A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

It's Square Enix's fault for not providing an actual solution instead of a bandaid. Please stay the SE apologies. Accusing people of something like a hivemind being the reason they went to Gilgamesh is just ad hominem; there was a lot of legitimate appeal in a server like Gilgamesh. The raiding community is small as it is, it makes perfect sense people would pick a place they could all be if they were interested in raiding. Stop with the Balmung comparisons, this is not about Balmung and comparisons to Balmung are not valid as they exist purely on the foundation of server population which, I don't know how many times I have to say this, has nothing to do with the server being alive. This has plenty to do with SE because they were the ones who locked the server, the players who went to Gilgamesh and were/are on Gilgamesh never had some intention of overflowing it; it just became the place for the raiding population to be.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

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.

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This is an inherently subjective topic. Enjoyment of a game is subjective, and it is entirely valid to provide subjective experiences as reason for something to change because the developers are partly responsible for enjoyment of the game they sell.

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Originally Posted by Excaliburnina

This is an inherently subjective topic. Enjoyment of a game is subjective, and it is entirely valid to provide subjective experiences as reason for something to change because the developers are partly responsible for enjoyment of the game they sell.

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A lot of the 'debate' is simply revolving around blaming Square Enix. Not liking their solution does not mean it is invalid. It clearly served the intended purpose and now Gilgamesh is set to boast a much more manageable player population. As a bonus, people transferring away from Gilgamesh and Balmung has served to breathe new life into other servers. Some of which were struggling to maintain a reasonable player population before the new policies were put in place, hence why I brought up Mateus earlier.

By all accounts, though, there's still plenty of people playing on Gilgamesh. So what, exactly, is stopping people from breaking into new social circles there?

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Originally Posted by Hikuras

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.

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Yes explain to me how it is totally Random player A's fault he decided to play on Gilgamesh on August of 2013 during early access.
Yes explain to me how it is totally Random Player B's fault she decided to play on Balmung on August of 2013 during early access.

You are being ridiculous. Square Enix could've exercised preventive measures years ago and refrained. They could've locked transfers and only allowed new characters, and they refrained. Square Enix is entirely at fault for how bad Balmung and Gilgamesh got. Their population swelling for years obviously is because people joined, but it is absolutely small-minded to seriously imply that Square Enix didn't see the numbers steadily rising and were totally blindsided by this. They knew the entire time and only did something once it started to inconvenience them, which was when it became too much stress for their servers in general. Not because of dying or smaller servers.

Are you going to say that Housing is only a problem because people can't collectively form a line or agree upon where personals and FC houses should be bought based on Wards or subdivisions? Are you going to say Housing isn't SE's fault, and that it's simply yet again the players doing things with their "hivemind"?

Stop being ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

A lot of the 'debate' is simply revolving around blaming Square Enix. Not liking their solution does not mean it is invalid. It clearly served the intended purpose and now Gilgamesh is set to boast a much more manageable player population. As a bonus, people transferring away from Gilgamesh and Balmung has served to breathe new life into other servers.

By all accounts, though, there's still plenty of people playing on Gilgamesh. So what, exactly, is stopping people from breaking into new social circles there?

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I respect your point, it has caused players to transfer to other servers which I accept was their intention. But then, why is it fair for Gilgamesh to suffer for these advantages in other servers? Why is it not fair for people to have problems with this side effect and seek a different solution? It being a necessary evil is not fair, the people on Gilgamesh pay for the game all the same as the people that are beneficiaries to this lock. By statistics, which still don't correlate to the actual activity of the server, people are playing on Gilgamesh. A dying community that raidlogs is no place to form social circles, especially circles that have been broken up by the transfers and lack of new players.

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Originally Posted by Excaliburnina

I respect your point, it has caused players to transfer to other servers which I accept was their intention. But then, why is it fair for Gilgamesh to suffer for these advantages in other servers? Why is it not fair for people to have problems with this side effect and seek a different solution?

