A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aerinae

6 PM Primetime Gridania - https://i.imgur.com/p2GSzKT.jpg
6 PM Primetime Kugane - 1. https://i.imgur.com/2r6ONjj.jpg 2. https://i.imgur.com/z1cXsFy.jpg

Compare them to previous screenshots I posted.

---

Uh, huh. Right.

Take a picture of Rhalgr's Reach and Limsa Lominsa during primetime. Not sure why people cherrypick Gridania and Kugane for activity metrics when endgame players have zero incentive to go to either area. (Especially Gridania, like what?)

I have to agree that Gilgamesh is definitely lacking in energy as of late. Seems most people on the server are all 70 and only sign in for raid after reset and kinda just screw off after that. Same for deliveries/roulettes/etc, any incentive to "have" to sign in.

I don't really care, I didn't like how packed the server was before and I was personally going to transfer off, but then I bought a house and things started getting quieter around here. So personally, I like it more.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elkanah

Because our server is locked, you can't create characters. We haven't had gil spammers since HW released. Every now and then, the server allows for another person to create a character, but outside of that, they're non existent on Gilgamesh. Unlike most other servers, where I seem to be flooded with spam tellers.

---

Good. I was just wondering if there were any SE back alley shenanigans going on if RMT spammers were actually still getting in.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

Uh, huh. Right.

Take a picture of Rhalgr's Reach and Limsa Lominsa during primetime. Not sure why people cherrypick Gridania and Kugane for activity metrics when endgame players have zero incentive to go to either area. (Especially Gridania, like what?)

---

This is Gilgamesh at 4:30pm Eastern time. This is Leviathan within 5 minutes of the first screenshot. I know the angling isn't exactly the same, but there's definitely less people, even if I moved down towards the marketboards on Gilgamesh.

I left Gilgamesh, and this character was born there.

Some people have to remember a lot of players left other home servers and migrated to Gilgamesh for the "raid scene" before cross party finder became a thing. So naturally you have a place who has more players that are end-game ready than your traditional server. That's not to say every good player went there, there was the "not-so-good-but-wanna-try" people as well. But even so the allure of if having to go to Gilgamesh for end-game options has been going away for awhile because no one has to migrate for a raid group anymore. So they can stay on Sargatanas or even Mateus. You may even left some long-time friends because you coveted the idea of finishing hard content in the game. However server attachment for a raid might not be larger than friends and familiarity.

The statistics also don't lie. The highest amount of NA savage clears still comes from Gilgamesh. There is also the thriving end-game crafting, because of the high amount of support for end-game it was always a buyer's market. Most end-game gear could be ~20% or more cheaper on Gilgamesh than your typical medium sized server. So many benefits, and of course capacity also played into that.

The problems of it being locked isn't so much the end-game scene. It's more of community issues. As there are many talented end-game free companies on Gilgamesh. It becomes extremely difficult to recruit players with the server locked because all you can do is attempt to poach members, and that should never be a long-term recruitment idea. You can't get bigger realistically, you can only bleed members so much and because of the locked door these FCs lose out on potential talent because it's just not an option. So it hurts the server economy.

Giglamesh was my home server until about 9 months ago when I followed a friend blindly to Balmung. It's a shame to here its in that state. Balmung is in the exact same place. While I hope SE never open up Balmung again. We do suffer from no new players to make the economy be worth anything. The market board on Gilgamesh and Balmung is like day and night. Something I greatly miss. Anyway I hope they open back up Gilgamesh for you and others OP

I'd like to add my +1 here.

My main character is on Gilgamesh, and I help lead a social Free Company. We've found it hard to recruit new members ever since the world locked. Prior to Patch 4.1, major cities lie Limsa and Gridania were absolute ghost towns, which was a really sad sight to see. Even now, with Patch 4.1 up and running, the life of the server is still so much less than it used to be.

For those of you who aren't on Gilg, please try to have some empathy. There are servers on Primal that seem to be approaching our numbers and they're not locked. We're bleeding out players, losing vital connections with friends, and if we want to consider bringing new people to the game, we either have to play cross-world or consider leaving the server we consider home.

It feels as if Gilgamesh was punished just to make sure Balmung wasn't alone when it came to server locks, because as big as we got, we never encountered the same extreme issues (login queues, crashing, etc) as Balmung. Can we please have our world back, SE? There has got to be a better way of encouraging re-distribution other than destroying the community of what used to be an active, healthy world.

