How long until transfers to the big servers return?

Transferring in on big servers would be bad.. Imagine how many returning players will come back to play come 4.0.. That means logins could easily DOUBLE from their current mark right now.

I am surprised people dont move out some. Then again, if they do an open world pvp server.. that will get some attention.

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Originally Posted by SuzakuCMX

Wasn't Mateus trying to become the second RP server?

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While the "come to Mateus! :)" posts come from good intentions, I don't see a significant number of rpers taking them up on their offer. Mateus is entirely too dead to be a tempting reason to leave the biggest server. I'd rather be locked with the current batch of people on Balmung than transfer to a place that has a fraction of roleplay population, let alone regular ol player population.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

And no - I'm not transfering off. I would only transfer off if my EB partner and best friend linkshell transfers off. And they will only transfer off if their friends will transfer off. And their friends will only transfer off if THEIR friends will transfer off.

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This is how I feel most people here are weighing in on it.

As long as Balmung and Greg depopulate some and stop crashing the entire aether data center, it can stay closed forever as far as I'm concerned.

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Originally Posted by Rokke

Mateus is entirely too dead to be a tempting reason to leave the biggest server.

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I understand that some people like small communities, but there is a reason the mega servers are as big as they are. It's a classic "city vs country" debate.

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

But, from what I'm hearing, in Stormblood we're getting cross-realm (so datacentre wide) friends lists (though don't take me for gospel on that, it's interpretation from what I've been reading on the forums).

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Cross-realm PF and friends list is a step in the right direction for sure, but there is still quite a few things you cannot share with friends across server. Correct me if I'm wrong, but activities like maps, higher floors of PotD (I have never tried to cross-server this, but I assume it doesn't work), hunts, miscellanous world adventures, housing, and joint crafting and gathering can only be done with people on your server. It is a fair amount of things to not be able to do with friends who are on different servers. I suppose if you only want to do dungeons, raids, and primals cross-server stuff is pretty good though since I know not everyone does the extra things.

Maybe things like cross-world mailing and cross-world FC housing would be a good addition. It would be nice to have somewhere to stand and goof with friends from different servers that isn't a timed dungeon.

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Originally Posted by SomeRandomHuman

As long as Balmung and Greg depopulate some and stop crashing the entire aether data center, it can stay closed forever as far as I'm concerned.

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Agreed. The longer the better. With the PF updated to be cross-world, there is no reason to flock to these high population servers.

If SE would designate some RP servers, like 2-4...I am sure the situation would get better a lot quicker.

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Originally Posted by Iromi

Agreed. The longer the better. With the PF updated to be cross-world, there is no reason to flock to these high population servers.

If SE would designate some RP servers, like 2-4...I am sure the situation would get better a lot quicker.

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Yup. I won't move from Balmung to some other "Unofficial Server" just to have this nonsense happen again. The only way I would move is if SE made and Official RP Server with rules in place to protect said community which is impossible to do really. So in this rock and a hard place situation I'm staying put.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

I understand that some people like small communities, but there is a reason the mega servers are as big as they are. It's a classic "city vs country" debate.

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I have alts on Faerie, which is significantly smaller than Balmung but doesn't feel empty. I made an character on Mateus to see what it was like when the suggestions to move RP there popped up. Seeing super empty housing areas made me sad. I'd honestly rather not have a house because they're all full then be one of 3 houses in a ward.

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Originally Posted by ErikMynhier

Yup. I won't move from Balmung to some other "Unofficial Server" just to have this nonsense happen again. The only way I would move is if SE made and Official RP Server with rules in place to protect said community which is impossible to do really. So in this rock and a hard place situation I'm staying put.

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Even without special rules, I'd consider moving to a server officially tagged with (RP). I don't really know why they haven't done it. Even smaller games like TERA had one.

Sorry, but the majority of us aren't leaving. We like the large population.

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Originally Posted by DamianFatale

Sorry, but the majority of us aren't leaving. We like the large population.

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No one is saying anyone has to move, but people are going to have to pick their poison. Either you have to deal with not having friends (or new people in general) join the server or you have to move.

Not directing this at you... your post just had a good jumping off point.