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One would argue it's fair since we have a huge population or because at one point we were congested to the point of bloating.

Though many seem to forget that a certain company allowed limitless transfers* into our server for a very long period of time.

*Which they took your money for, I might add.

I've seen a few people leave balmung, But I want it to stay locked for as long as it can.

I'm not being ridiculous because I remember nothing but players " if you want to raid.. Go here. " Said by many players over YEARS of it being first said. SE did do something, you couldn't just make a character there anytime. you had to cheat the system and make one at some crack hours in the morning to get a character there if you didn't want to spend money. Yes you could've transfer there and I'll give you THAT one. But again, even with that out in the open it was players who told other players to go there for whatever reason. Sooner or later ofcourse it was going to get locked. Yes it should've happened sooner.. but it happened now. SE only issue is they didn't lock it fast enough, but it's still was on players for telling everyone and their mother with their sick dog to go there. Thats all I'm saying, if people wasn't doing THAT it would've been locked. So thats why I'm saying the players put themselves in that boat. Not all of them no. Some random person in 2013 at the start? No.

It's worth noting that the whole "raiding server" stigma isn't the only reason a lot of people came here. I made my character on Gilgamesh in 2.0 because I knew it was going to be a server that actually felt like I was playing an MMO. You know, that whole "massive multiplayer" part makes a pretty big difference. The fact that I happen to raid had nothing to do with it. Gilgamesh wasn't just a "raiding server"...it was the example of what a healthy server in general should look like, and we're losing that every day. I'm not lacking sympathy for the smaller servers that have been struggling this whole time, but cheering and clapping because a healthy community is deteriorating helps literally nobody.

Raiders congregated on Gilgamesh because the raids became so difficult that getting a strong pool of players was important for actually being able to clear the content. Gordias is the biggest culprit in this, and Midas continued the trend. In the wake of such challenging content, many groups fell apart on smaller servers and without a large enough player pool struggled to fill their ranks with a team strong enough to beat the content.

Coming to Gilgamesh was hope for a more serious population when it comes to clearing content for a lot of us (myself included), how is it so difficult to empathize with that situation and instead blame the players? The symptoms that created Gilgamesh have largely been cured - we can pool our talent from all the servers in a data center now when it comes to raid groups. We've gotten stronger as a community at tackling difficult content through PFs and better recruitment ethics. Population growth on Gilgamesh has little reason to be more than other servers at this point, especially when the last 4 months have made great strides in spreading out the populations to other servers like Mateus.

So why keep the gates closed? There's plenty of Gilgamesh player testimony in this thread telling you that we are not ok, that things are getting worse, and we want to still be a healthy server when we are unlocked. There's been testimony that our hubs are not very crowded during prime time.

Also, since some people are asking for Rhalgr's Reach, here you go. I just took these, so they're from around 6:20pm EST on a Friday: This is as crowded as it gets during prime time.

I transferred in 2.4 and I can say it was due to the raid community then on my old server. My group at the time was on T12 progression when we lost a member and had to boost a guy through T9 and farm a High Allagan weapon for him and relearn the fights. Some people didn't have enough patience so the group blew up and I was stuck trying to look for a group and either had to regress back to T9 or just stop raiding. I was part of the problem people to balloon Gilgamesh but transferring at the time was the best thing to happen to me as I was able to find a group to do content together with, if I didn't transfer to Gilgamesh the chances of me quitting the game back then would be 100%. As others have said cross server statics have stopped that. Currently it just irks me as I tried to introduce friends to the game but they're unable to play with me.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

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.

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Actually Gilgamesh's RP scene has been dying for a long time. As of right now for RP your bets are Balmung, Mateus, and Omega. Though for new players it's actually only the last two, but Gilgamesh hasn't been considered one of the unofficial RP servers for a bit since a lot of the rpers on there packed up and moved to Balmung. The issue with no new blood is what a lot have pointed out, there is no one replacing these people that are leaving and it will collapse economies and there are several locked servers. As of right now Balmung and Gilgamesh are the only locked NA servers, but Japan and EU servers are locked to. I think the best solution is to open up new character creation so new players and those wanting to join and play with friends can get on them, but prevent the flood gates of people wanting to return from doing so.

