I'm just curious if any developers or Square Enix employees have ever said anything official about how servers will be organized in FFXIV.  Specifically I'm wondering if they are planning to combine people from all countries and language groups on the same servers like they did in FFXI.  Has anyone seen an official statement on this?

Alternatively has anyone ever heard any FFXI developers comment on how the system worked in FFXI in articles or interviews?  Something like "Oh, we think it turned out pretty well" or "It didn't quite work out like we planned" might give a clue as to their thinking for the next game.

We will all be playing together just like FFXI.

I am not sure, but I have heard a lot of talk about global servers, which I am all in favour of. It makes much more sense to let people choose according to language/ play window then geography. I personally hate playing on EU servers for instance and will jump at the chance of playing on a US one, something not many games since EQ2 have let me do.

I guess the only reason to have regional servers in a MMO is due to publishing deals, and I assume SE will self publish this so that won't matter.

Originally posted by Shoju

We will all be playing together just like FFXI.

Do you have a source or link for this?  As I said in the OP I'm really trying to find an official statement, but I haven't been able to locate one yet.

No regional servers

http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=19342

http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=19412

Originally posted by toddze

No regional servers

http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=19342

http://ffxiv.zam.com/story.html?story=19412

That's what I was looking for.  Thank you for your post.

Thats depressing so NA has to put up with the 2 second delay again?

Hope there are no world bosses then because the Japanese players will have a clear advantage once again.  Pity.

I wanted to try this game when it came out but it isn't even worth if I'm guaranteed a ping of 300+ ms.

0.3 seconds means something to you? Did you forget we're not playing FPS nor twitch based game?

You won't ever see the difference in everyday use. Just like in XI. Of course if JP's claimed something first it's "because of lag", not "because we suck" so its easy to spread the misconception. Like "SE favors JP's".

Originally posted by Hyanmen

0.3 seconds means something to you? Did you forget we're not playing FPS nor twitch based game?

You won't ever see the difference in everyday use. Just like in XI. Of course if JP's claimed something first it's "because of lag", not "because we suck" so its easy to spread the misconception. Like "SE favors JP's".

As someone who has played FFXI for 6 years and camped against Japanese Players and watched as a mob would appear claimed already because they have about a two second advantage... yes this is a problem.

You can pretend like the delay isn't that long, but it is.  When a monster POPS claimed how can you possibly have a chance? 

Originally posted by toddze

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Thats depressing so NA has to put up with the 2 second delay again?

Hope there are no world bosses then because the Japanese players will have a clear advantage once again.  Pity.

2 second delay is by far extreme, maybe you need to stop playing on dial-up, 2 seconds would gaurantee all world pops to JP players 100% of the time, And it was not like that. I camped fafy/nid for months straight and it was about 50/50 jp/na on who got it, so theres no need to spread trollish statements.

As accusing someone of trolling is against forum rules please refrain from doing so.  I am not and I find it offensive you would just brush off my opinion as a lie without any basis of fact.

Please stick to the topic and refrain from personally attacking me, thank you.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

As someone who has played FFXI for 6 years and camped against Japanese Players and watched as a mob would appear claimed already because they have about a two second advantage... yes this is a problem.

You can pretend like the delay isn't that long, but it is.  When a monster POPS claimed how can you possibly have a chance? 

And you know what? This happened with NAs and EU's too. It's all about who has the best bots.

Not to mention in a heavily congested area like HNM's there is lag no matter where you play from.

If you put your settings to minimum + delete all the meaningless mobs from your .dats there would have been no such an issue. That + bots gave the people their advantage, not the location they were playing from.

But yes, it is indeed easier to just blame the location for losing the claim. 

In either case, there won't be a HNM system like that in XIV, so I don't know what your problem is. There are no other circumstances aside from those 3 that could somehow be affected by 0,3 second lag. This is not an FPS: ping doesn't matter as much.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

 

In either case, there won't be a HNM system like that in XIV, so I don't know what your problem is.

how can you be so sure about this? it may not be there at launch but I wouldnt rule out world NM spawns unless SE specifically says there will never be any in ffxiv. In which case Id love to see that quote. Well actually i wouldnt love that news, quite the oppisite that would suck. I am still counting on there being world HNM pops. I doubt there in alpha, i doubt there in beta, i doubt they will be there at launch, but I am sure they will be there at some point in time.

btw I claimed several of the hnm's on my good ole ps2.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by Laughing-man

As someone who has played FFXI for 6 years and camped against Japanese Players and watched as a mob would appear claimed already because they have about a two second advantage... yes this is a problem.

