DevTalk: Detailed Analysis of Depopulation in Limsa/Grid and How to Fix It

[Rentahamster]

crafters will have even more reasons to work out of other towns, and a market to get while doing it. It is a little more likely you will see more specific things in certain areas, like woodworking crap in grid, etc.

If current player behavior is anything to go by, this will not have a significant impact. People who accept Grid and Limsa local leves now do one of the following:

1. Do the locals as fast as possible, then go back to Uldah
2. Pick up the locals, go back to Uldah, do the synths, drop off locals later.

Even after the patch, there still won't be any compelling reason to stick around. There will be more of a reason than now, yes, but will it be enough? I'm not so sure.

transportation issues: this is a real factor, and i think its also why he wants to get a very basic easy and fast airship system going city to city, a no cutscene form of travel from city to city that uses money instead of anima will open up travel.
This i think will eliminate the need to unify the MW, and though it will increase shopping times for bargain hunters, I think it will make it a good balance of bargain hunting and accessibility. For easy things you probably want to stay in towns, but for expensive or important gears you may check all three.

There's still not enough total people per server to make all 3 wards in all 3 cities viable yet. Even with airship transport, it would still be in everyone's best interest to just consolidate their retainers in one city. The game might as well be designed around that concept.

Also unifying wards can only work if they add a delivery type system,

We need a mailbox, but I don't think that's the only reason why a unified ward would work. I'm not sure what your reasoning is here.

or they make MW not transport you to other towns.

I thought this part was obvious. You enter ward from Grid, you exit to Grid. You enter ward from Uldah, you exit to Uldah.

In effect, this actually acts sort of like a makeshift mailbox, since you can always meet someone to trade, even if they're in a different city. Just meet in the wards.