Data Center Expansion - Questions

[Kyeria]

So, I have a pretty limited understanding of how our Data Centers work and was hoping someone could potentially clear something up for me.

I read that they were Expanding our Data centers for performance reasons and I guess stupidly assumed that we would obtain better performance while expanding our current data centers to allow more players. However, after reading the announcement in detail it appears they're pulling servers from our current Data Centers and redistributing them to new entirely Data Centers. If I'm understanding this correctly the player average base per data center is actually going to decrease, right?

I'm only concerned because if I'm right in my thinking ( And I could be wrong ) the queue times, in theory, could potentially worsen as multiple servers are getting pulled from each Data Center and you cannot queue with people outside of your center. Aether is going from 13 servers down to 8 and queue times can already push 10-20 minutes depending on the duty/raid you select. Can someone reassure/explain to me of what's actually happening and what impact it'll have on us if any?

Thanks!

[WaterShield]

So, I have a pretty limited understanding of how our Data Centers work and was hoping someone could potentially clear something up for me.

I read that they were Expanding our Data centers for performance reasons and I guess stupidly assumed that we would obtain better performance while expanding our current data centers to allow more players. However, after reading the announcement in detail it appears they're pulling servers from our current Data Centers and redistributing them to new entirely Data Centers. If I'm understanding this correctly the player average base per data center is actually going to decrease, right?

I'm only concerned because if I'm right in my thinking ( And I could be wrong ) the queue times, in theory, could potentially worsen as multiple servers are getting pulled from each Data Center and you cannot queue with people outside of your center. Aether is going from 13 servers down to 8 and queue times can already push 10-20 minutes depending on the duty/raid you select. Can someone reassure/explain to me of what's actually happening and what impact it'll have on us if any?

Thanks!

That is correct. Average queue time is about to increase as the same pool of players will now be spread across 3 data centers instead of 2. They are doing this to grant increased stability of the servers during the expansion rush.

Edit: post cap

Others have made points about max number of instances factoring in here. I was unaware that this was affecting queue times given that you can form a premade and instantly queue into anything? This would seem to make it so that max instances isn't the problem.

I could be wrong about this, but my experience up to this point and the logic I just listed doesn't seem to support that being a problem.

[Wilford111]

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

[Wilford111]

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

**up, not down. Sorry there's no editing on mobile

[Kurando]

Apparently though there is only a set number of instances that can be active at one time which adds to queue times. If you have more centres then you can have more instances, which in tail either means the same amount of waiting time or if anything potentially shorter.

Average queue time is about to increase as the same pool of players will now be spread across 3 data centers instead of 2.

It's actually not that bad on EU after the split, roughly the same as before anything was changed and we have much less active players than NA.

[Kyeria]

That is correct. Average queue time is about to increase as the same pool of players will now be spread across 3 data centers instead of 2. They are doing this to grant increase stability of the servers during the expansion rush.

Hmm, thanks for clearing this up for me! I guess we'll just have to see how this pans out, but I'm honestly a little nervous of the long term effects of this decision. However, on the other hand, I'm am glad to see they're trying to remedy the issue that happened with StormBloods launch. I guess there isn't a perfect solution...

[Ekinoxe]

Will que times really go down though? Sure we'll have less tanks and healers queing in but we'll also have less dps so it evens out. Unless you're talking about 24 man ques, in which, yeah I feel ya.

Whether it be healers, tanks or dps, a smaller player pool will generally mean longer queue times.

[Vidu]

You are correct in your assumption that the amount of servers in each DC and therefor the amount of players is decreasing - in theory.

However I'd expect the actual impact to be very little, at least once we're past the "its the end of the expansion and a lot of people arent playing right now"-time, which currently is your main reason for longer queuetimes. The reason I expect little impact is that they're not doing this split for fun but to add more servers alltogether without creating a negative impact on the overall stability of the game. As it seems to stand right now servers and DCs have reached their capacity and to avoid scenarios like Raubahn Ex and the like they need to offer more server-space if they still want to see this game grow.

Once we're getting a whole new expansion I'd expect queuetimes to still be reasonable - given that you dont queue at odd times or for odd, outdated content (my impression is that most of the time queuetime-issues seem to happen to people who're trying to do T9 through DF on a thursday at 2 a.m. ST...).
Hopefully we'll see lots of new people with 5.0 aswell as the return of veterans who are taking a break right now, getting queuetimes back to a healthy level of "not having to wait for ages for other people" and "not having to wait for ages for serverspace".

(Personally I also consider it easy enough to kill 10-20 minutes in game with all the little sidethings to keep one busy, but hey... or you can always play a tank and enjoy sweet, sweet instaqueues for almost everything)

[Vidu]

Hmm, thanks for clearing this up for me! I guess we'll just have to see how this pans out, but I'm honestly a little nervous of the long term effects of this decision. However, on the other hand, I'm am glad to see they're trying to remedy the issue that happened with StormBloods launch. I guess there isn't a perfect solution...

Til Stormblood the EU-DC only had 8 servers aswell and queuetimes werent horrible. Unless you're playing at really weird hours (in which case you should probably consider if a japanese or EU server might fit your time-schedulde better in general) you shouldnt be to worried.
8 servers are still quite a lot of people - assuming that the roughly 250k active characters on the NA-servers are spread out evenly about all 3 DCs that still means that you have about 83k people to play with.

[Akonyl]

Part of the reason for the split is so that as the game expands, they can add more servers without having to overload the existing datacenters. This gives a bit more breathing room (although I can't help but feel there would probably have been a better way around it), so since it's done to support future expansion of the player base, it's being called a datacenter expansion.