Quote Originally Posted by Dyvid View Post
How data centers do the many MMO's have? How does their cross realm feature work? What are they doing that FFXIV isn't?
WoW. You can play with any player from any region through their realm visitation system. Guilds and standard matchmaking are still limited to Battlegroups, but you can play with all players.

BDO. All one data NA/EU data center. All character and clan data is stored separately from servers. You pick the server to log in on based on whichever has best ping at that particular time. Some events and bonuses set to particular servers to draw relevant players, but generally it's just a matter of additional/excess servers being made or crunched as needed for ping, with a graduated transition of some three seconds as your server or mini-server is crunched or split.

B&S. Crunched to one NA/Oceania server and one EU server, with cross-connectivity. (Russia, China, Japan, and Korean clients all wholly separate entities.) Channels are made/crunched similar to above for purposes of ping.

GW2. Now uses only mega-servers for all gameplay intents and purposes. NA or EU. Separate instances made/crunched as needed.

Playing on an NA server on any of these MMOs I have access to nominally 50+ to 100% of players playing the same game, worldwide.