RPers are trying to do exactly that - attempts are underway to establish Mateus (NA) and Omega (EU) as additional unofficial RP servers.
How successful this will be only time can tell, but so far it is looking good.
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The issue with balmung was it was advertised as the rp server before aar.
You cannot replicate its success as an rp server, official or not. Even if they made a new rp server and balmung not an rp server, I'd imagine balmung would still dominate for a long while.
Again, you have an ooppertunity to create your own in one of the newer ones. You need a few dedicated hardcore rpers and a lot of time to advertise. Slowly it'll build, and it'll be yours... until such time it's big enough for people to branch out to make their own communities.
Or he'll make it the official erp server. That'll probably work better and quicker to get rpers anyway
Slaping a RP tag on server won't slove the issue. You said yourself people won't move if the community does not exist, and everyone will only move if the community moves. The RP communities biggest enemy is not the lack of an official RP server but the community itself.
The reason an official server will work is simple: it directs all new role players and undesignates Balmung as the RP server. Not all will move, but they will feel pressured to consider it. Most will just make new characters to RP there and do their main basic gameplay on Balmung
https://media.giphy.com/media/n2IPMYMthV0m4/giphy.gif
Yoshi announces that due to the amount of Roleplayers on Balmung. Balmung will now be designated as a roleplay server. No transfer outs required!
Those not a roleplayer will have the option to transfer out with bonuses to non congested servers free of charge. As always.
http://i.imgur.com/jilnekj.jpg
This will only work if they keep balmung 100% locked for an extended period.
Some will transfer, some new players will go there. But plenty are already rooted into Balmung and won't wish to leave. And I suspect thats a large majority of the playerbase there. So they need to force people to populate the new RP server or else people will simply see that balmung is still thriving and continue to flock to it, even with an official RP tag
Another HUGE problem with allowing people to transfer is the many, MANY, alt characters RP players have. They -invested- time to level on other servers and then paid to transfer to Balmung or how other players say they "invested" time to wake up or stay awake during the Maint hours so they could create alt characters in that server. I believe that is some other reason some of them feel entitled to stay in the server.
Well thats how this is a at least 50% squeenix's fault in the first place, they locked the server but for some dumb reason still allowed people to pay to transfer in, which plenty of people are willing to do to play with their friends. The server should've been locked a year ago, I've been playing on and off since mid ARR, and back then it wasn't bad at all, But slowly it built up, they locked the server, and still allowed people to get around it from the maint times or paid transfers, and now we're at what it is today
Here is the issue and this is stemming from the whole fact of watching E3:
Yoshi actually said something about an icon being put on the world itself can actually cause server stability and problems (Which made me go O_o at my screen when I heard that one) but the biggest issue is this: He does not want to segregate people from their servers. They don't want to slap an RP role on, say, Balmung, and now the people who are on that server are slapped with a label they want nothing to do with it.
It's a double edged sword: You can't force people on Balmung to move off to another server and try to make an RP community because some people actually play with non rpers or rarely RP but still have great friends they want to keep in touch
But you also can't slap an RP tag on Balmung because the community has 'demanded it' because others may not even care for it. Some people don't want to be labelled with an RP label. And you need to respect that fact.
I believe Yoshi said something in regards that it 'can' be looked at if more requests are made but it's really a low priority and he would rather that communities get together and designate servers for that and if a server gets overpopulated, to find another one and start fresh from there. (The last part may not be accurate, been a bit since E3.)
It sucks for people who wanna have a great and big community to RP. Just like it sucks for RPers not to be able to welcome new people to their server. But as a whole, it's the community that needs to set up something to do a change. Just like Balmung was chosen for the unofficial RP channel, the RPers need to designate another server and 'stick' to it. Especially now that you all have server transfers.
Or, we live with the problem we have now and just gotta suck it up. There's no real easy answer.