What do you think will happen to a failed data center?

[Myrany]

In the case of Materia specifically I really think the best solution is to move the DC to SEA (where honestly it probably should have been from the start). The "fail" of materia is more one of SEA not transferring over causing a situation where critical mass was not reached.

For Dynamis I really believe it is just a matter of time before things naturally settle in and things improve.

[Enkidoh]

Well in FFXI when servers got too quiet/their player populations declined enough consistantly over a long period of time they closed the servers down and moved their remaining populations into another server (this happened to my original FFXI server Midgardsormr - it was amalgamated into Quetzalcoatl back in 2010, where my character has been ever since).

1.0 did this too when the servers were replace towards the end of 1.0's life in preperation for ARR's launch. We haven't seen this happen yet here in ARR though as the player population has been steadly increasting ever since ARR's launch, so they've been regularly adding new ones.

But it's definetely possible servers or even data centres may be shut down if they're found to not be too popular, but that would usually be seen through the wider prism of the game in general being much quieter than it actually is.

As others have said, Materia and Dynamis are brand new and just need time for their populations to stablize - the European servers were the same when they were added.

[Deveryn]

Well in FFXI when servers got too quiet/their player populations declined enough consistantly over a long period of time they closed the servers down and moved their remaining populations into another server (this happened to my original FFXI server Midgardsormr - it was amalgamated into Quetzalcoatl back in 2010, where my character has been ever since).

1.0 did this too when the servers were replace towards the end of 1.0's life in preperation for ARR's launch. We haven't seen this happen yet here in ARR though as the player population has been steadly increasting ever since ARR's launch, so they've been regularly adding new ones.

But it's definetely possible servers or even data centres may be shut down if they're found to not be too popular, but that would usually be seen through the wider prism of the game in general being much quieter than it actually is.

As others have said, Materia and Dynamis are brand new and just need time for their populations to stablize - the European servers were the same when they were added.

I think we're still a few years away from shutdowns ever becoming a possibility. The fact is they made the decision and have the funds to expand. Things may not be hopping all the time, but there's enough activity and income to justify the new spaces. I've noted elsewhere that this is actually an odd occurence for an MMO as old as this one. 10 years down the line, servers are always being removed.

[Warghoul570]

My gut feeling is that they’re going to move a world from each of the old NA DCs to help fill it with more established players. I know it would tick people off but that hasn’t stopped them before

[Deveryn]

My gut feeling is that they’re going to move a world from each of the old NA DCs to help fill it with more established players. I know it would tick people off but that hasn’t stopped them before

Take this for your gut and it should feel beter. That'll 1000$ for med treatment.

[Oizen]

Dynamis likely exists in response to how backfilled the servers were during Endwalker's release.
But it was also released a month after a very lackluster update (6.25) so its not going to attract anyone for a bit.
Datacenter isnt even a month old yet, its going to take time to fill. We can call that one failed if its still empty after 7.0 drops imo.

[Zsolen]

For Dynamis: SE could always pull 4 servers away from current NA DCs with one of the current DCs losing 2 servers. Then add new servers to the older DCs. But it should only be done if it is needed.

[DixieBellOCE]

We've had this discussion quite a few times. I do agree with people pointing out that cross data center travel, will not help with long queues in the duty finder. I still however, think it's beneficial for players to have the option to exhaust the content outside their data center if they can't do it in their main one.

A data center needs numbers. But people will ditch a data center if it's not active enough, but are likely to come back to it during an expansion launch release to not deal with the login wars in an active data center.

But say if a data center still fails in the end. Not enough hype and interest during expansion release, which means not a good enough boost in numbers, that people just end up transferring back after the expansion craze is done. How do you think Yoshi P and the team will handle the situation?

There is no way they will delete the worlds. That would result in a major backlash, especially from people who still made a community there and want to keep their houses. I think the data center will be deleted, but all the words on that can be merged with another data center, likely split.

So what if they deleted the data center, but merged the words to another one. Could be a culture clash, but everyone could still keep their communities and their houses.

These are just predictions. I'm thinking about scenarios that could seem possible and what could be the best solution for a data center that is a confirmed failure. But what's your take on it?

edit: Had to edit the post to keep the discussion more focused here. But it seems no one has a theory of their own at the moment.

Cross-DC duty/party finder and DC travel are the only solution for Materia as it is now.
Its not growing as everyone claims, infact XIVCensus shows that people are still leaving.

They need to add DC travel to Materia before people just pack up and move to NA like i have, where i get all the benefits of Materia, but with DC travel included.. (And no, you dont need 30 ping to play XIV because every single mechanic in the game is scripted and you can just memorize fights and play on 200ms)

[Shibi]

Dynamis is terribly dead. But the budget is done until the end of 2024, so they won't be deleting those 4 new worlds until then at least OP.

Just play the game and be happy.

[Jojoya]

I suspect SE will add cross region travel before long. It's just a question of whether they leave the JP worlds out of it because they seem to be the ones complaining.

I wonder if Materia's problem was the timing of the opening. Would Materia be in a better shape if it had opened 2 months prior to EW release instead of 2 months after? Hype and seeing large numbers of excited players will usually create a better experience and keep players better engaged for the long term.