Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Churchill]

I welcome separation.

[VanillaLatte]

Ppl on all the times, but only certain time(6PM~11PM usually) there will be active players that actually do stuff.

Some ppl have to play at odd hours, due to work, real life etc. So if you play at odd hours, you will not see anyone in game/have anyone to do stuff with if servers are regional.

And this can hurt if there are some sort of public event in 2.0, may not affect event that requires a static as much(since you probably won't static with ppl speaking other language), but if there are some sort of public event/shout friendly event, you can't do any of those when you log on.

When I played 11, I was in JP timezone, but I speak English. When I log on weekdays, majority of the players are JP, so I join JP /shout pt or their EXP pt(not every JP will take outsiders, but some would), this ensures I have ppl to play with no matter when I play. Also, public event such as besieged, there will always be players doing it and I can join.

On weekend I can play with NA players too, to do more serious stuff such as static.

If there is regional server, and I play on NA server, log on in the morning, there's no way I can do anything on weekday. If there are public events, which both current 14 and 11 has, I won't be able to do it because I can't solo it.

From what I've seen in every way, regional server is more harm than good, for anyone that can't play on 6PM~11PM.....so if you work on 4PM~10PM(which isn't uncommon), you won't have anyone to do stuff with.

And no, "do research and find server that's active around your time" isn't an option, I'm not going to a server that everyone else are JP just because I play on JP timezone. I'd rather to have both as an option, do easy stuff that doesn't require communication on JP time, do serious stuff that requires a lot of communication on weekends.

Of course, lag etc. But before ppl worry about lag in a MMORPG and not fighting game, having ppl to do stuff is more of a serious problem.

The prime hour issue is there, and I hate it. When i was playing wow (during lich king era). You have raids happening and even pug raid shouts during the prime time, and prime time only. When it's out of the prime 6pm-10pm time frame, you don't get anything really - definitely no pug raids at all. Not to mention when you go to wintergrasp, you may end up with only 10 people there.

This kind of stuff never happened in FFXI.

It was very obvious and I didn't like it. I like MMOs to be alive all the time, and global server provides that.

[Jynx]

I just think it's a shame how we went from such a strong community in XI with many of the same people. Are just willing to let those bonds come un-done for the sake of a few milleseconds.

If they fail to at least give us the option of a global server I know for one I'll be on the train to picking what server we should try and mark as global for those of us who don't give a toss about latency and care more about a live server over a primetime server.

[Titans]

The whole point of remaking ARR was to reduce lag and a lot of server errors this current version has. They mention remaking the game over a year ago, and not once did they mention regional servers until resently with 2 months left before they shut down 1.0. Adding a global server would benefit those of us who work during prime time hours. Some one like myself whose work hours are from 3p.m. to 11 p.m. It's sad that SE choose to seperate us rather than unifying it gaming community.

[Zumi]

The whole point of remaking ARR was to reduce lag and a lot of server errors this current version has. They mention remaking the game over a year ago, and not once did they mention regional servers until resently with 2 months left before they shut down 1.0. Adding a global server would benefit those of us who work during prime time hours. Some one like myself whose work hours are from 3p.m. to 11 p.m. It's sad that SE choose to seperate us rather than unifying it gaming community.

What about content finder log in do stuff whenever you feel like it?

[Titans]

What about content finder log in do stuff whenever you feel like it?

I'm for it, just hate loosing/saying goodbye the EU, JP, and NA friends I've meet over the two years I've been playing.

[Starlord]

I have a feeling either at TGS or next week they will reveal the Alpha start date ( and benchmark)

[Jynx]

What about content finder log in do stuff whenever you feel like it?

How will Content finder help? Give you 1-2 more servers to troll a few members at late night? What about open world content? Content finder will probably itself be region locked otherwise it would defeat the entire purpose of Regional servers in the first place making global servers more logical because you would be able to find people 24/7 for all content not just raids.

Funny enough MMO's do expand beyond raids...

[Ruisu]

Speaking of instances and whatnot, I wouldn't mind if they made content finder region locked, and leave the game global otherwise. Any non-content finder instances and whatnot can all be located at whatever server you're on anyways.

Of course, it's already a bit too late for that.

[Zumi]

Here is my reasoning on why I like regional servers much better the international set up they have now.

First off I live in the US in the Pacific time zone, typically I play during the evening. These are just estimates based on data SE gave awhile ago for FFXI, FFXIV prob similar but about 50% of the players are JP, 40% are US and the remaining 10% are EU. Now then I can't really do much of anything with JPs I am not fluent in Japanese. I am actually Japanese American though but don't speak the language. For the most part I don't see too many EU players I could play with them however they aren't usually on when I play unless they play weird hours that lets them play in PST evening. So essentially I have a server where I can play with about 40% of the population and there are character caps on servers so no new characters can be made. Meaning I probably won't be able to play with 60% of the people on my server due to time zone differences or speaking JP.

Now here is the problem I am currently having with the game. I leveled all the jobs to 50 quite some time ago, pugged lots of mog got all the weapons then started doing Ifrit. When reilcs came out I wanted to do them. However the FFXIV community is pretty closed off when it comes to inviting new people to join their group or LS. Most people on the server have their set group of 8 people and almost never invite new people to join them. Basically I looked pretty hard and found nobody that wanted to do relics. I was stuck trying to pug hamlets but was very unlucky and didn't win any seals. More recently I try finding people on the forums on the servers forums, I might of got 700+ views on my topic but nobody was like hey join my group or LS we can use someone to go out and get relics together. Everyone seemed so set in their ways with set groups they made awhile ago that I pretty much had very little chance of finding 7 other people interested in doing this. FFXIV seemed to be much more clicky then any other MMO I played, FFXI, Aion, WoW, Swtor. In those games I had no problem finding a group to do end game.

The problem lies in only being able to play with about ~40% of the playerbase. When regional servers come out and I pick a NA server with about ~90% of the players will play at the same time I do, and speak English. I think it would be much easier to come by a group that wants to do some serious endgame. Which is why I can't wait for the regional servers because I actually want to do stuff in FFXIV not sit around in Uldah thinking maybe ill get lucky today and see a good shout so I can get some progress on my relic quest.