Balmung, Solutions to fix your.. population balancing.

We kinda went over this countless times in different threads and I'm sure SE went over this aswell before they decided that the best solution was to lock Balmung.

But here it goes, let me adress all the points seperatly:

1) Merging - Means they'll run into a lot of problems. Starting with housing (who keeps that Shirogane Ward 1, Plot 30 house? The FC from Balmung or the person from whatever low-popo server you're preying on?) all the way to characters with the same name (again: who has to change?)

2) Incentives - its honestly sad to me that you're bringin this up... considering that your initial reason for unlocking Balmung was "I want to play with my friends" - if being able to do that isnt motivation enough for you to switch server, I dont know what will be... specially considering that we're having several servers with RP-communities now, dont we? Mateus as alternative for NA, Omega for EU. Maybe not your "Balmung-atmosphere", I dont know, never played on any of those servers - but if thats worth more to you than friends you've made your choice.

3) Crossworld-Features - They've already said they're working on that. It just takes time.

And frankly: Locking the server to get it down to healthy (for the hardware) numbers worked once. This time they probably locked it to keep it at those healthy numbers.

Saying you cant leave is bullshit - you can leave at anytime, even free of charge. You just dont want to - thats okay if thats your choice, obviously.
But keep in mind that an overpopulated Balmung is more harmful because of server-stability for the wholer data-center than a locked one.

Split Balmung, and all that will happen is everyone will flock to one server again to recreate the problem.

Merging low population servers (which have all had a boost in population since incentives were put in place, leaving fewer that are truly "low") just punishes everyone else for Balmung's problem.

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Originally Posted by JohnnyDevo

Well if population is a problem you could always police all the breeding that happens at the quicksand.

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There have been several groups dressing up like officers, attempting to do this very thing.

It's quite humorous.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

I'm reasonably certain a significant chunk of what happens there can't actually result in anything being bred.

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Well, they are the 'races' of Eorzea, and not the 'species'. So Speciation hasn't occurred. Thus by the definition of the word used to describe them, they can all interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
(For those unfamiliar. A Horse and a Donkey can interbreed and give birth to a Mule. But Mules are infertile, thus, this is the line between One species and the next.)

Curiously asking at Fanfest, the devs seem to be very, "Whatever you imaaaagine!" (While waving their hands in the air) about it and don't really want to answer it.

I'd say one solution needs to be considered. Lock out Balmung to new characters/transfers. For 10 years straight. Only unlock it before then if the population dips below 100 (yes, one hundred) active players. Because it'll have taken that extreme amount of drop to unlock the server, Balmung will be seen as dead, and thus people will not flock to it as hard.

Plus, by forcing everyone onto new servers, you help fuel them. For example Louisoix has greatly benefitted from this (we've now stabilised as a "Normal server", though we did have a period as "preferred"). Lock out standard servers to new characters (only paid transfers, which are price hiked to £250 per character to help make them unattractive), keep congested as they are. Then you funnel people into the preferred/new realms ONLY (with only the most extremely dedicated moving to standard servers).

Very extreme scenario, but one that I daresay could be very effective.

Forcing people to move isn't going to end well. There's a real risk that a lot of people would just quit the game altogether if they were placed somewhere other than where they decided to settle. Server merges also aren't likely to end well, either - especially with the way in which houses and apartments are implemented in this game.

My only real concern with Balmung these days is that a significant portion of players who don't role-play seem to have moved elsewhere or quit. As someone who likes to dabble in every aspect of the game that makes me sad.

Proper Incentive is the main reason people arent leaving.

Free transfer is great and all but having to leave and start from scratch is not worth it. They mentioned the ability to transfer your FC but that never came through.

Losing all that progress in the workshop, credits, house, decorations, etc. the small gil they offer for your loss is not worth it. Rather deal with the queue time than rebuild everything.

Every time I see one of these threads inevitably one of the 'solutions' is something to the effect of 'let's take resources from smaller servers so that our overcrowded one can be even bigger'. It rather irks those of us that play on smaller servers on your data cluster and reinforces this negative image of Balmung natives as being self-centered. I realize not all of you are but the vocal group that makes forum threads is eerily similar in their demands. Just look at the kind of responses you're getting, mockery and hostility mixed with thoughtful disagreement.

Seriously we understand you're unhappy but for just a moment think about the rest of us. Why is merging us okay but splitting you is bad? Why should houses be given away free when Preferred worlds are being promoted to new players, shouldn't they get a chance too? It's not like the idea of locking overpopulated servers is one that SE just came up with, Blizz was doing it better than ten years ago when I was playing WoW. It's a tried and tested method of spreading out the playerbase and it's clearly working for them.

As for cross server functionality, I can get behind that. It's one of the real shining wins of Eureka for me how parties work in there. If they could bring functionality similar to that to the game at large, I'd appreciate it.

The only real solution to the Balmung problem has already been said time and time again and the devs refuse to do it: Designate another server as the official RP server and offer transfers.

You do that and a massive chunk of the population on Balmung will leave. Not only that, label Balmung as the official raiding server or something and that chunk of the community will stay. Done. Problem solved.

I'm not kidding. Mateus became another secondary RP server but the overwhelming community on Balmung weren't going anywhere because Roleplayers thrive on their community. Their friends, their enemies, the FCs and events around them. Unless everyone has a reason to leave, they never will. Designate an official RP server and they WILL go.

Personally I don't think SE have to do anything at all. They've given incentives, but if players don't like them that's on them. Realistically though, I'm starting to think no matter what incentives SE gave, players still wouldn't leave. In fact you pretty much implied that yourself:

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Originally Posted by AriaXIV

People dont want to leave and flatout wont because they love the server community or have alot of friends there and are fearful they will never be able to get back.

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From what I understand the population of Balmung is lower than it used to be so it's probably not such an issue for SE any more. From a systems management perspective, SE will want to have all their servers with exactly the same configuration. It's a lot easier to do upgrades/maintenance if everything has the same configuration/hardware.

As others have said a server split for Balmung might be the only realistic option if it gets too big again. But no matter how they do that, lottery, preference, whatever, people will be unhappy. By locking the server at the current size they can probably sustain it indefinitely without needing to resort to drastic measures like splitting. So really they're doing you a huge favour by locking it.

The biggest complaint from Balmung players seems to be the lack of housing. Well that might be an issue there, but the other *65* servers are all doing just fine with that. Some have more than others, but getting a house is a realistic possibility on every other server.

So really, you have to decide on staying on a disproportionate sized server, or moving to any of the other ones where it's more balanced. That's up to you to choose.

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Originally Posted by Rhysati

The only real solution to the Balmung problem has already been said time and time again and the devs refuse to do it: Designate another server as the official RP server and offer transfers.

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I don't see how that's a solution? That server gets overloaded then and it's then SE's fault for actually designating a server. What about when they then lock the "official" RP server? Better start sharpening your pitchfork...

Numbers 1 and 2: or we could just leave Balmung locked.

Number 3: new features take time to develop. They said they're working on it. Give it time. Of course also make sure they know the updates are still needed / wanted.