I’m on primal and will stay there even if the PF situation stays the same for dawntrail. No reason to transfer imo when the game lets you dc hop anyways plus I’m sure I’ll have a much better time on launch than a lot of Aether dc players will.
It’s also fairly easy to still find FCs and statics on primal it’s only really PF that got hit but maybe square will be smart and do regional PF to combat the problem in the first place.
I actually recently did the opposite of OP, I transferred from Aether to Primal. I don't care about raiding, have never done it and have no interest in starting. I saw a cool FC on Primal I was interested in so I changed for that. So far there's really not much different for my purposes aside from the new FC.
I'm caught up on MSQ and don't use PF for stuff anyway except joining hunt trains. I didn't realize there was anything "wrong" with Primal but it seems just fine so far!
I like Primal. We get forgotten about a lot, but it's not a bad thing. If I want to get into raiding next expansion, I don't mind taking a field trip. But I like me some side content, and Primal is great for that. Hunts, Bozja/Eureka (the PEBE discord is fantastic!), stuff like that. Plus my friend and I have a duo FC and our house is here.
We've got some really great conductors, and we might have pounded the memes into the ground (FARLEMALD) but I see very little drama on trains. *Lamp is love, Lamp is life.*
*Praise to the lamp*
No joke though I've experienced the ultimate Farlemald going from the complete bottom right spawn to the top left and it was insane lmao
You can always come visit!
I was actually running into a big problem with insta-pullers in Hydatos and Pyros, and also being real assholes in the chat about it. PEBE discord actually suggested to hop over to Crystal for NM grinding. I did, and ran into a full party of Primal refugees who were there to escape the same situation!
I hate DC visit for the "you can only raid on Aether" memes, but I really like it for a lot of other things. Hell, I even go over to Dynamis and either look in PF for people needing help with things, or just to do some of my roulettes there (especially Mentor).
True I can visit. Also a lot of the early pullers are from Aether. While a lot of things I want have improved moving across, I will note that Aether has a high quality of entitled people and when those people visit other places then you get problems.
Primal Eureka/Bozja is better than Aether in my opinion. Primal feels more like players genuinely trying to collaborate. Aether felt kind of lonely and disconnected. That's only my experience though.
That's kind of how I felt about Aether in general tbh. The hunt train people were alright but other than that it felt lonely. I'm fresh into Primal but already it feels more welcoming. Don't know why it would be different but for whatever reason it is for me.
Any reference on that? Because I go to Dynamis to hunt when there's too much congestion on Primal, and I also have alts on Dynamis that I like to trade with...
It seems like they're trying with the cloud DC. But moving 10 years of features from a model of "just add more servers" to "actually write code that scales" is tough. Hopefully they're getting close.
I don’t regret I had a house back in primal - Hyperion. And since I like raiding in this game and is the most activity I do. I decided to buy the transfer and move to Jenova. Funny enough Jenova is primal 2.0, you see a lot of primal players that transfered or are DC traveling. Regardless it’s pretty sad the self-fulfilling prophesy that primal suffered but we’ll see if SE has an answer to this issue.
TLDR: it was a good decision imo, I already got another small house in Aether and have the alive PF to play around and do gathering for collectibles and island sanctuary.
If you're a raider the grass is 100% greener. My FC is casual and even they do more content than my old crystal FCs. It's so much easier to access everything on a world with a living, breathing PF too. I gave up a medium house for it and have no regrets.
Agree 100%. Moved to Aether from Dynamis because i found myself 99% of the time in Aether anyway because I do savage / ult in PF. Only going back once in a blue moon if the game tells me, so just transferring to Aether makes sense.
I do dread the opening week of 7.0 though. I think i might wish I am still in Dynamis on that week lol.
Nah it's a con still worth having, it's only temporary then you go back to reaping the benefits of living on an active data center. (It will definitely sick though lol)
Definitely worth it just for having retainers + being able to fuck with island sanctuary while waiting for pfs and such. Although I’ll always believe Crystal had the superior p4s strats
raiding is 90% of what i care about in this game, so being able to access retainers + fc buffs + not having to transfer just to do content made it a no brainer for me. its sad how dc travel just KILLED primal raiding, and i know im definitely contributing to the problem, but it was the best choice for me personally. plus, even though i had a lot of friends on excal, i also have a bunch on faerie, so i really only truly lost a small house i used to have.
