EU Confirmed as 3rd Rate Customer

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

No, they're not to blame at all. I already outlined it in my previous post but it's well worth repeating. European players who started the game before the European servers were created would have - understandably - invested a lot of time, effort and social networking to lead them to become rather comfortable on their server of choice. Adding European servers may have lured some people over there but there's still a decent number of European players who did not move over. You're expecting them to pay a real life fee as well as to sacrifice most of their acquired gil due to transfer limitations and a house if they're lucky enough to own one. In addition, you expect them to also abandon any established social networks and commitments.

The servers were designated EU from the launch of 2.0, and players on legacy servers were able to freely transfer to Ragnarok at the time. Those that chose to stay on non EU designated worlds made their beds then.

[Theodric]

The servers were designated EU from the launch of 2.0, and players on legacy servers were able to freely transfer to Ragnarok at the time. Those that chose to stay on non EU designated worlds made their beds then.

No, you - along with a few other posters flocking to this thread - are just deliberately ignoring the complications that exist. It's not a cut and dry matter and more could have been done to resolve the problem in advance. The irony is that looking at the post history of those pointing fingers shows that when a problem affects them, directly, they're amongst the first to kick up a fuss about it. It's interesting how that works, isn't it?

[era1Ne]

No, you - along with a few other posters flocking to this thread - are just deliberately ignoring the complications that exist. It's not a cut and dry matter and more could have been done to resolve the problem in advance. The irony is that looking at the post history of those pointing fingers shows that when a problem affects them, directly, they're amongst the first to kick up a fuss about it. It's interesting how that works, isn't it?

I would say the same, if the situations where reversed. Let me ask you this, who made the decision to stay in US despite having the option to transfer the EU datacenter? Who made the decision to create an character on an US Server when they could have used an EU one from the start as Valkyrie_Lenneth said? We can talk all day, but ultimately this was your decision and Square owns you imo nothing. They were open about it and you decided to stay in the US with your character. Your decision, your fault. As harsh as it might sound.

[Theodric]

-snip-

It's not the same at all, you're just deflecting and deliberately ignoring the very valid concerns raised. European servers were only added after a lot of European players decided to settle down on North American servers. You are literally expecting European players to sacrifice an incredible amount for very little in return. It would be a completely different scenario if European players were allowed to transfer from North American servers to European servers and not lose out on their in-game acquisition such as player housing and gil. That isn't the case, though - and that's without factoring in the social connections left behind.

So, yes, I will quite rightly call out anyone making it seem like European players are wholly to blame when the larger picture isn't even being taken into consideration. Bear in mind that European players were also treated as an afterthought in regards to the campaign associated with the maid/butler attire as well. So there are multiple reasons for European players to feel like they're not getting a fair deal.

What I will say, however, is that this thread could and should have been made to be more constructive. The OP does himself and his cause no favours by not expanding on the situation.

[Lexia]

European servers were only added after a lot of European players decided to settle down on North American servers.

There might of not been a EU data center but there was always servers designated as EU servers which those were the ones that where later moved to a actual data center in the EU. So actually most the blame does lay with the consumer for choosing which server they joined. Unless they were legacy but then again there still able to transfer to server of their choosing from 1.0 with in a certain time frame. I did it myself as one of my alts was placed a JP server which I used the free 1.0 to 2.0 transfer to move my alt to my mains NA server.

[Nezerius]

There might of not been a EU data center but there was always servers designated as EU servers which those were the ones that where later moved to a actual data center in the EU. So actually most the blame does lay with the consumer for choosing which server they joined.

At launch, there was no indication that the servers located on the EU "datacenter" would ever be moved to an actual datacenter located in the EU. There was no reason for me to create a character on the "EU" servers.
Since I moved to XIV from playing another MMO on its NA servers (TERA, playing on NA since the EU publishers were absolutely trash), I decided to make a character on Sargatanas, along with a few people I played TERA with.