Honestly I see it as a good chance to start a new place for role-play and such. If a FC were to fully pack up and move together to a new server they might even be able to collectively buy a mansion and build up a good foundation within the first day or so, split up the items they can take, shove em in retainers and practically move house. Yet I do agree, a server that is basically tearing at the seams because of population needs to remain locked.

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Originally Posted by AlphaFox

Honestly I see it as a good chance to start a new place for role-play and such. If a FC were to fully pack up and move together to a new server they might even be able to collectively buy a mansion and build up a good foundation within the first day or so, split up the items they can take, shove em in retainers and practically move house. Yet I do agree, a server that is basically tearing at the seams because of population needs to remain locked.

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Some people just want everything based around them. Namely everyone that's saying "I want to play with my friends" and/or "I'm too invested to move" while wanting the server unlocked.

They're too selfish to realize that those two servers alone have crashed or otherwise broke the whole aether data center several times and inconvenienced everyone in the whole center. Do they care? Nope. All they care about is everything being convenient for them.

To be honest I feel like it's only a matter of time until they add cross-server friendslist, which will inevitably lead to cross-server linkshells and free companies. Though it's not the same as having the person on the same map you are outside duties, I do feel like eventually we'll be allowed to visit other worlds with our characters as "guests" (as in going to a different server but not being able to use it's markets or trade with players) and our "home" world will be just for the housing and market preferences.

They hinted a couple times on interviews an interest on cross server activities such as linkshells and free companies. It might suck to have blocked servers now, but I have the feeling it won't be an issue in the (near??) future.

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Originally Posted by DevilsDontFly

It might suck to have blocked servers now, but I have the feeling it won't be an issue in the (near??) future.

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Well, they could just pull a Guild Wars and let you allow to log into any server with any character - And to solve the issue of duplicate names, you put the server name behind the regular name when not on the native server and the name is taken on the target server.

But then again, how would they gain money from server transfers then? Nah. They're gonna do it differently.

As of the recent ffxivcensus.com numbers for active players (May 2017), these are the numbers for the 6 closed worlds, their data centers, and the EU data center (CHAOS).

https://i.imgur.com/A0dOz8e.png
Note: I've contacted the owners of ffxivcensus.com. Atomos has 0 as there was a 0 for the population so it doesn't appear as Atomos had a typo on the webowners' end. Hopefully Atomos' population will appear in June 2017 census.

EU Data Center (CHAOS) - Getting additional new worlds: Cerberus (11k), Lich (6.8k), Moogle (10k), Odin (11k), Phoenix (10k), Ragnarok (11k), Shiva 10.8k), and Zodiark (7k). "All worlds on the EU Data center are presently experiencing high levels of player congestion" which most likely points to a number of around 7k.

Japanese Data Centers (worlds getting suspended transfers and character creation): Elemental’s Tonberry is not making as much issue as it is 11k but the active character populations of the data center are very uniform. Gaia’s Bahamut is over 11k and it is a more contrasting bump to the rest of the worlds so there is much more room for people to move. Mana has 3 ‘spikes’ in the 3 worlds it has closed off (Chocobo -12k, Mandragora - 10k, and Shinryu 12k).

North American Data Centers (worlds getting suspended transfers and character creation): Aether has closed Balmung (18k) and Gilgamesh (16k) while the other worlds are much much lower. The next world higher active populations are in either Sargatanas or Cactuar (8.5k). The lowest worlds have active populations around 2.5k and 3.5k. 7k compared to 18k? Or 16k? Yeah. Um. Not happening soon.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Well, they could just pull a Guild Wars and let you allow to log into any server with any character - And to solve the issue of duplicate names, you put the server name behind the regular name when not on the native server and the name is taken on the target server.

But then again, how would they gain money from server transfers then? Nah. They're gonna do it differently.

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Not meant as an attack or anything, but how exactly would that solve the problem? If the whole argument about wanting the server unlocked again is to give other people access to the "community" you have on Balmung, I cant see how allowing this server-flux would help to have less people on Balmung? Wouldnt it even be more people logging onto Balmung/Gilgamesh/other high populated servers, now that they can? And if the servers can only handle so many people at once, wouldnt that lead to even more server-crashes, long loadingtimes, NPCs getting burried in PCs?
It also sounds a bit like an... impractical solution for the single player aswell - if I want to check if my friends are online, I currently log into my character, check my friendslist and can then determine whos around and who isnt - with this solution I would have to check several servers, right? Or even if I get a menu to check across servers for certain non-instanced stuff, I'd still have to gather all of them on ONE server.

