Quote Originally Posted by Abriael View Post
Repeat with me:

They. Are. Opening. Access. For. Everyone. To. The. Newest. Region.

That 100% invalidates the economic concern and identifies it as an excuse.
Not really because we have no guarantee that travel to the JP worlds from NA or EU will be allowed at some point in the future.

For all we know, SE is only responding to player feedback pushing for something to be done to help Materia, which is OCE not JP. That data center has struggled since it was set up because the player population is so low and a lot of players that wanted it ended up transferring back to NA or EU. What happens with the economy there is a trivial concern compared to trying to improve the general game experience.

To be honest, I tend to agree that it's far more than economic concerns holding things back. SE could have set things up so players couldn't purchase items on other worlds if they really wanted to. If that was all that was holding things back, we would have had cross region travel by now.

I think the fear is the cultural differences disrupting things on the JP worlds if too many random NA and EU players went there. Their beliefs about what is socially acceptable behavior vary quite a bit from ours. JP players have been very resistant to cross region travel where most NA and EU players are fine with the idea.

I'd be fine if JP wants to remain isolated and left out of cross region travel. Let the rest of us play together.