Datacenters: A Plea For Community Building, Not Fracturing

[Cleanse]

After the announcements at Fan Festival NA, the biggest letdown from a community perspective was the datacenter decision. Instead of merging NA's Aether and Primal, the decision to create a third was made. The extra datacenter is going to split up some friends who play on the current set of datacenters.

The server visitation feature is actually a very welcomed change and could be the key to merging the regional datacenters. As it stands right now going into Shadowbringers, we can visit a friend's server by visiting an aetheryte.

Would it be possible so that when we queue up for an instanced MSQ/Job/etc quest, the backend can have the player automatically visit a low pop instance server to complete the quest (no more Raubahn EX)? After the quest we can load back to our original world as if we had used the new visitation feature. The tech is pretty much created. Automatic load balancing is the only tech that would need to be created.

As it stands right now, another mega server or two like Balmung will be created, so the datacenter addition will have been for naught.

If this is possible, people wouldn't have to leave their friends behind, houses will not have to be given up, and North America would be merged. This would even help with the Feast population being divided even further.

[Conando]

Wait, you seriously thought a merger was possible with Aether being a laggy mess? Are you for real? Is this a joke?

[Enla]

There was no way Aether and Primal would be merged. Not when Aether already housed several of the biggest servers in the entire game regardless of region. Doubly so when SE refuses to upgrade their server infrastructure even though it should have been handled a long time ago. The best we could have ever hoped for, then and now, is for them to allow cross data-center play. Which is likely as the servers seem to be housed in the same location in each region.

[Cleanse]

Wait, you seriously thought a merger was possible with Aether being a laggy mess? Are you for real? Is this a joke?

A merger could be possible if they utilize their visitation server feature. I am not sure how adding a third datacenter resolves lag?

[TitaniaZero]

I'm rather glad there was no crazy merger. Aether has had no end of trouble, but Primal I feel has been the calmer of the two. So asking to bring your trouble to us would have made me unhappy!

Too bad for you that people have been asking for a third data center since the move. Either way, I'm sorry for those of that get shafted with going beyond your own server for your statics and I'll be a tad unhappy when nightly queues go from 5mins to who knows what, but I'll be happy for better stability.

Besides? (Aside for those of you with houses) Why not those of you with statics get together and decide on a new home, that way you are not split. In fact there is plenty of time to even plan how you want to keep together. Right?

[dotsforlife]

Lol... You didn't think this through did you?

[Cleanse]

Lol... You didn't think this through did you?

What is the flaw in using the visitation feature to automatically load balance a bottleneck in the MSQ?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

What is the flaw in using the visitation feature to automatically load balance a bottleneck in the MSQ?

Because the instance servers are split by datacenter, as is lobby servers. This is effectively adding 50% more instances to the NA world's.

[SomeRandomHuman]

As I have said in another thread regarding the third NA DC:

This wouldn't have happened if the balmung population wasn't so stubborn about staying on their server despite all of SE's attempts to balance out the population.

Also the fact that players on balmung of all places are the ones complaining is hilarious. It and Mateus will be in Crystal together anyway.

[Vaer]

A merger could be possible if they utilize their visitation server feature. I am not sure how adding a third datacenter resolves lag?

It at least adds a third set of instances that existing servers are given distributing the load. All the servers in a datacenter at some point are pulling from the same set of instances. If you put all the servers in one datacenter you just shrunk the pool of instances in around half.

I'm sure if it was possible they would gladly merge all the servers into one datacenter without changing anything (in this case messing with the servers/code), then they wouldn't have to spend any money.

The game launched with one datacenter for na/eu and one for jp. In 2.1 they split them up into separate datacenters since they weren't expecting so many people which caused the servers to crash constantly at launch. They eventually pulled chaos and moved them to an EU location and now here we are. There was no cross world back then, so the split caused no issues since you could only form premades with people on your server.