Why they couldn't just do what, well, every other MMO in existance does (Servers A and B will both become server C, etc) I have no idea.

Hello! This is Producer/Director Yoshida.

Thank you for the large amount of feedback in regards to the world merge.

I’ve been reading through each of your posts (as well as Twitter) and I’m sorry my post is really late. A world merge at this current point in time, as well as being something of great magnitude for all of you players, it is at the same time something of great magnitude on the development and operations side.

I would like to follow up on the released specifications for the world merge.

Intent of the World Merge

I believe that MMORPGs are made up of large connections between the entire game community and the communities within each world. For MMORPGs, there are a lot of instances where you form parties and play, so because of this the community requires the proper number of players to be able to accomplish this. As we head toward 2.0, we began billing and we had a pretty good grasp on the number of people that would play the game. We predicted that conditions would arise on worlds where it would be difficult to establish a community, which is why we proceeded with the preparations for a world merge.

Of all of the comments that were against this world merge, the one comment seen most often was “don’t destroy the community!” However, just the same as all of you, the development and operations team and I consider “community” to be the highest priority. This is how we engaged in a discussion about the world merge specifications.

With that said, first let me say that our underlying feelings are in the same place.
Especially with this merge, we felt very strongly to make it so everyone from the EU region can play together in the same time zone.

(By the way, there seems to have been some conjectures about financial aspects and what not; however, we had already been operating with 18 worlds, meaning that the game server hardware and database servers we already purchased. By stopping 8 worlds, there is a near zero affect and there is not a single motive having to do with cost, so please don’t think this is the case.)

Reasoning for the Announcement of the Specifications

A large reason why we announced the specifications early was to be able to see your feedback once we released the development and operation team’s specifications. World merges are an extremely delicate topic and we need to flesh out the specific details of the specifications, so we decided it wasn’t suitable for a survey and put a stop to the idea. (It would be near impossible to gather the appropriate responses by offering a survey with methods like: A, A1, A2, B, B1, B2)

Due to this, we released the specifications early to give ourselves time to make adjustments based on feedback. I am very sorry that I was so late to follow up on this as I crashed from a high fever until this evening.

There have been comments from Foxclon, but even internally there have been heated debates about the world merge between the development, operations, and QA teams. I will be honest in saying that up until the last minute there was no plan that everyone agreed on. (The reason for this being that every plan had its own set of pros and cons)

The 4 plans that stayed prominent throughout the discussions are the 4 listed below.
(A=World with high population of players, B=World with low population of players, C=New World, X=Different World)

①A + B⇒A World to merge with B World
②A + B - X ⇒A World to merge with B World, except people that would like to move are able to choose a different World
③A + B - C ⇒A World to merge with B World, except people that would like to move are able to choose to go to C World
④Prepare 10 Worlds, set a limit, and give everyone the power to move their characters to a World of their choice.

There were many others as well but I eliminated them.

Of these, after thinking very carefully, we decided to prepare an announcement for ④.

The Intentions of Going with Option ④

After weighing the pros and cons of each option day and night, I finally decided to go with option ④. The biggest deciding factor for this decision was me believing in the strong bond within the community.

We thought that by giving the community plenty of time before the application period, each community would come together and discuss their destinations.

Of course, we considered the players who do not login as often as others.

Discuss Period + Selection Period A (Decision Can be Changed) + Selection Period B (Decision Can Not be Changed)

With the long time frame that was provided, I believed it was enough time for a majority of the communities to agree on a World. Another reason we decided to not reveal the World names is because we wanted everyone to decide on a World purely based on what the community wants instead of having the World name getting in the way of making that decision.

We knew that the World names will be a huge factor in deciding what World you will be going to. By hiding the World names, we thought that we would be able to avoid flooding specific Worlds and provide each community a chance to spread out without losing anyone. (I assume this is one of the reasons why the community complains that the devs always makes the wrong decision…)

We also provided a World recommended for German/French-speaking players in order to make it easy for the German/French community to gather together.

Furthermore, no matter what option we decide to go with, we knew we weren’t able to satisfy every customer. If that was the case, we thought it would be the best way to go if we gave the players the freedom to choose. Because there were no World Merges like this in the past, we had a really difficult time finalizing the specifications of the merge. On a side note, we also have plans to implement a system within The Lodestone wherein players will be able to track what players transferred to what Worlds (as Foxclon mentioned before).

The Cons of Option ④

The reason why I had a hard time choosing Option ④ was because of the following factors.

A: Players who belong to multiple communities might end up being torn apart by having to decide which community they will follow.
B: The option will cause stress on all players instead of causing stress on a number of players.
C: Players who decide to come back to the game after the merger will end up on a brand new World and no longer be able to player with friends.

Both the QA team and I though factor A was the biggest problem of them all.

