They announced how worlds would be shuffled.

[Drakonas]

It just so happens that both RP servers are paired up which honestly is smart of them.

No it's not smart. I, and many others on Mateus are not part of these RP'ers, but do savage and late-game content. Now we will have to move to another server because our queue times are going to be utter crap.

What I am angry about is everyone is saying Mateus is an RP server, but what they don't seem to get is that Mateus WASN'T an RP server prior to 4.0. When 4.0 hit, lots of ERP-ers flooded our server from Balmung and Gilgamesh. It utterly ruined our world. I've been playing with the same group of people for 4 years, and times have changed. These changes have ruined my fun for this game.

This is some other guy taking over on this part of the post because I can't be bothered to login here:

it sucks. I transferred to Mateus to PLAY WITH THIS GUY UP HERE WHILE BEING ABLE TO PLAY WITH MY FRIEND ON CACTUAR. Now I can't. That's dumb. Really dumb. Even with free transfers, the transfers require me to either
1) Get my friend to quit her FC and come over with me and drop all of her friends.
2) Get my OTHER friend (THIS GUY) to quit his FC and come over with me.

How is that smart?

[dinnertime]

No it's not smart. I, and many others on Mateus are not part of these RP'ers, but do savage and late-game content. Now we will have to move to another server because our queue times are going to be utter crap.

What I am angry about is everyone is saying Mateus is an RP server, but what they don't seem to get is that Mateus WASN'T an RP server prior to 4.0. When 4.0 hit, lots of ERP-ers flooded our server from Balmung and Gilgamesh. It utterly ruined our world. I've been playing with the same group of people for 4 years, and times have changed. These changes have ruined my fun for this game.

This is some other guy taking over on this part of the post because I can't be bothered to login here:

it sucks. I transferred to Mateus to PLAY WITH THIS GUY UP HERE WHILE BEING ABLE TO PLAY WITH MY FRIEND ON CACTUAR. Now I can't. That's dumb. Really dumb. Even with free transfers, the transfers require me to either
1) Get my friend to quit her FC and come over with me and drop all of her friends.
2) Get my OTHER friend (THIS GUY) to quit his FC and come over with me.

How is that smart?

You're not getting it. It was coincidental at most that the RP servers were moved to the new datacenter. They could've swapped Mateus with Gilgamesh alternatively and people will still get mad. The devs can't please everybody.

Besides players can call a server the RP server, Raid server or PvP server all they want, but officially these are just 'servers' and people can actually do anything they want on them. I'm sorry your server got "ruined" by those mean and scary RPers...Not.
I won't say much about the consequences of the world arrangements, but it's obvious that SE is taking a huge sacrifice here, for something that'll benefit the game in the long run.

[Drakonas]

It was coincidental at most that the RP servers were moved to the new datacenter.

Have you even looked at the statistics for the servers that were moved to Crystal? Mateus and Balmung are the largest servers in Aether now. And they are the majority of the game's RP'ers. All the other servers moved to Crystal are low population servers. So basically, YES it is moving RP-ers and casuals to Crystal!

[...]I won't say much about the consequences of the world arrangements, but it's obvious that SE is taking a huge sacrifice here, for something that'll benefit the game in the long run.

How will this benefit the majority? They are pissing off a majority of their fanbase. Have you even looked around Reddit and these forums? What would have been "better" is creating a brand new datacenter and creating mass incentives, perhaps discounts off of housing for those that can't get any housing on the limited supply right now; and free gil for transferring; and FC housing movement keeping furniture intact; and maybe exclusive glam gear that isn't too enticing but enough to be something to convince people that want a fresh start to move; and perhaps longterm gathering/crafting/exp buffs for the first number of weeks after you transfer. They can lock all brand new accounts (first-time-players) to only being able to play on the new datacenter at first with their leaf character. With enough incentives, I believe a number of people would move of their own will to these servers, especially since housing is so scarce now.

I know 3+ people each in like 5 different communities already today that are pissed because they often raid with their friends from other worlds on the Aether datacenter that are now having those connections severed. And to make matters worse, we have 2 months to figure this out, in which some people may not even renew their 60 day pass at that point, because their friends have been severed from them in multiple directions.

To add to my point I want to quote the last post:

I was so hyped for Shadowbringer at Fanfest, but this made me leave it with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.
[...]
I have friends on all servers. Some I'm very close with. I don't want to lose access to them.
[...]
._. The three people I stayed with for Fanfest, all of them are going to be transferring to Cactaur from Coeurl because of this... I keep hoping this is a nightmare I can wake up from, because as a raider, this is just disheartening. Raiding or Friends/House...

