They announced how worlds would be shuffled.

[Anzaman]

TFW all of friends had already left DC, so no impact it.

Tho might move to Crystal, find some nice lil server there and use World Visit -system and play with them once they offer me that sweet 100% refund on house + 3 mil.

[Duskane]

still nothing about a aus data center

[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.

[splinter1545]

I don't have many friends that play this, and most of the people I did play regularly with moved to Brynhildr. I was still able to play with them though, which I was glad about. I didn't transfer because I worked really hard to get my house (both in the mists and now my current one in Shiro). Now I basically have no one to play with. Not a big deal since I mostly solo, but now I have less of a reason to get on per week.

Welp.

[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...

[HyoMinPark]

genuine question here, for the people affected. I haven't seen a post from anybody saying that a solution is making an alt on the other datacenter to stay in contact. Why making an alt is not an option? With an alt, you can stay in touch, you can rejoin the statics leveling it up. I think it is worth it, if I really wanted to keep contact, and leveling an alt is pretty fast in this game

For me, I would have to level up my alt on Balmung to stay with my current group (though it has since been confirmed that our MNK and MCH are leaving, as they do not want to be on Crystal), and I lose everything I have done on my main as a result: all my achievements, my mounts, my titles. And yeah, maybe I can get them back on my alt, but I like to make my main a priority. I also do not have the time to raid on two different characters at this time due to other things I have to do outside of the game, much less progress an Ultimate fight on them and I like the Ultimate raids.

[Spiriel_Basanda]

and.......this does nothing but screw me over entirely. No matter what I do I lose. If I stay on Goblin, I'm now no longer on the same datacenter as my cousin so we can't do anything anymore. Now my FC leader is talking about moving our FC from Goblin to go back to the Aether datacenter.

Ultimately, this choice has become "Go back to Aether and lose my house(I've got a really nice Medium house in the Goblet to) + the best hunt scene in the game(I think anyways) to regain playing with my cousin and keep my FC" or "Stay on Goblin, keep my house, the Hunt scene and whoever doesn't want to leave the server, and keep Balmung in the DC".

Thanks for giving me the middle finger SE.

[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.

[Jojoya]

Maybe I missed something because I'm not seeing where they said they plan to grab the High Pop World like Balmung and Excalibur; crack them like an egg and split them among three different data centers. FC's are world based and won't be effected. The only thing that is going to be hit is the cross world duty finders and LS; fairly new features in the game.

What did I miss in the announcement that everyone is so fired up about?

That people have friends on their world. They have friends on other worlds. Their friends have friends on other worlds.

All those worlds are being split up so friends won't be able to play with friends any more.

My circle of friends is on Coeurl so on the surface I shouldn't be impacted. Except their friends are not strictly on Coeurl. Some of them are already talking about transferring to other Aether worlds so they can continue to play with their other friends. Some of their FCs are talking about leaving as well. That in turn affects the friends of the friends of the friends...

It's a ripple effect. Players that are on worlds that will be moved to Crystal are now debating leaving their current worlds so they can continue to play with their friends on their current data center. In the meantime, there's almost no incentive for players on other worlds to transfer to the worlds that will be moving to Crystal.

While Balmung and Mateus will most likely retain decent populations, all the preferred worlds that are already low pop will be even worse off.

[347SPECTRE]

Thank you SE, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for forcing me to choose between my friends/housing and being able to do any sort of high-end PVE. Fantastic idea, split up communities, destroy friendships. 10/10 great idea..................................