Gilgamesh has been slowly losing players and I would love to have it unlocked so new players and friends could join, I think its time to open the server gates.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rokke

Feelings =/= Facts

---

In a social game, feelings matter. The user experience matters. And you don't have to agree with us, but with all due respect, unless you're on Gilgamesh you really can't say what is or is not fact about the state of our server. The available census data is flawed, pulled from a human-made algorithm with external data, leaving plenty of room for error. We don't have access to the true analytics of the world distributions. All we can report on is our user experience as a community, which is exactly what we're doing here.

+1 to unlocking Gilgamesh.

There's nothing stopping people from socialising even if the server is locked. There's a significant number of people still playing on the server - far more than on some other worlds - and there's always someone online at any given time. The stagnation on servers such as Gilgamesh and Balmung isn't linked solely to the lack of new players, it's just a consequence of each server's culture. I remember when Gilgamesh was going to be the 'sister server' to Balmung yet many there decided to drive role-players away and mock them.

Role-players, incidentally, being the sort of players to play even during dry periods in between new patches. So to some extent it's a problem of the server's own design.

I have been on Gilgamesh for a good year or so now, and since the lock was put into place I’ve seen many friends leave for the same reason, they want to play on a server where their friends can join in as well. Yes the cross-world party finder is a thing now, and you can add your friends cross-world now. But that is not the same as being in a Free Company with your friends, and doing more in game socially. Since Gilgamesh was locked, our very active FC slowly dwindled in numbers, as one after another, they transferred so they could play with their IRL friends. I know this is the same for more than just people I know game as well. I know the idea is to keep all worlds in mind when playing the game, but as people are leaving to other servers for the bonus incentives, we haven’t seen the lock lifted for Gilgamesh. Please consider at least lifting the lock for a set period of time, and if need be put it back in to place.

Again, I played on Balmung myself and transferred off of the server about a month ago. The entire point of locking both servers was to encourage people to take their leave and settle elsewhere to balance out the population. It's just one of the downsides of choosing to play on such a bloated server. You can't have all the perks and none of the drawbacks. It doesn't solve the population issues, either, to allow those individuals to bring their friends along to the ride.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

Again, I played on Balmung myself and transferred off of the server about a month ago. The entire point of locking both servers was to encourage people to take their leave and settle elsewhere to balance out the population. It's just one of the downsides of choosing to play on such a bloated server. You can't have all the perks and none of the drawbacks. It doesn't solve the population issues, either, to allow those individuals to bring their friends along to the ride.

---

Can we stop comparing Balmung to Gilgamesh? I was on there before I transferred to Gilgamesh years ago and they're two different beasts in their entirety. The only similarity they have ever had is "lots of people." Except Balmung has far, far more.

I also hope one day people can stop pretending this was seriously about congestion or the interest of fairness or "balancing out the population" as SE kept prattling about. They did it purely for the initial rush for Stormblood so that those servers could actually be manageable without too many incoming connections during launch, and following weeks/months for stormblood. It failed miraculously. The same way that they specifically set up preferred servers and congested servers in an attempt to slowly weed out the population and even it out more for the inevitable housing war. SE knew that was the main incentive for many people to transfer off of a huge server, and many people took that offer if only just for the chance of getting a house. This ultimately failed spectacularly, just the same.

The fact of the matter is that people who aren't on Gilgamesh have no idea how Gilgamesh is, nor will they ever know, because the server is locked. The grand majority of the players on this server are raiders, the server was constantly pitched with a primary endgame focus. Now that cross-server party finder, and multitudes of other cross-server options are coming (or are already here, like friends lists) the main incentive for being in this server for a lot of people is pointless. That was the main "perk." People are simply addressing that right now, Gilgamesh is hollow if only because the main drawback is that despite having such an active playerbase, that the population is steadily getting smaller and will continue to get smaller. It is not like many other servers where if someone quits, transfers off or takes a break, one or two people, or more, will take their place.

As I have said in a previous post, I personally like that there has been less people on Gilgamesh and more importantly that the server definitely doesn't feel as crowded as before, but I'm just getting super tired of people who have never been on this server commentating like they've actually been there. Even more tired of people comparing it to Balmung, when that is almost literally comparing apples to oranges. "But Balmung," is not a valid argument. We are not talking about Balmung. Stop bringing it up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

It's just one of the downsides of choosing to play on such a bloated server. You can't have all the perks and none of the drawbacks. It doesn't solve the population issues, either, to allow those individuals to bring their friends along to the ride.

---

That's the thing, a server shouldn't have problems by being so populated in the first place. This could have been handled better. The current method they're using to "fix" this problem doesn't really remedy it, it's just causing more issues. I understand their intent, but the methods they used were very poor. Not everyone wants to settle with "you can't have all the perks and none of the drawbacks" as if a large server is some kind of enigma compared to other servers. It shouldn't be handled or treated any differently than a smaller server, and that difference in treatment is where the unfairness lies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

There's nothing stopping people from socialising even if the server is locked. There's a significant number of people still playing on the server - far more than on some other worlds - and there's always someone online at any given time. The stagnation on servers such as Gilgamesh and Balmung isn't linked solely to the lack of new players, it's just a consequence of each server's culture. I remember when Gilgamesh was going to be the 'sister server' to Balmung yet many there decided to drive role-players away and mock them.