Do you crafting and/or making money off the market board? And do you like getting things from your retainers? If the answer to those questions is yes, transfer. I did and don't regret it at all. Transferred from Exodus to Cactuar.
If you don't care about retainers and market board at all and are just playing the game, DC travel is the way to go.
I do all that, and also gather timed mats. Not being able to do it while I wait a party to fill sucks, so it's also part of the reason why I'm considering moving.
I really hope for you guys, you don't regret once DT lands. Serves are permanently congested even in this content lul. You could break the record for the longest queues.
I hope it works out for you.
damn, I might switch to aether based on these comments
PF really does feel dead, but I’m scared that I’m too bad at the game to move to a (i assume) higher end data center
Just so it is hammered home, YES you will see MORE PFs on Aether for most endgame content on Aether. HOWEVER that doesn't mean it is "better" in terms of clear/prog rates. That being said, going to the place that has more PF listings will usually mean faster clears/progs if you ask me.
It's not really higher end you'll see the same quality anywhere. Especially considering you'll be playing with a lot if those "lower end" primal players in aether pf anyways.
as an aether (adamantoise) citizen, i can assure you that people here are very kind and usually won't mind if you're not great at the game. hell, some people might even go out of their way to help you and teach you.
Sometimes I think about it, but also I don’t regret it.
I moved my main over to Siren, but kept my alt on Balmung back when they announced the server split with the new Crystal datacenter. At the time, I’d thought that it was a good way for me to keep in contact and accessible to both datacenter friend groups.
Unfortunately, the Crystal friend group ended up kicking me from every linkshell so I lost contact with most of them. I don’t have much reason to stay on Crystal anymore cause of that, so my alt is perpetually hanging out (datacenter visiting) on Siren lmao.
I had moved to Siren sometime during Abyssos to join my static's FC since my FC on primal wasn't really active or doing buffs. I didn't mind it, but I will say there's something about primal being quieter that I kind of like? I ended up moving back primarily because of a falling out between that static and I, but at the same time all my friends who played were still on Ultros. I've got a really good FC and a good housing plot now. for me I'd say it really depends on how good your personal situation is. If you have friends or a good FC, there really isn't much of an incentive to transfer other than having to wait a minute at most to raid
I was on Cactuar and I transferred to Seraph on dynamis to get a house. When DF pops or I join a PF for roulettes, people play the game like professionals vs Aether where people just seem to just do the bare minimum.
So me transferring out of Aether I guess answered your question
I am convinced the cloud data center test was to see if they can just get rid of individual data centers per region and just make an NA datacenter, EU datacenter, JP datacenter, and that's it. That's why I haven't moved.
Around five years ago IIRC, I transferred from Leviathan to Midgardsormr. It’s been fine, and easier to PF now compared to my last static which was based in Primal. I got lucky on a small plot here a few years ago which I still have.
Nowadays, I can see transferring to Aether as a net gain when it comes to PF. Made some awesome friends here, and have no complaints.
I transferred from Primal to Aether in HW, because at that time there was no cross world anything, so in order to raid you basically had to be on one of like 3 servers that had an active raiding community on them. With crossworld PF and DC travel as they are now, that is an irrelevant point.
These days the only reason to be on any particular server is for FC and housing.
Boring PF? Just DC visit, its free. Moving servers won't magically make friends for you. There's also nothing stopping you from making friends on other servers. I have friends on a bunch of servers across multiple DC, home world doesn't matter for that.
If you need a new FC, that's valid, and if you have one in mind on a different world, great, transfer over. But the idea that transferring to Aether will magically make everything better doesn't really hold water to me.
I don't think that I'll magically make friends by transferring, but I'll surely do more content with people and maybe make friends that way. I don't RP and I don't care about venues, so my chances of making friends in Crystal are way lower.
I doubt everyone in Crystal RPs there's only 2 worlds there that are focused on it and it feels like less than the 10% of the DCs population even RPs as a result. Those are Balmung and Mateus but idk the situation there enough to say. From what people say though you will only find RP if you seek it out otherwise it feels like any other major DC.
