Give OCE players a free transfer off their dead datacenter.

[enthauptet]

It didn't have to be this way. Unfortunately, Square made a bad decision that excludes most SEA players from Materia by having an unnecessarily awful ping.

They chose NTT, a Japanese telco, for their connectivity to the DC in Sydney. Why? Probably because NTT are big in Japan, but in Australia? They are third-rate.

The problem is, no-one except Australian domestic ISPs interconnect with NTT in Sydney. Most south-east asian ISPs reach NTT in the US, at their San Jose peering. Consequently, your traffic crosses the Pacific twice for a >300ms ping. Many SEA players currently get 110-150ms to the JP servers, so a world transfer seems super detrimental.

It's possible to have 90ms from Jakarta to Sydney, but Square would have to switch transit provider to one of the few Australian tier 1 ISPs that have great regional peering, e.g. by transporting their SEA traffic via one of the Perth fibre landings.

Even more embarrassing, NTT are so far down the pecking order in Australia that even some local ISPs don't peer with them, and you can live in Sydney but have a 320ms ping to Materia. For Australian players, that's easy to fix, just churn to a different access provider. For internationals, the only option is, roll the dice and spend extra on a gaming VPN that may improve matters.

I don't know if Square realise any of this, or care, but it strangled OCE from birth because many SEA players don't want to migrate to a much worse ping.

That's really a bummer, I was disappointed they went with NTT here in the US and I still get better connection to EU than to NA servers from the US east coast it's a bit absurd too.

[Broken_Wind]

I guess it's what you're used to. As someone who only really started when the OCE servers were released, I've been loving it. Now granted I brought 11 of my friends as new players with me so obviously that helps massively. But the experience in general has been great. Sure when I've done some of dungeons/trials solo I've had to wait a bit for it to pop, but it's generally on average been around 10 minute wait as DPS. Only time I've ever had to wait nearly 30 minutes was once and it was way outside peak hours.

I do wonder how many more on OCE are like us, new players who aren't as visible yet to the max level transfers and thus exacerbating the perceived problem of not enough people. Given how much content there is in this game, the majority of us in our 'new' FC are still just finishing Heavensward.

I think people underestimate how many people there are in older content. Im still in ARR doing my relic because I have more fun that way. Many FC mates are entering HW

I think what Square Enix should be doing is giving people big incentive to unlock off the MSQ path content to help populate roulettes.

Trail roulettes need help too. I remember on my old character having to wait nearly two hours for titania, and that was on a NA server. people act like some of that story stuff is quick queues in the other regions when they are often not.

[Shibi]

Honestly, it's not great to let a few dissatisfied people and (worse) a single schadenfrude happy non-regional "cheer" on the wrong opinion. I feel bad for the people who regret their move and hope they know they can always come back when the frontier feel is a little lower. But that's still easily a year off.

It's a new data centre with a bulk of players starting from level 1, and as far as I see it's doing quite well. SE botched up a bit which has hampered it, but it will recover, as all the SE botchups have recovered.

DC is far and away a long way from being on it's last legs.

I think people underestimate how many people there are in older content. Im still in ARR doing my relic because I have more fun that way. Many FC mates are entering HW

Yeah, I'm only in Stormblood. Most of my new friends are in HW. The queues are fine away from EW. Even Eureka is now starting to become chatty at times. I love it.

[JRonnie]

I think people underestimate how many people there are in older content. Im still in ARR doing my relic because I have more fun that way. Many FC mates are entering HW

I have to admit I was shocked when I saw someone saying they're waiting 30 minutes in a queue for end game instances during prime time. Certainly not been my experience in the ARR/HW content. During prime time 5-10 min queue for DPS max.

All I can say is that at the very least, myself and my FC are coming to endgame (for what it's worth)! Just need to be a little patient.

