About Global Servers / グローバルサーバーについて

[Shipp]

You're right, your completely-fabricated facts about mythical servers where only 3000 people are allowed to play and all of them do so 24 hours a day without sleep or work are completely proving your point.

I was being generous with those numbers. I could have called a spade a spade and just said 95% of the JP population in MMOs are completely xenophobic and think they're better than the rest of the world.

You're the type of person I'm glad I can avoid with segregated servers, the typical English person pretending to be Japanese with their Sailor Moon anime name.

The numbers are not made up, 3,000 people was about the number of players from XI. You're right though, the majority of players in XIV are Japanese, but again, I was trying to be generous with the numbers. You could take that 1,000 French, German, Spanish, etc language category and shave it to 100 players and add 200 to English and 700 to Japanese and that would be closer to XI numbers.

It's a fact that the vast majority of JP players will not group up with people who don't speak Japanese. Whether it be xenophobic reasons or they just aren't into using the translator, it really doesn't matter. The vast majority of them will only party with other Japanese players, which leaves me out of that equation. I should not have to play on a server where half of the players will not party with me just so you can have your way and converse with them. Giving people options does not take your options away. If the global servers are desolate, they're desolate for a reason. Most people do not want to play in the scenario I have listed. Call it fabricated all you want, you're not fooling anyone who played XI and isn't deluding themselves that JPs weren't bad about "JP ONLY."

[Shipp]

i hate language specific servers, i myself have a japanese only LS and i don't speak japanese, they helped me a lot when i started ff14, so some of this statements are not true for all.

Most of us are probably pulling from personal experience in XI. 2.0 looks to be moving more towards XI's way of things, from what I see. At least for the partying aspect. Up to now, I haven't had problems in XIV with JP players, and it's usually fine grouping up because it's for a 10 minute behest or something. I did see a shout last week for a JP "onry" (I am not being sarcastic, that was how they spelled it) Ifrit fight, so it does still hold true to some degree.

Obviously not all JP players are like this, but the majority of them would rather play with other JP players.

[Tsukino]

I was being generous with those numbers. I could have called a spade a spade and just said 95% of the JP population in MMOs are completely xenophobic and think they're better than the rest of the world.

Congratulations, you're just as much of a racist jerk as all the people who put "JP ONLY" in their search comments.

People exaggerate a small issue to be most of the people playing the game. In reality the number of people who refused to party with non-Japanese speakers was small, most of them don't care one way or the other unless it's a big endgame event where clear communication is key (in which case everyone should care). I'd join many Japanese parties and then invite my English-only friends along while offering to interpret and the vast majority were happy to have them along. There were some xenophobic players on every server, sure, but they're a vocal minority holding onto bad stereotypes from years prior.

Anyway, your facts are fabricated because there's a faulty assumption which I already outlined many posts ago, and it has nothing to do with the presence (or even amount) of xenophobes. I don't think I should have to explain it again but I will try to use your example, though I'm sure you're just going to call me a weeaboo and ignore it all anyway.

If you ran a /sea all on FFXI and saw 3000 people, that would be the number of people playing at any given time. Obviously there were more than 3000 on each server, since their total reported numbers were above 500,000. Let's say you ran that search in the middle of North American prime time, around 18:30 Pacific 21:30 Eastern. At that time it's 10:30 in Japan. Almost everyone there is either at work or school or going there. Indeed the entire range from 18:00 Eastern to 22:00 Pacific is from 7:00 to 14:00 Japanese time. Out of 3000 people, a very small number of them are Japanese; only those with strange shifts or the unemployed would be playing an online game in the morning work hours. You still have tons of English speakers to party with and get things done at this time.

At this point you might be saying something like "but if 3000 are mostly NA, another 3000 are probably JP and maybe another 1500 speaking other languages from Europe." That is most likely true, but it does not mean that the game suddenly becomes able to accommodate 7500 players all at once. It can probably only handle close to the amounts we had when they kept adding new worlds and trying to get people to shift to them. The time zone differences allow them to put all those people on the same server though, because there's no way all of them will ever be logged in at once. The peak times from the three regions line up rather nicely (seriously, there was a chart, I swear) to keep the servers at capacity all the time. You wouldn't get twice as many English speakers, you'd just get a very similar amount but without everyone else.

Even if your absurd 95% statistic were correct, during peak hours you wouldn't need to party with any Japanese players anyway, and during non-peak hours even 5% means more than you'd get from just people in your own region playing at a weird time of day. Except it's not correct, and the boost to people up at 4:00 is much greater than that, even if the language barrier means they can't do serious endgame content.

[Shipp]

Congratulations, you're just as much of a racist jerk as all the people who put "JP ONLY" in their search comments.

Not really, because I have no problem playing with anyone. I have a problem being discriminated against by the majority of the JP player base in XI.

Nice job trying to pull the racism card though. Not all of us can suck up to a race instead of being realistic about the situation. Funny, even JP players have commented about how they didn't like partying with NAs because we were rude. But yep, I'm the racist one.

