Why have more than one server?

[lvlagmarink]

Take a look at any thread on servers, and you'll see everyone wants to be on the bigger server. No exceptions. They don't care if they have to wait until 4 AM to log in, they want those server numbers.

If everyone is just going to cram into the highest population server anyway, why bother having other servers?

Count me out on this, I actually chose moogle as my server simply because it's a moogle because i like mini mog card from ffviii despite the fact that i have worse latency compared from JP datacenter.. As much as i never created any character in legacy server, i'd think moogle is quite lively server

[Anarnee]

Never understood the draw of servers like Balmung and Gilgamesh. I have alts there and honestly is no better than my home server Siren. Its a case of the grass looking greener on the other side.

[Kogasan]

I agree I like moogle server as well. Mostly nice and helpful people and not to crowded. Fits me very well. I would hate to be on an overpopulated server.

[Cakekizy]

I wouldn't want a crowded server.

[KarmaCha]

Who is everyone? I certainly wouldn't want to be on a server I had to wait in queue to log into. I'm on Ultros. It's medium, and lovely. The server is very active and I have never had a queue time.

While I'm playing Heavensward Friday morning leveling with friends, I await the dozens of "THIS ISN'T FAIR! LET ME LOG INTO GILGA/BALMUNG!" threads here.

[ChillbroSwaggins]

I'm on Behemoth which is a fairly populated server, and I've had no issues whatsoever. Logging in or running content. I agree that some of the smaller servers should be absorbed and we should expand the existing servers some. However, one server by itself wouldn't be possible. There's no way the existing framework could handle such a load, nor do I see them creating the infrastructure to support such a machination.

[Gunspec]

They should have done a lot of things differently with servers in the very beginning.

They should have made our characters share a cross-server account name, allowing people to identify the player by account instead of character name (thereby preventing one RMT account from spamming with a hundred different characters).

They should have created a framework for cross-server play, like many western mmos have been experimenting with. Consider that we can group with random players from other servers during dungeons, but we can never meet or speak to those players in-game again. Meet someone new online or in real life that you want to play with? Pay $ to change server and say goodbye to all of your old in-game friends.

They should have experimented with different types of servers for different activities. Imagine if housing was on an entirely different server from your home world, and each housing server was shared among the general population. Access to housing would no longer be impossible on overpopulated servers and there wouldn't be dozens of empty housing wards on the lower population servers. Or how about a GLAMOUR server, where your character could temporarily migrate to access a glamour catalog for all of the armor designs you have unlocked? The glamour server would only load your current inventory and a massive wardrobe native to the server, ignoring all data for achievements and quests, thereby allowing the separate storage of data currently unmanageable by the native servers.

It's sad that Dragon Quest X was actually a lot more bold about how it handled server shards, and that was just a Wii game. Once they locked FFXIV into the same type of server system that traditional mmos had, they made it really hard to improve on how players are able to interact together.

[CYoung187]

Way to completely over-exaggerate. Lower population servers are hardly a wasteland.

[DevilsDontFly]

You know the Fate trains at Coerthas and Thanalan? Imagine that with all servers as one.

No, thank you.

[Orspeth]

I like my server just fine as it is. Some days I can't stand to be in town to do my crafting because I think it's too busy and crowded, so I go to the house. I would never want to be on a hi pop server, did that in another game, and I hated it.