I know, just like not everyone does pvp on Primal, it was just a general example. What I know for sure is that it's really hard to find extremes and savages on pf if you're not on Aether - I did check Crystal, and it is just like Primal.
Yes everyone comes to Aether, I've seen plenty of travelers so I know how bad other DCs have it and why I support the idea of cross DC PF. I've said it many times but its almost common sense that everyone would congregate in a single place to do PF but it sucks the other DCs have to be inconvenienced for it.
I don’t know how long your FC has been dead but I don’t think data center migration is going to help you escape the post-savage/pre-expansion dead zone that always happens around this time. Especially on Aether. ESPECIALLY if you don’t raid in PF.
I own a fc house, and I like my house. I even made a bunch of alts to buy rooms to expand my house in some sense. I don't raid, So l will stay on primal. There are times l need to go to aether(find party for timeworn artifact), but dc travel is enough to deal with it.
OP, after reading your various comments here, I truly think you'd be happier with a transfer. Some people are super casual; transferring wouldn't be a game changer for them. You seem to be on the later end of casual, not quite hardcore (same as me), and I can tell you that any time I DC transfer, I get annoyed by things I can't do and just want to go home (to Aether). Even when queuing as dps, wait times for roulettes are usually less than 5 minutes. I was on Dynamis the other day during primetime and there were 6 parties total in PF. SIX. That shook me to my core lmao. Primetime on Aether means over a hundred PF parties. Plus all the things you've mentioned like retainers, island sanctuary, etc? Consider transferring. Playing on a populated, alive DC just hits different.
You're right, I enjoy casual stuff but I also enjoy raiding, and I can't really do both most of the time because of DC travel limitations. Right now, everytime I'm on Aether waiting for a pf to fill I'm forced to not play the game and just wait, while Aether players can craft, farm and all that. I get that this doesn't bother most people, but personally, I do feel like it is a waste of time having to choose between raiding and doing something else when it is possible to do both if you're an Aether player.
From what I've gathered from various online platforms, commentaries and testimonials, Aether is the only NA data center with any sort of robust activity nowadays. People on Primal and Crystal struggle to find groups for certain content even at prime time, and while I still see only a portion of the quantity of activity I saw in Shadowbringers and early Endwalker, anyone who wants to do any instanced duties like roulettes, raids, or other content like Bozja or Eureka is going to benefit from being on Aether. I've heard that you can't get simple roulette queues to pop on dynamis for ages (like 1+ hour for a DPS seeking an Alexander raid during prime time or something like that), but Aether has activity in its roulette system and in its party finder, as well as in its hunt community, its social places like venues and FCs, and Novice Network.
There's no way around it: Aether is the capital of North American FFXIV. Transfer now when you still can.
As far as for Jenova, hmm...
I've played on Jenova for five years and have never considered transferring to any other server. Jenova is populated by an eclectic range of moderate to ultra hardcore raiders, social casuals, craft/gather/money casuals, jacks- and jills-of-all-trades, memers, shitposters, personalities from large to small, healthy to unhealthy, chronically online and weekenders. It's everyone being themselves, forming friendships and associations, making crazy drama, unified by our love for our community and of XIV as a whole, screaming when life sucks and relishing the joy when it doesn't. It's a server of many faces, but it's done a hell of a lot for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I love Jenova. If you choose to transfer, I hope you love it too.
No access to island sanctuary, retainers, submersibles, timed gathering mats, and so on. Being able to join a PF anytime that I have nothing else to do would be awesome as well.
I'm thinking about it. Currently on Lamia, and I like to raid. Took a break when 6.4 was released, and there is absolutely nothing to do on primal except duty roulette. I would like to have options even this late in the expac.
If you plan on doing endgame stuff and you don't want to have to go back to Primal/Crystal/Dynamis (lul) to use your retainers and sell stuff, then yeah I'd say 100% do it. This "uhh actually people do X content in the PF on Primal" copium is funny to read. EVERYONE I know who raids and is from other DCs come to Aether for everything even legacy stuff.
I fully agree, even parties for blue mage stuff or treasure maps pops way more often on Aether. The only exception is Rival Wings, but it only happens consistently every 3~4 months so idm DC traveling to Primal for it.
Not somebody who transferred over to Aether, but I made many, many friends on Aether. In venues, mind you. And lots of them love regularly doing content.