Most of us that have been on servers in Aether since 3-4 years ago have seen longterm friends leave the world to other servers.. This will cause certain players to leave the server in favor of certain friends on those other servers, leaving other friends in the dust. The features which added cross-datacenter play brought new life to the game, making play with all of those friends possible again! And now with this move, those friendships will end... permanently... moving datacenters will cut all friends not on the datacenter from your friendslist most likely, meaning you won't be able to find them again if you don't write them all down. Also contact through the app will be impossible too, I imagine.

This basically just cut all contact with people in-game. May the gods help you if you didn't get Discord, Skype, or phone numbers for those people. Square just basically destroyed thousands of friendships with one feature.


And you say this is "Better" longterm... bah. It might be for some people, but I guarantee you this will not go down well at all.

[Hestzhyen]

How will this benefit the majority? They are pissing off a majority of their fanbase. Have you even looked around Reddit and these forums? What would have been "better" is creating a brand new datacenter and creating mass incentives, perhaps discounts off of housing for those that can't get any housing on the limited supply right now; and free gil for transferring; and FC housing movement keeping furniture intact; and maybe exclusive glam gear that isn't too enticing but enough to be something to convince people that want a fresh start to move; and perhaps longterm gathering/crafting/exp buffs for the first number of weeks after you transfer. They can lock all brand new accounts (first-time-players) to only being able to play on the new datacenter at first with their leaf character. With enough incentives, I believe a number of people would move of their own will to these servers, especially since housing is so scarce now.

I know 3+ people each in like 5 different communities already today that are pissed because they often raid with their friends from other worlds on the Aether datacenter that are now having those connections severed. And to make matters worse, we have 2 months to figure this out, in which some people may not even renew their 60 day pass at that point, because their friends have been severed from them in multiple directions.

There would never be enough incentives to get people to uproot their social communities unless it was something so extreme it would be a huge imbalance to the game itself. Like 100% guaranteed housing of your choice, free sub for x months, free item from the MogShop, extra retainer at no cost... look at all the pain in this thread. They've been trying for years to get people to redistribute themselves by offering the Road to 60 buff with free transfer to low-pop worlds but it hasn't been enough. Now they have to forcibly shuffle players around if they want to stabilize the datacenters (for all those people saying they'd rather go through Raubhan EX again... no, you don't really want to do that).

This situation sucks and it's terrible to see so much hurt from the community. I really feel for the people who have to choose between friends, statics, houses, and FCs. But it's happening because we didn't self-sort and everyone in Aether is tired of the weight of Balmung, Gilgamesh, and Mateus risking a meltdown when the next expac hits. It's all in the name of stability and performance and (hopefully) future feature improvements.

If SE had been clearer about the future benefits instead of saying "oh btw this is happening, use the remaining time wisely", there might be a little less fear and outrage. They should absolutely do better about telling us why this is happening and what this action will allow the devs to do for us further down the line. For now though I hope people can take the time to make the hard decisions once the shock wears off.

[Drakonas]

They should absolutely do better about telling us why this is happening and what this action will allow the devs to do for us further down the line.

I guess I agree with you there.

[Jojoya]

for something that'll benefit the game in the long run.

Except it won't benefit the game in the long run. It's a bandaid for a temporary problem that only happens for a few weeks at the start of an expansion.

Already we see players planning to take advantage of the free transfer service, which will simply reshuffle population back to the current data centers. The low pop worlds which SE is segregating will end up even lower pop, making it harder for people to get groups of any type because the players who tend to act a community leaders for starting groups will have transferred to remain on their original data center where their friends are.

Unless SE gives real incentives for players to choose to stay on Crystal and Light worlds for the long term, all SE has done is created a couple of dead data centers. Outside of housing, few players find any incentive to be on those worlds. Even Road to 60 is only a temporary enticement as it generally gets used to level up alts as fast as possible before transferring the character to the world the player actually wants to play on.

[Barraind]

You're not getting it. It was coincidental at most that the RP servers were moved to the new datacenter. They could've swapped Mateus with Gilgamesh alternatively and people will still get mad. The devs can't please everybody.

I will bet you any amount of money you'd like that if they had moved Gilgamesh, Cactuar and Jenova instead of Balmung and Mateus (which would make Crystal and Aether roughly the same size instead of Crystal being slightly larger) the levels of outrage would reach insanity from the remainder of Aether.

[dinnertime]

I will bet you any amount of money you'd like that if they had moved Gilgamesh, Cactuar and Jenova instead of Balmung and Mateus (which would make Crystal and Aether roughly the same size instead of Crystal being slightly larger) the levels of outrage would reach insanity from the remainder of Aether.

Hah, possibly. Nobody here likes or likes being with the RP servers...

[Theodric]

Hah, possibly. Nobody here likes or likes being with the RP servers...

Balmung - and Mateus - have long been a scapegoat, unfortunately.