The new Oceanic data center has finally gone live. Players can now start applying for World Transfers to the new servers.
Final Fantasy XIV has been the top MMORPG over the past few years. There have been a lot of contributing factors to the game’s growth, including the mass exodus of World of Warcraft players to the MMORPG drought. Square Enix’s hit MMO’s most recent expansion has also cemented the game’s supremacy over other gaming titles in the genre. As the Endwalker expansion’s popularity soared, so did the game’s player base. Unfortunately, the surge in active players farming FFXIV gil has created a problem for the MMORPG’s limited servers. Thankfully, Square Enix has finally opened new data centers in the Oceanic region to address the problem.
Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker and its Crisis
Endwalker was released during the first week of December. The expansion saw the culmination of the Warrior of Light’s epic conflict with the gods of the Eorzea as players with FFXIV accounts fight to try and save the world from the apocalyptic ‘Final Days’. Before the epic clash between the heroes of Eorzea and Meteion’s doomsday form, gamers will have to confront the primal god Zodiark and pass the trials of the patron goddess Hydaelyn. These challenges form the last chapters of the game’s main conflict and story. Endwalker also features many new contents such as new raids like Pandaemonium and the upcoming guild raids. Fans are also treated to MSQs and other new items.
The number of newly available content in the recent expansion has garnered a lot of praise and attention from gamers and critics alike. Endwalker has been described as the game’s most successful expansion. However, this popularity resulted in a big crisis for the game’s developers and for the players. As thousands of players swarmed the FFXIV’s server, the queue time became longer and unbearable. Players spent more time waiting to log in to the game than their actual playtime.
As servers became more congested, Square Enix was forced to stop the sale of several game packs to halt the influx of players trying to get in the already-crowded MMO. The gaming studio had announced that the suspension of sales was only temporary until they could find a resolution to the problem. Though players are eager to try out the recent expansion, most of the game’s fans understood the intention of this decision, and surprisingly, it caused no backlash from the FFXIV community.
The Oceanic Data Center
To address the server congestion issues, Square Enix decided to open another data center so that the game can add more servers for players to play in. The new data center will host the new Oceania server known as Materia which have five different worlds. Gamers from Australia, New Zealand, and the Oceanic region may find that transferring to these servers will help with latency and network issues so they should consider migrating.
Players from other regions in the world can also consider migrating to the new servers if they find that the current queue times in previous worlds unbearable. However, gamers from NA regions should keep in mind that transferring to the Oceania center will result in some latency and network issues due to the geographical distance. If NA players can bear these network issues, then there is no stopping them from migrating to these new world servers.
The data center has also been live since January 25, 2022, so gamers can already start migrating to the new world servers. Here is the list of the new worlds in the Materia data center:
- Bismarck
- Ravana
- Sephirot
- Sophia
- Zurvan
World Transfers to the Materia servers will have no fee for the first migration since Square Enix will waive all transfer service fees. Gamers will also be incentivized to transfer to the new region. Here is the list of incentives being offered when players choose to transfer or when they start in Materia:
For newly created characters in Materia:
- Double exp bonus until level 80
- Gift of 10 silver Chocobo feathers which can be exchanged for low-mid level gear
For newly created characters that attain level 30 in Materia:
- 1,000,000 Gil gift (once per account)
- 15 days of free play time-limited (once per account)
Bonuses for transferring to new worlds:
- Free service charge
- Double exp bonus until level 80 (valid for 90 days after transferring)
- Gift of 10 gold Chocobo feathers which can be exchanged for special rewards like rare mounts
- Owners of private estates and apartments will be given a certain amount of compensation in Gil
NOTE: For owners of estates and apartments
- For estates, do not relinquish the land. Only remove all the furnishings and estate hall before applying for Home World Transfer
- For apartments, do not vacate. Only remove all the furnishings before applying for Home World Transfer.
- Relinquishing the deeds or vacating the rights to properties will void players’ eligibility for Gil compensation.
While the first transfer will be free of charge, any subsequent transfer out of the Materia server will incur transfer fees, so gamers should make sure that they actually want to transfer out of their current world. To do a World Transfer, players will need to file their request at the Mog Station. As of the moment, gamers cannot yet visit other worlds on other data centers since this feature is still in development.
For months, FFXIV has been struggling with its overpopulated servers. With the release of the new data center, Square Enix hopes that the new servers will alleviate the load on the previous worlds. As the gaming studio has also resumed sales of the game’s digital copy, new players can now enter the game to start farming FFXIV gil.