Splitting up friends defeats the spirit of an MMO. Please reverse this server mess.

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Both have the highest active player population in Aether in the information I could find, with 19k and 13k. I would suggest that this isn't likely a coincidence.

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The biggest problem with the population of Balmung and Mateus is the activity. Theyre currently sitting at 30k players combined, but 16k of those arent active. Theyre alts and people who rush to make level 1's to have them on balmung in case they want to do things.

Conversely, the population of Greg, Cactuar and Jenova add up to about the same number (those are the 3rd, 4th and 6th largest servers in the world) but have ~22k active players vs Balteus's 14k. Thats the ENTIRE POPULATION of Jenova in activity difference.

Balmung and mateus have the worst activity to population ratios in the world, but the metric they used was total pop.

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Originally Posted by Wobi

They are never going to designate official RP servers and over if the did if they picked any other servers than the ones the player base already created it would be a complete dumpster fire as the community would be outraged. As for your idea on low-pop server incentives most people are big fans of the Road to 60 buff, but I’d support a toggle to remove it if the player does not want it. Adding exclusive mounts/glamours would not work as the older players would have no way of obtaining it, and would of course be very upset with SE. The buff hurts no one, so it’s not a bad move on their part. No matter what they decide to do someone will be upset at them, I cannot say I blame them for playing it safe and doing what will benefit the majority of the players.

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Aye, that's a good point. Ideally it would be an incentive that's more impactful, but not something that will upset anyone if they don't have access to it. But I think unique rewards have the most impact. A little extra gil as a reward for tanks never helped motivate people to tank, but I know several people who leveled tanks to get the unique mounts. Server transfers are a different situation though, but I'm sure there's a good middle ground solution.

But I'm curious, why do you say they will never designate RP servers? It seems like Square has been doing a lot of things specifically to help the RP community, like the RP tag, Estate tags, and many of the furnishings they've added seem solely to help RPers--like the stages for the groups of players who put on theatrical plays in their player homes.

I'm on Balmung and looking forward to possibly getting to RP with those on Mateus. Not everyone has friends split into different world in which case this change is benefitting people such as myself.

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Originally Posted by Azurymber

Part of the fun of an MMO is making friends.

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Let me play Devil's advocate for a moment.

If making friends is the "fun" part of the mmo experience for you they just literally added fun content for you by allowing you to meet and play with multiple servers worth of new ppl and letting you stay with your old friends at no cost and are even giving you free gil if you have a house and want to transfer.

If your friends are also keeping you in the game you can literally just transfer over at no cost to their server instead of being forever alone and sulking angstily in the corner of your current one.

Also just because you have friends on almost every other world on your dc, I doubt this will be an all to common issue. There is no real need to talk to ppl on your own world in this game, much less others, so my guess is cross world stuff is a non issue for the most part for the majority.

I would think a lot of ppl win with the shuffle. Less Balmung lockouts, rp servers are kindda lumped together now it seems making there more for rp players and less annoyance of rp for those who are non rp players. Also if adding more dc reduces server strain that means they can implement a lot of things that ppl have actually been asking for, like Ishgardian housing wards, larger inventories and such. All these restrictions are based on server strain so if you ease the strain you open more options that players have been clamoring for.

So, I cant see how this is something you would be upset about if you stop and think about it for a moment.

People picking between friends/FC's and their statics is not ok. If this wasn't considered in their decision to move worlds out of data centers then the devs are incompetent. I have to move out of Malboro because I do not want to be in a rp data center. I'm not affected by the friends/fc problem, but I am affected by the housing problem. I'll lose my ideal location medium house. I also do not have the inventory space to carry all my furnishings so I'm not sure how I'm going to handle that. If they do not add some more retainers then I will not be able to transfer. Preferably they would add a collection system, but that's probably never going to happen.