Role-players, incidentally, being the sort of players to play even during dry periods in between new patches. So to some extent it's a problem of the server's own design.

---

So, are you comparing your horrible experiences that may have occurred probably years ago on a post that literally explains what is /actually/ occurring as of right now?

Quote:

---

I remember when Gilgamesh was going to be the 'sister server' to Balmung yet many there decided to drive role-players away and mock them.

---

Seems to be your own experiences. I dunno, bud.

Quote:

---

Role-players, incidentally, being the sort of players to play even during dry periods in between new patches. So to some extent it's a problem of the server's own design.

---

Are you directly blaming Gilgamesh for the cause?


Dude, step back for once and leave your past behind you before commenting. Balmung vs. Gilgamesh isn't a valid argument.
This isn't bout congestion or to keep interest with other servers. It's about how dumb the servers are being utilized. Are you going to say it's still the player's fault for playing on a server that -constantly- crashes? It's SE's fault for not keeping the population healthy. Gilgamesh is stale, at best. Some may be playing, but it's fallen from the ranks that it used to be before Stormblood. Gilgamesh is stupid quiet, and I can confirm this. (Sure, I may play on Balmung. But I've still got a alt I raid on there, and oh boy it's stupid. It's nothing near back before the locks.)

Quote:

---

Again, I played on Balmung myself and transferred off of the server about a month ago. The entire point of locking both servers was to encourage people to take their leave and settle elsewhere to balance out the population. It's just one of the downsides of choosing to play on such a bloated server. You can't have all the perks and none of the drawbacks. It doesn't solve the population issues, either, to allow those individuals to bring their friends along to the ride.

---

Again, Please read the thread and see if we're comparing it against Balmung or not. Thanks.

It blows my mind that anyone can support the idea of keeping our world locked. I'm sorry that you think Gilgamesh is some land of milk and honey and we're getting our due dosage of suffering now, but at the end of the day, Gilgamesh was just another world on Aether that worked its way up into being a very lively, active end-game focused community.

In all honesty, I was initially alright with this idea, thinking "Yeah, okay, this will be good for population balancing". Players who weren't entirely committed to Gilgamesh left, which was probably for the ultimate better and I was okay with that. But it's gone on long enough.

Like can ya'll just not imagine what it would be like if this happened to your server, or do you just not care because it doesn't affect you, yet?

The comparison is fair as both Balmung and Gilgamesh are large servers. For what it's worth, I also played on Gilgamesh for a while.

Again, Gilgamesh cannot expect to have all the perks of a large server and none of the drawbacks. Why do you believe that it should be different? One of the best things to happen to this game has been for Balmung and Gilgamesh to be locked. It has led to other servers gaining momentum and healthier population levels. Gilgamesh is still a very large server - there's plenty of players to be found there at any hour of the day. It's simply approaching a more reasonable level of population that serves to equalise it with some of the other servers. It's not dying, not in the slightest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

The comparison is fair as both Balmung and Gilgamesh are large servers. For what it's worth, I also played on Gilgamesh for a while.

Again, Gilgamesh cannot expect to have all the perks of a large server and none of the drawbacks. Why do you believe that it should be different? One of the best things to happen to this game has been for Balmung and Gilgamesh to be locked. It has led to other servers gaining momentum and healthier population levels. Gilgamesh is still a very large server - there's plenty of players to be found there at any hour of the day. It's simply approaching a more reasonable level of population that serves to equalise it with some of the other servers. It's not dying, not in the slightest.

---

The emphasis is on "played." You no longer play here. We are talking present tense.

Gilgamesh no longer has "all the perks of a large server." That is the point. Current-day Gilgamesh is a shadow of its former self. Far less players can be found at any hour, and not "far less than congested and I don't like it," but "hardly any compared to congested servers, so it's okay now" I'm not saying Gilgamesh is dying, it just seems people like you and others keep insisting that until it is actually dying or dead, that it's getting its just desserts and should remained locked. The fact of the matter is that if people seriously encourage that mindset it means the server eventually will die. Eventually it will have such a stigma that people will avoid transferring here entirely even after it's unlocked, because there's "nothing there" or "no one plays there anymore." Servers literally have died to this in other games.