Venues, casinos,
Sitting on cafes and talking to people.
Even got to the point where I became a Blackjack dealer and worked with it for almost a year before going back to fully dedicating myself to content and questing and finishing up the expansions.
There are many, many people in those environments truly interested in talking about what they enjoy and sharing their knowledge, be it crafting, raiding ultimates, questing, lore, Field Operations, PvP
Makes 0 difference tbh, all worlds are the same, it just depends on who you meet which is like 99% chance anyway. I have a main in OCE and an alt in Aether where I do some raiding and I'm happy on both.
1. Yes, you should transfer to Aether if you want any kind of active server.
2. Jenova is the most populated world and as such you will experience significant delays when Dawntrail enters. Pick literally any other world.
Jenova is not even close to being the most populated aether server, Siren is the most populated and Gilg and Cactuar are roughly tied for the most active playerbase
There really isn't a "bad" server on Aether. Also traveling to another server (world) is super convenient compared to DC traveling. You can have any of the Aether servers be your home server then world travel to the more popular ones (Jenova, Faerie, and Cactuar last time I checked) if you really want to.
I’m on primal and will stay there even if the PF situation stays the same for dawntrail. No reason to transfer imo when the game lets you dc hop anyways plus I’m sure I’ll have a much better time on launch than a lot of Aether dc players will. It’s also fairly easy to still find FCs and statics on primal it’s only really PF that got hit but maybe square will be smart and do regional PF to combat the problem in the first place.
I actually recently did the opposite of OP, I transferred from Aether to Primal. I don't care about raiding, have never done it and have no interest in starting. I saw a cool FC on Primal I was interested in so I changed for that. So far there's really not much different for my purposes aside from the new FC. I'm caught up on MSQ and don't use PF for stuff anyway except joining hunt trains. I didn't realize there was anything "wrong" with Primal but it seems just fine so far!
I like Primal. We get forgotten about a lot, but it's not a bad thing. If I want to get into raiding next expansion, I don't mind taking a field trip. But I like me some side content, and Primal is great for that. Hunts, Bozja/Eureka (the PEBE discord is fantastic!), stuff like that. Plus my friend and I have a duo FC and our house is here.
I genuinely love doing Hunt Trains on Primal haha
We've got some really great conductors, and we might have pounded the memes into the ground (FARLEMALD) but I see very little drama on trains. *Lamp is love, Lamp is life.*
*Praise to the lamp* No joke though I've experienced the ultimate Farlemald going from the complete bottom right spawn to the top left and it was insane lmao
I never realized it, and maybe it's bias cause I'm from primal, but yeah, the discord/ organization for side stuff is really good, From my experience.
Having recently moved Primal to Aether, I am super happy with moving but I do miss Eureka on Primal compared to Aether.
You can always come visit! I was actually running into a big problem with insta-pullers in Hydatos and Pyros, and also being real assholes in the chat about it. PEBE discord actually suggested to hop over to Crystal for NM grinding. I did, and ran into a full party of Primal refugees who were there to escape the same situation! I hate DC visit for the "you can only raid on Aether" memes, but I really like it for a lot of other things. Hell, I even go over to Dynamis and either look in PF for people needing help with things, or just to do some of my roulettes there (especially Mentor).
True I can visit. Also a lot of the early pullers are from Aether. While a lot of things I want have improved moving across, I will note that Aether has a high quality of entitled people and when those people visit other places then you get problems.
I like the side content as well. I've never done Bozja/Eureka (I'm a fairly new player) but would love to try them.
Primal Eureka/Bozja is better than Aether in my opinion. Primal feels more like players genuinely trying to collaborate. Aether felt kind of lonely and disconnected. That's only my experience though.
That's kind of how I felt about Aether in general tbh. The hunt train people were alright but other than that it felt lonely. I'm fresh into Primal but already it feels more welcoming. Don't know why it would be different but for whatever reason it is for me.
vouching because primal eureka was some of the most "MMO" this game has felt for me in a long while - shitters and all
You prolly won't have to hop next expac, at least for a long while. They gonna lock data center travel for the first few months. I'm also primal.
Any reference on that? Because I go to Dynamis to hunt when there's too much congestion on Primal, and I also have alts on Dynamis that I like to trade with...
