Long gone are the days where you couldn't leave your designated server in Final Fantasy 14. A patch in 2019 introduced the ability to hop between servers within your data center, before an update in 2022 went one step further and let folk hop between data centers within their region. Players hoped that it would extend to cross-region travel, but that hasn't been the case. Until now. Kind of.
Here's the good news: Cross-region travel is being trialled, beginning on March 25 and continuing until Dawntrail releases. Here's the potentially bad news: You can only hop over to the Oceanian data center. That means that players on Japanese, North American and European servers will be able to travel over to Oceanian servers, but Oceanian players are stuck right where they are.
It does make sense to use the Oceanian data center as a guinea pig. It's by far the least populated of the four regions—it was only added in 2022, and while some folk migrated over, many chose to stay behind in their already established communities. It's the perfect testing ground, and it looks like if things go well it'll be used to ease congestion when the upcoming expansion Dawntrail releases.
"Many Worlds may experience login queues following the upcoming release of Dawntrail, especially during peak times," a post on the Lodestone reads. "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."
Those who were around for Endwalker's release will remember the pain of hours-long queues, 30-minute AFK timers, and even the game being pulled from sale because it was so popular. It makes sense that the team wants to avoid a repeat of that situation. Besides, everyone hopping over to Oceania might make for some great multi-region get-togethers.
Whether this will lead into full-blown cross-region travel remains to be seen. The system has been in place since 2022, but director and producer Naoki Yoshida has been publicly hesitant to introduce it on a wider level. He's cited concerns around messing with the cultural differences across regions, which is mentioned in the Lodestone post.
"As previously announced, our system is capable of facilitating cross-region travel, but we are still evaluating this functionality in light of the often substantial differences in market economy and social norms between data centers," the post reads. "We will continue to take community feedback into account as we consider whether this functionality should be enabled."
I would say the concerns are at least legitimate, to a degree. Just look at the differences between how each region handles raid mechanics—try to show a European player a pastebin or a North American player an in-game macro and watch fists fly (I'm kidding, sort of). But I think Yoshida could do with trusting the community a little more, and I hope that this trial proves that players all over the globe can play and coexist in harmony.
