Beginning at 8:00 p.m. PDT on March 24, Final Fantasy XIV will test cross-region data center travel in all regions. With Dawntrail coming this summer, elongated queues are once again a cause for concern, and the Final Fantasy XIV team is evaluating the potential of allowing players to migrate to less populated physical data centers on a temporary and limited capacity to help alleviate queue wait times.
While Data Center Travel exists in Final Fantasy XIV, players have been limited to travel within their home regions. Other than the obvious technical drawbacks of playing outside your region like latency, the Final Fantasy XIV team also calls out differences in “market economy” and “social norms” for not considering cross-region travel until now. But with the “Login Queue (Savage)” memes following the release of the last expansion, Endwalker, still fresh in their memories, cross-region travel could assist with getting players into the game faster following the launch of the upcoming Dawntrail expansion.
Keep in mind that cross-region travel will be limited during this public test which runs until the release of Dawntrail. North American, Japanese, and European data centers will only be able to travel to the Oceanian data center, with Oceanian players unable to travel. Still, this public test is meant to identify technical problems with this feature and the team is encouraging players to try it and to provide feedback during the testing window.
You can find more information about the upcoming cross-region travel test in The Lodestone.