How Square Enix can solve both data center travel and ping/routing issues for NA

[Drimn]

TL;DR: Spread NA DCs out. The playerbase will naturally distribute itself evenly for better ping so Aether is no longer the PF hub. Nobody is punished and everybody wins.

No they won't. They'll go where their friends or streamers they simp for are, and that's Aether, with RP alts on Crystal if that's their thing. They'll accept bad ping if it means being where the activity is. All more DCs will lead to is longer queues.

[mana-burner]

No they won't. They'll go where their friends or streamers they simp for are, and that's Aether, with RP alts on Crystal if that's their thing. They'll accept bad ping if it means being where the activity is. All more DCs will lead to is longer queues.

Buddy, it's not 2021 anymore. Also nowhere in the OP did I mention making more DCs, so I don't know why people keep bringing that up.

They could, but would they? Transferring is a much more involved and complicated process than simply letting someone back into the character creator to make adjustments, including the checklist of things you need to do just to be eligible for a transfer at all.

They already let people transfer for free.

Speaking of which... forcing people to transfer due to the newfound physical locations would have immediate consequences on people's friend groups and free companies (...and then there's the housing). Sure, the East Coaster now finding themselves on a East Coast server is happy, but all of their West Coast buddies not so much, and they may transfer away (one way or another) for the same reason you're trying to drive home: Better ping is what/only matters. Data center travel wouldn't be the solution for fractured groups either, given that we've established that trying to play from too far away has a crippling effect on performance, so some of those WC's players aren't going to suddenly come back to play on the EC side, friends or not. And if there's one central data center that's ideal for everyone on both coasts to travel to? Well, now it's the new Aether, and all the current problems that come with current Aether.

I think if this is enough to ruin your relationships then you probably weren't that close. Pretty much everybody I know from FFXIV talks on discord anyway because the in-game social systems are awful.
Even if it isn't ideal, east coast players manage to do all levels of content from the opposite coast so I don't see why you couldn't travel to play together. Take turns playing with worse ping. It'll be like using the shitty player 2 controller.
Most of your issues are mild inconveniences at worst which aren't very compelling. You raised a good point with housing but Square Enix came up with a solution for this a while ago:
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...5d22338cf55ce7