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

[wereotter]

Not really following the big argument but to add my own two cents, I did wonder why they decided to do this at the same time as implementing World Visit as opposed to sampling the effects of it first. If a world is congested then I assume visits will not be permitted for the sake of the actual residents, so I like to think Balmung would not suffer further for it, though I wonder how many people would visit other worlds and spend more time there, particularly during patch time for the sake of less congestion and competition out in the world. Perhaps it would not have a significant impact, but I still would have thought it was worth at least a short sampling period before jumping to such an extreme measure.

Doing world visits before splitting the data centers would have the potential to make the ripping apart even worse. If I visited another server on my data center, say Zalera, and made some friends while on that server, then the issue would be more wide spread when those new friends are moved to a new data center. Better to do them both at once, or split the worlds before implementing world visiting. Personally, I'm glad they're doing both at once rather than delaying world visits.

[SomeRandomHuman]

If people weren't cranky old folks about dispersing balmung's population more evenly this would've never been an issue. So you can thank all of them for this lovely mess!

[Catwho]

Also for the vast majority of players this will have little to no impact. Speaking for myself, I have two people I play with who aren't on my own server, both of them players who were formerly on the same one and transferred off for different reasons. Obviously this will have some impact on a small number of players, and I do feel for people who might not be able to play with all their friends anymore, but I think Square is also being as generous as they can be when it comes to free server transfers and reimbursing you for housing. Yes I know some people might have paid more initially out of pocket for the house than they're getting back, but you also have to consider into that the value you got from it by actually using it for the time you had it, and realize that you're still getting a reasonable offer.

This is kind of how I see it. I have many friends across both data centers. I already have to hop back and forth to play with them. Four of my characters are getting moved to Crystal. Adding a third data center into my RP rotation is going to be kind of a drag.

But SE announced this now so that everyone could have time to prepare and figure out who has to give up what. Yes, it sucks for many people who have to make hard decisions about raid groups, housing, etc. But doing this move now allows them to handle peak population load better when 5.0 drops. "Just buy better servers" doesn't work when they're already using state of the art hardware, likely a real time database that lives in RAM, and yet we still manage to crash everything.

It's growing pains.

[Knahli]

Because they solve 2 different issues. One solves people not being able to do open world type content with friends on different servers, the other solves networking issues with the number of hosts connecting to the servers login, lobby, and instance servers. Instead of a set of 2 lobby, instance, and login servers for NA, there will be 3 sets.

Ah, I meant more along the lines of... well, since you can essentially "live" in another world - with exception to a few limitations - I was curious how many people from a congested server would essentially spend most of their time on one with friends as a sort of compromise between transferring outright to play with them without having to lose their house or existing friends. While unlikely, it made me wonder if more quiet servers would see a boost in activity as a result of long term or frequent visitors. That is of course presuming the issue was world balance and not the overall count of players across the data center.

Again, highly unlikely but I thought anything would be worth checking out before committing to such a big and controversial decision.

Doing world visits before splitting the data centers would have the potential to make the ripping apart even worse. If I visited another server on my data center, say Zalera, and made some friends while on that server, then the issue would be more wide spread when those new friends are moved to a new data center. Better to do them both at once, or split the worlds before implementing world visiting. Personally, I'm glad they're doing both at once rather than delaying world visits.

Ah, I guess you are right when you put it that way. I hadn't even considered it.

[Beckett]

Ok lets just kill the game by not having enough people to run things, then having people sub 2-3 months, subing only for the active time being counter productive on the concept on keeping your house.

If SE can't handle these small number of players, how do they expect to be running a game at all? How about the "Suzaku EX bug during the Simon phase" was cuased by them cheaping out servers and using outdated hardware from the 1990s? FFXIV numbers are TINY!!! I do not understand why they hare having this many problems with such a low user base problem.

You are missing the point, you are trying to use a stawman here saying I do not understand dead times and slow times. The problem here is this game has them too often while the population is way too low, and this change is only going to make it much worse, so much so i feel people are not going to want to play at all after that 1 month after patch. Then you are going to have mass complaints on, if SE can't keep enough content going for 3 months, why do we lose our house in 45 days? You are defending a losing battle here.

