Square Enix was at gamescom 2019 in Germany last week to celebrate Final Fantasy XIV with players. Thanks to the launch of the Shadowbringers expansion in July, there was plenty of things to show off to attendees, and some even got to play the game and win free swag. There was also a panel in which FFXIV’s game producer, Yoshi P, answered some excellent questions regarding the conception of the Shadowbringers expansion. You can catch all of that on the official Twitch channel.
One interview with Yoshi P from gamescom courtesy of Twinfinite however, is raising plenty of eyebrows. According to Yoshida, Square Enix’s long term goal is allow players regardless of data centers, to play with each other without barriers. Right now that sounds almost impossible of course due to the current restrictions and server technology in place. If you didn’t know already, currently FFXIV is split in to three data centers. One each for North America, Europe and Japan. Players on one of these data centers can only play on worlds within these data centers. What Square Enix wants to do is break down those barriers. In the future, we could see European players play with American players seamlessly, and that sounds too good to be true.
The catch is, this vision is miles off and years away. Final Fantasy XIV has bigger fish to fry in the meantime. There’s more content updates and patches to come, but we hope this data center crossplay arrives soon too.
