SE: Please address the enormous imbalance created with the data center changes.

[JackHatchet]

Have you considered that the reason Crystal's clear rates are low are because those people just don't care to raid?

Servers provide different amenities and atmospheres similar to how different cities act in real life. If you want to live in a college town--you move to a college town. If you want to live in New York--you move to New York. If you want to live in a small rural town--you move there. Think of servers like cities. Find the server/city that gives you the most benefit for what you're looking for--and only then establish your roots.

One of the biggest problems I see with MMOs, is that new people don't even realize that servers can provide vastly different atmospheres from one another. Too many folks plant their roots down in terrible servers (for them), and then gripe that the servers can't accommodate them, or get jelly at other servers. It's just like a city. Instead of trying to plan out their lives--they settle for a server that doesn't suit them--and then they get invested in friends (on that servers/in that city), and then find it almost impossible to expand, because they've already rooted themselves. Now they're stuck between two worlds.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to find the things that can't be replaced, raiding scenes, RP scenes, college town, big city--and chase those. Because as shallow as it is to say--you can make friends anywhere, and they're more replaceable than a larger community. You can literally move to 'any' server or city and make friends--so pick the one that gives you what you crave, and foster friendships with like-minded individuals.

[Flarestar]

Have you considered that the reason Crystal's clear rates are low are because those people just don't care to raid?

Even if a larger portion of the playerbase on those servers doesn't care to raid, that doesn't change the core problem. A large number of players on them DO care to raid, and will be severely impacted by this change.

[Barraind]

Have you considered that the reason Crystal's clear rates are low are because those people just don't care to raid?

As someone on a Crystal-bound world, every single static I know of that isnt Coeurl-only is 1-2 Coeurl, 6-7 Aether. We have a very strong core of active players, we just end up, thanks to cross-server raiding, playing with the other raiding servers. People who wanted the Balmung/Mateus experience left for those servers, people who wanted to raid didnt have to.

Thats the BIGGEST issue. To go roleplay on a RP server, you HAD to be on that server. to get your raiding and EX clearing, you could be on any server, with any rl friends, or people who were casual, or people riading with other statics, and still raid with that static. Thats what a lot of aether's small servers were. I didnt have to move to Greg to find a ton of statics this expansion, I had to say "Hey, I'm a tank looking for a static".

Cross server raiding basically meant we could play with people we know on other servers, or actively seek out groups which met our raid times (there were 0 coeurl raid groups that needed a tank in 4.2 or 4.4 and dont raid on Tuesdays, for example)

They now, pretty much have to move to one of those 5 or 6 servers. If you had a static on this server, or a lot of the other crystal servers, its probably dead now, or you're moving.