuntarily negatively impacted, but rather voluntarily. They chose an EU server over a JP or NA server after all, despite SE telling them that their experience there will be less than optimal. They therefore willingly accepted that their experience there would be less than optimal, just like an EU player who now creates a character on a JP or NA world accepts that his/her experience will be less than optimal. It just happened not to factually be less than optimal for NA up until now, just like the experience of an EU player happened not to be any better on a chaos world than anywhere else against what was suggested, which is why people didn't care, neither EU, nor JP nor NA.

As such, if someone is negatively impacted, directly via worse pings or indirectly via opportunity costs, that's their own fault and SE should not issue any free transfers to compensate people for their inability to read which server would offer the ideal experience for their location.


Duly note: This is not my opinion. I am merely playing devil's advocate here.

[FaileExperiment]

Connection quality for EU players on NA servers hasn't changed with the server move.
Connection quality for NA players on EU servers just got a hell of a lot worse, so as compensation, they're allowed to move to an NA server.

This is the point, and what I was saying before. It's not about fault, or about what server you chose to start with, etc. It's those two simple facts above. SE made a change that negatively affects some players. In other words, it's SE's fault that some players ping went up, and they are compensating for that with free transfers. If you are an EU player on a NA server, nothing changed for you and thus there's nothing to compensate for, so you aren't getting a free transfer.

SE could change their mind, who knows. I think, personally, that they should. But the above is the reason for it, and it's completely sound reasoning from SE's point of view.

[Undrentide]

The fact is though for a lot of Eu players, they had a service that was less satisfactory than NA players. NA players on NA servers don't have the lag to contend with that a lot of Eu players have. NA players who chose Eu servers are now finding out what a lot of Eu players have had to contend with all along. Are you saying an Eu player on a NA server should stay put because "nothing changed for them' when a better alternative is now available.

[Gilraen]

I honestly think there should have been free transfers to and from the new datacenter, period. As has been said, EU players made characters on many servers, not just the 'official' EU servers, because there really wasn't a difference. All of the servers were in Canada save the Japanese servers. We've had two free transfers since the Beta, what's one more?

[Airget]

SE has always suggested since launch that EU players play on EU servers. It was your choice to pick a NA one.

This is what I feel is the reason behind it, though I guess to be fair then it isn't exactly fair that only NA get the choice for choosing an EU server but EU who chose NA don't get that same privelage? It is slightly unfair and quite honestly, doesn't SE know which accounts are JP, NA and EU?

Could they not have easily just said all EU accounts get 1 free server transfer to an EU server if they choose while still allowing all NA accounts a chance to move away from EU to NA server if they choose? Seems like they could of made the process easy but they forgot about their accounts being distinguished between NA, JP and EU.