Fact of the matter is that in terms of sheer community and actual interaction, Gilgamesh's congestion is highly overblown by people who aren't even here. We used to get 50~ people queues almost every day before Stormblood's launch and a little after, but since then I've never seen one aside from Shirogane. Not even during when the All Saint's Wake started, whereas last year I had to sit in a queue for it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

The comparison is fair as both Balmung and Gilgamesh are large servers.

---

No, it isn't. It's impossible for you to judge a server's life just based on numbers. You're forgetting that people raidlogging and simply existing on a server has nothing to do with how alive it actually is. Only the people on the server presently have the ability to make opinions on the server's vitality, and plenty of them in this thread have made statements, much more than the people opposing the problem (none of which are actually on Gilgamesh, seems like a trend). The people opposing Gilgamesh being unlocked have all had reasons that stem from anything but actually being present on the server; just faulty comparisons to Balmung and looking at statistics that don't indicate much at all. I trust the players of Gilgamesh much more than those not on Gilgamesh opposing its unlocking.

I'm wondering if it would be possible for SE to cull inactives from servers.

Say they take accounts that have not played in a year. They don't have any items on the market board. They don't have houses. SE should find a way to move inactives to a limbo area and if/when the account owner returns to the game, they are prompted with a "which server do you want to join" message that gives them the pick of open servers at the time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zygous

I'm wondering if it would be possible for SE to cull inactives from servers.

Say they take accounts that have not played in a year. They don't have any items on the market board. They don't have houses. SE should find a way to move inactives to a limbo area and if/when the account owner returns to the game, they are prompted with a "which server do you want to join" message that gives them the pick of open servers at the time.

---

Of course they could do that, but what would be the point?
Inactive players do not count when deciding if a server is congested or preferred, or if character creation is turned off. All such is based on number of active players.
Moving long-time inactive accounts would not change anything for the active players - except maybe free up some names.

I also vote for Gilgamesh to be unlocked. The lock out at this point is feeling like prison honestly. I actually transferred to Gilgamesh before the lock out happened, and when i was new here it was a large thriving community. Now it's just a ghost town in comparison, with no new players or friends to join us, along with the Server slowly bleeding active players over time. :(

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Of course they could do that, but what would be the point?
Inactive players do not count when deciding if a server is congested or preferred, or if character creation is turned off. All such is based on number of active players.
Moving long-time inactive accounts would not change anything for the active players - except maybe free up some names.

---

I'd not heard this before and was under the impression that inactive accounts still take up space on the server that could be used for new players. However, I don't want to beleive something just because you said so. Could I trouble you to cite the source of this info from the devs?

My two cents as a resident of Gilgamesh since aroudn 2.2/2.3. I agree with some points and disagree with some points, and i may be a little redundant, I apologize. Gilgamesh is definitely stagnating for a couple of reasons. Unlike Balmung which attracted players who are more likely to play the game at a more consistent pace, Gilgamesh attracted raiders, who are more likely to play the game in spikes around major content releases and settle into raid-logging. This was frequently tempered in the past by a combo of the ultra involved players, crafters, gatherers, achievement hunters (I see you!) along with new players keeping things fresh and modestly active at various levels. Without those new people giving fresh blood and dynamism in the server world, all we see is the raid loggers and we only see the population dwindle further in a feedback loop that sees the people who want to feel more community to transfer off. A quiet Gridania or Kugane or Ishgard to me doesn't really indicate the health of a server. Its just an arbitrary feeling of where players like to cluster. It doesn't do anything for me to see 100 people idling around a crystal or a market board or summoning bell. If it does for you, then I'm not sure what to say....but I don't think that's a server population problem, i think its "this is largely a theme park MMO" fact, not problem. It just is what it is. Gilgamesh still sees treasure hunt activity and significant hunt activity especially in SB zones so I'm not really buying the "totally dead" argument. mostly vacant overworld zones has been a thing in this game ever since the first run to 50 on ARR launch, Atma and Luminous Crystal grind excepted.

This also has caused (and will continue to worsen) markets to dry up as customers for lower level mats and gear are non-existent (even SB stuff is dirt cheap and has been for a while). Each person who gets a minion is one fewer customer for that minion with no one to replace them in the demand-curve. The supply continues to increase and potential customers for various markets will only continue to decline as fewer and fewer people need that Toadskin Jerkin, that Zu Mount, that Wind-up Shiva, that Ao Dai, etc. This gives the pro MB masters, the crafters, the gathers fewer incentives to engage in those activities, and contributes to the feeling of deadness and lack of things to do and crashing prices.

