Ragnarok: Only EU?

[Rhianu]

Goes without saying.

Except when you make a poll which you try to hold up as evidence. Then it has to be said.

It can be really hard to explain to someone not familiar with FF Online that "over 80% of the population you will play with do not speak your own language" and "half of that 80% speaks Japanese only", which is completely out of reach for 99.99% of French people. Try and sell them a product like that, good luck.

I agree completely. In fact I think one of the biggest reasons WHY the European community is such a small minority in FFXIV is precisely because of that reason. If SE wants FFXIV to be successful in countries that don't speak English or Japanese, they're going to need to make it easier for players to find other people who speak their same language.

[Antipika]

I agree completely. In fact I think one of the biggest reasons WHY the European community is such a small minority in FFXIV is precisely because of that reason. If SE wants FFXIV to be successful in countries that don't speak English or Japanese, they're going to need to make it easier for players to find other people who speak their same language.

I think SE is stuck on the past on that. The average French MMO player pre-WoW era was more "a gamer" than anything else. Usually used to speak English etc. Whoever started to play MMO early is used to English games, only few were fully localized in French and even when they were, French localization was always late (patch / expansion would come after in Europe) so players would often use resources found on NA forums.

Nowadays, your average consumer wants immediate fun. Wants to play a game and not fight with a dictionary to try and be understood. When you jump in a MMO, you want to be able to talk to whoever surrounds you, asking stupid questions at first like "how I do this or that" > get your answer > move on.

When you start XIV at the moment, as a French player, you're not even explained how to make a good use of auto-translate... People around you? Half of them are JP, the rest speaks English. You may find a French guy around only if you're lucky... Check the shout channel? Great! Kanjis everywhere. (early evening EU = end of JP prime).

It really doesn't encourage new players to stay in. Sure once you manage to get a French Linkshell, get people to help you, the game experience can be really amazing. Sadly not everyone will go on a forum first to try and find French linkshells around. Neither will have the luck to encounter someone speaking their own language, during their first hours of gameplay.

Now the main problem are some of the current FR players who still think about themselves more about future players. Since -they- like being mixed all together, they would be willing to go on strike if SE would introduce localized Worlds... To me, I'd be fine if localized servers were introduced, as long as international worlds remain. In a MMO where the population is high, there wouldn't be any issue to have FR/DE/UK/JP/NA only + international server.

Now let's be honest, if something like that happen, we all know how it would end up. Almost all new comers would choose a localized server and pretty certain that lot of JP players would just head over JP only servers as well. It doesn't mean that they are NOT willing to play with other people, but if you can play with someone speaking your own language, playing during your time zone and so on, then you'd just head for whatever is the easiest for you, after all it's a game...

Some company already understood that. SEGA has been separating JP and EU/NA players with PSO/PSU for a decade now. And it works just fine. It also enabled them to have different policies across regions, different business models, etc.