With the release of Patch 6.18 back in July 2022, Final Fantasy XIV introduced the Data Center travel feature, allowing players to hop between Worlds and Data Centers within their region. Now, the FFXIV team is aiming to expand this to cross region travel, and you’ll be able to test it out soon.
Since Data Center travel was introduced, Square Enix has been open about the concerns and limitations of its infrastructure. Just traveling between Data Centers proved difficult enough, as Yoshi-P has long offered transparency into the process and its challenges. But there have been concerns surrounding functionality of less concrete systems, too. Especially when it comes to the in-game economy and social norms that differ between Data Centers.
However, because many regions are expecting login delays after the release of Dawntrail, the FFXIV team is considering implementing cross-region Data Center travel as a temporary measure to ease the wait times. Additional notes about congestion expectations, friend listing, and more are available on the Lodestone.
As someone who still gets flashbacks of the 9,000+ player queues during Endwalker’s early access weekend, I can definitely get on board with this and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Especially if it offers more opportunities to play with friends around the world.
In order to test this system, players of FFXIV will be able to take part in a public test beginning on March 24 at 8 pm PDT / 11 pm EST, when the Oceanian Data Center will open its doors to visitors from Japan, North American, and European Data Centers.
The test will remain in effect until 7.0 maintenance begins, the date of which remains unknown at the time of writing, and while Square Enix does mention that players visiting from geographically distant places may experience some lag issues, they hope that people still make the effort to reduce stress during the launch of Dawntrail.
