Info on EU Preferred Worlds?

[noisydog]

Just wondering if there has been any further word on EU preferred worlds. Its now been a week since the changes and nothing. Wanting to start a fresh on an EU server (so have 1 on Light and Chaos) but is stupid too until the preferred worlds are back.

Got to be many new EU players in a similar limbo.

[Laphael]

Probably when the free transfer ends and SE knows which servers are empty.

[MistakeNot]

What further word? They just recently removed the Preferred label from the EU worlds which had that label.
There is usually a few months between each such status change, so if you are waiting you may have a long time to wait - I wouldn't expect any changes in world status before the release of Shadowbringers.
And even then there is no guarantee they will mark any EU servers as Preferred. The servers marked as such are those with unusually small populations. If no world in a datacenter has an overly small population, then none of the worlds will be marked as Preferred.
.

The last times there have been any changes in which worlds are considered Congested/Preferred have been:
Apr 2, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Nov 6, 2018
Sep 18, 2018

[Kurando]

Well it's possible the new worlds being created for the EU centres may well have Preferred status to entice players to populate them with new characters, but that's not going to happen till the expac releases. Keep an eye on the Lodestone though as they would announce it there.

[MistakeNot]

Well it's possible the new worlds being created for the EU centres may well have Preferred status to entice players to populate them with new characters, but that's not going to happen till the expac releases. Keep an eye on the Lodestone though as they would announce it there.

Well, "New world" is a separate status that has all the bonuses of a Preferred World and then some

[Hasrat]

Idk, they might update just prior to SHB, with the intent of hoping new recruits on expansion release may be intentionally or unintentionally funneled to the servers that will be able to handle the extra load.

[MistakeNot]

Idk, they might update just prior to SHB, with the intent of hoping new recruits on expansion release may be intentionally or unintentionally funneled to the servers that will be able to handle the extra load.

The world servers themselves are usually not the problem come expansion time. The load in the open world areas isn't that huge.
No, the weak point tends to be the instance servers - the special servers handling all the instanced duties including dungeons and the like for a data centre. The data center splits are almost certainly made with the intention of reducing the load on the instance servers, by reducing the number of worlds each of them will need to handle.

[Hasrat]

Naturally. But, the need for instancing The Lochs as well last expansion suggests that they may also take world load into consideration.

Or, perhaps not, and they'll hope the world visit system may be able to take care of that issue. Why trouble themselves with additional instanced zones when they can just encourage players to hop to a world less congested for a time.

[noisydog]

What further word? They just recently removed the Preferred label from the EU worlds which had that label.
There is usually a few months between each such status change, so if you are waiting you may have a long time to wait - I wouldn't expect any changes in world status before the release of Shadowbringers.
And even then there is no guarantee they will mark any EU servers as Preferred. The servers marked as such are those with unusually small populations. If no world in a datacenter has an overly small population, then none of the worlds will be marked as Preferred.
.

The last times there have been any changes in which worlds are considered Congested/Preferred have been:
Apr 2, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Nov 6, 2018
Sep 18, 2018

So what you are saying is that new players are best to avoid playing on the EU servers then? Started a character on one of the NA preferred worlds to kill time, but guess this will end up becoming my main if there won't be any EU preferred servers any time soon. Seems silly as created a NA toon in part because of all the talk of low populations on EU, but to not encourage further growth on the EU servers seems counterproductive.

[Frizze]

I might be mistaken, but i thought there was some sort of restriction about transfering on or off preferred servers. In my mind once you get on a preferred world you arent supposed to be able to transfer off for like 90 days. So its possible they lifted the preferred status just for the free transfer window to make moves easier to accomplish. Then as Laphael suggested they could re-instate preferred status on the servers that wind up with lower populations.