Splitting up friends defeats the spirit of an MMO. Please reverse this server mess.

[Akonyl]

Making a new data center is fine, but it should really be done with new servers. Make Shadowbringers launch servers, give large incentives for players to roll there. People who want to can transfer, the new people SE is expecting with the expanding playerbase (the whole reason they're doing this) can start there, it will take longer for it to become populated but over time, if the player base is expanding as much as they expect it to, it'll fill out to be more in line with other datacenters.

Doing this split after cross-realm duty finder an expansion ago is one thing, but considering that SE literally just gave us cross-realm linkshells maybe two patches ago, means that this was either a really short-sighted decision they thought up after CWLS, or maybe they should have mentioned the incoming tear-apart before putting in even more tools to form cross-realm friendships/networks/etc with.

[Vaer]

Making a new data center is fine, but it should really be done with new servers. Make Shadowbringers launch servers, give large incentives for players to roll there. People who want to can transfer, the new people SE is expecting with the expanding playerbase (the whole reason they're doing this) can start there, it will take longer for it to become populated but over time, if the player base is expanding as much as they expect it to, it'll fill out to be more in line with other datacenters.

Doing this split after cross-realm duty finder an expansion ago is one thing, but considering that SE literally just gave us cross-realm linkshells maybe two patches ago, means that this was either a really short-sighted decision they thought up after CWLS, or maybe they should have mentioned the incoming tear-apart before putting in even more tools to form cross-realm friendships/networks/etc with.

They've already tried this last expansion for about a year. (Preferred servers) I'm guessing not enough people are leaving.

Right now Balmung is still locked, but when the expansion comes out there is going to be a surge of people coming back to the game already on the servers being moved that aren't being counted in the "active player" graphs being shared right now so they are trying to mitigate the "no instances" spamming NPC nonsense that even happened again for a little while for the Omega story instance when the player base is missing a lot of active characters from the SB peak.

So they waited about 2 years to see if the player base would fix it themselves and I guess it's not satisfactory.

Adding a new datacenter and moving existing servers adds more instances at least and distributes the load for the expansion influx.

If they go through with it, hopefully they do this somewhere during the couple month dead period before the expansion and not on 4.5 launch so people get the full 6 months for the raid tier before having to decide.

[Hamada]

They've already tried this last expansion for 2 years. (Preferred servers) I'm guessing not enough people are leaving.

Right now Balmung is still locked, but when the expansion comes out there is going to be a surge of people coming back to the game already on the servers being moved that aren't being counted in the "active player" graphs being shared right now so they are trying to mitigate the "no instances" spamming NPC nonsense that even happened again for a little while for the Omega story instance when the player base is missing a lot of active characters from the SB peak.

So they waited about 2 years to see if the player base would fix it themselves and I guess it's not satisfactory.

SE is to blame for that because of the housing system -.-

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

SE is to blame for that because of the housing system -.-

And yet, is it not possible that the ishgard housing that is coming will be instanced due to the way its being added?

We still have what, 2 more fanfests to get more info before this all goes through right?

I think this is one thing being missed in all the outrage. The housing crisis may be solved with the expansion.

[Beckett]

Making a new data center is fine, but it should really be done with new servers. Make Shadowbringers launch servers, give large incentives for players to roll there. People who want to can transfer, the new people SE is expecting with the expanding playerbase (the whole reason they're doing this) can start there, it will take longer for it to become populated but over time, if the player base is expanding as much as they expect it to, it'll fill out to be more in line with other datacenters.

Doing this split after cross-realm duty finder an expansion ago is one thing, but considering that SE literally just gave us cross-realm linkshells maybe two patches ago, means that this was either a really short-sighted decision they thought up after CWLS, or maybe they should have mentioned the incoming tear-apart before putting in even more tools to form cross-realm friendships/networks/etc with.

We've seen time and again that this does not work. If they make new servers, people won't move. If they lock the high population servers, people complain until they're re-opened. The only way to solve the overpopulation issue is to forcibly move people.

And yeah, for the players who have friends/raid members that are getting moved to different data centers, it sucks. But this is a no-win situation, where somebody is going to get screwed, no matter what. And it's either the relatively few people who can't cross-world communicate anymore, or literally every person that plays this game.