You can pretend like the delay isn't that long, but it is.  When a monster POPS claimed how can you possibly have a chance? 

And you know what? This happened with NAs and EU's too. It's all about who has the best bots.

Not to mention in a heavily congested area like HNM's there is lag no matter where you play from.

If you put your settings to minimum + delete all the meaningless mobs from your .dats there would have been no such an issue. That + bots gave the people their advantage, not the location they were playing from.

But yes, it is indeed easier to just blame the location for losing the claim. 

In either case, there won't be a HNM system like that in XIV, so I don't know what your problem is. There are no other circumstances aside from those 3 that could somehow be affected by 0,3 second lag. This is not an FPS: ping doesn't matter as much.

They weren't bots they were legit players, the mob would be already claimed and they would move to where it appears to me as if they knew where it was going to spawn before it did.  Why?  They are drastically closer to the server than I am. 

This is a real issue, stop making assumptions saying it was a bot or I'm just complaining or my computer wasn't good.  I am not the only person to have experienced this, as I'm sure you are aware you camp HNMs in large groups of people, when everyone who I was camping with has the same story as I do, its not just my computer.  Distance from the server DOES effect what you see and when you see it.  Ask anyone who played Aion chinese Beta and then plays Aion now on an NA server, huge difference.

I understand you love the game, I played it a long time and I loved it in my time.  However after losing claim to players merely because they see something spawn full seconds before I do is not fun, after a while I gave up.  I hope 14 does not have any world bosses with timer respawns.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by Laughing-man

As someone who has played FFXI for 6 years and camped against Japanese Players and watched as a mob would appear claimed already because they have about a two second advantage... yes this is a problem.

You can pretend like the delay isn't that long, but it is.  When a monster POPS claimed how can you possibly have a chance? 

And you know what? This happened with NAs and EU's too. It's all about who has the best bots.

Not to mention in a heavily congested area like HNM's there is lag no matter where you play from.

If you put your settings to minimum + delete all the meaningless mobs from your .dats there would have been no such an issue. That + bots gave the people their advantage, not the location they were playing from.

But yes, it is indeed easier to just blame the location for losing the claim. 

In either case, there won't be a HNM system like that in XIV, so I don't know what your problem is. There are no other circumstances aside from those 3 that could somehow be affected by 0,3 second lag. This is not an FPS: ping doesn't matter as much.

They weren't bots they were legit players, the mob would be already claimed and they would move to where it appears to me as if they knew where it was going to spawn before it did.  Why?  They are drastically closer to the server than I am. 

  Early on before the random claim patch yes, but what you're explaining there is a bot. They were mostly used by JP's before they really even needed to, due to them already having a ping advantage. Hell, there are still youtube videos of this infamous JP Linkshell from Shiva that claimed every mob for 6 months straight using whatever bot they had at the time. They'd all start running at mobs before they even spawned, using a packet bot.

  This of course all changed with the random claim patch, as that LS decided they didn't want a level play field and broke. At that point it was and still is all about having the most players you can on a bot, to increase you're claiming chances. Ping has little to nothing to do with it anymore.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Originally posted by Hyanmen

0.3 seconds means something to you? Did you forget we're not playing FPS nor twitch based game?

You won't ever see the difference in everyday use. Just like in XI. Of course if JP's claimed something first it's "because of lag", not "because we suck" so its easy to spread the misconception. Like "SE favors JP's".

As someone who has played FFXI for 6 years and camped against Japanese Players and watched as a mob would appear claimed already because they have about a two second advantage... yes this is a problem.

You can pretend like the delay isn't that long, but it is.  When a monster POPS claimed how can you possibly have a chance? 

I hear where you are coming from laughing-man... I remember countless times when mobs would pop already claimed by JP players. The ping is an issue when camping NMs because people are sitting there spamming their /provoke "target name" macro, so whoever has the faster ping gets the mob...  it isn't my system specs either so that isn't an excuse, I have a top of the line system.

