Dynamis honestly felt like the worst data center for a new player to start on.

[Aidorouge]

If you only care about que time and not hard into raiding or RP, I can confidently say that you can still pick Aether or Crystal. If you don't care about RP you'll quickly learn what areas to avoid on Crystal and the only weird thing about Aether to me is that there seems to me more FC recruitment spam than other data centers. But I do have to admit, both Data Centers seem to have an noticeable increase in que times during off hours over the past couple of months. Hopefully it picks back up with all the changes coming in the next patch.

Aye, queuing for stuff is extra rough for me because I tend to long in later than most (8PM onward) and I'm in the Pacific time zone, so that could be as late as 10PM for others, and its well into the AM hours by the time I log off. Not to say there aren't people still putting up venue adverts up until morning, but that's not the kind of thing I engage with so I never actually meet or play with the majority of night owls on Dynamis.

Meanwhile, I've still had Frontlines popping after midnight on Aether and Crystal some weekdays when I've visited, whereas I can't even remember the last time I got a Crystalline Conflict match to start on Dynamis, and that's with a very committed fellowship over here trying to make it happen. Bless their hearts but man... it's just gotten depressing to see as time went on.
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If Primal is not dead, then to be honest I don't really see a reason why you should wait for Aether or Crystal, unless there's a specific reason you want to actually be on either of those DCs

No specific reason I suppose, I don't even know anybody on those data centers (or Primal for that matter) so its not like there's any welcome wagon waiting for me and everyone will be a stranger, and similarly I won't miss or be missed by anyone from Dynamis because there never WAS anyone else.
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For Crystal at least, roulettes tend to pop fairly quickly. But lately, good luck if you’re trying to queue for something specific outside of peak hours. One of my Mog challenges (the one that isn’t the same for everyone) was a Hard mode dungeon that took 22 minutes to pop, and you can’t just unsync those if you want the Moogle tomes. Also notice some MSQ trials take quite a bit lately. Luckily I have 7.4 glam dresser prep to occupy me for the long dps queues!

It's the same on Dynamis honestly, people trying desperately to fill Omega and Mhach raids (some of them for the first time even, mentioning the FT bonus) and yet you can watch in real time as they expire without even getting half-full.

I imagine its because most people are just farming GATEs for mogtomes, because I can join pretty much any Leap of Faith over here and could easily count almost a hundred people popping into existence, and yet once I leave it could still be a 10+ minute wait for even 4-man content, including tank or healer, on the WEEKEND.

I snidely remarked about that during the last LoF I was in last evening when I managed to get on earlier than usual (5PM PST), wondering outloud why our queues and PF are so dead 24/7 over three years later when there's literally dozens of people on RIGHT NOW and got met with "probably just here for houses/RP" and "shut up" lol. It's what motivated me to make this topic honestly, because it felt like a "final straw" to know that even during prime time on the weekend, barely anyone plays over here, Dynamis only exists for housing enthusiasts/RPers and I'm neither of those things.
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Primal has had a noticeable population drop over the last year but it's no where near as dead/low pop as dynamis if you want to leave right away. Que times are still pretty fast for most things for non raiders when doing roulettes and dungeons.

As long as I can get decent queues for PVP once the new Series starts, that's good enough for me, and over the last month I've finally dipped into visiting Crystal when I normally ignored it for PVE/PVP content and found it was just as good (and sometimes) better than the other two on queue times for things. So its really a toss-up where I end up because I'm ignoring the whole "this is the data center for this" thing completely now. Population matters in an MMO, and those three have all the population split between them.
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I do my raiding on Crystal, and I've never seen RP here outside of venue spam in shout chat.

The people who keep repeating "Datacenter X is for Y" are part of the problem, just like people who keep saying, "DC travel to not-Dynamis to do Z" help ensure that Dynamis never actually grows.