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Originally Posted by Vrankyl

As of right now Balmung and Gilgamesh are the only locked NA servers, but Japan and EU servers are locked to.

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No EU server is locked.
There is no transfer to Omega, but it is open for new created characters

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Originally Posted by Felis

No EU server is locked.
There is no transfer to Omega, but it is open for new created characters

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I missed that, which is interesting... Then again the EU population is fairly evenly distributed so there isn't much SE would be able to do there. That said there are 7 Japanese servers designated as congested at the moment, I honestly wonder what the state of their communities and market boards are. Especially since RP isn't really a thing there so there is no RP community to sustain their servers through patch lulls.

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Originally Posted by Kalia

-snip-

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Hmmm... That's about Sargatanas level activity, which is still pretty decent. Difference being Sargatanas players in general try to do much of everything.

But yeah, the devs really should open the servers again then. A server being locked due to raider overpopulation and another being locked due to being the RP hub are two entirely different things. One responds to the actual game design (especially the creation of cross-world PF essentially eliminating the need for said server to exist as a raider hub), the other doesn't since there's nothing that can really be designed for them (in a reasonable manner, anyway).

And fact of the matter is, as the game is designed now... Raiders ironically have very little incentive to stay subbed during 'catch-up' patches, so it's understandable why Gilgamesh's population would disappear during odd-numbered patches if raiding is literally the only thing that a good chunk of the population does there.

What's SE going to do besides reopening the server, force everyone to start leveling DoL/DoH jobs?

I've never been on Gilgamesh, but some of these testimonies makes my heart ache. I know if Hyperion ever got to be like that, I would hate it too.

The only reason I can see for people to move back to Gilgamesh is to reunite with their friends. I don't think opening the server back up will be as much of a cycle as people think.

Census pages base their information off Lodestone updates. The numbers they show do not represent a Realms true population. The active number is the number of players on that realm who logged in during that month, a person could log in for 5 minutes and the census would count that as active. Gilgamesh is most likely still locked cause despite what the Census shows its true population is bigger then what SE wants to see.

I agree that gilgamesh needs to be unlocked. Things are really starting to dry up without new players, the server lock is long overdue to be removed.

I'll keep this brief.

Our economy has crashed.
FCs are dying left and right, and there are no new people to strengthen them.
We have many latent players, but the active ones are leaving, making the environment bleak for those who play socially.
Open Gilgamesh, please.

~ Scoot Patoot

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Originally Posted by ScootPatoot

I'll keep this brief.

Our economy has crashed.
FCs are dying left and right, and there are no new people to strengthen them.
We have many latent players, but the active ones are leaving, making the environment bleak for those who play socially.
Open Gilgamesh, please.

~ Scoot Patoot

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Once your population isnt in immediate risk of exceeding server capacity, they will.
It's as simple as that, especially since it took SE FAR too long to stop the ability to transfer in, one could make the argument Balmung even went beyond what would be considered stable numbers

Problem is there's no way to resolve the issue without pissing everyone off or risking server stability. You either unlock the servers and have the issue arise again (because lets face it, everyone and their mother keeps pointing people to select servers like sheep being herded) or SE takes a hard stance and basically just sets a hard cap for each server and as it's hit it gets locked until population flows back out or the more dead servers start filling up.

