Aussie Server

[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.