In 2023, Final Fantasy XIV director and producer Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida first floated the possibility of cross-regional Data Center travel. A new test to save players from login queues is being introduced after nearly a year, thanks to some testing and implementation over several previous patches.
As per a post on the Final Fantasy XIV Lodestone site, the potential of using cross-regional travel to ease login queues during the release of the upcoming expansion Dawntrail is being explored. The blog post explains that “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.”
To test this feature and avoid any technical issues, the developers are implementing a public test of cross-regional Data Center travel from Monday, March 25. This test will continue until the beginning of 7.0 maintenance, better known as the release of Dawntrail. During this test, players from Japanese, North American, and European Regional Data Centers can travel to the Oceanian Data Center, but no other cross-regional travel will be possible.
FFXIV’s Oceanian Data Center was opened in January 2022 and initially exploded in popularity. However, many of the server’s initial inhabitants were players making alternative accounts with meme names. The Data Center’s population later normalized to a small but dedicated number, although it has the lowest population of any Data Center. This new test will effectively turn the Oceanian Data Center into a kind of login queue “fast pass,” which may not have been the original vision for the servers.
Still, for those who remember the multiple-hour login queues on the release of Endwalker in December 2021, with queue numbers hitting the hundreds and thousands, any way to streamline the process for Dawntrail is welcome. FFXIV’s next expansion doesn’t have a solid release date at the time of writing but is projected for release in Summer 2024.
