Data Centers/World Locations Info from the LIVE Letter

[Jynx]

The fact is, all servers are 'global."

Aside from being able to connect to them, they really are not.

Giving people even 1 server listed for people who want a global community isn't too much to ask for. I don't want to play with just NA, EU, or JP, I want a worldwide server location be damned.

They could place the damn thing on the moon for all I care.

[Catapult]

I'm not anywhere near as worried about the lag caused by server location as I am about the lag caused by the graphics engine. So this is a moot point for me.

That, and I live in Australia. I've been throwing up the pros and cons of changing server in the future anyway.

Moving on...

[tymora]

the 3 global servers will be empty except for a few die-hard multiculturalists, and then they will complain how there's nobody to play with and quit the game because of it.

And the 9 regional servers will be relatively dead outside of the respective regional prime time hours. There will be a scattering of people from other regions but nowhere as many as what you see now.

JPs are not the only people around in the JST time zone by the way. There are many English speakers there (ASEAN, Australia...etc).

[Huginn]

So, i guess destroying the community is worth a 0.1 second speedup; because that is the total speed improvement from my location to NY or TX vs current server locations.
sad days, sad days for us all.

[Alhanelem]

And the 9 regional servers will be relatively dead outside of the respective regional prime time hours.

Load of crap. Ever play WoW? There are people on the servers at all hours of the day. Unless FFXIV crashes and burns on 2.0 launch, which seems really unlikely at this point, there will be more players than there are now.

[Xatsh]

the 3 global servers will be empty except for a few die-hard multiculturalists, and then they will complain how there's nobody to play with and quit the game because of it.

The fact is, all servers are 'global." However, to label some of them and not others as such is a misnomer and just plain wrong, since the "global" servers would be in a particular region still- because you can't make a "server" that' people will connect equally well to all over the world.

The little poll thing that was posted by someone showed about 30% of the people preferred to not have regional servers. If you extrapolate that to the overall population lets use 100k for ease. That is 30k people.

That is easily a few global servers. The idea that no one wants a global community is absurd... it was something that almost everyone who played XI enjoyed.

If they over kill the amount of server yea they will be underpopulated. But I would take a server with 2-3k people on per time region then have 5k NAs on at Na prime then sub 500 the rest of the day, and there are alot of people who share that opinion. There are more who like regional yes, but SE is risking pissing off 1/3rd of their current and potential players.

[Scratches]

Even if we do have an automatic transfer to the new servers, what if Sargatanas only has a Japanese data center? That would mean, in the long run, the EN friends that leave the game will be replaced by JP who want minimal lag. The EN friend pool will be really shallow, and like I've been saying I don't think I can get anything done with the faulty auto-translate dictionary.

Holy hell. I think I found a solution to all of these nonsensical cries and unrealistic dreams for global servers!

Take all the regional servers, and simply name them all the same name!

"Hey Bob, what server do you play on?"
"I'm on Sargatanas, what about you?"
"No way! I'm on Sargatanas, too!"

Boom. No more "segregation".

Or, if that's not enough, we can move the servers to a brand-spanking-new data center in a global, latency-neutral area too: Mars. That way, nobody has an advantage anywhere because everybody will have a crap ping. You guys want everyone else to be miserable just so you can talk with friends? There ya go. Because, y'know, who in their right mind would ever use skype..? Or worse yet, compromise about which server to play on. Who has time for such boring, mature behaviour, right? *eyeroll*

Ooh! Plus, Square would be able to claim the title of "First Interplanetary Developer"! How awesome is that??!

[Alhanelem]

Even if we do have an automatic transfer to the new servers, what if Sargatanas only has a Japanese data center?

umm... what?

each server can only have one data center in the first place. I don't think you understand what a data center actually is- It's a secure facility where server equipment is stored.

[Tiago]

Holy hell. I think I found a solution to all of these nonsensical cries and unrealistic dreams for global servers!

Take all the regional servers, and simply name them all the same name!

"Hey Bob, what server do you play on?"
"I'm on Sargatanas, what about you?"
"No way! I'm on Sargatanas, too!"

Boom. No more "segregation".

Or, if that's not enough, we can move the servers to a brand-spanking-new data center in a global, latency-neutral area too: Mars. That way, nobody has an advantage anywhere because everybody will have a crap ping. You guys want everyone else to be miserable just so you can talk with friends? There ya go. Because, y'know, who in their right mind would ever use skype..? Or worse yet, compromise about which server to play on. Who has time for such boring, mature behaviour, right? *eyeroll*

Ooh! Plus, Square would be able to claim the title of "First Interplanetary Developer"! How awesome is that??!

You know, TALK isnt everything right? This is a GAME so we like to PLAY alongside our friends. Is that hard to get? ... seriously.

[Tiago]

Europe has like 16 different languages. Most people i know from other games know english poorly enough to play a game. I really enjoyed FFXI because it had mostly English and JP only. plus the Auto-translation was pretty good. And there is not Auto-translate for most of EU languages. So i'll be going for NA servers even tho i'm in EU.