People exaggerate a small issue to be most of the people playing the game. In reality the number of people who refused to party with non-Japanese speakers was small, most of them don't care one way or the other unless it's a big endgame event where clear communication is key (in which case everyone should care). I'd join many Japanese parties and then invite my English-only friends along while offering to interpret and the vast majority were happy to have them along. There were some xenophobic players on every server, sure, but they're a vocal minority holding onto bad stereotypes from years prior.

I don't know what your character name in XI was, but seeing as you are fluent in Japanese and have a Japanese name in XIV, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they assumed you were Japanese yourself. Most of them want to play with other Japanese players, or they did in XI. This isn't some huge secret, I don't know why a few people seem to be acting like this wasn't the case.

Anyway, your facts are fabricated because there's a faulty assumption which I already outlined many posts ago, and it has nothing to do with the presence (or even amount) of xenophobes. I don't think I should have to explain it again but I will try to use your example, though I'm sure you're just going to call me a weeaboo and ignore it all anyway.

If you ran a /sea all on FFXI and saw 3000 people, that would be the number of people playing at any given time. Obviously there were more than 3000 on each server, since their total reported numbers were above 500,000. Let's say you ran that search in the middle of North American prime time, around 18:30 Pacific 21:30 Eastern. At that time it's 10:30 in Japan. Almost everyone there is either at work or school or going there. Indeed the entire range from 18:00 Eastern to 22:00 Pacific is from 7:00 to 14:00 Japanese time. Out of 3000 people, a very small number of them are Japanese; only those with strange shifts or the unemployed would be playing an online game in the morning work hours. You still have tons of English speakers to party with and get things done at this time.

Do you not remember XI? You had HNMs at any time of the day. There were always people playing in certain shifts. Your little example does not explain away my point. I don't typically play in NA prime. I usually play in JP prime. If I was on an English server, I would see other English people during JP prime, because the game is never barren just because it isn't prime. I don't understand why you and every other "global" pusher keep ramming this misconception down everyone's throat. In WoW, I can get online at 5am and see PLENTY of people running around on my server, and guess what, they all speak English.

I know the server limit wasn't 3,000. I said that is what I typically saw around prime. Now, there are certainly no English players that will not play with me just because I don't speak Japanese. However, there are Japanese players that won't play with me because I don't speak fluent Japanese. In English servers, even during JP prime there won't be a ton less characters just because it isn't prime for most people. If it was region-based it might present more of a problem, but it still wouldn't be bad. It will likely be language-based. Even on English servers, there will still be plenty of English speakers on during non NA prime, because there will be several "primes" for English speakers throughout the day.

This means that there will be several times during the day where that number will reach the 3,000 mark, and all of them will speak English. That is a full server of people willing to play with me, whereas FORCING JP to play with English players does not give me that same amount of people, because many of them only want to play with other JP players.

No, my examples are not fabricated, and they are not faulty due to your timezone comparison. You're working under the false assumption that very few English players will be on when it's not prime, and this is 100% not the case. Might not be as many as prime, but it's still going to be a larger selection for those of us who do not have Japanese names and do not speak Japanese, since we can't "trick" them into thinking that we are Japanese.

At this point you might be saying something like "but if 3000 are mostly NA, another 3000 are probably JP and maybe another 1500 speaking other languages from Europe." That is most likely true, but it does not mean that the game suddenly becomes able to accommodate 7500 players all at once. It can probably only handle close to the amounts we had when they kept adding new worlds and trying to get people to shift to them. The time zone differences allow them to put all those people on the same server though, because there's no way all of them will ever be logged in at once. The peak times from the three regions line up rather nicely (seriously, there was a chart, I swear) to keep the servers at capacity all the time. You wouldn't get twice as many English speakers, you'd just get a very similar amount but without everyone else.

Yes, you would. Example:
We have 2 "global" servers currently:
3,000 English and 3,000 JP on both. 6,000 players on each server, 12,000 total players within the two servers.

SE segregated into 1 English and 1 JP server:
English server now has 6,000.
JP server has 6,000.

Even at a capacity of 3,000, this would work fine. There are plenty of us that log on at random times. Many people work night jobs and play in the day/morning. Factor in English speaking EU and AUS players and you have more primes.

Again, the only people these new servers will hurt will be JP players who do not want to play with English speakers. Also, another poster said they were introducing cross-server tools just like I thought I read on the roadmap. This largely eliminates any concern you have of people not being on because it's not prime.

Even if your absurd 95% statistic were correct, during peak hours you wouldn't need to party with any Japanese players anyway, and during non-peak hours even 5% means more than you'd get from just people in your own region playing at a weird time of day. Except it's not correct, and the boost to people up at 4:00 is much greater than that, even if the language barrier means they can't do serious endgame content.

I'm not talking about all JP people. I'm talking about a very specific group, XI players. I have no clue how it is in XIV besides Behest and the shout I saw last week for a JP "onry" group for Ifrit.

Again, you are operating under the false assumption that during non-peak hours there is nearly nobody on from the region that is non-peak. This wasn't the case in XI, it's not the case in WoW, it's not the case in XIV currently, and it will never be the case with cross-server functions.

