Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Zumi]

This is where logic comes in.

Say you've made 15-30 friends that you play with on your server. They are in NA, Europe, and Japan, along with other places that might be closer to regions outside of your own.

Those people also have friends, most of which probably closer to their own area.

So I'm just gonna say "ok guys all of you have to come to my North American server"? Even if we were to take the time to see how many of who is closer to what (which would take forever), we'd also have to take into consideration their friends from OTHER servers that want to come play with them (and friends that haven't played the game yet but want to).

Why they didn't just keep the same sort of server structure is beyond me. It's hard enough getting people to choose one server exactly how it is now, let alone with this new shit.

This occurs any time when they add new servers let people switch. Everyone can't play on the same server as is the nature of servers.

But why leave all the servers in Japan where everyone who not in Japan is at a disadvantage due to latency. With these new data centers in NA and EU regions at least SE is giving people the choice to have less latency and a overall better game play experience.

[Rjain]

Because it was very badly built and people made sure to let SE know about it.

Yeah that's why XI failed horribly.

Hey wait a second.

[Faiyez]

Yeah that's why XI failed horribly.

Hey wait a second.

You're talking about a game that launched before WoW did. Luckily, standards have gone up since then.

[Croy]

Yeah that's why XI failed horribly.

Hey wait a second.

FFXI server structure was horrible and ill fitted for a modern MMO. They had to put claim lag on their servers to keep JP from having an unfair advantage in claiming NMs, and although fun Ballista suffered in a similar way when fighting people between regions. Just because it was less noticeable does not mean it was non-existent. FFXIV is just so much worse from FFXI we delude ourselves in thinking it was acceptable for todays standards, hint, its not for most people. People 'coped' with it. I know plenty that were shouting from the roof tops hoping for servers to be spread out so people at least had the option not being second best to the JP side.

[Alhanelem]

Since you clearly don't value friendship as much as other people do, it's understandable why you use the term "freak out", when it's perfectly reasonable to be upset people will be separated from friends they care about.

This person's stance does not mean he doesn't value friendship. There are different levels of friendship though. Friendships that extend outside of the game, and aquaintences that you play with in the game but don't really contact outside of it. I have close friends, that I will stick with, and aquaintences that I might become seperated from, but it will be on good terms. If I should desire to talk to them in the future, I can create a character on their server. Ideally, there will be a game-wide friends list so I can still chat with people on different servers.

These kinds of problems are not caused directly by regional servers, and are a consequence of any server change, such as adding new servers and merging old ones. Whenever either of these events happen, there will be some seperations- and these kinds of situations are unavoidable. If new servers are added, some friends-of-friends-of-friends may take different paths. When servers merge, the same thing can happen. These things are unavoidable because the population will grow and shrink over time. Regional servers may bring about this change at an unexpected time, but a similar situation would eventually happen regardless of if they did it or not. It's something you have to accept or not play the game.

[Astora]

Yeah that's why XI failed horribly.

Hey wait a second.

For all we know, they could have. XI was designed and built for PS2 on a 56k connection, PC was a completely after thought. XI is also 10 years old, the internet and its tubes have come a long way where latency really shouldn't be an issue for XI tiny packets.

X|V is a beast on bandwidth which causes the large latency issues. I wouldn't be surprised if it ran worse on XI's architecture.

[Amage]

This mean plears who dont want lag will use us servers and eu will use eu servers etc . way to kill the game ffxi servers were in japan ran fine use that server style

[Shura]

And you have no idea how much lag I suffer from this game, getting R0 all the time, so don't give me that shit about exaggeration.

That's the thing isn't it, because clearly there are those of us who also live on the other side of Japan and don't have this lag issue. The fact that it seems to work fine for some and not for others suggests the problem lies elsewhere and not the location of the server. If it was the server that's causing this unplayable lag where players R0 and D/C all the time, EVERYONE outside japan should be experiencing it since everyone is connected to the same sever.

[Croy]

This person's stance does not mean he doesn't value friendship. There are different levels of friendship though. Friendships that extend outside of the game, and aquaintences that you play with in the game but don't really contact outside of it. I have close friends, that I will stick with, and aquaintences that I might become seperated from, but it will be on good terms. If I should desire to talk to them in the future, I can create a character on their server. Ideally, there will be a game-wide friends list so I can still chat with people on different servers.

These kinds of problems are not caused directly by regional servers, and are a consequence of any server change, such as adding new servers and merging old ones. Whenever either of these events happen, there will be some seperations- and these kinds of situations are unavoidable. If new servers are added, some friends-of-friends-of-friends may take different paths. When servers merge, the same thing can happen. These things are unavoidable because the population will grow and shrink over time. Regional servers may bring about this change at an unexpected time, but a similar situation would eventually happen regardless of if they did it or not. It's something you have to accept or not play the game.

Precisely, and for the record I am not leaving my server even if it becomes JP zoned. I am pretty sure most of my friends are going to stick around on the server and if not oh well, work on what will be best for my playing experience, move on. Saw plenty of people leave for Ragnarok, in FFXI when various new servers were added our shell even contemplated moving, didn't happen, saw large ls swath take off, we stayed, life went on. Hell we got more disenfranchised as a shell when FFXI had its server merges because people got forced to make name changes and start new shells because the shells broke during the merge. That had WAY more issues then this change will ever make and it gives people the option to play the game in much the same way the JP players have been able to do for years now.

[Rjain]

Perhaps I'm biased because I apparently have super hero special powers to not let lag hinder my play performance in MMOs after years of playing them and experiencing it, and resorting to prefer the social element of the game and the people I play with from around the world over a tiny bit of lag which is going to exist regardless of whether or not the server is in Japan or right outside my house.

If someone was to ask me "brand new game coming out would you rather have one set of global servers in one location or data centres in different regions"? I would say data centres in different regions. I'm not blind as to see that the people complaining (including me) are probably a minority because the new game will probably get far more players than it currently has. I just felt like voicing a bitter complaint because it's going to kick the community structure that has existed for ages in the ass.

That said, and in response to the lag video that was posted, I will repeat what I've said in every case someone has complained about lag. I, geographically and technologically speaking, live almost the farthest you can possibly get in the world from Japan's network (besides living off the coast of Brazil in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or the south pole). It takes me like 2 minutes to upload a 10 MB file there at times. Not only that, I play on a mid-grade laptop and have low FPS. Apart from the first 10-15 attempts at endgame where I cried lag, I have never had a problem since. The only issue I see people ultimately having is they cast a special, get stuck in an attack, and can't get out of said attack before the attack goes off based on what the server is seeing (animation lock). That has been fixed in ARR. I've watched videos of the Japanese players on Ifrit, I hardly see a difference in the slightest between lag. A difference exists, but so insignificant it's not even worth mentioning.