Important Information Regarding North American Data Center Relocation

[EUSerena]

Greetings FINAL FANTASY XIV players....

I have only one request regarding this.
Please give the players who have characters on the US datacenters a free world transfer.

Or at least to those, who are using EU versions of the game and playing on US, if everyone cannot be included in this offer.
Reason: We joined the US servers because well, more people spoke English and generally the community felt better. It was great... until now it seems.

The latency was always high, but not unbearable. Had to evade the attacks a bit sooner but it was nothing to worry about. But, this will change.

So no problem, we will learn to love the EU servers, just let us move without paying.
Thank you.
(I definitely don't want to restart my character. Nor pay tons for the transfer, or die a hundred times and be the reason of wipes because of my new latency. It would be sad if I had to stop playing because of this.*)

Thank you.

* Yes I pay the monthly price and even bought cosmetics. But an additional 15 eur is a huge amount for each character, especially if you play with friends. Dropping ~100-200 EUR to move... that would be crazy.

@ReplicaX: People don't speak English on EU servers, or rather, they don't speak at all. It's not an FF exclusive thing, that's just how people are around here. So that's why many people kept with US servers. I re-started my character after the EU open and still moved to the US after realizing that EU would never offer me any endgame play, communities, communication, nothing. Endless solo grinding.
But hey, there is only raid wipes and lag for us now on the US, so what can you do. If we can move back, maybe there will be people on EU servers who will talk and whatnot.

[Lexia]

* Yes I pay the monthly price and even bought cosmetics. But an additional 15 eur is a huge amount for each character, especially if you play with friends. Dropping ~100-200 EUR to move... that would be crazy.

You don't pay for each character one transfer covers all characters.

[Pixiehawk]

You don't pay for each character one transfer covers all characters.

if they are starting from the same world.

[Lexia]

if they are starting from the same world.

Well yea but that kind of their own fault then if they have multiple characters on different servers and decide they want to transfer them all to a EU server.

[cbwriter]

My guess would be that the move will be to a central time zone location, most likely Chicago or Texas. My money's on Chicago since CenturyLink bought Level 3 in October 2016 and has just built a new data center there.

[Niwashi]

... most likely Chicago or Texas. My money's on Chicago since CenturyLink bought Level 3 in October 2016 and has just built a new data center there.

Chicago is also centrally located. Since the game isn't released in Spanish, there aren't many Mexican players, leaving "North America" to basically mean the US and Canada. Texas is at the southern edge of that, nowhere near the center.

[Mature]

I'm very nervous that this moves gives me higher ping rates me being in UK on a primal server. Right now I have l zero lag issues or latency so I'm praying that nothing changes.

I really do not want to transfer to a EU server and leave my static cause of this.

[EUSerena]

You don't pay for each character one transfer covers all characters.

I am sorry I meant that cost accumulatively - regarding all players in our friend circle from EU who play on US right now.
For me it would "only" mean 30 EUR, then there is Stormblood and the monthly fee. I am all for supporting FFXIV and SE, but come on.
It's not like a world transfer would really incur any costs for SE, the price is there to keep people from server hopping, which is fine in normal situations.

But in this case, I believe a free transfer is 100% warranted.
Though others mentioned in this thread that there were similar situations and no one received free transfers. But hey, one can hope. :/

[Zojha]

Though others mentioned in this thread that there were similar situations and no one received free transfers. But hey, one can hope. :/

There was one similar situation in FFXIV (move of the EU data center) and there actually were free transfers (off the EU data center). Lasted around 1-2 weeks after the transfer, so you could test your ping in normal gameplay and see if you can stand the new latency or not.

[NarikoStar]

I posted this over on the FFXIV Reddit Thread but thought I'd cross post it here-

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS IS SPECULATION BASED. Obviously, let's wait and see if they actually end up but the images I think point to some strong evidence at least its working with this company.

In regards to the servers potentially taking a West Coats base... I find it likely based off the photos we were given.

I'll reference the comments made the in the Reddit post link above but a user pointed out that Nippon Telegraph and Telephone fully acquired RagingWire Data Centers Inc earlier this year. (confirmed here) As the reddit poster points out, NTT is a company that Square has partnered with in the past~ Initially also pointing out that the color scheme for RagingWire's data centers uses a very similar color scheme to the pictures we've been shown by Yoshi P.
From Raging Wires website:


After taking a look at it myself, went to research a bit deeper into the company and its facilities.

These are pictures referenced from the Sacramento Raging Wire base. After looking through their website page for Sacramento AND their California Data Center Tour. I believe the pictures they posted on the FFXIV Official Forums were taken from the Sacramento base.
CA01 comparisons:

CA02 comparisons:


Now... to be honest this move seems quite scary for most East Coasters. I would have hoped evidence pointed to a much more centralized data center...
BUTT
Raging Wire DID open a Texas Center at the end of April....
There's always a possibility they'll be located at this base... but the pictures we get that aren't a virtual tour are from their Ribbon Cutting Video at 0:50secs...but none of these pictures from the video look anything like the pictures we were shown by Yoshi P.

I did a bit more searching hoping MAYBE something could link us to the Texas base but the only remotely close thing I can find comes from a twitter post via Raging Wire which the floor plan and light plan look very similar to the ones we see in Sacramento's base and the pictures Yoshi P gave us- so I guess there could still be hope for this...
Tweet:

So again... a few things in this whole data center moving fiasco. We still have not been given a location. I'd say this is normal, except when EU servers were moved a local IP was given for Frankfurt for players to pre-test ping. My initial thoughts was this was not given to us to avoid a PR shitstorm if the servers do indeed move West Coast.
But- after researching company maybe it was simply not announced because the Data Center in Texas had not opened yet? It's very possible. I still can't snag the TX01 IP route but I can easily check ping with the companies Sacramento and Virginia bases. So that's always a possibility... but then again the whole reason this internet detective work was found was via a reddit user who stated a friend working at the data center in Sacramento got wind of it.

So who knows... I'm pretty positive the pictures Yoshi P gave us were from the Sacramento base... but it's always possible the company gave stock photos of a different base just because the base we intend to go to was not open at the time...

Fingers crossed we'll see central! I play West Coast and have average pings of 104-115 currently. It's not bad... do I savage raiding and pvp still. But I can understand why this would be really frustrating for those who currently play with sub 50 ping may see a 50+ increase.

From Cali- I ping aproximatly 32-40 to Raging Wire's Sacramento base, and while I can't snag the exact IP of TX01, other data centers located in Dallas I average approximately 54-60ish ping.