Per FFXIV’s Patch 6.08, the Oceanian data center is open for residence. The new data center, dubbed Materia, will improve network latency and decrease ping issues for players based in Australia and New Zealand. Materia hosts five servers currently: Bismarck, Ravana, Sephirot, Sophia, and Zurvan.
For those looking to transfer existing characters, Home World Transfer services to the Oceanian data center will be available on January 25 around 10 PM PST. The transfer fee will be waived and players will get the following bonuses: double EXP until level 80 and 10 gold chocobo feathers. If players own a private estate or apartment, they’ll receive gil in compensation.
For players creating new characters on the Oceanian data server, they’ll also get bonuses in both gil and EXP. New characters will get double EXP until level 80 and 10 silver chocobo feathers, and upon reaching level 30 in any class, 1 million gil and 15 free days of playtime.
In addition to these updates, quite a few jobs received buffs. Paladin, Dragoon, Dancer, Black Mage, and more have received potency upgrades to certain skills. Surprisingly the Dragoon will also no longer have the dragon tether animation applied (the red noodle that links Dragoon and their chosen party member), even though the skill will still remain. (A pity for all the nuptials where players jokingly tethered themselves to their partner with the skill as a joke.)
Released two weeks earlier than the original launch date, the new data center will ease some of the burden off of server queues. Wait times have already remarkably improved since we’re months out from Endwalker’s launch, but peak playtimes during significant patch updates like the Asphodelos raids are still seeing longer-than-normal queue times.
Source: Gamespot