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Originally Posted by WellFooled

But I'm curious, why do you say they will never designate RP servers? It seems like Square has been doing a lot of things specifically to help the RP community, like the RP tag, Estate tags, and many of the furnishings they've added seem solely to help RPers--like the stages for the groups of players who put on theatrical plays in their player homes.

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They’ve effectively made Crystal an RP data center but they’ve been careful to actually create an official designation in the 7 (if you count 1.0 era)years the game has existed, I don’t see them starting now. People have a weird fear of RP’ers, it’s honestly silly. No one is going to force you into their RP, and the vast majority of the people that do RP do it in town only, I’ve never encountered it in battle content.

Making a new data center is fine, but it should really be done with new servers. Make Shadowbringers launch servers, give large incentives for players to roll there. People who want to can transfer, the new people SE is expecting with the expanding playerbase (the whole reason they're doing this) can start there, it will take longer for it to become populated but over time, if the player base is expanding as much as they expect it to, it'll fill out to be more in line with other datacenters.

Doing this split after cross-realm duty finder an expansion ago is one thing, but considering that SE literally just gave us cross-realm linkshells maybe two patches ago, means that this was either a really short-sighted decision they thought up after CWLS, or maybe they should have mentioned the incoming tear-apart before putting in even more tools to form cross-realm friendships/networks/etc with.

i agree with this, i had transfered to faerie to have a open server to invite friends to and to keep in contact with my friends on balmung but with this reshuffle ill be seperated from my friends on both faerie and balmung. im leaning on trying to get back on balmung though

I think folks need to understand the greater good of growing this game. They already apologized profusely for needing to do this.
Does it suck? Yeah it does. But they are giving you ample time to consider your move, plus two weeks of free transfer time, reimbursing housing and furnishing costs, etc.
Just gather your friends/raiding team in a discord hash out the details and decide where to go. It's like having to move in the real world. SOmetimes it sucks, sometimes you lose friends sometimes you gain them. But life goes on and you make the best of it and grow from the experience.

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Originally Posted by MicahZerrshia

Let me play Devil's advocate for a moment.

If making friends is the "fun" part of the mmo experience for you they just literally added fun content for you by allowing you to meet and play with multiple servers worth of new ppl and letting you stay with your old friends at no cost and are even giving you free gil if you have a house and want to transfer.

If your friends are also keeping you in the game you can literally just transfer over at no cost to their server instead of being forever alone and sulking angstily in the corner of your current one.

Also just because you have friends on almost every other world on your dc, I doubt this will be an all to common issue. There is no real need to talk to ppl on your own world in this game, much less others, so my guess is cross world stuff is a non issue for the most part for the majority.

I would think a lot of ppl win with the shuffle. Less Balmung lockouts, rp servers are kindda lumped together now it seems making there more for rp players and less annoyance of rp for those who are non rp players. Also if adding more dc reduces server strain that means they can implement a lot of things that ppl have actually been asking for, like Ishgardian housing wards, larger inventories and such. All these restrictions are based on server strain so if you ease the strain you open more options that players have been clamoring for.

So, I cant see how this is something you would be upset about if you stop and think about it for a moment.

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that is not free gil, that is literally, you lost 1 million dollars, have a penny. I want my house and furnishings, not the plot cost returned to me because getting a new house is unlikely, and 3 million gil is not replacing the lost furnishings.

How do people win when you got this to deal with:

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Originally Posted by Barraind

The biggest problem with the population of Balmung and Mateus is the activity. Theyre currently sitting at 30k players combined, but 16k of those arent active. Theyre alts and people who rush to make level 1's to have them on balmung in case they want to do things.

Conversely, the population of Greg, Cactuar and Jenova add up to about the same number (those are the 3rd, 4th and 6th largest servers in the world) but have ~22k active players vs Balteus's 14k. Thats the ENTIRE POPULATION of Jenova in activity difference.

Balmung and mateus have the worst activity to population ratios in the world, but the metric they used was total pop.

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Yeah I do not like being forced to move on a dead data center, losing friends, to keep my house, or move, lose a different set of friends, and have no house.