Now, this isn't as simple as just saying we're dead open the floodgates again. Because we have a raid-logging community, while the overworld may SEEM dead, there are actually still tons of characters on our server, and when the next major raid comes out, and especially when the next expansion comes out, all those characters will log back in, and if we've re-opened the flood gates of transfers and creation back in, we could see a server stability problem on our hands again. So I recognize the solution isn't simple.

I think the main point I want make is this: the current combination of locking and incentives has worked on most of the people it's going to work on, and its now starting to degrade the experience of the player base at large, so a new mix has to be figured out if SE believes we still need more characters off of Gilgamesh but make a better environment for the server. Right now having the server locked, for some people will actually make the incentive to stay on Gilgamesh STRONGER. (not everyone, some). If you aren't able to get back on the server one day, some are going to be more hesitant to make that permanent move. Further, the people that were convinced to transfer by and large had probably pretty loose ties to their in-game community. There are some that probably left things behind they didn't want to, but overall, there are people who play the game PRIMARILY to be with their in-game community whether that's RPing, raiding, or anything in between. Much of this activity is centered around the FC, and part of the benefit of being in the FC is the housing (I'll go off that deep end in a second). So if you're in an FC you like, you may not enjoy the environment of the server, but there's too much incentive to stay with your FC which is trapped on your server. Small FCs of 10people may be agile enough to coordinate a move, but you quickly reach a breaking point where you're not going to all agree as an FC, and either the FC gets stuck or some people get left behind. More likely the FC will stick (especially with housing being a now non-existent resource). Cross-server PF helps with this. Cross-server LS will help with this, but its still not perfect, because its still limited to Data Center, and it will never be able to include FCs with the way the game is currently structured on a fundamental level.

Anecdotally for me, I very much like being in my FC and have zero interest in leaving, however when my BF started playing recently, I couldn't bring him on to my server. We could still party together with the new PF systems and I could help him with dungeons, but our characters can't interact in regular stuff. I can't help him explore or go raise him when he dies to a boss FATE. I can't give himi a chunk of gil to help him get good gear. I can't craft him anything. But the in-game incentives to stay with my FC on my server are just way too strong for me to move my main character off. I can make an alt character, but that's not a very good solution and doesn't solve most of the issues I've mentioned. If he were on my server I'd be incentivized to get stuff of MB to help him with gear, give him some minions, etc. I'd help him with fates in lower level zones. I'd be taking him around giving the overworld a bit more activity. I could hunt with him and do treasure maps with him. It'd be new blood in the markets to shift the demand curve back to a better equilibrium. I am certain this is not the only story like this out there, and when you aggregate the loss of all the new player activity you end up with a very significant and growing problem of stagnation, to bring us full circle.

I don't have many solutions, but I would agree that the current set up has run its course of usefulness and I hope SE is able to find a way to still protect server population balance while also allowing life to flow a bit more freely on gilgamesh again. Else they'll need to come up with ways to incentivize and facilitate large FC's moving servers, which would also require them to figure out a way to guarantee housing for relocating large groups. That is a whole other can of worms given the recent fiasco of shirogane, so it may be as they come up with a solution for meeting housing demand they could figure out a way to make wards that are only available to transferring FCs or something. Otherwise they'll never be able to make an sort of significant dent in our server population (or other major populated servers)

I've been on Gilga since Gordias and never have I seen it so dead, it's actually quite sad looking at the sorry state that it's in now. Over the past few months I've lost count of how many friends I've lost due to them transfering, it seems every day there's at least 1 or 2 new (unable to retrieve)'s showing on my friends list. Everywhere you go is empty, and the op is right that even during peak hours major cities are like ghost towns.

+1 to unlock Gilgamesh.

The economy here on gilg is abysmal in Stormblood. Prior to 4.1 the shard/crystal situation was getting incredibly bad (Wind Crystals would have 0 listings sometimes, and spiked up to 1000 per after the patch before some supply stabilized). FC and LS are stagnating, there's more (Unable to Retrieve) popping up every day because everyone is abandoning ship. Cross-server PF is only a band-aid for friends playing together, most would prefer to be on the same server and interact outside of instances but there's no way to do that on Gilg unless the entire circle made their characters here months and months ago.

The first 10 days of Stormblood we had a queue that resembled a high pop server. After that it dipped down to less than one queue cycle and we never had a wait again (excluding the forced kicks where everyone had to log back on). That was the peak of population, but since the lock has been in effect the numbers can and have only gone down. Don't leave gilg to die. We're like China with a Zero Child policy and the elders are inevitable kicking it over time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Just a fun little factoid for you. According to that census above, Mateus has more than doubled its population since June. That can mostly be attributed to people leaving Balmung, which has seen the largest decline. :)

---

It's all these nerds playing house I mean roleplaying, and let me tell you the #original Mateus player tears are delicious.

