Moving from US to NZ, have some questions related to tech/digital stuff

The Dude With Herpes

Alrighty, so without going into a long thing, my wife has been offered a job in New Zealand (Dunedin, specifically) that we've decided to accept and move our family there. We're moving from Utah in the US.

We took a trip out there recently, to make sure it's somewhere we wanted to move, and while there I made sure to take note of tech stuff to see what would work without issues and what I might need to figure out a different option for.

I'm not sure if there are many folks around these parts that are in NZ, or thereabouts, but hopefully I can get at least a few answers/tips.

I'll say that we've got family living near us now, that for other things we already intend on using their address(es) for some things where we need to keep a US address for, so for things that need a billing address, we have already got a way to have that while overseas.

First, as far as I can tell, virtually any modern tech can work fine there with just a basic wall adapter. Anything that has a 120/240 adapter (which is almost everything that isn't an appliance as far as I can tell) is good to go. We had zero problems with our phones, laptop, switches, etc. But is there anything that I might not be thinking of here? If we were to just move all of our stuff, like TV, PC's, consoles, etc, should there be any issue with keeping what we've got and using the wall adapters? I know we'll have to get all new appliances, and that's fine.

Second, though we're assuming we'll be staying long term, I'd rather avoid (at least initially) switching all of our accounts to NZ ones, for things like streaming services, Nintendo Online, PS+, and so on; I've never used a VPN, but my vague understanding of them is that we should be able to just have a VPN set up on our router that says we're still in Utah (or wherever in the US), so that we should still see our normal content and such. Is that about right? Is there anything I might not be thinking of?

Third, this is more specific to a single game, and not tech, but I'm gonna throw it in here anyway; in FFXIV, while I can transfer my character to an oceanic server, and don't really have any issues with doing so, aside from losing my house in game, if I were to stay on US servers, does anyone know what the latency is like if I were to do so? They seem to have pretty good internet in NZ, but no amount of bandwidth is going to make it faster to connect to servers located in the US, so if it's exceptionally bad, I'm totally fine transferring, but if folks know what it is like in practice, prior to them opening up the Oceanic data center, it'd be nice to know.

Fourth, every place we stayed that had fiber, had with seemed like a standard modem/router, but I was wondering if that was a required thing, or if I could just bring over my Nighthawk and use it instead. I didn't look close enough to see if those beige boxes that seemed to be for wifi and fiber, were combined ONT's with the router, or if they even have ONT's there or the infrastructure is just different. The wifi quality of those places we stayed wasn't fantastic and they all used those boxes (they were all Spark, for what its worth, but I didn't notice branding on the boxes), and none seemed to have bought higher than basic speeds, but I know those are available, and I'm just curious if I can use my current router as the modem too. I've looked up a few services there and it SOUNDS like I can, but I thought I'd just ask to be sure, from people who have actual knowledge.

I think that's all I've got for now. I'll add more questions if I think of any later, and I'd love some advice/tips or whatever on any of these things, or things maybe I haven't thought about at all.

BahamutZERO

Re: FF14: Most of the oceanic region players played on NA before they added the oceanic server because it was better ping than the EU servers and the only other option was the JP servers where they don't speak a ton of english. The ping will definitely be worse but people managed so it can't be completely unplayable.