I've admittedly fallen for the stereotype that people on Crystal "mostly" RP and didn't do much else, to the point I actually thought Primal was the 2nd most populated data center and not Crystal, or that Crystal was "just as bad if not worse" than Dynamis about venue spam all day and nothing else in the PF. I've learned since (per your own advice even) that this isn't the case at all, and why I included Crystal in the running along with Aether and Primal for my departure point because I don't care about the community labels, I care that these data centers have a community AT ALL.

Dynamis ever growing though? Never going to happen. Xbox launch didn't help it, Dawntrail launch didn't help it, locking it down for a month and Cosmic Exploration REALLY didn't help it. At this point my insistence on trying to stay here for content or community instead of immediately DC hopping has left me more isolated than ever because I end up spending a lot of time dozing off in my house waiting for stuff to fill or just seeing venue stuff I'm never going to go anywhere near.

In that sense, Dynamis ended up being the actual stereotype I had of Crystal, and I'm not going to stay here while being told it'll totally get better if I give it ANOTHER 3 years. There will be one (possibly two) housing vacancies in the Goblet soon if anyone from Aether/Primal/Crystal wants to be the hero who contributes to Dynamis though, but I reckon most here don't even travel there, much less want to transfer.

I mean, hell, I get more human interaction related to this game on the forums with you people, because its SOMETHING with other FF14 players versus NOTHING at all within the game its self.
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Wait until Aether opens up. It doesn't makes any sense to transfer anywhere else - you'll have to dc transfer to Aether anyway.

From what I can tell, Aether is ideal if one does high-end duties if the 100+ listings under that purple face are anything to go by. But I don't do that kind of content (I've had Unreal unlocked for months, never touched it) so I won't be bothered if Primal and Crystal have fewer or any such listings. If nothing else I can be certain PVP pops everywhere that isn't Dynamis, and I care about that way more.

[DanniWho]

I've been feeling this way too. Started back on FFXIV again this month and started on Dynamis.
It's been an actual nightmare trying to get queues to pop. Going through the MSQ and approaching the final three raids leading into Heavensward took over 1 hour for EACH raid.
I try to use party finder but as you've mentioned it's absolutely spammed out at certain times with venue advertisements.
The three cities are also just that in the chat, spam for venues. Or RMT bots.

It would be nice if SE would do something but what would they do that wouldn't upset a large portion of people. If you set each Datacenter as a "RP, PVP, Raid, Levelling", it'd put a bandage on the problem but wouldn't do much imo. Almost need a datacenter that is entirely for venues or something.

It sucks that there's a queue to login but yet the actual duty finder queues feel so barren.

[Toutatis]

Queue times for regular duties/roulettes are quite decent on Primal. I never wait very long and it's sometimes faster than Aether (I have characters on both). PF is awful though unless it's something very new.

[Aidorouge]

I've been feeling this way too. Started back on FFXIV again this month and started on Dynamis.
It's been an actual nightmare trying to get queues to pop. Going through the MSQ and approaching the final three raids leading into Heavensward took over 1 hour for EACH raid.
I try to use party finder but as you've mentioned it's absolutely spammed out at certain times with venue advertisements.
The three cities are also just that in the chat, spam for venues. Or RMT bots.

It would be nice if SE would do something but what would they do that wouldn't upset a large portion of people. If you set each Datacenter as a "RP, PVP, Raid, Levelling", it'd put a bandage on the problem but wouldn't do much imo. Almost need a datacenter that is entirely for venues or something.

It sucks that there's a queue to login but yet the actual duty finder queues feel so barren.

I do my best to try and join Crystal Tower PFs when I can, especially for Labyrinth of the Ancients due to the minimum of needing 12 people even when done unsync. But it doesn't really give possible new players (rare as they seem) the best impression of Dynamis when we have to tell them "oh yeah, this will never fill if you want all 24 people" or "travel to one of the other data centers instead". On top of that, I don't think you even need to unlock (much less clear) Crystal Tower to gain access to house bidding, so that's just one more piece of content that the alts can avoid to get what they truly came here for.

It sucks that when I joined all those years ago, there were still spots left on worlds all across Aether/Primal/Crystal, but I was an idiot and chose a "preferred" one because I was under the mistaken impression the game was "booming" so much that they needed another data center and it would fill up fast because of that... and we all know how that turned out.

