As of April 2021, there are a total of 68 servers (also known as worlds) for Final Fantasy XIV. These are split across 8 data centers located in Japan, North America and Europe. This is a different setup to what 1.0 had whereby servers were not recommended for different regions and you could often find yourself playing with people from all over the world. It does mean you will have more people available during peak times, however less available if you play at odd times.
Players are free to create characters on any server in any data center, providing a server is not closed to new characters due to being over capacity. It is possible for players to transfer characters from one server to another by doing a world transfer, but there is a fee for this. The fee is sometimes waived if transferring from a high population server to a low population server.
These days it is possible to visit other worlds and play with friends directly on their server. The same feature will soon allow you to play with people on other data centers as of the Endwalker expansion.
New Worlds
The server structure for new characters only is below. They are named after summons and iconic monsters found within the Final Fantasy series.
Japanese Data Centers
| Elemental | Gaia | Mana |
| Aegis | Alexander | Anima |
| Atomos | Bahamut | Asura |
| Carbuncle | Durandal | Belias |
| Garuda | Fenrir | Chocobo |
| Gungnir | Ifrit | Hades |
| Kujata | Ridill | Ixion |
| Ramuh | Tiamat | Mandragora |
| Tonberry | Ultima | Masamune |
| Typhon | Valefor | Pandaemonium |
| Unicorn | Yojimbo | Shinryu |
| Zeromus | Titan |
North American Data Centers
| Aether | Primal | Crystal |
| Adamantoise | Behemoth | Balmung |
| Cactuar | Excalibur | Brynhildr |
| Faerie | Exodus | Coeurl |
| Gilgamesh | Famfrit | Diabolos |
| Jenova | Hyperion | Goblin |
| Midgardsormr | Lamia | Malboro |
| Sargatanas | Leviathan | Mateus |
| Siren | Ultros | Zalera |
European Data Centers
| Chaos | Light |
| Cerberus | Lich |
| Louisoix | Odin |
| Moogle | Phoenix |
| Omega | Shiva |
| Ragnarok | Twintania |
| Spriggan | Zodiark |
Legacy Worlds
Legacy Worlds are defined as those which players with Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 characters were able to transfer to at the beginning of A Realm Reborn. New players can still join these should they choose. Legacy worlds are named after powerful weapons from the Final Fantasy series.
| JP Data Center | NA/EU Data Center |
| Aegis | Balmung |
| Durandal | Excalibur |
| Gungnir | Hyperion |
| Masamune | Sargatanas |
| Ridill | Ragnarok |
A History of Legacy Worlds
Legacy worlds weren’t always named after weapons as they are now. Originally Final Fantasy XIV launched with 17 worlds; which was reduced to 10 after a poor launch forced server merges. The original servers were named after towns featured in the first 13 games of the Final Fantasy series.
The details of this server merge is below. It may help some people understand what happened to their original characters if they played before the merge but not since.
| Original | Current |
| Selbina | Ridill |
| Wutai + Gyashl | Masamune |
| Rabanastra + Cornelia | Durandal |
| Melmond + Figaro | Aegis |
| Istory + Mysidia | Gungnir |
| Saronia + Lindblum | Sargatanas |
| Fabul + Besaid | Balmung |
| Trabia + Kashuan | Hyperiod |
| Karnak + Palamecia | Excalibur |
In addition to these merged and renamed servers, a new server called Ragnarok was created. This server was labelled as being recommended for players who were in European timezones. However not every EU player chose to transfer to this world, many were still attached to their original.