[Osteichthyes]

I've been debating between moving and saying put for so long now. Currently on Primal and have no issues getting queues (less than 1 minute) regardless of the hour I'm playing (apart from on patch days where everyone is doing the new thing) and the ping is very playable (frequently high blue parses). The better ping on OCE would be nice, but that queue times can be pretty rough. It would be nice to make some friends on the server that I could actually hang out with outside the game, but at the end of the day I just don't have the confidence that the queue time is going to get better. I also play primarily at night 11pm - 5am, so I rarely get primetime queues from OCE which only makes the prospect of moving that much less.

NA servers really worked for me because I was part of a static (pretty much disbanded) that ran during NA primetime (midday for AUS), so I could do the raiding, go to work, and come home and still get good queues. With the new job changes my reasons for moving are becoming less and less. Would be nice to hang out with the OCE crowd, but I just can't bring myself to move to a server that doesn't have those really nice queue times. That I have very little idea what the raid scene is like. Then I think, if I move to OCE, I can get a more standard 9-5 and still be able to play, which would give me a lot more options, and now I can't a good decision.

If the OCE scene was a little more active I would move over in a heartbeat, and unfortunately there is very little the devs can actually do. It's too difficult to incentivise people breaking friendships and playing on other servers that can only really offer slightly better ping and playing with other OCE people, and for a lot of us, it just isn't that big of an issue at this point.

[Larirawiel]

This would be more impressive if you'd actually read anything you've linked. But it's ok, I can spell it out for you since you seem to need some help.
.
.
.

I have read all the links, even the SEA link.

The point is, there are no other good reasons for "local servers" than a better latency and better connection stability. If the internet connection would not be limited by some physical laws then one huge global data center would be enough for everyone. The SEA link falls into the same category: lower the latency even for OCE players because SEA is nearer that JP. But if you still do not like the link then ignore it. The remaining list is still big. And this are the links, i have found quickly. I am sure, with other search terms i would find more.

The demand for local OCE servers was there and SQEX delivered it. And maybe today, after the content patch, the OCE players will find other players for group content quicker.


Cheers

[ThivraK]

I have read all the links, even the SEA link.

do you honestly not feel embarrassed to say that? 5 out of the 14 links you provided were about OCE servers, 1 thread with 3 pages from 8 (!) years ago, 2 more from 7 (!) years ago with 4 and 8 pages, respectively. that is not the loud voice that you implied in the earlier post

cheers

[Tigerlilley]

I've been debating between moving and saying put for so long now.

I play outside of Aus prime time too and Ive been finding the day time queues just absolutely awful for EW content. There is certainly not the varied timezones of players that NA has. Cross region would really help with this, I think. Hop over to NA for day time, head back to OCE for the prime time.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

If you really wanna leave then you gotta pay.

I went for the Road to 80, and will pay to return to a US server after my 90 days are up there.

I regret nothing.

[PangTong]

I transferred in week 2 of the DC opening because I was really tired of high ping and needing a VPN tunnel, and I wanted to be a part of helping the new DC get off the ground.

Currently I'm planning to transfer back to my original NA server once the 90 restriction period is up which for me is in about 3 weeks.

I don't mind long queues, I have a lot of time to play the game. But there is loads of content which simply NEVER pops no matter how long you queue for it. There isn't enough people queueing across the entire datacenter to fill even one instance, at any time of day. To say nothing of more niche content like running old raids for glamour. I had to pay people (in gil, obviously) to do an unsynced run of an Omega raid for a glam piece I wanted. The new PvP revamp just dropped and I haven't been able to get a single run of Frontlines across probably 4-5 hours of queueing at different times of day. Yeah, everyone is doing Crystal Conflict, but not even ONE Frontlines, even just for the daily bonus at prime time? I've been playing since Heavensward and even back then when the playerbase was a fraction of what it is now, I've never had population issues like this before.

I will be livid to have to give up the better ping, some jobs were effectively unplayable back on NA even with a VPN, but what's the use of good ping if you can't even play the game when or how you want?

If we knew that cross-region DC travel was coming, I would maybe stay and hold on until it released so I could simply DC hop when I was having content troubles. But cross-region has not been announced and is being deliberately held back because of possible cultural problems. If it is ever added then I might return to OCE, but I would be foolish to stay just on the hope they might add it one day.