I always kept telling myself that surely the "next thing" everyone said would boost the population would work this time, or that I didn't want to pay Square-Enix an additional fee just to have a functional data center. Well, I'm not really caring about the cost anymore, and I seriously doubt the glamour dresser overhaul in 7.4 is going to bring back THAT many people.
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Queue times for regular duties/roulettes are quite decent on Primal. I never wait very long and it's sometimes faster than Aether (I have characters on both). PF is awful though unless it's something very new.

Aye, sounds like its in a healthy enough state for me, and the PF can't be any worse then the one I'm dealing with right now.

Oh yeah, I suppose I could finish leveling my last jobs to at least 90 using the server XP boost while I can, so just Alchemist and Culinarian really.

[Shinku_Tachi]

Yeah, I decided to go for a fresh start on Dynamis with Dawntrail's launch. So I left and transferred to Seraph, because I was feeling nostalgic, due to Seraph being the name of my server on FFXI back in the day.

Everything was fine back then. However, I took a hiatus and came back to a ghost town.

So I left everything behind (including my FC and house) and moved on. I don't regret it. At the end of the day, a better experience is awaiting you on the launch data centers.

Aether is the most populated, sometimes I will go there occasionally to queue for a thing, but you can't go wrong with any of the launch data centers. I've lived many years on Primal (Hyperion & Ultros), Aether (Cactuar & Gilgamesh), Crystal (Brynhildr & Goblin). Outside of Dynamis, every world I've lived on is alive. Not only are the worlds alive, but they actually feel alive as well (if that makes sense)

[Aidorouge]

Yeah, I decided to go for a fresh start on Dynamis with Dawntrail's launch. So I left and transferred to Seraph, because I was feeling nostalgic, due to Seraph being the name of my server on FFXI back in the day.

Everything was fine back then. However, I took a hiatus and came back to a ghost town.

So I left everything behind (including my FC and house) and moved on. I don't regret it. At the end of the day, a better experience is awaiting you on the launch data centers.

Aether is the most populated, sometimes I will go there occasionally to queue for a thing, but you can't go wrong with any of the launch data centers. I've lived many years on Primal (Hyperion & Ultros), Aether (Cactuar & Gilgamesh), Crystal (Brynhildr & Goblin). Outside of Dynamis, every world I've lived on is alive. Not only are the worlds alive, but they actually feel alive as well (if that makes sense)

Nah, I get what you mean. Even when just hopping over to do roulettes, cities on A/P/C actually seem like they have people wandering around, or how if I'm doing dailies while queuing, I might ACTUALLY run into other people in the overworld instead of flying through entire zones all alone. No friend tells, no FC chat, or fellowship chat to break up the silence on Dynamis, so it feels like I'm playing a single-player game instead of an MMO.

I do acknowledge that it could end up a case of "thinking the grass is always greener on the other side" once I transfer and my experience doesn't improve much or at all, but even if I still end up on my lonesome, at least I still have actually decent queue times and zero houses to worry about because man is the housing in this game grossly overrated and a massive waste of gil if you're not like, OBSESSED with the feature to get anything out of it.

[FeyFavilla]

It really is a problem with the group finding systems in general, both for duty finder and the custom party finder menu. If at the very least duty finder was region-wide a lot of these issues could be mitigated. Same as the market board.
I hope Aether and Crystal open a few worlds again after 7.4 dies down a bit so you can switch to them. What you are describing is exactly why people are scared of going to dynamis and I genuinely hope SE will eventually knuckle down and update their server system to a modern standard, preferably before 8.0 so we do not force new players onto a dead realm. Locking down the big worlds to force new folks to start on dynamis is doomed to fail if this is their experience with the community.

[Xieldras]

I'm only on Seraph for Housing. It's as silent as the grave here except for venue PFs.

