Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Antipika]

So, people in England will be stuck with French and German only. I preferred English/日本語 only, seeing as I could deal with both... Maybe I'll just have to learn French and improve my Deutsch.
Or move to America.

????

It's by region not by language. French and German players are a minority among everyone else who uses English in the EU region (which is on top on Europe also include the Middle East). And most of FR/DE players can speak/understand English decently (at least enough to do light content that doesn't require a very complicated strategy, basically what you do in PUGs).

So I really don't see the issue there. There are lot of EU players on Ragnarok and English is still dominant.

[Tatsuguy]

amen, to what Xatsh Vei said.

[Kowen]

Please implement something similar to Guild Wars 2's guesting system, which lets you "guest" on another server besides your home for free and play with other people.

Not happy about the regional servers, but at least that way I could still play with EU friends who'd like to base themselves on a local server.

[OsmosisDave]

One of the great things about 14 and 11 was that communities from all over the world were able to integrate together. This is the most dissapointing update from this game that I've read. I'm EU but I play in an NA LS and our times have worked out nicely together as they do early events. I've had quite a lot of gear from runs and I owe them a lot and vice versa. For me to fully enjoy the game I'm going to need to be on a European server, especially if there are world events that need a lot of random players like in Guild Wars 2. Now, I dont want to fuck over the shell im in but I will ruin my play experience if i stay on an NA server.

I'm sure this applies to a lot of people, not only me. It is a good thing for casual players and I understand the limitations of the technology but for the people who take this game seriously, its forced segregation, so go fuck youselves the people who white knight this.

tl;dr You've left me in a shitty situation here SE. I'm not happy.

[Priya]

So many pages!!!

Just wanted to chime in and say that I'm mostly happy with this change (still too new for a plethora of friends). I'm rather indifferent to the origins of the people I play with (I'm a dirty non-bilingual American, though, so it helps me if people can speak some English since the translator is pretty bad), but I do like to aim for servers with higher East Coast populations as I do play during that prime time-- this makes that easier. New players needing to spam Google with "which server has the highest NA, east coast, population" will probably still be present though as I imagine there will only be one central NA data server.

As far as lag is concerned, they can't really change the combat to be more fast paced with so many people claiming they are hit with huge lag. XI has some slow combat, so latency can be a bit higher there without it causing too many problems. Faster fights need faster data transfers-- if SE wants to overhaul the combat, they have to give these server options.

Honestly, if all goes well and the game brings in more people than it has currently, this is actually more beneficial than detrimental on the whole (sorry to those of you who will be split-- perhaps they will try GW2's "guesting" as was mentioned before).

And if the game stays dead... there are always server mergers.

[VoltaAsura]

Why can XI do this right, but XIV (1.0 or 2.0) can't? It makes no sense. Good luck with getting ARR a major success lulz

[Jynx]

You can still play with them, just join the server they're on.

And what of my EU, AU, friends? What about the people I play with in the NA region? I unfortunatly can't exist on multiple servers or this wouldn't be a issue.

I play with people from AROUND THE WORLD. Not from a specific slice of land.

[MStowastiqVahlshdeh]

Wait, so If I choose to play in a server/world that's not in Japan, and all Japanese players decide they want to play on servers in Japan, I will not be able to play with Japanese players at all?

Edit: Of all the things I've complained about in this game, this has to be their worst decision yet. I really cannot believe this is happening.

It's impossible to force players to stay on a server when they have multiple friends across all regions. EU players on our linkshell will most definitely move to an EU server, NA players to NA servers and all JP players that I loved to play with will remain in JP. And since I don't belong to any, I have no idea where I'm going to go to. I'll probably end up outside of XIV.

I feel for you and agree!
With so much content dependent on group play where you need to make relationships to access the majority of the content and where there is not as much for solo play, they really need to consider the damage this can do to people in situations like this where they have made strong bonds with people from more than one region. I also have friends from multiple regions, can't comprehend choosing less lag over friends.

For the person saying "MMorpgs are not about the community these days anyway" on the contrary, XIV is about the community and thus they have created a lot of content that requires team play. The international aspect of the xiv community and the translation features are something unique that many players enjoy, making friendships with people across the planet.

I am comfortable with less community, used to do things solo as much as possible due to my real life limitations on play time but I had no choice but to break free from that and make friends in order to enjoy the content and I don't regret that decision, yet it will be horrible to break apart friendships after having made them.

It is difficult to undo that kind of player habit, friends are friends.

[Zumi]

And what of my EU, AU, friends? What about the people I play with in the NA region? I unfortunatly can't exist on multiple servers or this wouldn't be a issue.

I play with people from AROUND THE WORLD. Not from a specific slice of land.

Organize ahead of time tell your friends to join the same server you. The lag for them can't be any worse then it is now.

[Jynx]

Organize ahead of time tell your friends to join the same server you. The lag for them can't be any worse then it is now.

The lag isn't the issue it's that if they ever have to change play times they will be utterly boned, likewise if I move to their server my playtime varies wildly and this "Was" one of the best games you could hop on and find people playing 24/7 because it was a wordwide game.

Again i can't just hop servers when my playtime changes.