They announced how worlds would be shuffled.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Looking at the bigger picture, I get it. By moving these high pop worlds to different data center; it frees up space, space that is need for such things like housing.

Except when those big servers see a mass exodus, which balloons Aether's playerbase. And forgive me for not feeling trusting they'll do something like add more wards after all this nonsense. It feels more like they're looking for cheap alternatives instead of actually fixing things.

[Nalien]

It feels more like they're looking for cheap alternatives instead of actually fixing things.

That's exactly what's happening IMO. Players, and the friends and connections they've made over the years, are being thrown under the bus to save money. Meanwhile our subscription fees go god-knows where.

A split like this should have been an unacceptable solution to the server issues. You don't split an existing playerbase up like that, it's never going to be pretty. How this made its way to fanfest is beyond me... I'm perhaps overly critical of XIV at the best of times, but fanfest and a new expansion still hype even me up. This one though? Potential deal breaker in all honesty. Not sure I can tolerate 5.0 being basically exactly the same as 4.0 and 3.0 and 2.0, with large chunks of my friends spirited away to a new data center never to be seen again... Among almost everyone I know, "I'm still playing because of my friends here" is a common trend... Splitting that up like this... Jesus Christ... The "SE is a small indie company" meme is reaching critical mass...

[Enla]

That's exactly what's happening IMO. Players, and the friends and connections they've made over the years, are being thrown under the bus to save money. Meanwhile our subscription fees go god-knows where.

A split like this should have been an unacceptable solution to the server issues. You don't split an existing playerbase up like that, it's never going to be pretty. How this made its way to fanfest is beyond me...

It sadly goes to fund SE's other projects. They've made it no secret that a lot of the money FFXIV brings in helps them develop other games, with the Mog Station being one of the few money making coffers SE as a whole won't plunder from the FFXIV team. Though if that cash flow ever picks up in quantity I would not doubt that it would be raided as well. Ergo part of me wonders if they had to make the best out of an unwinnable situation and this was their imperfect solution, or if this might not be marching orders handed down by the notoriously out of touch SE executives. We'll never really know given how Japanese game companies handle themselves, and even if we did know it still doesn't change the fact that they have their heart set on this potential mess.

[Hamada]

You're sbsolutely right that people coukd just transfer back to their old DC, leaving crystal relatively unpopulated.
However their intention with this is future proofing. Simply adding more servers and more worlds doesn't solve the problem of congestion within DCs, and with a nrw expansion looming and expecting more players than they've ever had, they cant just put up with the current set up. We cant just put up with it, unless ypu want the game to be unplayable for the first couple months of the expansion.
Ultimately the new, sparsely populated DC will be populated by newer players, and it'll all be forgotten about in a few months.

GREAT IDEA! lets put all the dead servers on one DC (in regards of doing content), and all the active servers on another DC, then everyone that wants to do content can move off the dead DC making the situation even worse then now...

Does SE have a contingency plan set up for this????? How would be the top 100 in pvp be determined? those that sat in queue the longest?