[Tsukino]

Not really, because I have no problem playing with anyone. I have a problem being discriminated against by the majority of the JP player base in XI.

Nice job trying to pull the racism card though. Not all of us can suck up to a race instead of being realistic about the situation. Funny, even JP players have commented about how they didn't like partying with NAs because we were rude. But yep, I'm the racist one.

Those people are prejudiced. You thinking that because some people from Japan say that the majority of Japanese people must be similarly prejudiced is also a form of racial prejudice. I'm not saying that because you're acting like a racist that they can't also be racist; you're the one who seems to think it can only be one or the other.

I don't know what your character name in XI was, but seeing as you are fluent in Japanese and have a Japanese name in XIV, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they assumed you were Japanese yourself. Most of them want to play with other Japanese players, or they did in XI. This isn't some huge secret, I don't know why a few people seem to be acting like this wasn't the case.

They may have, but I wasn't getting at the fact that I could get parties myself. I understand that my situation is a rare one. What I was trying to point out was that I fostered many bilingual parties and no one ever cared when I invited my English speaking friends along for the ride. I never once had anyone say no to inviting them when asked, nor leave the party or anything else. I made a point of avoiding people with the big "JP ONLY" in their comments though, because those people are jerks and I didn't want to play with them anyway.

Again though, those people are a vocal minority. I'm not saying they didn't or don't exist. They did, and do, and like you say everyone knows that and had a truly unique experience if they didn't encounter it at least once. I know for a fact it's sticking out in your mind though because it's one thing you can read out of hundreds of people who really don't care either way, just like you claim yourself. And the reason I know it is because I met so many more people who didn't mind English speakers in their groups than I ever saw comments or shouts demanding otherwise.



As for the rest, we're both operating on the idea that the other one is making a fundamentally flawed assumption about server populations so I don't think there's much else I can say about it. Only thing I'll add is that I'm basing my argument on a chart SE put out (I want to say it was during a census but I really don't know anymore) showing how the populations over a 24-hour period line up, specifically pointing out that they allow the game to remain populated at all times and more people total to be on a single server. Yours, on the other hand, seems to be based mostly on anecdotes such as "I see a lot of people on WoW" (I personally felt the game was dead in the early mornings) and "HNM groups are full of unemployed people who can be on at any time and therefore the whole game is like that."

[ellohwell]

I've had good experiences with Japanese people in FFXIV, so I don't consider it a problem, but I would rather have a server which i could 100% interact with. At the moment, it's like 30% of the population I can talk to.

If they release regional servers with better ping, I will definitely support the move to regional servers, but if they're still located in JPN, it kind of defeats the point.

[Murugan]

I will probably get jumped for saying this, but I don't necessarily mean it in a bad way. And sadly, it's a little known truth among XI/XIV gamers.

Japanese people are extremely racist, in general. Japan is one of the most nationalistic countries in existence. They have an overwhelming pride of what is Japan and look down on almost anyone that isn't Japanese. Now, of course there are exceptions, and Japan is by no means tiny, so when you play something like a video game that appeals to a specific group of people (gamers), you may not see the problem as much as it exists. But the fact that the Japanese community is the only community really pushing segregated servers really says a lot. Some English speaking players push for it as well, but not even close to as many English speaking players care about the issue.

Just as many English players push for it too, but most of them maybe are no longer playing FFXIV.

The day the game first came out there were people on my serving raging at a group for speaking in German on shout, demanding they speak English or leave. Not all Japanese players are xenophobic, and not all xenophobes are Japanese.

[Miliant]

I'm for it. I know this is pointless in the game as it is right now, but language-specific servers also pretty much guarantee that certain NMs will not be heavily camped at certain times of the day/night, making it easier for people to get stuff from popular NMs.

[DonMega]

I could care less about Language specific servers, If all the different societies and languages wanna go to a certain server sweet. Maybe is can bring some server wars where server compete over who beat this and how many of this awesome item this server has, I always enjoyed that in FFXI.

[Yellow]

I absolutely love the way all the servers are now..

If they bring out language servers they may as well restrict everyone to play on their on servers.

What's the point of an English speaker to join a Global server when there will be less people who can fluently understand them, and obviously less people in general compared to Language servers?

I know I wouldn't pick a global server because they would be empty.. even though I want to play with people from other countries.

Being Australian.. the only people online when I'm online are mostly Japanese with the occasional American who is staying up late.

@OP
I hate how people can be so ignorant of different cultures and nationalities ~ However people need to be educated to understand

When ever I come across someone who doesn't speak English (quite common :P) I always try to speak in their language with the use of my own knowledge, in game translator and if It's really necessary.. Google translator (D

** And not sure about your servers.. but I've never come across any Japanese player who hasn't wanted to talk to me.

Even through our language barrier we will manage to have fun through emotes, terrible japanese/english translations (Google) and doing Leve quests together.

A couple of days ago I partied with 3 Japanese players and one American player. It was the most fun I have had on an MMORPG for ages.