Quote Originally Posted by WaterShield View Post
Points for the explanation (I learned something). I still am not happy with this move though, considering the trade off is a sizeable reduction in people to pull from for PF and duty finder content. Also the split happening causes people that have cross server friends, to be forced to choose between them due to not everyone going to the same place.

I can't say what exact effect this will have on queue times given I do not have access to the demographics of each server, but I am very apprehensive.

This also does not address what happens if people dog pile back onto Aether and Primal. This could still not have the desired outcome.
RE: People staying on whatever datacenter
It's a common misconception that roleplayers don't do content. (OK, there are some who don't. Or won't on their alts, but let's ignore those for now as they're a minority.) Balmung and Mateus have two of the largest active populations currently. Gilgamesh is also MASSIVE on its own too. Before we had commodities like the Cross-World Party Finder, or even the Party Finder in general, these larger servers weren't running into issues with people finding groups to run basic content. With the newer features in addition to the World Visit system, I don't think we're going to see any issues aside from destabilizing per-world markets. Perhaps some people ruining hunts for others if they abuse hopping to multiple worlds to get the same hunt mob.

RE: People moving "back"
I can't judge for other servers, but I can say Balmung has a pretty horrid housing situation these days where things sell out FAST. While this seems like it would typically encourage people to jump, nobody wants to have to spend that much gil again and rebuild and reobtain their nontransferable items. Between groups of friends already on a given server and the other time investments a user's made, I don't think we're going to see some massive migration of players. Surely, we're going to see some people move out from Crystal. We're also probably going to see others move in, whether for RP or not.

There are some good charts showing the general active population of each datacenter before and after the moves. They're rather balanced. Does that reflect high-end duty raiders? Not really. I've been seeing quite a lot of panic there, which I think is fairly unfounded. Unless...people don't play with their friends? Like...at all. Friend groups/Statics being broken up will suck. But at the same time, there are plenty of all-on-one-world clusters as well. And we may see more of those in the short term while people re-adjust to all the changes. Or they'll make alts and have to split their time. Friends will find a way to stay in contact and enjoy their time.