Regional Servers? (Opinions please)

[Krausus]

If you think only FPS games require low latency, you're in for a rude awakening.

most non FPS games do not require the twitch response that FPS games do, and certainly not this one with its slow combat.

[Catalyst67]

Thanks for all of your opinions, it is greatly appreciated! I am glad it didn't turn out to be a flame war. Now that I understand different viewpoints from other players, I think the players should be able to pick if they want to play on a regional or global server to fit their schedule. I know I shouldn't talk about other MMOs here because this is FFXIV, however, when I played WoW, latency was an issue when I had connection problems. For example, when I was a warlock (dps), it decreased my DPS on an average of 15-20%. If you think about it, if your whole party has latency issues and your party consists of 5-6 DPS, that is a major decrease is damage done. It is game changing.

On the other hand, strong players adapt and overcome their challenges. That is the thing, players shouldn't have to adapt to a game based off of lag or latency issues. It makes the game unenjoyable to me. I know I might be flamed for this, but FFXIV does not require a lot of skill (nor do I think WoW does either). I am not saying I am an expert, but I can handle pressing maybe four buttons to handle my class. When I battle against Ifrit, it feels like I am fighting against the lag / latency issues instead of the boss. Oh well, I guess I will end my rant, sorry for complaining so much. =/

[Krausus]

Thanks for all of your opinions, it is greatly appreciated! I am glad it didn't turn out to be a flame war. Know that I understand different viewpoints from other players, I think the players should be able to pick if they want to play on a regional or global server to fit their schedule. I know I shouldn't talk about other MMOs here because this is FFXIV, however, when I played WoW, latency was an issue when I had connection problems. For example, when I was a warlock (dps), it decreased my DPS on an average of 15-20%. If you think about it, if your whole party has latency issues and your party consists of 5-6 DPS, that is a major decrease is damage done. It is game changing.

On the other hand, strong players adapt and overcome their challenges. That is the thing, players shouldn't have to adapt to a game based off of lag or latency issues. It makes the game unenjoyable to me. I know I might be flamed for this, but FFXIV does not require a lot of skill (nor do I think WoW does either). I am not saying I am an expert, but I can handle pressing maybe four buttons to handle my class. When I battle against Ifrit, it feels like I am fighting against the lag / latency issues instead of the boss. Oh well, I guess I will end my rant, sorry for complaining so much. =/

I think what you are not understanding (which has been mentioned in this thread) is that the main issue isnt that the servers are located in Japan, its the server structure and client itself that is causing the main issue. 2.0 ushers in a new structure and client that is supposed to fix the issues.

[Orophin]

It's funny how people still confuse physical server location with how they group people together to form "regions" of players.

SE will probably never have servers physically located outside of Japan. It will be up to their NOC team to optimize network traffic to reduce latency across the globe. (apparently the new server code will help with this too)

SE has stated that they are considering creating servers (still located in Japan mind you) to cater to Global groups (all languages) and maybe other specific languages or regions. (English only, Japanese only, European only)

Ragnarok is the first server they've tried to use to do this ("regional" servers) by encouraging players in Europe to transfer to so that people in that area would be in a similar time zone and be able to get together easier to do things. They weren't REQUIRED to, it was just a suggestion to see how many would, since when people originally created characters, they went to whatever server their friends were at or whatever random one they chose.

[Eclipse]

Players to Servers in Region
If forced, no thank you, I enjoy my friends from Switzerland, England and France and don't want them being herded onto another server because of where they live.

If this is an option, then I have no strong feelings in any way.

Game Servers In Multiple Regions
This I am all for. POL had servers in US and it was very nice.

[Mirage]

POL did, yeah. Too bad the game launched from POL didn't.

[Nushidorei]

I don't think Ragnarok is a good example of a regional server in how it was executed.

Personally, I am very agitated that I get home at 6:30 PM GMT and until I go to sleep each night, I see almost no groups recruiting in Ridill. Why? because the vast majority of players are American or Asian which both have very different time zones.

So... why not move to Ragnarok? Well first of all, I started playing on launch and left a few months afterwards; by time I returned the Ragnarok transfer was said and done. Reroll? And level to 50 all over again? That is not a good solution either.

I sincerely hope that once 2.0 we will get a transfer feature as well as cross server content as I do like this game and have very high hopes for it; but as there is nobody around for me to play with and no linkshells for me to join which run content at my time on my server, I'm stuck doing nothing.

In addition, two of friends recently started playing just over two months ago, neither of them noticed that Ragnarok was a European server. Which indicates that not enough emphasis is given to show that it is recommended for the European time zone.

Granted, I can see this post drawing a lot of hate as it goes against the tide of people demanding global servers. Yes, I agree that it is nice to see people online at all times and to be able to play with people across the globe, however the popularity of this game is very minimal in Europe with little people playing to begin with, if these people are spanned across servers at random (like me and my friends), we are unable to find people to do any meaningful content with and usually just end up looking for members for two hours with nothing to show for it.

This is a large issue, an MMO without having any community to play with is a very boring and tedious experience, the majority of new players who join in 2.0 in Europe and other lesser played regions will leave very quickly if something is not done to accommodate them.

[Orophin]

I understand where you're coming from Nushidorei. The campaign to usher EU players to Ragnarok only transpired during the phase when they merged a bunch of the servers together to try to bolster the populations of each world. On top of that, it was pretty much exclusively advertised on Lodestone/Forums, so any new players who didn't know better to look at the game's website was pretty much in the dark on which server to pick.

Also, once the merges happened, the servers were all locked for character creation EXCEPT for Ragnarok, so a lot of new Non-EU players had to join that server by default. Later on once things stabilized they opened up the servers again, but it pretty much screwed people that didn't want to be on Ragnarok and wanted to join friends from other servers and didn't have the option. Either that or they've just refused to play until the servers did open up.

If SE plans to have regional servers at 2.0's launch, I hope that they will be clearly identified WITHIN the game like WoW does. Each server should be labeled whether it's a Global Server, Japanese "Preferred" (emphasized for NOT REQUIRED to reside in Japan or even speak Japanese), English "Preferred", etc.

[Yumi_Hibiki]

Oh my, global servers would be abandoned, you say? If that happened, it couldn't possibly mean that the majority preferred regional servers, right?

in this case it has nothing to do with preference, its simply the false sirens call of "that precious milliseconds will make you play muuuuch better for really realz" that a lot of people will follow like sheep, and with them the friends and LS's they drag along.

why ruin one of the unique aspects of the game that actually established to be good in over 10 years of FFXI?
not everything has to be straight from the NA players "dear santa yoshi-p" wishlist of run of the mill "MMOs nowadays must have this" stuff

[Mirage]

How do you know the siren is false?