EU Data Center (Chaos)

[Director_Zero]

Hey all,

I originally made this post to try and help the future new players. I've been playing FFXIV for over 400 days, and I can tell you, when I started playing i'd very much like the opportunity to join a server(world) that is new or at least more recent than 1 and a half years(Zodiark).

Sure it is cool to join an already built community, but just as joining a new one has its down points, joining an existing one has its down points as well. I dont need to name none of them as Im quite sure all of you can figure them out by urself.

I just believe that European players deserve the opportunity to choose from an OLD world and a NEW world, that's all. If you don't agree with this, so be it. I hope at least SQenix does.

Have fun !

[Atoli]

I just believe that European players deserve the opportunity to choose from an OLD world and a NEW world, that's all.

There have to be enough new players to justify a new world, otherwise it will be close to completely empty. I think you are overestimating the amount of people joining because the location of the datacenter moved extremely. This is a minor detail, not something big like an expansion launch (and even then, no new worlds were added, although many new people actually did start playing then).

[Raist]

Have to keep in mind that a considerable portion of the players may not actually be in the EU region. Players create characters across different regions all the time. Unless SE has put forth a concerted effort to determine exactly where logins come from (which can be misleading because of VPN usage), the languages actually used, the version of the client, etc.---they may not have an accurate enough picture to tell exactly how many people to expect on the EU servers. They likely have a better understanding then we ever will though, since we don't have access to any of the actual live data.

If there was a need to create a new world, they would have ponied up the money to build a new cluster of servers to support one (or reserved the virtual resources to create a new world(s) within an existing cluster). If they have to build new clusters to support new worlds, those setups do NOT come cheap. Even setting up a new virtual space may not be a trivial expense either (more drive/RAM, licenses, man-hours, etc.), and unless there will be an extreme overload on the existing servers (which there doesn't appear to be as is with the mix of regions on them currently), there should be no need for the extra expense.

We may find a lot of people jump ship and move to NA/JP servers once all this shakes out. We simply don't know. Just like they simply didn't know for a fact how things would work out at ARR's launch. But...we survived that just fine with all the "old" worlds in place at that time. In fact, don't know if you could really say any of the worlds were actually "new". The name may have been new, but there was enough of an experienced population to go around that I doubt there was a world full of newbies out there that were running around completely clueless. Regardless, if a player is new to the game/franchise, it will be new to them regardless if there are 1000 or 10,000 players active at launch. Unless they are willing to step up and communicate with other players, it won't matter much if the players are still wet behind the ears or seasoned veterans if they aren't interacting with them.

The point is, there may be plenty of resources available to support the EU community at launch. If not, then SE will regroup and make adjustments just like they have in the past.

[Director_Zero]

Have to keep in mind that a considerable portion of the players may not actually be in the EU region. Players create characters across different regions all the time. Unless SE has put forth a concerted effort to determine exactly where logins come from (which can be misleading because of VPN usage), the languages actually used, the version of the client, etc.---they may not have an accurate enough picture to tell exactly how many people to expect on the EU servers. They likely have a better understanding then we ever will though, since we don't have access to any of the actual live data.

If there was a need to create a new world, they would have ponied up the money to build a new cluster of servers to support one (or reserved the virtual resources to create a new world(s) within an existing cluster). If they have to build new clusters to support new worlds, those setups do NOT come cheap. Even setting up a new virtual space may not be a trivial expense either (more drive/RAM, licenses, man-hours, etc.), and unless there will be an extreme overload on the existing servers (which there doesn't appear to be as is with the mix of regions on them currently), there should be no need for the extra expense.

We may find a lot of people jump ship and move to NA/JP servers once all this shakes out. We simply don't know. Just like they simply didn't know for a fact how things would work out at ARR's launch. But...we survived that just fine with all the "old" worlds in place at that time. In fact, don't know if you could really say any of the worlds were actually "new". The name may have been new, but there was enough of an experienced population to go around that I doubt there was a world full of newbies out there that were running around completely clueless. Regardless, if a player is new to the game/franchise, it will be new to them regardless if there are 1000 or 10,000 players active at launch. Unless they are willing to step up and communicate with other players, it won't matter much if the players are still wet behind the ears or seasoned veterans if they aren't interacting with them.

The point is, there may be plenty of resources available to support the EU community at launch. If not, then SE will regroup and make adjustments just like they have in the past.

I agree with you. Still if Chaos Data Center is capable of hosting 1 or 2 new worlds I dont see why not.

[Raist]

I agree with you. Still if Chaos Data Center is capable of hosting 1 or 2 new worlds I dont see why not.

Most likely because the numbers simply aren't there to justify it yet.

And not talking just the money either. There are also community and by extension economic concerns as well. If they aren't seeing a trend to support enough population growth to support a new world, they are less inclined to build one if they fear they may need to tear it down 6 months later.

It has always been, and still is about network load balancing. It isn't all about population numbers, but more about concurrent connection limits. Database servers can handle tons of data themselves...but the network interconnections can bottleneck under heavy traffic spikes. The login queues and new character creation logouts are triggered when the concurrent connection loads cross specific thresholds. Likewise when the demand reaches a certain threshold they will add new worlds in an attempt to spread the traffic out more. That is what triggered new servers shortly after 2.0, and likely the process going forward as well.