Free transfers and housing reimbursements are a given. They are NOT an apology

[geekgirl101]

Not to mention any houses with workshops would probably lose all their progress and have to start over again.

[Naginatasu]

I'm curious as to what you think you should be given instead. Not flaming, really genuinely curious.

I mentioned the option of a free retainer. If that's too much, then maybe some sort of priority given to people who move to obtain the same size house they demolished when they left their old server. Just something a little more earnest than 3 mil, which seems paltry when considering the furnishings lost through a demolish.

[Nalien]

For a MMO, the community is a large part of the product, some might even say the main selling point of the genre... For SE to just disregard that and split up communities like this frankly has me dumbfounded... The way Housing is handled doesn't even come close to good enough IMO, honestly I think they need to hold off on this change until they can revamp the entire Housing system. As much as I like the neighbourly feel of Wards, I think it's time for them to go... If Housing was instanced you'd clear up all the issues with transferring, I'd hope they'd even make it possible to just copy/paste from one server to another and remove the need to completely re-place everything, but given we're in this situation to begin with, that's very wishful thinking... Still, would be nice to be guaranteed Housing when you transfer (perhaps lock buying temporarily for all but people transferring?), and some system to carry over something like Free Company Workshop/Airship/etc progression would be nice...

Honestly though, I hope this is just an out of season April Fools joke, it goes so perfectly with 5.0s trailer; "This tragedy, greater even than the seventh Umbral Calamity, must be undone"

[Krokov]

Why do you want to move from the server you're on?

[ShanXiv]

For a MMO, the community is a large part of the product, some might even say the main selling point of the genre... For SE to just disregard that and split up communities like this frankly has me dumbfounded... The way Housing is handled doesn't even come close to good enough IMO, honestly I think they need to hold off on this change until they can revamp the entire Housing system. As much as I like the neighbourly feel of Wards, I think it's time for them to go... If Housing was instanced you'd clear up all the issues with transferring, I'd hope they'd even make it possible to just copy/paste from one server to another and remove the need to completely re-place everything, but given we're in this situation to begin with, that's very wishful thinking... Still, would be nice to be guaranteed Housing when you transfer (perhaps lock buying temporarily for all but people transferring?), and some system to carry over something like Free Company Workshop/Airship/etc progression would be nice...

Honestly though, I hope this is just an out of season April Fools joke, it goes so perfectly with 5.0s trailer; "This tragedy, greater even than the seventh Umbral Calamity, must be undone"

SE had already killed the XI & XIV1.2x community in 2.0,
now it's your turn
The MMORPG experience is never a selling point of this game, you can solo everything.
Yoshi had mentioned many times: it's only a theme park, don't take it too seriously

[Penthea]

I mentioned the option of a free retainer. If that's too much, then maybe some sort of priority given to people who move to obtain the same size house they demolished when they left their old server. Just something a little more earnest than 3 mil, which seems paltry when considering the furnishings lost through a demolish.

Hmm that priority won't work because SE can't guarantee the plot size you want will be available for purchase on your destination server. It would mean nothing to those who can't claim that compensation. I don't think they can really give anymore relating to purchasing housing that you could be guaranteed to be able to claim. Though they could have tossed in some mog station furnishings or some crysta.

[Vaati_Kigu]

SE had already killed the XI & XIV1.2x community in 2.0,
now it's your turn
The MMORPG experience is never a selling point of this game, you can solo everything.
Yoshi had mentioned many times: it's only a theme park, don't take it too seriously

This is true, But if your guest at the theme park are not having fun, or can play with the people they like they will start leaving which will cause the park to lose money, also not caring about the community is also bad as people can warn people away from the game again causing lost revenue. SE/Dev team need to halt this and rethink this.

[KisaiTenshi]

They can when they charge you for it, ala the companion app. Remember how inventory was a huge issue... until it wasn't. Regardless, you said it yourself, they could have added more servers which would have helped mitigate this problem immensely. And if they could afford to do it for EU, they could for NA as well.

