FFXIV Data Center Travel Detailed, Arrives in Patch 6.18

Final Fantasy XIV players could soon be traveling across new dimensional barriers. FFXIV Data Center Travel will debut alongside patch 6.18, according to the latest Letter from the Producer Live broadcast. Producer Naoki Yoshida presented details on the planned feature. It’s intended for players on one Data Center to be able to temporarily send their characters to another Data Center and play alongside players “native” to that Data Center.

Typically, FFXIV Data Centers are arranged into Physical and Logical Data Centers. Each Physical Data Center is located in a certain region. Those data centers are divided into multiple Logical Data Centers, which themselves contain various “World” servers that serve up instances of the game world to players. For example, a character might be on the Lamia World, which is located in the Primal Logical Data Center, which in turn is in the North American Physical Data Center. FFXIV Data Center Travel lets players travel from one Logical Data Center to another within the same Physical Data Center. That means the previously mentioned character from Lamia on Primal will be able to visit a friend on Balmung on Crystal.

The system works similarly to the World Visit system already in the game, with some additional restrictions. Players on another Data Center won’t be able to use their Free Company Chat and may have PVP Teams restricted. Cross-World Linkshells will also be restricted, but from Patch 6.2 onward, it will be possible to join them on other data centers.

To initiate Data Center Travel, FFXIV players will need to be on the Character Select screen. Selecting a destination Data Center and World will cause the game to pause momentarily to initiate the transfer, and the transfer can’t be stopped. Then they’ll be able to load in with a selected character and play.

FFXIV Data Center Travel will arrive in Patch 6.18. The first post-Endwalker patch, patch 6.1, will debut in April 2022. The game is available on PC, PS4, and PS5, and its free trial recently resumed.