Final Fantasy XIV will hold a test of its Data Center Travel system that permits cross-region play for the first time, looking to limit potential Dawntrail queues.
Starting on March 24th at 8 PM PDT, through the beginning of Patch 7.0 maintenance, the public test will begin to enable those from near and far to play with one another. This is being done ahead of Dawntrail’s release, in order to get ahead of potential queues and server capacity issues when the next expansion releases.
“Many Worlds may experience login queues following the upcoming release of Dawntrail, especially during peak times. With this situation in mind, we are considering a temporary option in which a limited form of cross-region travel would allow players to play on a less-populated physical data center.”
Previously, when the team opened up Data Center Travel back in 2022, they limited it to use within the same region, but left the door open to a cross-region option in the future. This was reliant on the technology coming together, and regional norms and community feedback.
The test will work by enabling cross-region travel from each of the European, Japanese, and North American data centers to play with others in the Oceanian data center region. Those whose home region is Oceania won’t be able to participate in the test, but since that is the destination for all, the data the team gathers should help bring it to its final stage for all regions.
With the system trying to connect to a far region, they warn of potential lag and for some slowness, including that there may be slow returns and some server congestion when Dawntrail is out.
When it comes to server congestion, while the FFXIV community is ready to commiserate, meme, and otherwise wait when Dawntrail releases, Square Enix is working to make that experience much less likely with the new option.