I've never played GW and maybe that solution works great there, but I do believe that a lot of times a solution works in one game because it was designed with that solution in mind - unless I missunderstand how this is working, I cant imagine it in FFXIV. Seems rather inconvenient and wont help to decrease the active population on the overpopulated servers, quite the contarary. Looking at all those replies here, one thing becomes perfectly clear: A lot of Balmung people arent willing to leave and there are also still people who'd like to get into a server that is just completly stuffed. If they cant move together, why would they log into a different server together? The number of active players would only rise with this "solution" and would do more harm than good. I mean, after all the problem isnt the amount of characters created on the world, but those that are actually active - a character thats created but never used shouldnt put any stress on the server, a logged in one does.

As I go down this thread I'm reminded how lucky I am that I decided to get off my but an move all my alts here when I did. I have my RP main on Bal sure, but I had a raider, a main crafter, and a few play around types that were well spaced among 4 other servers. In march I just figured BAL was diverse enough and just decided to consolidate all together. Sold my homes, bought some allagen coins and things and moved them all over.


EDIT: Before panties are wadded, I sold my homes by letting their timers run out and got my money back.

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Originally Posted by Rokke

While the "come to Mateus! :)" posts come from good intentions, I don't see a significant number of rpers taking them up on their offer. Mateus is entirely too dead to be a tempting reason to leave the biggest server.

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Anecdotal evidence, but I've seen a bit of an uptick in population growth recently, and definitely an increase in RP crowns floating around. No competition for a big server or anything, I imagine, but still, not as dead as it was when I started.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Not meant as an attack or anything, but how exactly would that solve the problem?

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You wouldn't lose anything when logging into another server, much unlike transferring. That's one of the main deterrents why people don't want to move off - You lose house, gil, contacts etc. If you could just log into any server freely, you can just spontaneously decide that your FC will play on Mateus that day to circumvent congestion queues and then the entire FC will play on that server that day. If you lose your friends, house, gil etc in the process, nobody's gonna go elsewhere, people will take the queue instead. Even if it's a queue of 3000. If they could log freely? They'd see 3000 and would just log elsewhere until the queues are lower and their FC and friends would as well because why not? It's easy, free, convenient and once things have slowed down, they can log into their other server again. That greatly helps fighting the congestion issue during high activity times.

Likewise, if there's an RP event planned, you can just go:"And if Balmung is congested, we'll hold it on Server X that day instead." And everyone who wanted to participate can follow. Right now? Not possible. The event makers and the players all need to have characters on the same server. And this isn't a very alt-friendly game. Similar goes if you want to play with friends on a different server without sacrificing the friends you already have. And while cross-server technology can help doing instanced content together, sharing the same worldspace is still important.

As for the friend list, it would ideally remain similar as now. You'd have your list and it would show the name of the character, which world he's native to and which world he's currently playing on.

The main issue with that solution is confusion - You'd have lots of duplicate names with their unique server tags to keep them intact, something GW2 solved by requiring a unique name across all servers, which isn't do-able here anymore. But with cross-world technology, that's pretty much what happens anyway, because cross-world technology has to do the exact same thing. If you join such a group, it already does show name and server. And cross-server friendlist will have to do the same when it comes.

It cannot help that some servers are more popular than others of course. But it does greatly help the issue with overlong queue times during events and the servers crashing due to overload, because the higher the congestion, the more inclined people will be to temporarily evade elsewhere so they can actually play. Or even permanently, if they happen to find cool people elsewhere in the process.


That all said: As EU player, the highest queue I get on Balmung during my time tends to be a few seconds long. Even during the last housing rush, I could get online in only 5 minutes. And I have an alt on EU servers for latency issues. The topic doesn't concern me personally. I just think that their current approach is ineffective.

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Originally Posted by Jaleyn

RP community won't do that, no point. Would have to be a second RP community not on balmung gathering on a server for that to happen. Sqaure designating a server would speed up the process.

