The fantasy MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV reaches deep into its pockets and wants to build a new server center. This is intended to eliminate some of the most annoying weaknesses of Final Fantasy XIV: the too small zones and the too small inventory.
Naoki Yoshida is both the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV. Yoshida is a kind of pop star and mastermind: What Yoshida says counts. And Yoshida likes to speak to his people.
On Friday, he announced that Square Enix will invest in a new North American data center for Final Fantasy XIV. This is a big deal and involves huge financial expenditure, as he said. It is rare for an ongoing MMORPG to relocate.
Final Fantasy XIV is bursting at the seams
Yoshida says that when the data center was set up, it was the first time that Square Enix had done something like this outside of Japan. Since the data center has been up for four years, there have been some issues: the data center is too small, there is no space for new servers, and the internet infrastructure is also not optimal.
Therefore, Square Enix has decided to move to a new center soon with more space, better network, so that many things will be possible that have not been possible before. This can be afforded because Final Fantasy XIV is said to be a constant success.
Yoshida talks about addressing three problems that have long annoyed players of Final Fantasy XIV with the Stormblood expansion and the move to the new data center:
- they want to increase the limited inventory
- FF14 wants to introduce “Cross-World” matchmaking for parties and also make friend management independent of the world
- and they want to create additional game content and an expanded area for the zones
Three of the most annoying problems will be solved
This addresses issues that are frequently criticized in Final Fantasy XIV: Too little inventory space when playing many jobs; too small zones with frequent loading screens.
The North American data center seems to cause difficulties; it is a bottleneck that has limited the development of the game. Square Enix only moved to a new European data center at the end of 2015.
One can assume that the entire game will benefit from these new features, not just the US servers.
The move is planned for “mid-May 2017”, during which North America will be down for 48 hours. Japan and Europe will take 24 hours off. The new features will then come in June with Stormblood or possibly later.
With such a server relocation, the ping for Europeans playing on North American servers is likely to get worse – so the data center is probably moving westward.
By the way, Yoshida does not reveal where the servers are currently located and where they will be moving to. This is for security reasons.
Read more new plans for Final Fantasy XIV here:
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