Limited Data Travel System

[Lauront]

Got news for you.

You can make a new character on JP servers as is.

And you believe that involves the same degree of convenience as simply right clicking on an aetheryte to travel to the JP DC and would pose the same risk perception of western players flooding to their servers, just as they're glad they're finally free of the "Oceania" ones?

[Shougun]

I'm all for them being linked together seamlessly in the end, but such a system will take a lot of learning, practice, and if not done slowly/carefully a lot of pain lol.

It's easy to say there should be a smart system that lets people play with who they want in a beautifully dynamic world that can also handling some filtering (like the English speakers probably want to be with English speakers, the Japanese speakers with Japanese), it's actually extremely talented to pull that off well. Like I think WoW's phasing to have super dynamic zones is a SUPER cool idea (that FFXIV uses on a sort of similar but sometimes less 'big' scale), yet phasing has had some issues and particularly when it first came out.

Good luck

[Auralii]

As someone who will soon have friends in JP, NA and OCE servers, I'm hoping they will allow us to travel to other datacenters worldwide. As for the economy, couldn't they disable the marketboards or trading for cross physical datacenter travel? I feel that the hesitation is more to do with culture differences between the JP and NA/EU players as opposed to the economy - but I hope that we'll eventually be able to party up and do content with friends worldwide.

[technole]

Limiting movement to the physical data center is a good idea at-first. While the technical aspects seem fine to send your toon down though the ocean fiber, the economy and unintended issues they haven't flushed out are good reasons to wait it out.

[Tigerlilley]

I just posted but I'll post here again.

Incredibly disappointing decision. Our community has been raiding on NA servers since 2013. What incentive is there to go to OCE and leave everything behind? We've travelled the world IRL and met each other from this game....

Was really hoping to be able to move to OCE and play with our NA family still but GG. I won't be moving my main, neither will my raid group.

If they're so concerned about people going to the Japanese servers, just close them off. They can have their own space, I'm sure the rest of us don't care. Nor are we that ridiculous, tbh. Expand your community and raid experience 10 fold? No thanks, we're xenophobic. Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face.

[Krotoan]

If they're so concerned about people going to the Japanese servers, just close them off. They can have their own space, I'm sure the rest of us don't care. Nor are we that ridiculous, tbh. Expand your community and raid experience 10 fold? No thanks, we're xenophobic. Talk about cutting off the nose to spite the face.

And in what part do they say exclusively that this is to keep people OUT of the Japanese servers specifically?

[Jaxxa]

While a good thing overall (to have more servers and more movement that we currently have), I am really disappointed we can't travel to any Data Center. As an Australian, my in-game friend group is going to be split, it does not matter if I stay in the centre I am in or change to get a lower ping, I won't be able to play with everyone I want to and will have to make a choice.

Here's hoping they reconsider based on the feedback and open it up to every center, hence me making my first forum post.

[Ryaz]

And in what part do they say exclusively that this is to keep people OUT of the Japanese servers specifically?

They don't. You have to realize the forums tend to be... extreme. Yoshi makes a statement about wanting to be careful of Market board prices and economies, but they're considering implementing full on cross-server play in the future and that somehow equals Yoshi-P hates Westerners to them and wants to keep them out. It's a huge stretch by any margin, but human beings behind computer screens always seen to lose all rationality.

[TwistedTea]

They don't. You have to realize the forums tend to be... extreme. Yoshi makes a statement about wanting to be careful of Market board prices and economies, but they're considering implementing full on cross-server play in the future and that somehow equals Yoshi-P hates Westerners to them and wants to keep them out. It's a huge stretch by any margin, but human beings behind computer screens always seen to lose all rationality.

Seems like you're making the stretch to hating Westerners - my take was that SE might be protecting JP markets not about hating gaijins.

Again, when World Visit was first introduced, it brought together legacy servers with low pop servers etc - yet back then, SE stated that the Data Centre economies would normalize over time even though there were differences in server economies before World Visit. eg Balmung's economy vs Diabolos

So it's interesting, for Cross Region Data Centre Visit - SE is using the reason of differences in game economies and values - shouldn't the economies of the different regions normalize over time?

[Krotoan]

Seems like you're making the stretch to hating Westerners - my take was that SE might be protecting JP markets not about hating gaijins.

Again, when World Visit was first introduced, it brought together legacy servers with low pop servers etc - yet back then, SE stated that the Data Centre economies would normalize over time even though there were differences in server economies before World Visit. eg Balmung's economy vs Diabolos

So it's interesting, for Cross Region Data Centre Visit - SE is using the reason of differences in game economies and values - shouldn't the economies of the different regions normalize over time?

I would say that the differences in marketing strategies, courtesy to other sellers and willingness to bot gathering/crafting are wildly different between data centers but not between servers. NA marketboard sharks being a different breed to the JP ones and the EU ones (though probably to a lesser degree between the EU and NA).

If anyone is willing to take a look at the actual price differences and selling habits between the servers that might provide some perspective.. but all I can guess is that there are large differences noticeable in each economy that they are worried about.

All in all it would of course normalize, but it might disenfranchise a large swath of whatever data center and cause their gaming experience to be bad enough that they'd quit or swap to what SE considers undesirable tactics.