At some point before 2.2, I found out that Balmung ended up being the unofficial RP server. Since I used to play on an RP server in WoW, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere of a busy RP server (Balmung had not yet reached its current popularity, back then), I decided to create a character there. Eventually moving my main there, since there was still no indication that the EU servers were going anywhere.
The announcement of the physical datacenter didn't come until 1.5 years after that. Note: this was also a year after the introduction of privately owned housing.

If a EU player decided to start on a NA server right now, then yes, most of the blame lays with them. However, you can't lay the blame on any EU players that started out way before there was even a hint of a physical EU datacenter.

That said, ping for EU players will only noticeably increase if they decide to move the NA datacenter to the west coast, and SE has been pretty hush-hush when it comes to where their new NA datacenter will be.

[Lexia]

At launch, there was no indication that the servers located on the EU "datacenter" would ever be moved to an actual datacenter located in the EU. There was no reason for me to create a character on the "EU" servers.

This person said it pretty well

EU players who choose to play on NA servers weren't the target of that relocation. Besides, it was their choice not to follow official recommendation, and their choice to ignore the future possibility of server moving (it's not the fault of SE if people had poor forseeing abilities and didn't know that server merging, relocating and whatnot are pretty common in MMOs).

[ReplicaX]

It's not the same at all, you're just deflecting and deliberately ignoring the very valid concerns raised. European servers were only added after a lot of European players decided to settle down on North American servers.

They were advertised as EU recommended servers since ARR Release with the exception of Ragnarok, which was created during the server merges for 1.20 and advertised as a EU recommended server.

So honestly, the recommended option has been in place since 1.20.


Personally I am not deflecting or ignoring what happened with the EU DataCenter move. As I feel, any player that wanted to transfer off Chaos should have paid for it period. Why? Because they knew they were the recommended EU Servers. Just like EU Players knew non-Chaos DC were NA Servers.

Those that feel this is not the case, simply ignored SE's recommendations. Right on the Character Creation Screen since 2.0 with (EU) tags.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/ps3/

PS3 Playguide still has the same images since ARR launch, minus when they added the DataCenter option at the Title screen. Which in the images you can clearly see there is no DataCenter under the Start Selection. However, upon server selection all the (NA) and (EU) tags were there.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

No, you - along with a few other posters flocking to this thread - are just deliberately ignoring the complications that exist. It's not a cut and dry matter and more could have been done to resolve the problem in advance. The irony is that looking at the post history of those pointing fingers shows that when a problem affects them, directly, they're amongst the first to kick up a fuss about it. It's interesting how that works, isn't it?

What complications? There was no housing at the time, and the game had freshly launched, so unless you were legacy, there were no bonds pre-existing to put you on a non-EU designated server.

Yet the NA players who chose to be on Ragnarok back then for timezone or friendship reasons were bailed out by the free transfer. What about all of the people who joined after 2.0 hit, but before the mythical EU datacentre ever came to be? They were actively being advised to join NA servers 'because there's no real difference' on these official forums for a very long time, and no mods ever jumped in and said that was bad advice because until the EU datacentre was formally announced very few people believed that it was really coming. S-E has acknowledged that the lag will increase for players outside NA, therefore the decision to play on a NA server has a different meaning now than it did back then.

And yet, the dev's posted a recommendation at the start for EU players to be on the EU datacenter. it was the PLAYERS who told people to go wherever.

[Serilda]

And yet, the dev's posted a recommendation at the start for EU players to be on the EU datacenter. it was the PLAYERS who told people to go wherever.

Not going to argue that the players were the ones giving out what ended up being bad advice, but the reasoning for the official recommendation was, IIRC, based on time zones, not latency. The players who made that decision were happy to sacrifice some convenience, but they didn't realise they were also giving up their ability to play with an acceptable ping several years into the future. The NA players who opted to use the EU servers had exactly the same official recommendation hanging over their heads. Really, the only difference I see is the completely arbitrary restriction people are giving that it's still within the borders of 'NA' after the move this time, however both EU and NA are big places with very variable routing depending on the region.

Given how few people are affected and want to relocate, it seems unnecessarily mean not to help rehome a small number of them to keep the move as smooth as possible. Especially when the devs went out of their way to acknowledge that EU pings would increase.