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Well I guess you're screwed then. The RP Community can either brave the crossing to a new server, to create a new settlement or stay in the highly dense Metropolis that can't support anymore more members.

http://gallery.mmoguildsites.com/img232603.png

The transfers wont come back until the large servers depopulate. The large servers probably wont depopulate until the following things are met.

1. Data center wide market boards: The large servers have more stable and cheaper economies. Easier to play when you don't need to farm it yourself.
2. Cross server friends lists: Talk to your friends across the data center
3. Cross server world grouping: Join your friends across the data center to do hunts on any server. *this would require a much more rigid spawn schedule not affected by kill times and possibly a daily lockout on killing a hunt mob*

The large servers still have more going for them which is why people keep asking when transfers are coming back. Not enough has been done to take away the advantage for the population to want to spread.

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Originally Posted by Rokke

While the "come to Mateus! :)" posts come from good intentions, I don't see a significant number of rpers taking them up on their offer. Mateus is entirely too dead to be a tempting reason to leave the biggest server. I'd rather be locked with the current batch of people on Balmung than transfer to a place that has a fraction of roleplay population, let alone regular ol player population.

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It's not about people moving off Balmung to RP: it's about players who want a larger RP community having to go to Mateus because Balmung is now locked. That means new players who are looking for an RP server or current players who don't have a big enough RP community on their current server.

SE needs to tell everyone on BAL and GIL that the servers are going to be deleted in X (30? 60? 90?) days. All characters from those servers can transfer to A, B, C, D, or E and should click (link) to specify their preferred server by X date. As compensation for the inconvenience, A, B, C and D rewards are being offered to players who actively participate in the server rebalancing program. All characters that have not been assigned a realm by their player before X (date) will be moved to a new server via random selection.

By giving ample time, SE would allow communities (RP, LGBTQ, Raiders, etc.) to decide where they want to go. By offering rewards that are obtained by actively being a participant in solving this problem, they could reduce backlash and make the transfer process less frightening and more productive.

This is probably not going to be a popular solution, but in theory it would end the problem.

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Originally Posted by Katryn

This is probably not going to be a popular solution, but in theory it would end the problem.

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So would a complete server split but that's not a good way to fix things either. That's about as horrible a solution as splitting the worlds.

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Originally Posted by Katryn

SE needs to tell everyone on BAL and GIL that the servers are going to be deleted in X (30? 60? 90?) days.

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yeah, that shit storm would reach historic levels. "Now that we have let you all pay to transfer to these servers, we are going to forcibly move you off them because we let you all pay to transfer to these servers" Good luck with that

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Originally Posted by Edewen

yeah, that shit storm would reach historic levels. "Now that we have let you all pay to transfer to these servers, we are going to forcibly move you off them because we let you all pay to transfer to these servers" Good luck with that

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With the introduction of the World Transfer Service, there may be cases where players are requested to transfer to other Worlds due to fluctuations in population. We may also consider the splitting or merger of Worlds. Because of this, there may be instances where players who have used the World Transfer Service are requested to move to a different World. Please note that in such cases, applications for World transfers cannot be canceled or refunded.

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http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...nsfer_service/

Not saying people wouldn't be upset, but they were warned.

i'm guessing no time in the near future problem is that well in balmungs case it's all role players how many other heavy rp server are out there on na data centers? just balmung and gilgamesh right?

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...nsfer_service/

Not saying people wouldn't be upset, but they were warned.

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The inevitable shitstorm just... wouldn't be worth it financially. They risk losing a substantial amount of customers considering they're pissing off the two largest servers in the entire game. Furthermore, it wouldn't accomplish anything. Those who did stay, would just congregate on a new server. Sargatanas has a fairly decent following and all the RPers will move whatever new server is designated the RP server, and bam, you have two new mega servers again.

While I agree Balmung and Gilgamesh needed to be locked. Their timing is horrendous. Why wait to implement all these incentives? No one is going to leave when they're still charging $18 and you'll lose your house should you have one. Had this been done months ago, with all the perks implemented immediately, a sizable portion may have left before Stormblood.

