Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Jynx]

The claim that japanese players had advantages is not anecdotal. It's factual. They have lower ping times therefore htey have lower response times therefore they have a higher chance to beat a non JP player to the claim. The difference is not drastic, but any difference at all should be considered unacceptable.

Lower ping is an advantage, whether you like to think it is or not.

Wether this made a difference in a slow paced game such as FFXI or most MMO's in general is up for debate.

[Zumi]

So that's why my North American colleagues outclaimed Japanese people all the time. Because they had a unfair....wait what?

You do realize a couple years after FFXI was out that SE put in a random claim delay when a NM spawned. Meaning the first person to claim after the server made the monster claimable. Because NAs complained about always being outclaimed by JPs. They did this to make the field on claiming NMs more even. You try and claim a monster before he becomes claimed which is randomized by the server you get locked out.

[Jynx]

Because NAs complained about always being outclaimed by JPs.

I can fix this for you.

Everyone complained about botters outclaiming everyone.

[Alhanelem]

I can fix this for you.

Everyone complained about botters outclaiming everyone.

Actually, both of the statements are true.

[Jynx]

Again the big issue isn't if Latency is important or not. it's wether sacrificing the global community is worth a few millseconds. Especially in a genre of games where those millseconds make little difference. ESPECIALLY in the direction the game is going with instanced content.

The mythical claim wars are moot when there is nothing to claim...

[Rokien]

I had no problems with claiming, I infact, was an amazing claimer that claimed stuff before those JPs, man those JPs are terrible people.... why do we even bother playiing with them, all they do is take our stuff and wont let us play with them!

[Alhanelem]

Again the big issue isn't if Latency is important or not. it's wether sacrificing the global community is worth a few millseconds. Especially in a genre of games where those millseconds make little difference. ESPECIALLY in the direction the game is going with instanced content.

As 2.0 rolls in, those milliseconds are going to be more and more likely to make a difference, especially for PvP fans when they finally get their PvP content.

[Starlord]

Every penny adds up~ Every millisecond counts :P

[Jynx]

Every penny adds up~ Every millisecond counts :P

Every person I can play with at any time of day counts more to me and it appears a few others.

Just give us a global option at least, not just NA, JP, EU.

[Astora]

The only times an area server has to read or write to the character DB is when you save/load your game. During your game session, your savestate is being updated periodically in case you disconnect or crash. This updating taking a few more milliseconds doesn't change anything.

Otherwise, everything happens regionally, so yes, it has a benefit you refuse to see. Prove me wrong.

Regional channels could be beneficial, yes, but there would still be server side latency when the world server would communicate to the database. It's much, much more complicated than a simple save/load state of your character as you say. Everything that happens in the world has the potential to be some sort of database write/read.

Take a seemingly simple item drop for example; we'll neglect that you're in any sort of party so the item drops directly to you. Your current channel decides you get a drop, awesome! That item will need to be generated in the database, then that item will need to be given ownership to you as well as assigned a slot in your inventory. All this information can be passed at once to the database server to deal with, but you'll be waiting for the database server to do that operation(s) then respond back to your channel. Now not only are we waiting for our channel server, we're waiting for a second server as well that is far away. This is only for an item drop, you still need to think about experience points updates, if the character levels up off of that battle, achievement updates, statistical updates for that particular monster, durability updates to gear, etc.

That's with only one fight. With the new battle pace coming to x|v, we'll be killing a handful of mobs every couple of seconds. Now multiply that by tens, hundreds, thousands of players. The milliseconds add up.

Having a local cache of the database wouldn't be wise either, it opens up way too much potential for having synchronization issues and merging conflicts, not to mention the problems that would arise from wanting to switch channels.

It certainly is possible to host channels across the world, but it does come at a huge server latency and response cost that the player pays for in the end. There are ways to hide the latency, but that doesn't solve the problem.