Snapshot of PF activity on North American data centers

[EorzeaWanderer]

As for my own conclusions/opinions...

1) We are seeing the logical and inevitable effect of players being able to move freely. In the absence of any technical constraints imposed by the game designer (SE), people are going to cluster together because they all benefit from doing so. It's easier to find groups, it's easier for DF to pop, etc. It's just easier to play the game when players cluster together.

2) As for *why* Aether became the de facto "place to play in NA", it doesn't really matter anymore. It's already happened.

3) We can see that Crystal and Primal, communities that were about equal to Aether prior to DC travel, have not been immune to this powerful pull to a single data center, which, unfortunately for them, has become Aether and not Crystal or Primal.

4) Crystal has more PF entries in "other", and indeed, unique player housing is something that one data center can offer that another can't.

5) One wonders what the purpose of being on Primal and Dynamis is at this time.

This is one shapshot in time, but I hope that SE is collecting and looking at this kind of data and thinking about what DC travel naturally does to the people who don't happen to be on the DC where people actually play content.

[Poporito_Popoto]

5) One wonders what the purpose of being on Primal and Dynamis is at this time.

This is one shapshot in time, but I hope that SE is collecting and looking at this kind of data and thinking about what DC travel naturally does to the people who don't happen to be on the DC where people actually play content.

To get away from people on the other servers.

[VerdeLuck]

As for my own conclusions/opinions...

1) We are seeing the logical and inevitable effect of players being able to move freely. In the absence of any technical constraints imposed by the game designer (SE), people are going to cluster together because they all benefit from doing so. It's easier to find groups, it's easier for DF to pop, etc. It's just easier to play the game when players cluster together.

2) As for *why* Aether became the de facto "place to play in NA", it doesn't really matter anymore. It's already happened.

3) We can see that Crystal and Primal, communities that were about equal to Aether prior to DC travel, have not been immune to this powerful pull to a single data center, which, unfortunately for them, has become Aether and not Crystal or Primal.

4) Crystal has more PF entries in "other", and indeed, unique player housing is something that one data center can offer that another can't.

5) One wonders what the purpose of being on Primal and Dynamis is at this time.

This is one shapshot in time, but I hope that SE is collecting and looking at this kind of data and thinking about what DC travel naturally does to the people who don't happen to be on the DC where people actually play content.

With the Cloud server test, it seems to show there's an interest in other locations for DCs. If they were to move the DCs to other regions like East Coast or the Midwest, people would definitely swap over to a different DC for the lower ping to play.
The issue now is there is no difference between Dynamis/Primal and Crystal/Aether other than things that require home world like housing and retainers and island sanctuary, but if one DC had lower ping for people there would be a reason to stick around and try to make it work.

[Toutatis]

5) One wonders what the purpose of being on Primal and Dynamis is at this time.

It's only PF. DF is still healthy with very short queue times. Anyway they need to make PF region wide. I am no longer bothering with it. I hate DC traveling as it breaks FCs and I miss my house, retainers and crafting. There is nothing to do while waiting for PF.