Quote Originally Posted by Rhianu View Post
The point of the entire series? Uh, no. There are like 30 games in the FF series, and only five of them even have multiplayer, and only two of those are online. So interacting with people from all over the world can't possibly be the point of the entire series.

Anyway, I think a special regional server is a good idea. However, if it were up to me, I would segregate the severs based on language rather than location. That way instead of having just a European server, we would have a French server for French players, a German server for German players, and English speaking Europeans could just go on the same servers as everyone else.

Also, Japanese players could have their own servers as well.
FR/DE population is probably way too low for them to have their own server, at best it would be from 2.0 and onward, especially when a brand new audience will join XIV, an audience that may not be used to MMORPG and speak only French or German.

Also, (talking for the FR community since I'm also French), a good part of the FR community is attached to the "melting pot" that exists in XI & XIV (JP/NA/EU all together on the same World). Most of them speak decent English, good enough for basic gameplay things. And because of that, the idea of having a FR only World is not really appealing to them.

However, if you take the future 2.0 average customer profile, that could be different. Let's say you have someone like :

- Not a former XI player
- First MMORPG or used to others mainstream products which have servers separated by language
- Too young to be proficient in English

Well then, this type of customers will be interested in a FR only server and won't probably like to play with JP/NA/EU people all together.

It can be really hard to explain to someone not familiar with FF Online that "over 80% of the population you will play with do not speak your own language" and "half of that 80% speaks Japanese only", which is completely out of reach for 99.99% of French people. Try and sell them a product like that, good luck.