[Discussion] Do data centers need to be merged/allow cross play?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I had a two hour queue earlier this morning. Yesterday I had one three hour queue and a couple 1.5 hour queues. Typically the average wait time during peak hours is like 45 minutes to an hour. I remember when Frontlines used to be almost instant queues. What happened?!? Trying to get that 100 win mount seems to be impossible because of the wait times.

What happened? A limited time event was almost over and people rushed to get rewards

[FirstnameLastname]

Plus they removed the actual fun Frontline (24 people) and only left in the cancerous one (72 people). Go figure.

[Zazay]

Always use Party Finder for EX trials, not Duty Finder. You'll notice that your Party will fill up quicker.

[NessaWyvern]

I had a two hour queue earlier this morning. Yesterday I had one three hour queue and a couple 1.5 hour queues. Typically the average wait time during peak hours is like 45 minutes to an hour. I remember when Frontlines used to be almost instant queues. What happened?!? Trying to get that 100 win mount seems to be impossible because of the wait times.

Yesterday, and the day before, I was having 5-10min queues in FL roulette. Are you sure you're queuing during peak hours? PvP tends to pop far more often during weekends.

[aesteval]

While i was queued for ex and yeah, that is probably half of it

It's not half if it, it's 99+% of it. NA doesn't really use DF for Ex and higher content, it's PF to form groups. This is doubly so for old content that can be unsynced.

[LaylaTsarra]

I'm all for Cross Data Center play. The World Visit system currently in place is amazing and I'm so happy they've done it. I've love to see it expanded.

[aesteval]

However, I fail to see why they can not do this for data centers that are located in the same building IRL. Wouldn't it be as simple as just using a wire at that point? Why can't Crystal play with Aether?

How would you propose load balancing that wire? If it was as simple as connecting a wire it would be complete by now. The task actually requires re- architecting their server infrastructure to allow for it and then requires comprehensive testing to make sure it works correctly and doesn't cause problems. When you're talking about a connection point that's managing thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of concurrent connections it's never a matter of just connecting a wire.

[Zsplash]

What Aesteval said, their incompetence at not being able to do it by now though is a bit much... The average players shouldn't even know datacenters exist typically if things are being done right. This is usually the default in any other MMORPG with cross server. The average person probably doesn't even know WoW has multiple datacenters since you never even see them.
But yeah, EX content can't be queued using duty finder it's just a bad idea and hardly ever works.