A recommendation to the community and SE about world visit...

[Zeiky]

It's very understandable they're having issues with the unprecedented influx of players wanting to experience the new expansion. The time spent in the queue trying to log in, the constant errors--- I know they've addressed all this and apologized for (even offered due compensation!)

However, what I do not understand at all and something they haven't warned us about is: how come trying to move back to your homeworld from a different one is progressing at a whopping 7 people per hour?

Just to give some context: I travelled from Balmung to Brynhildr last night to buy a fish from the marketboard for my turn-ins (very common practice, really, since some worlds offer better prices). Logged out there. Upon logging back in next morning and attempting to move back to Balmung at around 11am PST, I get placed in a queue of 50 people--- I think to myself "this isn't so bad."

Almost 6 hours later: yes, it was THAT BAD. Like, extremely bad. Even worse than logging in to a congested server.
For comparison, my boyfriend logged in to Balmung at the same time I attempted world travel (11am PST). He got placed in a queue of about 1100 people which he got through in about 25 minutes. It's currently 5:27pm PST for me and this is how things are looking:

(when I was down to 25 from 50)

(how things are going rn)

So, as a TL;DR

Recommendation to players: do not attempt world visit during these times; the queue to go back is WORSE than logging in during peak hours. Bear in mind I attempted it earlier in the day, before prime time, and it was still this bad (moving at a rate of about 7 people per hour. Whatever reason you want to world visit for isn't worth the wait.)

Recommendation to SE: at the very least, make the priority for people wanting to go back to their homeworld similar to those logging in the game. The way world visit queues work right now seems to be awfully lacking even compared to the current logging in times (and that's a lot to say).

I play this game for its social features and I'm currently isolated from my significant other and community because of this prohibitively long world visit that's not allowing me to return home.

EDIT: As some people have noted: Logging out and changing the world you will be logging in to at character selection section is a faster option as of now! but I'd still recommend not doing world-visit with how congested the servers currently are (you could be met with the 'World visit isn't available right now' message as it happened to me...)