Please be Careful about the Labels used during Server Transfer

[Tibian]

To Yoshida-san, FF XIV Team and Community Reps:


Please do *not* label or designate the remaining active Servers as ONLY 1 Language or not. That leads to SEGREGATION.

Please do. I am tired of feeling completely cut off from other people who speak my primary language. Yes it leads to segregation, but it is a better situation in the long run. It leads to better party search functionality, better pick up groups, and overall a better community.

• Besaid Server - ENGLISH
• Rabanastre Server - JAPANESE
• Mysidia Server - EUROPEAN
• Lindblum Server - JAPANESE
• etc.

This is exactly what I hope to see. I do not want you to IP lock regions though. There are people from various countries, who speak several languages, who would be welcome on a server if they can speak the appropriate primary language.

You're going to end up indirectly (or directly) influencing and driving players into segregated Servers, where everyone on the server is mostly Japanese, or English-speaking, or European, etc.

This should be the point.

One of the most unique and *enjoyable* facets about Square's MMOs (Final Fantasy XI and now XIV) is that you took the time to allow GLOBAL SERVERS. And gave us a solid Auto-Translator Tool to help us communicate (somewhat) with players of different languages.

I actually find this to be one of SE's most significant weakness in their MMOs. They are spending valuable development time working on auto-translate functions and capabilities when it could be spent elsewhere in a much more pertinent area. You even say in your post that the auto-translate is "somewhat" useful. In other words, you really can only do limited functions with people from another primary language.

I love the diversity, flexibility and colorfulness of Final Fantasy's MMO population! I love that I have plenty of Japanese, European and English-speaking friends from around the world and we can play at various times of the day.

I fail to see how you have friends from another language (especially if they can't speak english well), when you can't even say simple phrases like "How was your day?" Apparently having an emotional connection is not a requirement when you make "friends."

If you end up labeling / categorizing the remaining active Servers in the manner above, players will be influenced to just go to servers that do speak "English" or "Japanese" or are "European" mainly.

Again, this should have been the case from the beginning of the game; IP region lock should not occur however.

If you have to keep Labels (to "help EU players gather" as you stated), one solution to encourage your current diversity is to then add a "GLOBAL" Label, so continuing with the example above:

• Bahamut Server - GLOBAL
• Odin Server - GLOBAL
  
• Besaid Server - ENGLISH
• Rabanastre Server - JAPANESE
• Mysidia Server - EUROPEAN
• Lindblum Server - JAPANESE
• etc.

This works. I am all for having both options in many aspects of the game, and this is one of them. I do want to see a labeled English server however that I can jump on and not worry about when I send a tell to someone if they are French, Japanese, German, or otherwise.

In addition to language labeled servers, I would even be in favor of TIME ZONE labeled servers if the population is large enough to sustain it. I am in the US-Central time zone, and most of the members of my linkshell are from US-Pacific time zone. Playing with them and coordinating appropriate times to log in for events is difficult.

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With that out of the way, I do agree with PV that the post reads very little into language/region based servers. I think this is simply a temporary move because they realize that when XIV goes subscription-fee play, a significant portion of the population will stop playing.
[quote]

I did not read it like this nore see it that way. The way I see it is exactly how it is stated.

"where the players from a world with less population can designate the world they wish to transfer to"

Yep.

I think the language designated servers will be an issue for 2.0, and it has been mentioned earlier (maybe in the PDF's even?)