Aussie Server

[Sotaris]

Please, just make new servers and offer free transfers and incentives :/

They do. Free. No gil cap. Some chocobo feathers. That's usally the go-to incentives.

Get an Aussie server but EAST COAST NA is out her suffering NA! The player count greatly outnumbers any now or future subs from AUS...gg

Clearly not, otherwise SE wouldnt spending millions of dollars in making a new datacentre. If you want a eastcoast DC, make your voice heard. Bitching in a thread about Oceanic servers aint gonna reach SE ears my man.

There was a time when EU didn't have any servers, and the ones they moved to the EU were formerly NA servers.

Ultimately it depends on how many Oceanic players are on those servers, and how many will be moving.
If it's 50%, they could go either way.
Tonberry is by far the largest server in JP, with 77k (12k active) characters, with the next largest having just 50k (9k). It would not surprise me at all if it has a majority of Oceanic players.

This is true. It wasn't until SB we got new EU servers, and a DC split in SHB.

[Chie_M]

I won't be moving because I'm too attached to my FC, latency be damned -- but I'd be willing to put money on them not breaking up Elemental just because that's where Australians have congregated.

[VelKallor]

I won't be moving because I'm too attached to my FC, latency be damned -- but I'd be willing to put money on them not breaking up Elemental just because that's where Australians have congregated.

Id wait, Chie, they have planned this for a while so Id imagine they have a gameplan for implementation.


All in time.

[LaylaTsarra]

I have an endgame character on Chocobo in Japan and i live on the East coast amd it plays fine there.

[seida]

There also seems like there's a pretty big difference between having to move to a truly new data center where there's nothing really there except what you bring and people being caught in the move who then can jump across to an existing and populated server in their region.

The difference is, moving to a brand new server people have completely empty housing wards to choose from.

Forcefully moving the entire server and then saying "oh, JP players can just move back" is completely disregarding the fact we'd be moving back to established servers with barely any open housing available.

In the end it's up to SE, but they'll have a lot of unhappy Japanese players (as well as just non-Aus players) if they do go this route.

If they can somehow guarantee housing then I don't mind so much, but a lot of people would also have to try and coordinate whole FCs moving back, and I'm not sure SE would want to do that to JP players. We'll see.

[LaylaTsarra]

Forcefully moving the entire server and then saying "oh, JP players can just move back" is completely disregarding the fact we'd be moving back to established servers with barely any open housing available.

They did that with the Aether/Crystal reshuffle. They are going to have to do it with this new data center. Yes some people will be unhappy and want to move back. The transfers will be free but as you point out housing is the real problem for anyone moving back to a populated server.

Honestly they don't really have a choice. The new data center has to have a minimum number of people for it to be functional from a game play perspective. They can't simply offer incentives and wait/hope people move to it quickly enough to make it viable.

Edit: Japan has 3 data centers with a total of 32 servers. I would suspect the new data center will probably aim for a minimum of 5 servers with 1 or 2 at most being totally new. They will probably move 3 or 4 Japanese servers to this new DC. I don't think they will be pulling any from North America or Europe (which only have 6 per DC).

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/worldstatus/

[Sairys]

They did that with the Aether/Crystal reshuffle. They are going to have to do it with this new data center. Yes some people will be unhappy and want to move back. The transfers will be free but as you point out housing is the real problem for anyone moving back to a populated server.

Honestly they don't really have a choice. The new data center has to have a minimum number of people for it to be functional from a game play perspective. They can't simply offer incentives and wait/hope people move to it quickly enough to make it viable.

I wouldn't entirely be surprised if they did a shuffle to ensure population then opened new servers in the data centers that lost some. That way you'd sort the population out while opening up housing across the world rather than in a single region, if that encourages OCE players to shift then it would also potentially open up even more housing as some percentage of those players would own houses too.

The hardware would presumably still be there so it doesn't seem implausible, they could also potentially shuffle things around and repurpose that hardware to add more housing wards.

[LaylaTsarra]

I wouldn't entirely be surprised if they did a shuffle to ensure population then opened new servers in the data centers that lost some. That way you'd sort the population out while opening up housing across the world rather than in a single region, if that encourages OCE players to shift then it would also potentially open up even more housing as some percentage of those players would own houses too.

The hardware would presumably still be there so it doesn't seem implausible, they could also potentially shuffle things around and repurpose that hardware to add more housing wards.

That's a possibility. The game has grown significantly and one can argue that many DC's are already in need of new servers as well. It would at least offer those moving back a place to get housing. I don't remember the timing of the last reshuffle but I think it was before Shadowbringers dropped. I would think this will happen as well before Endwalker releases.

At the least this go around DC Travel will be a thing which will at least allow people to keep in touch with friends. That wasn't the case the last time.

[Sairys]

The difference is, moving to a brand new server people have completely empty housing wards to choose from.

Forcefully moving the entire server and then saying "oh, JP players can just move back" is completely disregarding the fact we'd be moving back to established servers with barely any open housing available.

In the end it's up to SE, but they'll have a lot of unhappy Japanese players (as well as just non-Aus players) if they do go this route.

If they can somehow guarantee housing then I don't mind so much, but a lot of people would also have to try and coordinate whole FCs moving back, and I'm not sure SE would want to do that to JP players. We'll see.

So, yeah, you swap out "housing availability" with "will there be enough people on the new servers" and your concerns all apply to people that might move to the new servers. As noted, other aussies I know are saying, even with the incentives and housing availability, the risks of a completely new data center outweigh the benefit of better ping for them.

Given the ping difference listed for some areas is potentially small, people in other countries (looking at Singapore and Malaysia) might have a similar response as those aussies are having and not bother moving back to a JP data center for the ping. Which would create an immediate population base for the new servers that has a benefit for SE in encouraging OCE players on non-migrated servers to move as well.

And yeah, stuff like FC moves... that's going to be a concern for every player who moves to the new data center, it's yet another reason to not move in the first place. It seems in SEs best interested to ensure there is a population level in the new data center to build off rather than taking the chance all these reasons to not move stop enough players from bothering.

[VelKallor]

. It seems in SEs best interested to ensure there is a population level in the new data center to build off rather than taking the chance all these reasons to not move stop enough players from bothering.

Id say that their announcement is proof they've already done the numbers..and, old friend, you are forgetting growth, when more players sign in for the first time and learn there are Aussie servers, thats a huge pull factor.

The OCE community has been angry at Blizzard for a VERY long time and they are sick to death of being ignored. A LOT of OCE WOW players have been hesitant to try FF 14 owing to ping issues, now that thats been solved.....heh heh heh...