Important Information Regarding North American Data Center Relocation

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Any chance this means the end of Level 3 issues?

[worldofneil]

Any chance this means the end of Level 3 issues?

Not necessarily I'm afraid. Level 3 are rather large and pretty much everywhere and it's your ISP that's choosing to route your current connection to SE via Level 3. It's entirely possible that they will continue to do so the new location too. That doesn't mean that the L3 connection being used to get to the new place will be as the bad as the current one though, but as with the current L3 issues, this isn't something SE has any control over.

[ReplicaX]

Not necessarily I'm afraid.

I would read the quoted specifically. As level 3 has also been falsely accused by XIV players on issues such as DNS servers outside of their company's control and many cases SE hasn't publicly claimed fault of within their 3rd party provider with the DataCenter.

However, the endeavor hasn’t been without its challenges. The FINAL FANTASY XIV NA data center was Square Enix’s first attempt at establishing game servers outside of Japan, and as such, we have spent much time quietly tackling related problems since the center’s inception four years ago.

Some of these problems have included voltage overload and a lack of physical space for additional servers, ultimately leading to an inability to efficiently optimize servers or expand the scale of data center itself.

Voltage overloads & no physical space is a big red flag on stability. Also shows how taxed the existing servers are in general.

I'm really hope they decided on Chicago, NY, or a Texas city. As those have had some of the biggest Infrastructure and Pipeline improvements within the US, besides the physical location benefits.

[Sarevok_Thordin]

Anywhere in around the mid would be fine and shouldn't hit EU people too bad for lag, there is a large amount of love for EU and Na players to play together, but if it goes to Cali then there is going to be a meltdown.

Pinging servers in locations I'm hoping for either Santa Monica or NY, or around thereabouts, NOT Austin.

[Nantain]

Not necessarily I'm afraid. Level 3 are rather large and pretty much everywhere and it's your ISP that's choosing to route your current connection to SE via Level 3. It's entirely possible that they will continue to do so the new location too. That doesn't mean that the L3 connection being used to get to the new place will be as the bad as the current one though, but as with the current L3 issues, this isn't something SE has any control over.

Really hoping it at least helps, I really love the game and super hyped for SB, but if the constant DCs dont improve I will have to quit.

[Ama_Hamada]

Any chance this means the end of Level 3 issues?

This, is the location going to end up using level 3 routing? that has to be the most important thing. If you say the game is supposed to be playable on 200 ms ping, why is there significant lag issues with a current 40 ping to Canada?

[ReplicaX]

This, is the location going to end up using level 3 routing? that has to be the most important thing. If you say the game is supposed to be playable on 200 ms ping, why is there significant lag issues with a current 40 ping to Canada?

Doesn't matter. The current issues are more involved than one backbone provider who has been blamed countless times for issues outside their own control and not even within their own infrastructure by the playerbase.

SE has been working on this DataCenter behind the scenes for about a year based on recent interviews. SE is now admitting the current NA DC cannot expand due to physical & power limitations as well as having overvoltaging issues which directly affects the players.

- The current NA DC cannot expand to reduce load limits on the current hardware that is already taxed. This directly effects connection stability.
- The NA DC is the weak point for further game expansions & system improvements to include SB, which affects all DCs. (Why there is a relocation & new DC targeted for May release)
- The Dev Team has been restricted to implement possible improvements and/or enhance the user experience that require server loads beyond the current already taxed NA DC limitations, however the other DCs can handle the additional loads and further expand if required within their current locations.

When a DataCenter's servers & network hardware is overtaxed on loads & on power, the end user experiences "lag". A similar example for the end user would be running their own CPU/GPU at 100% load and experiencing the slowdown caused as the processors are bottlenecked, unable to process instructions at its normal speeds.