I play on Gilgamesh since the early days of A Realm Reborn. There is a big difference between Heavensward Gilgamesh and Stormblood Gilgamesh for sure. The server is not totally empty, and I know many many people are saying that out server is one of the highest populated servers, or that our server is the one with the highest activity, or whatsoever. The problem lies when and where that activity takes place. We have a spike of people on Thuesday... and that's it. For the remaining days of the week the activity gets lower and lower, because Gilgamesh is and always has been a server known for the phase "go there if you want to raid". A stigma that was created before crossworld party finder was a thing. The game before had a duality in which you could go to Gilgamesh and be a raider, keep up with endgame content at a decent pace and have your clears, or you could stay on your server, keep your friends and the social circle you were used to, but don't have a party finder as active as ours was. That was Gilgamesh's perk. But I don't think it is anymore. Stormblood brought a lot of new people to the game, none of em joined Gilgamesh. And the old people that abandoned the game on Heavensward and joined back for Stormblood are no longer playing it anyways. And I do feel like that is the problem on Gilgamesh right now. We do have a lot of people on the server, we do have a lot of players and we do have a decent player activity. However that activity only happens in big scale once every 4 or 5 months because of mainstory patch, and once a week on a small scale because of reset day. Now even this last patch was enough to give Gilgamesh a player queue outside of the housing wars, but to be honest I feel like every server had a queue for the housing rush the moment the servers went live. And with the fiasco of the housing what happened? Many many players that only stayed on Gilgamesh because of the possiblity of having a house here (and having it as an excuse to stay in the server for it's imaginary perks) are already leaving to other servers, because maybe on patch 4.2 they are going to have better chances. Not even our market board is as it used to be. We have less and less stuff there every day, and less people wanting to by the small amount of things we have anyways.

To me the problem is not the fact that Gilgamesh is locked, but the fact that other servers, now higher populated and active than Gilgamesh are still open. It creates the whole "Let's go to Leviathan, it's just like Gilgamesh but with new players" mentality, which many of my friends already decided to do. Since Stormblood launched my friend's list went from 185 to 40. But if I decide to only count the ones that actually log into the game, that number decrease to 15. I have yet to see an FC on my server that isn't VODKA, TSB and Lucid with more than 40 players logged in at once outside of reset days. And most of the time not even those big FCs have that amont of people online anyways.

One of the things that made me wanna join Gilgamesh was the fact that the server had a lot of different faces on a daily basis. You would meet new people all the time, you would have so many people being invited to your FCs, or wanting to know you and interact. You would have so many new players in need of assistance and there would always be someone doing something in one of the maps. Not even the Yokai events were able to spike the life on Gilgamesh a little bit because it's the exact same people from when the even was here last. Everybody always have everything they want. It's the same group of people, on the same place, doing the same thing. And even though we are still big, Gilgamesh got to the point in which everyone knows everyone.

I created some alts on different servers just because recently and I was amazed with how lively the starter cities are. The shout and yell chats, the amount of people crafting everywhere, the sprouts tags, the returning player tags. I really miss having that on Gilgamesh, and I do find it weird that the server is still locked. I understand Balmung because 1) it's really, really crowded, and 2) it's the major RP server. You can't simply create an entire RP community by yourself and even so, Mateus is slowly becoming an amazing second option.
As for Gilgamesh, every server is a raid server right now. You do have access to what everyone else on your data center have acces to in the blink of an eye. So the only strong point I can think Gilgamesh had over the other servers is now, thankfuly don't get me wrong, available to everyone across all the servers. I am considering a transfer too, and I have been for a long time, though it's a bittersweet feeling because I consider this server in which I started playing, my home.

Seeing what xivcensus says about Gildamesh, i dont see any problem.
16k+ activ players, that is 5k more than on Zodiark and we dont have any problems.

Its not SEs fault that Gildamesh seems to be 'raider-only' world, change the people, not the world.
If everyone would not only come out for raiding, your world wouldnt be so empty.
I´m sorry for saying this, but its truely not SEs fault.

No rush of new players would change that, they would stop playing fast and join a more activ server. There is enough to do besides raiding, make people remember that is my advice.

Still, good luck o/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yubelchen

Its not SEs fault that Gildamesh seems to be 'raider-only' world, change the people, not the world.
If everyone would not only come out for raiding, your world wouldnt be so empty.
I´m sorry for saying this, but its truely not SEs fault.

---

You can blame players all you want.

Did you even clear Gordias Savage?

It's not our fault SE didn't have cross world-party finder when the game obviously needed it back in Alexander Gordias Savage. More than a handful of small and medium servers raiding communities practically collapsed and fell off the map if they couldn't clear A3S. Many did not want to re-recruit capable players, they just migrated where more of them were.

