How Square Enix can solve both data center travel and ping/routing issues for NA

[mana-burner]

Statics and people with friends will use the workaround, sure.

The entire point is to stop people just visiting another data center alone to PUG, which will help create a culture of pugging on other data centers again. Then this will in turn stop people traveling away due to no PFs.
Well they could but I don't think all party leaders would bother with the hassle, especially since I think it would involve canceling the PF and world visiting to the same world to send the invite(?) I also think a very significant amount of the playerbase have anxiety that would prevent them sending the message (it already prevents a lot of people from raiding or pugging altogether).

That is something that already happens for "Duty Complete" parties. Someone who is clear ready might struggle to find a clear group that can actually clear a fight. So they message party leaders for reclear parties explaining their situation and asking to be let in.

Another potential workaround that I could see taking off is people using the normal tabs to recruit for high-end content. For example, someone who wants to run M4S could make an M4N party on Aether and write in the description that the group is for M4S. If a few people started doing this then it wouldn't take long for others to notice and make it the norm. One issue with this might be someone seeing an M4N party and joining it without reading the description but using party finder for current normal content is unusual when they could simply queue for it. ilevel requirements could also be set to require some savage gear and make this less likely. Another issue would be the inability to use duty completion settings to filter players who haven't cleared out of your clear group but rather than discourage people from dc traveling to raid, party leaders would probably check logs more often resulting in some toxicity as players who have cleared but lack any logs are unfairly kicked.

Right now, on a Sunday afternoon, I only see 4 PF listings on the high-end tab for Crystal and when I was on Aether an hour ago there were 40-50 listings. A strategy that more people are using to play on Aether is to wait until very late at night to transfer over and then park your character there until you feel like playing. I strongly believe that if someone thinks their raid experience will be improved on another server they will do whatever they can to get on that server, even if it means losing sleep or talking to people.

There does seem to be many anxious players in the playerbase but I think people who are so anxious they can't even speak with someone are less willing to do high-end content in the first place.

[Jeeqbit]

Another potential workaround that I could see taking off is people using the normal tabs to recruit for high-end content.

Maybe but it's still worth a try. They could block off normal versions of those to travelers as well.

Even if it doesn't prevent everyone traveling, prevent some wanting to travel is half the battle because there are people that travel reluctantly (they want to stay on their Home DC, but because everyone left, they feel pressured to as well). It's an exponential problem.

I strongly believe that if someone thinks their raid experience will be improved on another server they will do whatever they can to get on that server, even if it means losing sleep

A lot of people can't do that due to work and stuff like that.

There does seem to be many anxious players in the playerbase but I think people who are so anxious they can't even speak with someone are less willing to do high-end content in the first place.

Less but some do. It's really such a common thing that I once filled a linkshell in 2 days with people who felt that way. 128 people in 2 days. There are a threshold of people who break through the initial anxiety and join a [Practice] party but it's not like it completely vanishes.