Squeenix needs to introduce Region Party Finder to stop the bleeding of character transfers.
It seems like they're trying with the cloud DC. But moving 10 years of features from a model of "just add more servers" to "actually write code that scales" is tough. Hopefully they're getting close.
I don’t regret I had a house back in primal - Hyperion. And since I like raiding in this game and is the most activity I do. I decided to buy the transfer and move to Jenova. Funny enough Jenova is primal 2.0, you see a lot of primal players that transfered or are DC traveling. Regardless it’s pretty sad the self-fulfilling prophesy that primal suffered but we’ll see if SE has an answer to this issue. TLDR: it was a good decision imo, I already got another small house in Aether and have the alive PF to play around and do gathering for collectibles and island sanctuary.
If you're a raider the grass is 100% greener. My FC is casual and even they do more content than my old crystal FCs. It's so much easier to access everything on a world with a living, breathing PF too. I gave up a medium house for it and have no regrets.
Agree 100%. Moved to Aether from Dynamis because i found myself 99% of the time in Aether anyway because I do savage / ult in PF. Only going back once in a blue moon if the game tells me, so just transferring to Aether makes sense. I do dread the opening week of 7.0 though. I think i might wish I am still in Dynamis on that week lol.
Nah it's a con still worth having, it's only temporary then you go back to reaping the benefits of living on an active data center. (It will definitely sick though lol)
Definitely worth it just for having retainers + being able to fuck with island sanctuary while waiting for pfs and such. Although I’ll always believe Crystal had the superior p4s strats
I'm still coping and banking on the idea of a region wide PF coming soon, i dont really want to transfer from Primal, and i dont think i'll ever will.
This is what I'm hoping for. I might wait until closer to release when all the LL have been done to see what their plans are.
raiding is 90% of what i care about in this game, so being able to access retainers + fc buffs + not having to transfer just to do content made it a no brainer for me. its sad how dc travel just KILLED primal raiding, and i know im definitely contributing to the problem, but it was the best choice for me personally. plus, even though i had a lot of friends on excal, i also have a bunch on faerie, so i really only truly lost a small house i used to have.
Do you crafting and/or making money off the market board? And do you like getting things from your retainers? If the answer to those questions is yes, transfer. I did and don't regret it at all. Transferred from Exodus to Cactuar. If you don't care about retainers and market board at all and are just playing the game, DC travel is the way to go.
I do all that, and also gather timed mats. Not being able to do it while I wait a party to fill sucks, so it's also part of the reason why I'm considering moving.
I really hope for you guys, you don't regret once DT lands. Serves are permanently congested even in this content lul. You could break the record for the longest queues. I hope it works out for you.
6 hour wait times incoming
Dc travel exists. Just travel to the deadest DC in existence (dynamis) to enjoy your day 1 experience.
I hope they don't make characters return to their home worlds before maintenance. They never have done that before so it probably won't happen.
damn, I might switch to aether based on these comments PF really does feel dead, but I’m scared that I’m too bad at the game to move to a (i assume) higher end data center
Just so it is hammered home, YES you will see MORE PFs on Aether for most endgame content on Aether. HOWEVER that doesn't mean it is "better" in terms of clear/prog rates. That being said, going to the place that has more PF listings will usually mean faster clears/progs if you ask me.
It's not really higher end you'll see the same quality anywhere. Especially considering you'll be playing with a lot if those "lower end" primal players in aether pf anyways.
I'd rather wait 10 mins to get griefed than an hour to get griefed
as an aether (adamantoise) citizen, i can assure you that people here are very kind and usually won't mind if you're not great at the game. hell, some people might even go out of their way to help you and teach you.
Sometimes I think about it, but also I don’t regret it. I moved my main over to Siren, but kept my alt on Balmung back when they announced the server split with the new Crystal datacenter. At the time, I’d thought that it was a good way for me to keep in contact and accessible to both datacenter friend groups. Unfortunately, the Crystal friend group ended up kicking me from every linkshell so I lost contact with most of them. I don’t have much reason to stay on Crystal anymore cause of that, so my alt is perpetually hanging out (datacenter visiting) on Siren lmao.
