Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Antipika]

You're making it sounds like global servers will not have enough of the people from the same regions to form their own end game groups.

Global servers will have that end game groups you're speaking of + the luxury of having an active lively server at any point of time. The only con is the latency, basically.

Confirmed for playing in NA timezone. It's been almost 10 years since Europe have been screwed up on these so called "global servers". (talking about XI too)

It was hell on XI to find a Linkshell that was right for you, endgame wise. Yes all Worlds had some EU shells, but the choice was really low, especially if you wanted to focus on a specific activity, you had way less choices or no choice at all.

Right now XIV content is fine because it's 8 players max, so it's not as hard to find a decent EU dedicated group, then again, if you're not on Ragnarok it can be really hard.

I don't care about playing on a server active at any point of time. The only thing that matters is the server to be active when I am online. What happen before and after I log out is irrelevant to me. And right now, there is no such luxury for EU players, barely able to play during their own Prime Time.

If we ever get end-game involving 24 players on a regular basis (i.e. like Dynamis or "Raids" in other MMOs), I don't see "Global Servers" having more than ~2 decent EU raids. Which is a problem in itself as even if a group is "EU" their schedule may not be right for you. I play other titles in EU EN only servers and even there, not all raid group suits you.

Parameters to take in consideration:

- Level of progression (cannot join a group that is already too advanced gear wise)
- Schedule (start and end of raid, need to be at home before start time and need the raid not to end too late, start time is usually the biggest issue though)
- Frequency of raids (usually 3~5 nights a week, but some players cannot commit to 4 or 5 nights a week, so it makes it hard to join these group)
- Stance toward endgame (casual, semi-hardcore, hardcore...)

These 4 factors alone filter out easily half of guilds for some players. No need to restrict choices even more by adding timezone differences and languages issues. (I'm not even talking about latency here.)