When Elder Scrolls Online launched it allowed for people to use the North American or European megaserver. This is a standard for MMOs that launch worldwide, because of language differences and vast physical distance that can make playing a bit difficult if you are playing on a server located on another continent. What most Europeans realized soon after launch is that the European megaserver is actually located in United States. Zenimax told us that the reason for this was that megaserver infrastructure is very complicated and for the time being they had to have all the servers in the same place. Four months later Europeans will finally be able to play on Europe based servers. The move is happening at 1:00PM BST (8:00AM EDT) on July 30th. Move is rather complicated because it is supposed to transfer all of your characters and all their data. It will take about nine hours, but may be extended. After the transfer is complete people that have characters on the European megaservers should continue playing as if nothing really happened. The only thing they should notice is increased performance. This means less lag in PvP and during PvE combat (both of which were quite common). We, here at MMORPG Life, welcome this transfer because we are based in Europe and our game experience suffered due to the servers being in the US. We wish this happened within the first month after launch, as was initially promised, but better late than never.
You can read the official announcement here and here are some of the most common questions and answers concerning the transfer:
Will anything change for me when the migration is complete?
Nope! All your characters will be just the way you left them before the move. There won’t be a patch to download, either.
The migration seems to be during European primetime. Why is that?
Moving everything over to our new datacenter is a complex operation involving a large number of our engineers and support staff in Europe and North America. It’s important to us that everyone we need for the process is awake, ready, and available. This will help us make the transition as smooth as possible.
I’m European, but created characters on the North American megaserver. Can I move them to the new European megaserver?
No. The migration will only affect characters that already exist on the European megaserver, and no transfers are available right now.