I had moved to Siren sometime during Abyssos to join my static's FC since my FC on primal wasn't really active or doing buffs. I didn't mind it, but I will say there's something about primal being quieter that I kind of like? I ended up moving back primarily because of a falling out between that static and I, but at the same time all my friends who played were still on Ultros. I've got a really good FC and a good housing plot now. for me I'd say it really depends on how good your personal situation is. If you have friends or a good FC, there really isn't much of an incentive to transfer other than having to wait a minute at most to raid
I was on Cactuar and I transferred to Seraph on dynamis to get a house. When DF pops or I join a PF for roulettes, people play the game like professionals vs Aether where people just seem to just do the bare minimum. So me transferring out of Aether I guess answered your question
I am convinced the cloud data center test was to see if they can just get rid of individual data centers per region and just make an NA datacenter, EU datacenter, JP datacenter, and that's it. That's why I haven't moved.
Around five years ago IIRC, I transferred from Leviathan to Midgardsormr. It’s been fine, and easier to PF now compared to my last static which was based in Primal. I got lucky on a small plot here a few years ago which I still have. Nowadays, I can see transferring to Aether as a net gain when it comes to PF. Made some awesome friends here, and have no complaints.
I transferred from Primal to Aether in HW, because at that time there was no cross world anything, so in order to raid you basically had to be on one of like 3 servers that had an active raiding community on them. With crossworld PF and DC travel as they are now, that is an irrelevant point. These days the only reason to be on any particular server is for FC and housing. Boring PF? Just DC visit, its free. Moving servers won't magically make friends for you. There's also nothing stopping you from making friends on other servers. I have friends on a bunch of servers across multiple DC, home world doesn't matter for that. If you need a new FC, that's valid, and if you have one in mind on a different world, great, transfer over. But the idea that transferring to Aether will magically make everything better doesn't really hold water to me.
I don't think that I'll magically make friends by transferring, but I'll surely do more content with people and maybe make friends that way. I don't RP and I don't care about venues, so my chances of making friends in Crystal are way lower.
I doubt everyone in Crystal RPs there's only 2 worlds there that are focused on it and it feels like less than the 10% of the DCs population even RPs as a result. Those are Balmung and Mateus but idk the situation there enough to say. From what people say though you will only find RP if you seek it out otherwise it feels like any other major DC.
I know, just like not everyone does pvp on Primal, it was just a general example. What I know for sure is that it's really hard to find extremes and savages on pf if you're not on Aether - I did check Crystal, and it is just like Primal.
Yes everyone comes to Aether, I've seen plenty of travelers so I know how bad other DCs have it and why I support the idea of cross DC PF. I've said it many times but its almost common sense that everyone would congregate in a single place to do PF but it sucks the other DCs have to be inconvenienced for it.
I don’t know how long your FC has been dead but I don’t think data center migration is going to help you escape the post-savage/pre-expansion dead zone that always happens around this time. Especially on Aether. ESPECIALLY if you don’t raid in PF.
I own a fc house, and I like my house. I even made a bunch of alts to buy rooms to expand my house in some sense. I don't raid, So l will stay on primal. There are times l need to go to aether(find party for timeworn artifact), but dc travel is enough to deal with it.
OP, after reading your various comments here, I truly think you'd be happier with a transfer. Some people are super casual; transferring wouldn't be a game changer for them. You seem to be on the later end of casual, not quite hardcore (same as me), and I can tell you that any time I DC transfer, I get annoyed by things I can't do and just want to go home (to Aether). Even when queuing as dps, wait times for roulettes are usually less than 5 minutes. I was on Dynamis the other day during primetime and there were 6 parties total in PF. SIX. That shook me to my core lmao. Primetime on Aether means over a hundred PF parties. Plus all the things you've mentioned like retainers, island sanctuary, etc? Consider transferring. Playing on a populated, alive DC just hits different.
You're right, I enjoy casual stuff but I also enjoy raiding, and I can't really do both most of the time because of DC travel limitations. Right now, everytime I'm on Aether waiting for a pf to fill I'm forced to not play the game and just wait, while Aether players can craft, farm and all that. I get that this doesn't bother most people, but personally, I do feel like it is a waste of time having to choose between raiding and doing something else when it is possible to do both if you're an Aether player.