Factor B may not be as bad because we provided everyone the freedom to choose a destination.

Factor C also may not be as bad because we have no idea when these players will return to the game and if they do, it would be most likely with 2.0. With 2.0, we had plans to implement a World Transfer Service so we believed that should be able to address this problem.

Why We Didn't Go With Option ①～③

Option ① would be the most straight forward option and also it’s also the option that we can execute with the least cost. However, this option was most likely not a viable option for the French/German players. Also, we believed it was too forceful to merge the Worlds based on population as it might also cause a lot of stress for the destination World. Overall, this would be the safest way to go.

With option ②, players will be given the option to transfer to another World. However, if there ends being too many players who would want to transfer over to that World, it might end up going over the set capacity and overflow the World. Since we won’t know the results would be like until the actual we see the actual results, we would end up taking a huge risk.

In addition, if a player belongs to multiple communities, they might end up being torn apart by having to decide which community they will follow (probably not be as bad as ④).

Option ③ is a twist on option ②. We put a lot of focus on the French/German players.
However, even this option might end up with not enough players wanting to transfer to the new World or too many non- French/German players that might want to transfer to the new World and prevent some French/German players from moving with their community.

I personally was deciding between option ② and option ④ until the last minute and finally decided to go with option ④.

Until the World Merge Occurs

As I mentioned originally, the World Merge will be a huge event for the whole community.
I’m trying my best to be open with you by provide you specifications via topic posts and forum posts, yet it still seems to be not enough. I apologize for not being able to provide a clear explanation for everyone.

We will continue to perform internal discussions based on the feedback we have received. As I mentioned before, we want to perform the World Merge to “Move Forward in FFXIV.” In no way did I have any intentions of breaking the “bond” between you and your friends, nor break the “bond” between you and the development team.

Once again, I would like to apologize for not being able to provide a clear explanation for everyone. The only thing I would like to ask of you is to keep your feedback constructive.

Factor C also may not be as bad because we have no idea when these players will return to the game and if they do, it would be most likely with 2.0. With 2.0, we had plans to implement a World Transfer Service so we believed that should be able to address this problem.

プロデューサ/ディレクタの吉田です。
Producer/Director Yoshida here,

皆さん、多数のポストありがとうございます。
全リージョンの関連するスレッドにも目を通させて頂いています。
今回の件については、コミュニティ全体に対して、非常に大きな動揺を与えてしまい、申し訳なく思っています。
Thank you for many comments/posts.
I have looked through related threads in all region; I apologize for causing a major stir to the community with this issue.

現状、開発/運営チームでは、非常にフィードバックの多い②案を更に調整し、
④案のメリットも生かしたものにできないか、
皆さんのフィードバックを参考にさせて頂きつつ、検討を重ねています。
技術的な確認事項、スケジュールの確認もあるため、恐縮ではありますが、
このまま週末に突入し、週明けまでお時間を頂けると助かります。
We are currently looking into making it possible to go by plan #2 which received many feadbacks and keep the merit from plan number 4. We need to check and verify the technical side and schedule so please give us until beginning of next week.

トピックスについては、一時取り下げも検討しましたが、
仕様が見えなくなると、話し合いの際に、内容齟齬の可能性があるため、
少なくとも週明けまでは、このままとさせていただきます。
We thought of bringing down the topic on the topics section but if we take it down when people talk about this there might be issue where wrong information is given so we would like to keep it at least till beginning of next week.

繰り返しにはなりますが、現段階で非常に大きな懸念の声を挙げられている方が、
多数いらっしゃる中で、ワールド統合を強行するつもりはありませんので、
その点は重ねてご理解頂けますよう、宜しくお願い致します。
This is repeating what was mentioned before but at current timing there are few saying we are forcing this server merge but please understand that we are not.

Ahh, just when I thought Trendy Entertainment was starting to make Square Enix look smart...

I think chimps are running the show.

No way in F i am paying to pick a server. I want to come back for 2.0 but if they make me choose like this, they can kiss it. Idiots.

Plan #2 was so logical, if people wanted to create faux regional servers, the forums would have decided that amongst themselves without dev input by means of the optional self transfer.

I'm a little bewildered why this came as such a sudden surprise to the people who frequent the forums. Yoshi and the com reps have only been saying this was their plan for months and months and asked for feedback and no one squeaked a word. Actually I find this to be quite common. Dev asks for feedback, gets ignored, goes forward with plan, reannounces plan as finalized for next patch, forums explode with anger.

Hopefully they change to plan 2, plan 4 kinda had the same feeling that my character was being held hostage for a ransom of $10. (cue Yoshi with a pinky finger to his sinister grin)

Probably because most people are like me. We generally scan the boards for the occasional interesting tidbit, but we really don't dive into it that deeply. The first I heard of this plan for the mergers was when it got posted to the lodestone front page.