Before the Oceania data centre arrived, Australians sometimes found the online role-playing game Final Fantasy XIV a surprisingly lonely multiplayer experience.
On the Asia server, they'd struggle to find enough fellow English speakers to tackle the game's notorious super-bosses. Those visiting American servers would find the in-game Golden Saucer amusement park sparsely populated during another time zone's twilight hours.
And the few who chose the most distant Europe server struggled with "input lag" that perilously delayed gameplay actions, with the risk of failed quests and let-down teammates.
That changed in January 2022, 12 years after the game was released, when, encouraged by a pandemic boom in player numbers, developer Square Enix finally launched Oceania servers. It was a decision that united players in the region.
Lin, a Final Fantasy XIV community organiser from Melbourne, was shocked at the scale of the local player base.
"When they finally released a server where our ping [internet connection latency speed] was manageable, we were like, 'whoa, there's thousands of people here'," they tell ABC Arts.
"It took 30 minutes just to get into the queue. You no longer had to guess if we could speak the same language or understand the same lingo."
Final Fantasy's near-40-year legacy lured Pat, another community organiser from Melbourne, into online role-playing games.
"I love the Final Fantasy series. That's the one I grew up with," they say.
The Final Fantasy series has nabbed more than 212 million sales. (Supplied: Square Enix)
Massive offline multiplayer
By nature, Final Fantasy XIV's community primarily exists online. A community organisation called Limsa Extreme runs in-game award shows, theatre shows and musical productions throughout the year.
Local bar meet-ups are an infrequent occasion, but the annual Final Fantasy XIV community meet-up at PAX Australia, one of the country's biggest exhibitions of games and gaming culture, is the highlight on the calendar.
"The community is so tight-knit when they come together; but it's coming together, that's the hard part," Pat says.
This year's meet-up moved to a larger venue at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Even with the extra space it was standing room only.
Players attended from across Oceania, many cosplaying their game characters; one arrived in a costume of the series' cute cat-like Moogles, and several wore the green sprout headbands which indicate a new player.
The community has grown year on year, but 2026 had a special draw: the attendance of two popular Final Fantasy developers. Localiser Michael-Christopher Koji Fox and global community producer Toshio Murouchi, familiar faces to the global player base, dropped by the community event ahead of their panel.
Murouchi barely got to utter the single word "Hey" before being drowned out by enthusiastic cheers.
"I'm still a bit starstruck," says Mark Withers, a Newcastle-based streamer and event organiser.
"Many popular online games don't visit, or host dedicated servers, for Australian players.
"It's encouraging to be recognised and to be seen."
PAX Australia's Final Fantasy XIV community meet-up has grown since its inception in 2022. (Supplied: Limsa Extreme)
Australian impact on a global game
Koji Fox says a global team, including two longstanding Australian translators, is responsible for localising a game script that's now twice the length of the Bible.
But the Australian influence on the series goes even further back. Square Enix's localisation team, which produced English-language releases for landmark titles including Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, was founded by Australian translator Richard Honeywood in the early 1990s.
Since then, Koji Fox, himself hired by Honeywood, says the medium's transition to spoken dialogue has reduced some overt Australian influences.
"The one thing that we don't let them do is do anything that requires rhyming, because Australian words don't rhyme [with the game's medieval style of British English]," Koji Fox says.
"One time they tried to rhyme 'hyper' and 'paper'; it was like 'hypa', 'paipa'."
But Australia's presence has remained loud and clear at international Final Fantasy XIV fan festivals, which can attract 10,000 players at live events, even before they had their own servers.
"Since the beginning, we've had Australian fans spend the money, the time, the effort to get to these in America and Europe and even Japan," Koji Fox says.
"Now it's about giving back to this community by trying to increase the times we come to PAX Australia."
Koji Fox feels an Australian fan festival like the large-scale events held in Berlin and Tokyo is "not an if any more, I think it's just going to be a when".
"Everyone's just super-excited," he says, remembering the cheers that greeted Murouchi's speech.
"Imagine if [Final Fantasy XIV director] Yoshi-P was here; everyone would probably just drop dead!"
Geographic isolation as training weights
Perth's Ben Wu was one of many visitors to the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Berlin in July. As part of Team Fish, he took first place in a regional championship tournament, with a cash prize that was outmatched by the glee of meeting aforementioned director Yoshi-P.
Ben Wu (top row, second from right) from Australian Team Fish pictured along with Naoki Yoshida (top row, far right), known as Yoshi-P. (Supplied: Square Enix)
A retired competitive player in shooters like Counter-Strike, Valorant and Overwatch, Wu started playing Final Fantasy XIV during the pandemic, a period when the game's player count briefly overtook that of World of Warcraft.
Wu initially struggled to find other Australian players, participating in international tournaments with one local friend.
It wasn't until the Oceania server's arrival that he could marshal enough Australian players to field any team, let alone a winning one.
But its competitive scene still remains smaller than other regions.
Square Enix's unusual criteria means Oceania is grouped with Europe for fan festival tournaments. Wu found Australia's remoteness from other competitors, including the tightly interconnected network of European teams, gave Team Fish a surprising advantage against their rivals.
"We were able to hide our strategy from European teams by practising against North American and Japanese teams. We didn't only do that because we wanted to hide our strategy, it's almost impossible to practise with the Europeans," he says, explaining the high internet latency that makes executing rapid decisions impossible.
"We had to play on the North American and Japanese servers to get our practice.
"We weren't used to having low latency, so it felt like our training weights were removed when we played on stage."
Final Fantasy XIV contains multitudes, accumulated over its 16-year existence. In-game there are the high-level competitions experienced by Wu, and the Limsa Extreme community's relaxed hangouts at the Aetheryte Plaza.
Outside it, there are real-life cosplay, sticker exchanges and entertaining spin-offs like the Taskmaster parody game show held at PAX Australia.
One player jokes it's not the gameplay that keeps them coming back; it's the community. Murouchi agrees Final Fantasy XIV's sense of player ownership is crucial.
"Players tend to feel Final Fantasy XIV as their own game. It's not an import from Japan: it's your game," Murouchi says.
"Because you don't need to visit Japanese servers or US servers, I believe people can feel Final Fantasy XIV is their home."