They did this lock really half-assed. As many have said previously they REALLY should have done the transfer incentives the moment the servers were locked, that way before SB drops, server population would have at least partially balanced out. With the current rout they're going, launch is going to be quite a shit-storm.

I'd love to transfer off but I don't wanna deal with blacklisting/reporting RMT every time I go into a main city.

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Originally Posted by Slirith

I'd love to transfer off but I don't wanna deal with blacklisting/reporting RMT every time I go into a main city.

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This is such a boon on the megaservers...

I almost forgot RMT existed.

I created a few alts on Cactuar, the last few weeks, and the population there seems to be booming. Green sprouts EVERYWHERE, and Limsa and New Grid are almost Balmung-like at times, for activity level. Ul'dah, not so much, no big crowds in the Quicksand or on Emerald in front of the Ruby Road Exchange.

Efficient way to make your game go stagnant I suppose, papa nurgle would be proud.

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Originally Posted by ValamLym

Efficient way to make your game go stagnant I suppose, papa nurgle would be proud.

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So locking a overpopulated server and wanting other servers to fill up will make the game go stagnant? That says more about the community then the game.

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Originally Posted by Lexia

So locking a overpopulated server and wanting other servers to fill up will make the game go stagnant? That says more about the community then the game.

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Not immediatly, but slowly. You'll certainly tear a massive chunk out of new player influx. Face it, people enjoy playing with friends, when they can't they wont go to a diff server, they'll quit.

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Originally Posted by ValamLym

Not immediatly, but slowly. You'll certainly tear a massive chunk out of new player influx. Face it, people enjoy playing with friends, when they can't they wont go to a diff server, they'll quit.

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So you never made any other friends or other connections in the game from what I assuming are your RL friends you referring to?

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Originally Posted by ValamLym

Not immediatly, but slowly. You'll certainly tear a massive chunk out of new player influx. Face it, people enjoy playing with friends, when they can't they wont go to a diff server, they'll quit.

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I hear that only friends of players on Balmung or Gilgamesh are coming to the game...confirm or deny? :rolleyes:

On a more serious note, those two are hardly the only servers with healthy populations, and hardly the only servers new players coming to the game will want to go to.

The idea that the game will live or die based on how just two servers are handled is just silly.

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Originally Posted by Lexia

So you never made any other friends or other connections in the game from what I assuming are your RL friends you referring to?

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I'll ignore the attempts at making it personal.

That's not what I'm hinting at, people need an anchor to keep them in the game, take that away and they'll just drift away. Very few people look at a MMORPG and think ''I'll hop into that to make friends'' their friend invites them to play it with them and that's how they make your ''new connections''

I can count the people I know that joined a MMO alone on one hand. There's always someone they follow or join with.

Its like locking Argent Dawn.

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Originally Posted by ValamLym

I'll ignore the attempt at making it personal.

That's not what I'm hinting at, people need an anchor to keep them in the game, take that away and they'll just drift away. Very few people look at a MMORPG and think ''I'll hop into that to make friends'' their friend invites them to play it with them and that's how they make your ''new connections''

I can count the people I know that joined a MMO alone on one hand. There's always someone they follow or join with.

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However for the sake of the game's health long-run we might need to say to those friends of Balmung/Gilga players "Alright, either start on a server without your friend, get your friend to move with you, or don't play at all", and leave it at that ulimatum. The fact they've stopped transfers to that server which gave them a decent chunk of change means the server is (most likely) on the brink of collapse. Else why would they shut off that revenue source? The ultimatum sucks, but it seems it was required.

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Originally Posted by ValamLym

I'll ignore the attempt at making it personal.

That's not what I'm hinting at, people need an anchor to keep them in the game, take that away and they'll just drift away. Very few people look at a MMORPG and think ''I'll hop into that to make friends'' their friend invites them to play it with them and that's how they make your ''new connections''

I can count the people I know that joined a MMO alone on one hand. There's always someone they follow or join with.

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Not everyone that plays the game joins cause of friends, and I should know I as I am one of them I don't have any RL friends that play this game. Not now or when the game launched, there also some people in my FC in the same boat. There are also people in the FC that joined cause of friends but have since quit so the whole anchor thing does not always apply.

My FC is GTFO'in Balmung as soon as the free transfers come into play. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of small FC's do the same.