You wanted to even PuG with capable players? Or raid with the group looking for players on Gilgamesh? You had to transfer to a higher population server with more capable end-gamers. Like I said few pages ago, sometimes one's thirst of clearing the hardest content in the game will overcome staying put and losing the opportunity to clear when relevant. How is that their fault?

The world is different now, the same pre-tenses don't apply and anyone can raid together from any server in the same data center.

No offense, but I'd really appreciate if people stopped posting useless posts that are akin to "my server with <less numbers according to an unofficial census> is fine, so you're fine too. Just collectively gather thousands of people and change the way the server works." As I have said before, "But Balmung," is not an argument, and neither is "But my server." No one cares about Zodiark, this discussion is about Gilgamesh.

Square-Enix is entirely at fault for what is going on with Gilgamesh, let's not try to act like this is the fault of the community that our server was locked. It's not as if we voted on it.

People also seem to conveniently ignore that XIVcensus specifically says their data is flawed at this current moment.

Like I said, I prefer a server with less people, but reading ignorant posts that try to seriously insist or assume that every server works the same, therefore if their server is fine that Gilgamesh must be fine, is absolutely ridiculous. Stop trying to make it about yourself, when it has absolutely nothing to do with you. You're not even here.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yubelchen

Seeing what xivcensus says about Gildamesh, i dont see any problem.
16k+ activ players, that is 5k more than on Zodiark and we dont have any problems.

Its not SEs fault that Gildamesh seems to be 'raider-only' world, change the people, not the world.
If everyone would not only come out for raiding, your world wouldnt be so empty.
I´m sorry for saying this, but its truely not SEs fault.

No rush of new players would change that, they would stop playing fast and join a more activ server. There is enough to do besides raiding, make people remember that is my advice.

Still, good luck o/

---

I don't recall this thread talking about Zodiark. Additionally, your argument is invalid since it's been repeated over and over again.

"This isn't SE's fault!"

I don't recall the community having a choice whether it was locked or not.

GILGAMESH =/= ZODIARK
GILGAMESH =/= BALMUNG
GILGAMESH =/= Virtually ANY server you can compare to right now.


Please think before commenting. zz. It may be "just a raiding server", but i'm 100% certain that's your own opinion, and not others.

Yep, I get a little offended when someone from a server that has never spent any time on Gilgamesh, let alone even play a sniff of end-game savage content, telling us how we should operate.

It's completely on SE for making the situation the way it is. On the other hand we now have XPF functionality in the game that has helped making raiding a more healthier economy on more servers.

People have migrated out of Gilgamesh in droves since SB, maybe even back to their original home or a place they can feel more at-home with their friends, yet they can still raid with a part of their group that might have their home on Gilgamesh. That's just one example how much better the game is today, and why the lock doesn't make a lot of sense anymore.

I've been on Gilgamesh for nearly 3 years now, much for the same reason many came. It's a raiding hub, PF was server-only, and a lot of endgame raiders were situated here. It was the perfect situation for finding or creating a strong raid team, which I had struggled to do on Faerie. Finding players on a smaller server who could raid at a high level was much more difficult than on Gilgamesh - and coming here greatly increased the available pool of talent. Oddly enough, with the server lock that feeling is beginning to return. Finding new blood for raid groups is a lot harder with a locked server - sure cross-world PF is available, but when we coordinate on consumables and crafted gear (and knowing how bad some raiders can be at making gil or getting connections for their gear...), it's extremely helpful to be able to have members of a team be on the same server. By removing that ability, there just feels like a lot more distance between raid members. It puts a strain on the group.

And while up until Stormblood it's been a great ride on Gilgamesh, ever since 4.0 hit there's been this almost haunting aspect to the place. I think it's difficult to comprehend from the outside what it feels like being on a server with 0 new blood coming in, knowing that every person that leaves has no chance of being replaced with another. Going hunting in ARR zones and seeing no sprouts - a novice network full of returners. As I type this right now there's 8 people near the market board in Kugane on a late Friday afternoon.

A quarter of a year is a very long time to have a server completely locked out - it feels like a lot of the "active" members of this server are also only "active" at most 1 day out of the week, so the population numbers are very misleading. Patch days aside, I haven't seen a server login queue for ages. It's a dreary sight how empty the major areas can get, even on weekends or during prime time. But understand please that most of us chose this server as a raider hub - we knew what we wanted and would get out of that (the 1-day-out-of-7 logged in players) - but the new blood keeps the server feeling fresh. A constant flow in and out of a server is healthy for it, and meeting new people is what (a lot of the time) keeps people logging in as well. Seeing new faces, getting to know new people, or even just showing people around to the hot spots. It all stagnates when the flow in stops.

