Yoshida-san - GLOBAL Servers and Balancing Tweaks Instead of Regional Servers

[Alhanelem]

It's important to me because I enjoy playing with people from around the world.

Why do you enjoy this so much? What's so much better about playing with a person from <insert country here> compared to your own? What do they have that anyone else doesn't?

The JP onry issues are overblown and you know it,

While I've been in a few parties with JP players and they generally go well, It wasn't really any more fun than playing with people whom I can understand. And I can take a screenshot of my chatlong anytime after midnight eastern and show you why most people are happy for regional servers. It's just an endless stream of squiggles that 99% of non-japanese don't even understand how to read, much less know what the symbols actually mean. Again, while this doesn't explicitly BOTHER me, I would be able to get a lot more done if I saw some shouts for events I need. I often look at the JP shouts and can't help but wonder what fights they're doing that I need but I don't know it so I can't even ask if they need help because they rarely use auto translate.

the lag issues are overblown and you know it,

The lag issues are not overblown at all. physical location is only one part of why the game lags, yes, but it's a flat out lie to say that the game doesn't have substantial lag issues.

I'm very disappointed in being forced into regional ones.

you're not being forced into regional ones, you can still join any server regardless of region. If you play at oddball times, then just join an EU server if you're NA or a JP server otherwise. Bam, instant players online during your oddball time. Heck, probably even more reliably than you have now.

Regional servers does not mean "servers will be dead from X time to Y time." There are always people who are active at oddball times like you are, because everyone comes from different walks of life and are active at different times. Additionally, you aren't going to be forced to go anywhere. You'll still be on whatever server you're on now when 2.0 comes online, unless you specifically choose to switch.
Of all the reasons to want things to stay the way they are now, this has to be the least valid one.