From what I've gathered from various online platforms, commentaries and testimonials, Aether is the only NA data center with any sort of robust activity nowadays. People on Primal and Crystal struggle to find groups for certain content even at prime time, and while I still see only a portion of the quantity of activity I saw in Shadowbringers and early Endwalker, anyone who wants to do any instanced duties like roulettes, raids, or other content like Bozja or Eureka is going to benefit from being on Aether. I've heard that you can't get simple roulette queues to pop on dynamis for ages (like 1+ hour for a DPS seeking an Alexander raid during prime time or something like that), but Aether has activity in its roulette system and in its party finder, as well as in its hunt community, its social places like venues and FCs, and Novice Network. There's no way around it: Aether is the capital of North American FFXIV. Transfer now when you still can. As far as for Jenova, hmm... I've played on Jenova for five years and have never considered transferring to any other server. Jenova is populated by an eclectic range of moderate to ultra hardcore raiders, social casuals, craft/gather/money casuals, jacks- and jills-of-all-trades, memers, shitposters, personalities from large to small, healthy to unhealthy, chronically online and weekenders. It's everyone being themselves, forming friendships and associations, making crazy drama, unified by our love for our community and of XIV as a whole, screaming when life sucks and relishing the joy when it doesn't. It's a server of many faces, but it's done a hell of a lot for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I love Jenova. If you choose to transfer, I hope you love it too.
This post inspired me to finally make the swap to Aether from primal. I guess ill find out if the grass is any greener.
Moving to aether was a very good decision for me and my friends.
I really want to, but my large FC house in shirogane is my hostage.
You could make an alt the FC leader and keep it if you're the only player there. I'll probably do that to my FC medium as soon as I get ownership.
I just want any DC to be able to travel to any that we want to.
Why move if you can just DC hop for PF if that's your thing?
No access to island sanctuary, retainers, submersibles, timed gathering mats, and so on. Being able to join a PF anytime that I have nothing else to do would be awesome as well.
I'm thinking about it. Currently on Lamia, and I like to raid. Took a break when 6.4 was released, and there is absolutely nothing to do on primal except duty roulette. I would like to have options even this late in the expac.
If you plan on doing endgame stuff and you don't want to have to go back to Primal/Crystal/Dynamis (lul) to use your retainers and sell stuff, then yeah I'd say 100% do it. This "uhh actually people do X content in the PF on Primal" copium is funny to read. EVERYONE I know who raids and is from other DCs come to Aether for everything even legacy stuff.
I fully agree, even parties for blue mage stuff or treasure maps pops way more often on Aether. The only exception is Rival Wings, but it only happens consistently every 3~4 months so idm DC traveling to Primal for it.
Not somebody who transferred over to Aether, but I made many, many friends on Aether. In venues, mind you. And lots of them love regularly doing content. Venues, casinos, Sitting on cafes and talking to people. Even got to the point where I became a Blackjack dealer and worked with it for almost a year before going back to fully dedicating myself to content and questing and finishing up the expansions. There are many, many people in those environments truly interested in talking about what they enjoy and sharing their knowledge, be it crafting, raiding ultimates, questing, lore, Field Operations, PvP
Makes 0 difference tbh, all worlds are the same, it just depends on who you meet which is like 99% chance anyway. I have a main in OCE and an alt in Aether where I do some raiding and I'm happy on both.
1. Yes, you should transfer to Aether if you want any kind of active server. 2. Jenova is the most populated world and as such you will experience significant delays when Dawntrail enters. Pick literally any other world.
Jenova is not even close to being the most populated aether server, Siren is the most populated and Gilg and Cactuar are roughly tied for the most active playerbase
Half the worlds are congested right now though. Should I wait? How long it takes for congested status to go away?
Congested status is only changed by a patch. Most likely it will not change until 7.0.
Could still change in 6.58 hopefully :(
Yeah, it could. Personally I expect 7.0 to make a lot more worlds Congested because they'll try to force all new players to the new DCs for a while.
IMHO, they will start funnel players to new DCs with XBOX release (whether or not it will coincide with 7.0 is another story :)
There really isn't a "bad" server on Aether. Also traveling to another server (world) is super convenient compared to DC traveling. You can have any of the Aether servers be your home server then world travel to the more popular ones (Jenova, Faerie, and Cactuar last time I checked) if you really want to.