Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Alhanelem]

...what? So everyone who played XI outside of Japan lost?

Yes. Everyone outside of Japan was at a disadvantage, especially in the days of HNMs and claiming. Since shit like that doesn't really happen anymore, it's not as big of a deal as it used to be, but it still exists to this day.

The only times an area server has to read or write to the character DB is when you save/load your game.

This is an MMO. Your game is being saved and loaded constantly. Data is written whenever it changes and is read whenever it is needed, which is all the time. As such, this has the potential to slow down your response times even when you're on the server physically near you.

Otherwise, everything happens regionally, so yes, it has a benefit you refuse to see. Prove me wrong.

So what happens when people from area in region server A move to an area in region server B? You can't have the different parts of the server spread all over the world. Different people will lag at different times and the lack of consistency makes this even worse. Your suggestion just makes no sense whatsoever. This is what your proposal sounds like to me:

Lobby server [japan] <Everyone connects to this to access their character data
Area server 1 [NA] - contains la noscea
Area server 2 [EU] - contains thanalan
Area server 3 [JP] - contains the other stuff
All of these combined are one game world.

So, say I'm currently in Limsa. I get the fastest response time, because the limsa server is physically located near me.

Then I decide to go to Gridania. On top of a longer delay in area change, now my response time is slower, and I'm at a disadvantage.

Are you saying that this is fair because different pepople will be at different pings at different times and this all balances out? If so, can I have some of the drugs you're taking?