Tonberry (JP Server) .. Leafy's post is pretty outdated.

Problems I see with starting on a JP server:
- New players from AUS/Oceanic will be playing on NA servers as they will not be interested in not being able to communicate effectively.
- Once launch, the JP realms are going to be FULL of people and thus causing massive ques to even play. With that amount of people on a server/realm, the lag will be much much worse then your 'ping test' are revealing.
- Playing on the NA servers atm doesn't seem to cause too much issue and the amount of players overall in a realm will be less, but 98% of people in them will speak english.
- New English speaking players will be on NA/EU realms, thus making expansion of your FC etc difficult.
- If you use voice comms like Teamspeak/Mumble/Vent you will have an incredibly difficult time with Japanese speaking only people in your FC/comms

There are also another range of problems, but these are just the main ones I can think of.

With all of those in mind, I would think (for new players) it would be best to go to the first or second available NA server as all people not in the Beta/beta forums/community etc will be going there.

NEW: Adamantoise/Behemoth
Legacy: Balmung

I'm sticking with a jp server

because in my ffxi experience 9 times out of 10 there were no ppl on except my au/nz ls or jp.

The times I can play still have'nt varied much from then so I gather I'll have the same trouble. So I'll save me a headache and stay with masamune

I was going to stay on N/A regardless but after last weekend i tested both NA & JP.

i'll probably be moving to JP Masamune now, it made such a difference to gameplay.
But i need to find a Social Eng L/S & or F/C. All i can find are end game ones when i look

i'll probably be moving to JP Masamune now, it made such a difference to gameplay.Damien Ramirez

Yeah the difference was noticeable on lower ping to JP servers. The translate functions seem sufficient much like in FF11 to communicate with JP players for dungeons & events.

Problems I see with starting on a JP server:
- New players from AUS/Oceanic will be playing on NA servers as they will not be interested in not being able to communicate effectively.Umbra Sanctum

Historically for MMO's, new oceanic players will join whatever servers have been chosen as the unofficial oceanic servers so they won't just default to NA servers as you are suggesting.

Once launch, the JP realms are going to be FULL of people and thus causing massive ques to even play. With that amount of people on a server/realm, the lag will be much much worse then your 'ping test' are revealing.Umbra Sanctum

At launch all servers will likely be full, this wouldn't be much different on an NA server except the latency would be much worse in the general case.

Playing on the NA servers atm doesn't seem to cause too much issue and the amount of players overall in a realm will be less, but 98% of people in them will speak english.Umbra Sanctum

Playing on NA servers is noticeable different for me latency wise as well as a lot of other people in SEA/Oceanic countries. The NA servers are not west coast this time, they're east which makes a substantial difference.

New English speaking players will be on NA/EU realms, thus making expansion of your FC etc difficult.Umbra Sanctum

Most players don't come from these regions for SEA/Oceanic guilds. For the few that do, SEA/Oceanic members don't get to play with them most of the time due to the timezone differences.

If you use voice comms like Teamspeak/Mumble/Vent you will have an incredibly difficult time with Japanese speaking only people in your FC/commsUmbra Sanctum

Outside of difficult content that may require VOIP comms, the in-game translation functions will be good enough for pretty much all other game content. The majority of SEA/Oceanic players wont even be doing this sort of content with NA/EU people due to timezone differences so that's kind of a moot point.

The primary issue here is if there is enough sustainability for english speaking FC's to continue recruitment on the server(s) chosen. That'll mainly come down to picking a server as the unofficial location and everyone following along like we have in the past.

The current list is:
JP Legacy - Masamune
JP New - Tonberry
NA Legacy - Sargatanas
NA New - Behemoth

In ffxi I have always had bad experience with na timezones, that alone makes me go to the jp server.

Imo I have better chances with jp than na, masamune for me

Server population, beta 3 week 2
Sunday afternoon (around 8am GMT)

Tonberry (JP)
J=1362
E=93

Excalibur (Legacy, NA)
J=498 (many of them will go to Aegis, my JP friend told me so)
E=257 (most NA weren't doing much at odd hours, I guess 2.0 is no difference)

Sargatanas (Legacy, NA)
J=434
E=260

Ridill (Legacy, JP)
J=565
E=113

Edit: I'd like to know about the other servers, but I'm a bit sick of clicking through the cutscenes.

Jp server for me. Less lag. Still wondering whether to join Masamune or Tonberry though.

We are going to Masamune as well! Hope I can get to meet those going to Masamune in game. :D

Masamune & Aegis are almost full according to FFXIV_JP twitter