The issue they're trying to address is the DC services being drowned by DDoS's and/or bots. So the bean counters were probably presented with two options:

a) Split the servers X many ways = $$,$$$ (eg the cost of a new server group is probably one router and fiber drop, the rest is just time physically moving cables or machines in the DC)
b) Replace all the servers, networking equipment = $,$$$,$$$ (the cost of 16-24 new servers, plus the supporting services like the market and duty finder servers)

Option B, btw is the only way you get an east-coast server cluster. A maxed out server, alone is about $65,000 USD before taking into account redundant parts like RAM and SDD's. So multiply that by 8 for the world cluster and then by 4 for the housing, duty finder, and market.

At any rate always assume the corporation is going to pick the cheapest solution even if it's going to result in lots of expensive maintenance, because changing from the status quo likely requires paying termination charges for power, networking and space rentals wherever the machines physically are.

There's a difference between a spoiled sense of entitlement (throwing a fit) and a just sense of entitlement.

Not really. You'll see the same people throwing the same entitled opinions on this forum every time a pet peeve subject comes up, and even if the situation has changed, their opinion has not.

My opinion is that SE would do better by ripping the bandaid off:

1. Send everyone an email like in 1.x when they decided to move people to other servers, have them rank which server they want their main character moved to. Every other character is also ranked. So the character designated "main" gets priority.

2. At "DC move" time, they shut down all the world servers, and then over-provision one server temporarily and move everyone to it. (the "from <server name>" is temporary used.) The housing, market and duties remain offline while this process happens. Delete all the characters and retainers off the "old" servers.

3. When the players log back in they will get a "reserved" spot for the server they nominated #1 for their main that they can either move their previous character, or they can create a new character. After their main is given a spot, all "alt" characters will not be permitted to login/move until landrush ends unless requirements are met. Thus ensuring that everyone who actually wants to play, has an equal chance of getting a spot on that server. Housing will not become available to buy until landrush ends.

After launch, but before landrush ends, any additional characters that a player has that have "3.0/4.0 MSQ cleared" flags set, can also be moved, but they do not get a reserved spot, so if they have houses or retainers that will create a collision, then those will not be recreated without GM involvement.

After landrush, any characters still on the over-provisioned server with active service will get one last chance to be moved, and then will be marked "retired" if not moved. Retired characters will be marked as "retired" on the lodestone and as not residing on any server. They can be reactivated, but they will only be able to pick their previous server if that server isn't closed. If their previous server is closed, then they will have to be moved to an open server.

After this point, SE should make a point about "retiring" characters that haven't been played, or haven't had service for 360 days so that server resources aren't tied up by bots creating endless characters.

[NanaWiloh]

Having worked after-sales service for many years, my general default to arguments of entitlement is you're entitled to what obligations that were agreed upon purchase, usually through a ToS or contract or similar instead of what your expectations are and often people's expectations are inflated by the view that "I'm paying you, therefore you give me what I want" or "the customer is always right", when they could be delivering the service they advertise, that's agreed in the terms and what that fee is paying for. So in theory, you're only entitled to what they're charging you for.

At least, that is the line from "entitlement". Whether the decision is customer friendly is another matter. In which case, it's not customer friendly and from the live letter, I think they realise this too and I expect people are negatively impacted by it and aren't going to be happy. Whilst the rewards may help a number of people, but as in your case not so much. Perhaps a new housing ward and maybe something that allows you to get dibs as a person who has to transfer data centre - but put in a limitation that helps prevent it from being abused.

Ya customer is not always right. My spouse works at a Dermatology clinc and they get patients weekly asking them to do things their not allowed. They went against the scheduling format once about 6 months back that led too the head doctor/owner, the head office manager and the network tech piling into one room for a brief screaming match. The aftermath was all the schedulers and office staff being told follow the scheduling format to a T and never detour from it again unless the tech or owner say so.

[Balipu]

So how about you don't transfer and just stay where you are? problem solved. or are all your friends on different servers? Sorry, but if that is the case you might be doing something wrong.