How did you even glance over having a queue time of 999 minutes and 99 seconds? do you understand how long that is? One leaves the computer on as they sleep, wakes up and see they are in queue for over 24 hours, that is not playable. How is PvP going to be even playable? I want to know why these servers have problems dealing with the smallest amounts of population imaginable. You know my guess is money, they do not want want to buy modern hardware, they do not want to upgrade.



Yeah, I do not know how people do not understand that, do not forget they lifted the lockout completely in SB not to long ago, you know the point where you can make new characters without transfer? So that told me at the time, there was no issues, only to get blindsided with this DC change, makes no sense.

This is the most unintentionally hilarious post I've ever seen on these forums. You're a treasure, Hamada!

[Beckett]

Poor wording on my part, but it's poor compensation. :/ I'd never get my house back or my items if I left.

I'm definitely in this same boat. I have a plot that I love and I've spent countless hours furnishing it. Pretty much no amount of compensation would be worth it for me to move.

But look at it from this perspective: Say you've got a small plot that you've barely furnished and you're considering switching servers. You don't have much attachment to this plot, but that's still several million gil down the drain if you just abandon it when you switch severs... Oh, but it turns out you're going to get a full refund for the house, plus an additional 3 million gil. Now you've got nothing holding you back from switching servers.
This is the kind of person that the compensation is in place for, not you are me.

[Seraphor]

People saying theyd never get a house again if they moved servers:
Players are just as likely to be leaving your destination server as you are leaving yours, plots will become free.

You can store all of your furniture in retainers, retain all of your gil, get a full refund on your house, and an extra 3mil.

It'll be an upheaval and an inconvenience, but once its done you'll be no worse off.

This is a necessary step they have to take in order to futureproof the datacentres.

[Kaurhz]

Please. As much as this is a disaster for people, it was the most logical approach of this mess. Whether it was cheaper or easier to do is something none of us can attribute for. They'd have needed new equipment either way. Not to mention this was an inevitability when places such as EU get more and more players. Functionally having 2 DCs let balance the loads much better when they have 1 DC comparatively. Not as simple as... Throw more money at it, increase the capacity etc, etc. This solution was an inevitability. Anything other than this was just delaying the inevitable. Add as many servers as you like. The DC itself is still going to get cluttered. Imagine sticking all 3 of JPs servers into a single DC. Wouldn't work.

You should be thankful they've given free world transfers if anything. There's places out there so greedy they wouldn't even offer that, but treat it as an opportunity to milk more of your money. A choice like this was done out of necessity, nothing else. Whether you like it or not....

[NanaWiloh]

Please. As much as this is a disaster for people, it was the most logical approach of this mess. Whether it was cheaper or easier to do is something none of us can attribute for. They'd have needed new equipment either way. Not to mention this was an inevitability when places such as EU get more and more players. Functionally having 2 DCs let balance the loads much better when they have 1 DC comparatively. Not as simple as... Throw more money at it, increase the capacity etc, etc. This solution was an inevitability. Anything other than this was just delaying the inevitable. Add as many servers as you like. The DC itself is still going to get cluttered. Imagine sticking all 3 of JPs servers into a single DC. Wouldn't work.

You should be thankful they've given free world transfers if anything. There's places out there so greedy they wouldn't even offer that, but treat it as an opportunity to milk more of your money. A choice like this was done out of necessity, nothing else. Whether you like it or not....

The equipment at the current data center is new. They didnt move the original servers when the did the data center move, they only moved the data itself and loaded it on too new servers.

[Nyxn607]

They’ve effectively made Crystal an RP data center but they’ve been careful to actually create an official designation in the 7 (if you count 1.0 era)years the game has existed, I don’t see them starting now. People have a weird fear of RP’ers, it’s honestly silly. No one is going to force you into their RP, and the vast majority of the people that do RP do it in town only, I’ve never encountered it in battle content.

My issue isn't being forced to RP. It is the fact that when you go to a starting city for what reason it may be, your chat is instantly filled with RP. It is a personal issue for me, as I am sure others are not bothered by it. Another issue with the new DC is my current play time is over night. PF is already slim and will be even worse with Crystal having Balmung, Mateus and a hand full of smaller servers, PF will be non existent for me.