And hyanmen I know how upset you get about anything anti-SE but i'm not saying that SE is playing favorites with this, this is simply a location advantage, SE probably didn't intend for the JP players to have an advantage. But either way it is still an issue and should be looked into if FFXIV has NMs. (hopefully the NMs will be force popped)

Originally posted by Rajen

 

I hear where you are coming from laughing-man... I remember countless times when mobs would pop already claimed by JP players. The ping is an issue when camping NMs because people are sitting there spamming their /provoke "target name" macro, so whoever has the faster ping gets the mob...  it isn't my system specs either so that isn't an excuse, I have a top of the line system.

 And hyanmen I know how upset you get about anything anti-SE but i'm not saying that SE is playing favorites with this, this is simply a location advantage, SE probably didn't intend for the JP players to have an advantage. But either way it is still an issue and should be looked into if FFXIV has NMs. (hopefully the NMs will be force popped)

If you are going to complain, at least complain about a real issue and not a non-existent one.

The game is poorly coded; it lags no matter how high your specs are. Only by deleting unnecessary mobs and changing your resolution to 512x512 or something similar will give you an advantage.

Guess who figured that out first?

There are so much better things to complain about when it comes to HNM's (or the game in general) and you pick the one that doesn't make any difference.. yes, I am upset about that. So sorry.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by Rajen

 

I hear where you are coming from laughing-man... I remember countless times when mobs would pop already claimed by JP players. The ping is an issue when camping NMs because people are sitting there spamming their /provoke "target name" macro, so whoever has the faster ping gets the mob...  it isn't my system specs either so that isn't an excuse, I have a top of the line system.

 And hyanmen I know how upset you get about anything anti-SE but i'm not saying that SE is playing favorites with this, this is simply a location advantage, SE probably didn't intend for the JP players to have an advantage. But either way it is still an issue and should be looked into if FFXIV has NMs. (hopefully the NMs will be force popped)

If you are going to complain, at least complain about a real issue and not a non-existent one.

The game is poorly coded; it lags no matter how high your specs are. Only by deleting unnecessary mobs and changing your resolution to 512x512 or something similar will give you an advantage.

Guess who figured that out first?

There are so much better things to complain about when it comes to HNM's (or the game in general) and you pick the one that doesn't make any difference.. yes, I am upset about that. So sorry.

I wasn't complaining, I was agreeing with laughing-man and recalling my experience with NM camping (not HNM) in FFXI. I don't play FFXI anymore so it doesn't bother me either way,

I am just hoping we don't have to deal with it again in FFXIV. The issue happend on both PS2 and PC, I first noticed it on my PC so I figured I would try out camping on the PS2. It still had the same issue where the mob was already claimed when it appeared on the screen, no one can prove it either way for you so just let me have an opinion ok?

:)

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by Rajen

 

I hear where you are coming from laughing-man... I remember countless times when mobs would pop already claimed by JP players. The ping is an issue when camping NMs because people are sitting there spamming their /provoke "target name" macro, so whoever has the faster ping gets the mob...  it isn't my system specs either so that isn't an excuse, I have a top of the line system.

 And hyanmen I know how upset you get about anything anti-SE but i'm not saying that SE is playing favorites with this, this is simply a location advantage, SE probably didn't intend for the JP players to have an advantage. But either way it is still an issue and should be looked into if FFXIV has NMs. (hopefully the NMs will be force popped)

If you are going to complain, at least complain about a real issue and not a non-existent one.

The game is poorly coded; it lags no matter how high your specs are. Only by deleting unnecessary mobs and changing your resolution to 512x512 or something similar will give you an advantage.

Guess who figured that out first?

There are so much better things to complain about when it comes to HNM's (or the game in general) and you pick the one that doesn't make any difference.. yes, I am upset about that. So sorry.

 i didnt lag on my newer builds and i was running 2048 background rez

There was occasions that I did see a mob poped claimed by both NA and JP LS's. I knew for a fact that the NA LS that it poped claimed to was a LS that had notorius botters, Guess what they all were eventually banned. For the most part if it poped claimed for you a lot of times, the problem is more than likely on the user end. Like I said I played on PS2 Where i couldnt adjust the stuff that hyanmen was describing, and with top of the line broadband connection, I rarely saw it poped claimed, and I have even claimed HNM's multiple times. The server latency was a non factor in claiming, the human element was the deciding factor. Early in my ffxi days i thought it did matter but after camping those things for months straight I realized it didnt.