[ChrysOCE]

I'd say OCE is the worst. At least you can DC travel

[Aidorouge]

It really is a problem with the group finding systems in general, both for duty finder and the custom party finder menu. If at the very least duty finder was region-wide a lot of these issues could be mitigated. Same as the market board.
I hope Aether and Crystal open a few worlds again after 7.4 dies down a bit so you can switch to them. What you are describing is exactly why people are scared of going to dynamis and I genuinely hope SE will eventually knuckle down and update their server system to a modern standard, preferably before 8.0 so we do not force new players onto a dead realm. Locking down the big worlds to force new folks to start on dynamis is doomed to fail if this is their experience with the community.

Unfortunately cross-DC duty/party finder is a long way off assuming it happens at all, and I'm not much inclined to wait however many years it takes to implement when this is the same company that couldn't even figure out Viera and Hrothgar hats for the longest time.

Mind you, there's an argument to be made that if Square-Enix is in "break all the emergency glass" mode to keep people in the game and coming back that they might speed up working on said cross-DC duty/party finder due to it being constantly in demand. But... another thing that's ALSO constantly in demand is more housing wards/districts, and that might actually be easier for them to do. They drop thousands of new houses on Aether/Primal/Crystal and you have even less reason for people to transfer out and more reasons for others to transfer in.

And yeah, trying to "force" people to stay on or join Dynamis has failed twice already. First time was the Dawntrail launch lockdown, which not only didn't improve queue times much, but the moment the lockdown was lifted a bunch of people transferred IMMEDIATELY to avoid having it happen again (even I almost did it back then, but again, I was dumb and stubborn). Then came Cosmic Exploration, where progress was locked per-world and if not for the "pity" completion system, several Dynamis worlds would STILL be stuck on the earliest projects while everyone else is working on the next planet. Sure enough, a noticeable chunk of our DoL/DoH players upped and disappeared to join other data centers where their contributions weren't meaningless.

Even now, any new players are better off joining Primal than Dynamis because all of the "perks" are a trap. 1,000,000 extra girl isn't even enough to afford a Small house despite there being thousands to choose from. And being able to quickly level to 90? Yeah, that will come real in handy when you're forced to unsyc solo every piece of 4/8-man content because you'll never find enough people otherwise, which hits a real hard snag when you get to Stormblood and especially Shadowbrigers when they start throwing MSQ trials at you that CAN'T be soloed due to mechanics, so you're forced to travel out to get them done, or even before you get out of Realm Reborn you have to do the damn Crystal Tower and even just finding 12 people is a nightmare at times because of the frickin' pads.

And that's assuming these new players want to just do everything unsync/non-full party because, shock of shocks, they came here expecting to play an MMO and want to do content "as its meant to be done" with other people synced, and that's really bloody hard to make happen on Dynamis some days even during peak hours and weekends. Being here is like the most anti-MMO experience you can possibly have, and I wouldn't be surprised if the game has lost a lot of potential players simply because they chose Dynamis and effectively got a completely different game than advertised.
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I'm only on Seraph for Housing. It's as silent as the grave here except for venue PFs.

I don't fault people for wanting and enjoying housing, and RP is a perfect valid form of content, but it does unintentionally add to the "deadness" of Dynamis that the majority of players here are just hanging out at their venues all day and if they do get around to any combat content, it's in closed statics with their RP friends, which leaves everyone not in said RP circles out in the cold.

That's no blame on said RP circles of course, they're not obligated to play with others and such, but it does contribute to me spending more time telling new players to "re-roll to Primal while you still can" instead of bothering to welcome them into my FC or helping them with anything outside of Crystal Tower (I just tell them "over-level and come back to it" for 4/8-man stuff) because I'm just tired of trying to make Dynamis work.
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I'd say OCE is the worst. At least you can DC travel

I suppose I should have specified for NA, my bad. But yeah, OCE is a straight-up prison without even the benefit of DC travel to make up for the lack of people to play with, to the extent I'm surprised anyone still plays there at all.

I mean, it was cute of SE to allow for "voyaging" from NA/JP/EU into OCE, but it runs into the same issue Dynamis does; Why on Earth would ANYONE go visit when there's "nothing" there?