Just to be clear, though, I do think the server lock was a good thing. We did need something done to ease up the population growth that was continuing to happen on Gilgamesh (especially with something as large as an expansion in the midst of it). I'm thankful for what the lock has accomplished, but going on this long has started to feel like a stranglehold.

And I can't accept the answer that the players have to change entirely, either. Some of us have tried planning large events, making statics for grind content (like PotD, primal farms, etc) to try to get more people active, but there will always be many that won't respond to it. The server worked fine for such a long time with this model, and it can work again. We only need the lock to be lifted - and monitored, if needed, for signs of congestion to return. Ultimately, if we return to being congested with login queues and forced logouts again, I'll be happy to eat my words, but at some point we should be able to let the server equalize again and give it a shot at being at a healthy place for people to enter and leave.

If people are getting offended by people weighing in on what is a very nuanced situation then perhaps that is a sign to take a step back? I get it - some people are very attached to their server. Yet that also risks a situation where bias comes into play. It may be time to consider moving to a different server entirely if Gilgamesh is truly stagnating. Even if it is unlocked it is likely to be locked again if there is a sudden influx of players and then the cycle will repeat itself.

I also think there's a lot of merit to the argument that a server primarily focused on raiding and little else isn't necessarily going to feel as 'social' as other servers may be, especially if a lot of the chattier players end up taking their leave.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

It may be time to consider moving to a different server entirely if Gilgamesh is truly stagnating. Even if it is unlocked it is likely to be locked again if there is a sudden influx of players and then the cycle will repeat itself.

---

Again, not everyone wants to sit and take what the devs are doing and submit by changing servers. Your *hypothetical situation* of it being unlocked and repeating a cycle is outweighed by the current *reality* of the server lacking vitality.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

If people are getting offended by people weighing in on what is a very nuanced situation then perhaps that is a sign to take a step back? I get it - some people are very attached to their server. Yet that also risks a situation where bias comes into play. It may be time to consider moving to a different server entirely if Gilgamesh is truly stagnating. Even if it is unlocked it is likely to be locked again if there is a sudden influx of players and then the cycle will repeat itself.

I also think there's a lot of merit to the argument that a server primarily focused on raiding and little else isn't necessarily going to feel as 'social' as other servers may be, especially if a lot of the chattier players end up taking their leave.

---

Or Square Enix could simply come up with an actual solution rather than constantly fiddling with it and saying they can't do much else. Though it seems in general that's all they're capable of with FFXIV despite this game being their moneymaker.

I am simply offended because people keep casually posting denial towards the feelings and/or concerns of players on Gilgamesh with paper-thin or completely baseless arguments that rely purely on what is an unofficial census and past assumptions. Gilgamesh could lose 8000 players tomorrow and people would still be arguing the server is still "too huge," or that it will just "get huge again," and insist that it remain locked. People keep posting here specifically about their server, their experience, or things completely unrelated to Gilgamesh, as if it has any bearing at all whatsoever on whether or not the server should be unlocked. They keep posting and making it about themselves, despite their viewpoint and also how they experience things having nothing to do with anything relevant. Despite the fact that they could, unless they are on Gilgamesh at this very moment, never understand what is going on or exactly how some people on the server may feel regarding this lock. As I have said in the past, I personally prefer that we're losing people, but I'm also not daft enough to seriously tell people who are worried about it from my same server that they're just imagining things or that their worries are completely baseless, or even that they can shove it.

I'm offended by ignorance, not because "muh server."

How is it SE's fault for Gilga for the longest time being over filed with players and being called " the raiding server" That isn't SE fault. The players have nothing but themselves to blame for THAt one, and because everyone is a hivemind ofcourse people followed. And over time like Balmung - which I was on both for a litle bit of time- got overcrowded and locked. You don't see any other servers being locked do you? SE locked the servers cause they were extra full, and noone but the players caused that. Stop trying to blame SE for those servers being too full for school. Is it full now? I dunno, should it be unlocked? If there's deman for it sure. But don't sit here and blame SE cause G and B were player favs for the longest time and noone wanted to make other servers alts for RP and raiding until it was too late. That is on noone but the players.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Excaliburnina

Again, not everyone wants to sit and take what the devs are doing and submit by changing servers. Your *hypothetical situation* of it being unlocked and repeating a cycle is outweighed by the current *reality* of the server lacking vitality.

---

Which, again, means that people are not being objective. Servers change over time. It's a natural part of any MMO's progression. Up until a few months ago, for instance, Mateus was a very small server. Now? It's a lot bigger and is one of the three main unofficial servers for role-play alongside Balmung and Omega.