Reposted from Kaeden on the "other" forums:

This isn't true. If Oceanics play on a NA server, there will be significantly less people altogether. It doesn't matter if your community is all English speakers when there's no one online.

Not to mention, there will be plenty of other Oceanic players online that are not in your linkshell.

If we can get most of the Oceanics on one server, here's the differences between going JP or NA:

-Better ping on JP servers, higher on NA
-On NA server, the only people online during Oceanic prime time will be Oceanics and a few straggling night shift NA players.
-On JP server, not only will you have Oceanics online during prime time, you'll also have Japanese players. Significantly more than you would have of players in NA.
-Many Japanese players like to practice English. And there's always the Auto-translate function.

So at worst, it's the difference between having no other players to play with, or having players that you have to use an Auto-translate feature to communicate with.

Ping wise, everyone gets vastly better ping to Japan other than Telstra/Optus users, you can check the other thread here on latency tests.

The lower pings doesn't apply to prime time though. Unless something changed in FFXIV, my experience in FFXI is lags in prime time when there are lots of people, which would be the case if we go to a JP server.

Also, most group activities happen on weekends, where most people are free all day and time zone differences become less of an issue.

But my main concern is that this game is going to turn from an MMO into a LAN game with own group of friends only in a JP server. JP Onry is just too prevalent.

Just how many Oceanic players are there? Anyone know of an approximation?

Ping - no, that makes no sense unless the servers are poorly optimized or under massive load. I'll take my chances that SE won't botch this.

Group activities - this would depend entirely on your own guild / fc, not something that can be generalised for everyone. But picking NA based on this means you're basically confining yourself to weekend groups if you don't have friends/guildmates to play with.

If you're that worried then i would suggest you join Altena on the Legacy NA servers. Judging by the poll votes, the SEA/Oceanic community favoring new NA servers is a minority. I doubt you are going to convince people to suffer a permanent 100-150ms increase for no reliable benefits.

Well, whatever your ping is, having too many people at a time, such as in peak hours or popular areas, will suffer lag. As an extreme example, remember Besieged in ToAU in FF XI?

But again, my main concern is being unable to mingle or do things with the prevalent community, which would be the Japanese in a JP server. Ping is not everything, otherwise I would go play a single player game with perfect ping.

I won't be joining the beta, but I hope you guys in the beta can focus on interacting with the JP community, and tell us how it worked out.

Well, whatever your ping is, having too many people at a time, such as in peak hours or popular areas, will suffer lag. As an extreme example, remember Besieged in ToAU in FF XI?

But again, my main concern is being unable to mingle or do things with the prevalent community, which would be the Japanese in a JP server. Ping is not everything, otherwise I would go play a single player game with perfect ping.

I won't be joining the beta, but I hope you guys in the beta can focus on interacting with the JP community, and tell us how it worked out.Radkat

Since that is your assumption (first paragraph) then you are going to lag on NA servers on the weekends when you said you intend to do group activities anyway, so that kinda makes it a moot point for both datacenters.

As me and a few others have posted, we have had good experiences with JP players. Some others like Altena have not. Your mileage may vary.

Having had experience with a server dominated by NA and JP players, no.

The NA playerbase during oceanic peak is predominantly confined to your most hardcore playerbase who are exceedingly exclusive and rarely casual-friendly. Getting pickups is very difficult.

What matters is where the local playerbase chooses to gather. And if the critical mass of English-speakers in Oceania choose to gather on Masamune, that is where the opportunities for people in our time zone will be.

Well, whatever your ping is, having too many people at a time, such as in peak hours or popular areas, will suffer lag. As an extreme example, remember Besieged in ToAU in FF XI?

But again, my main concern is being unable to mingle or do things with the prevalent community, which would be the Japanese in a JP server. Ping is not everything, otherwise I would go play a single player game with perfect ping.

I won't be joining the beta, but I hope you guys in the beta can focus on interacting with the JP community, and tell us how it worked out.Radkat

Been there done that, they are the same as us, some jerks some very friendly, some eager to learn english and me eager to learn japanese.

They're human like us. only difference is our language.

Having played FFXI in a Japanese Linkshell without speaking/understanding a word of Japanese, I guess I will throw in my two cents.

You are going to run into good and bad experiences no matter what language you are communicating in (anyone who has ever played a MOBA can probably attest to that). The nationality and language difference is irrelevant. It all simply boils down to common courtesy and human nature.

Yes, there is a language barrier, and yes, it does take a bit of flexibility and effort both ways to make it work. But when it does work, there is something satisfying and rewarding communicating to someone who doesn't share your common tongue.

That said, there are already a lot of tools to help overcome the barrier already, i.e. auto-translate (if you haven't used auto-translate in a game before, you might be surprised how robust it is in FF), emotes, other in-game cues.

But in the end, it is personal preference on how you want to communicate. There is no right or wrong decisions.

Masamune has alot of JP linkshells that will play with english speaking players

just need your gear up to scratch, and already know what to do and you will be fine.

They sparingly use the auto translate function though, so I would use google or get LS members to translate for me.

Reinforcing Dub's point.

I am also part of a JP ls in Masamune. Gears are not that important in the JP ls I'm in.
Most of the members are wearing only artifact gears and still managed to do most of the content. So long as you know what you are doing, you will be fine.

If you are willing, you will find lots more events that you can participate in FF14. During the last few weeks before shutdown, they even organised player events like lala dance in grid.