They announced how worlds would be shuffled.

[Atlantasia]

I was so hyped for Shadowbringer at Fanfest, but this made me leave it with a bittersweet taste in my mouth.

My thoughts:

#1.) I do not want to give up my medium house, I've invested too much into it and it's not easily replaceable.

#2.) My raid group is now split 50/50 between Aether and Crystal... aka, I either stay on my server and leave it, or move to join it again.

#3.) I have friends on all servers. Some I'm very close with. I don't want to lose access to them.

#4.) My FC leader's raid group is entirely on the new Aether, he's leaving, so the majority of my FC is leaving with him... basically destroying my FC entirely with it.

#5.) PF is hard enough to get clears on at times NOW, I cannot imagine what it will be like once this move takes place. :/

._. 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...

[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.

[Atlantasia]

Just to add, I know absolutely no one who is planning to transfer to a Crystal DC world, only ones from Crystal DC worlds to Aether DC worlds. :/

[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?

[Dirwen]

Just to add, I know absolutely no one who is planning to transfer to a Crystal DC world, only ones from Crystal DC worlds to Aether DC worlds. :/

I'm gonna be one of those rare folks that will move from Aether to Crystal probably. My main char is on Sarg and house reimbursement plus free transfer is enough incentive for me to do so. Only worried about how DF/PF will be like on Crystal for normal content that aren't raids.

[dinnertime]

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.

Let's not pretend that we know more than they do this time. If they wanted to prevent another Raubahn EX then they could've cut the initial MSQ into two or three starting zones like in HW and ARR. It'll help keep data centers from breaking and possibly more, too.

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.

It looks interchangeable to me. People from Aether might transfer to Crystal and vice versa. If anything, I only see Primal servers being like that because only 3 got transferred to Crystal which does prove your point.
Wasn't there some graph floating around saying that the data centers will almost be even in numbers now? I think the EU servers will suffer a bit from it since they have the lowest population out of all regions, but I don't see how it'll be that bad to find groups. Primal is lucky about all of this, actually. Idk, we'll see I guess.

EDIT: I also don't understand how "dead" servers are problematic with cross-server play in the game already? Am I overlooking something?

[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.