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Originally Posted by Lazaruz

Once your population isnt in immediate risk of exceeding server capacity, they will.
It's as simple as that, especially since it took SE FAR too long to stop the ability to transfer in, one could make the argument Balmung even went beyond what would be considered stable numbers

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This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers. Now Mateus, Cactuar and Leviathan are the top servers. Should everywhere who went there cross their fingers and desperately try to re-direct people to other servers for fear they'll get moved into congestion and suffer the same decline? Now you could possibly argue Balmung needs to stay locked a bit longer, but I'd prefer the devs stop taking the easy approach and offer better incentives for other servers.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers. Now Mateus, Cactuar and Leviathan are the top servers. Should everywhere who went there cross their fingers and desperately try to re-direct people to other servers for fear they'll get moved into congestion and suffer the same decline? Now you could possibly argue Balmung needs to stay locked a bit longer, but I'd prefer the devs stop taking the easy approach and offer better incentives for other servers.

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You realize this'll be a continuous cycle that must be repeated? When that happens, the same applies to those servers because you cannot predict which players go where and for how long. There is no single solution other than to address the situations when they arise.

If Balmung ever got to the point where it actually stagnates, they'd just open the server and offer the incentive to transfer over. But let's be real, Balmung is far and away from that happening within the next 1-2 years.

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Originally Posted by KokonoeAiyoko

You realize this'll be a continuous cycle that must be repeated?

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I can see how that will be healthy for the game as time goes on.

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Originally Posted by KokonoeAiyoko

If Balmung ever got to the point where it actually stagnates, they'd just open the server and offer the incentive to transfer over. But let's be real, Balmung is far and away from that happening within the next 1-2 years.

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While the population itself may take that long to stagnate the real issue with such a lock is the economy on the server. So many things that non crafters sell are finite things to be sold, things that once people have they don't need again. Even crafters will eventually have an issue as leveling gear becomes less and less needed and thus ends up not selling. Now if SE were to implement a Data Center wide MB this would no longer be concerned and the lock could easily stay indefinitely until the population drops to acceptable levels. Without something like that it can very well ruin the economy on the server completely.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers.

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Recovers... back to too many people?
Or you think the server will finally go under safe limits of concurrent users and then it'll open and people will just gush out like a severed artery and it'll die? .. .. I'm not seeing any reason to unlock the server that makes sense yet.

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Originally Posted by Krotoan

Recovers... back to too many people?
Or you think the server will finally go under safe limits of concurrent users and then it'll open and people will just gush out like a severed artery and it'll die? .. .. I'm not seeing any reason to unlock the server that makes sense yet.

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Recovers in the sense of rebuilding their community. If enough people transfer, many won't go back and even more will inevitably leave or quit the game entirely because Gilgamesh isn't what it once was. You have to strike a balance between stable populations and letting a community thrive. I recently moved to Cactuar and don't want to see the markets implode and people start leaving because the devs refuse to offer better incentivizes.

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Originally Posted by Spirlia

I've never been on Gilgamesh, but some of these testimonies makes my heart ache. I know if Hyperion ever got to be like that, I would hate it too.

The only reason I can see for people to move back to Gilgamesh is to reunite with their friends. I don't think opening the server back up will be as much of a cycle as people think.

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Yeah, I agree with this assessment. The number 1 reason for people to transfer to Gilgamesh has already been designed out of the game with the creation of cross world party finder.

Re-opening Balmung, meanwhile, would still cause a flood of people coming in due to its mythical status as being THE RP server, and there is nothing that can address that. The only thing that can come remotely close is if SE somehow makes a series of cross-server instances that people can easily look for specific players and join with, without any party-based entry restrictions and time limits. Perhaps Diadem could be re-purposed to help with this, actually. Just add a couple non-combat RP-friendly locales and remove the entry restrictions, increase the maximum amount of people in an instance from the current 8 parties to like 150 total players, and let people choose any instance they want.

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Originally Posted by Vrankyl

I missed that, which is interesting... Then again the EU population is fairly evenly distributed so there isn't much SE would be able to do there. That said there are 7 Japanese servers designated as congested at the moment, I honestly wonder what the state of their communities and market boards are. Especially since RP isn't really a thing there so there is no RP community to sustain their servers through patch lulls.

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jp play differently then NA players.

Was it healthy for the game for servers like Balmung, Gilgamesh, Tonberry and others to bleed other servers in their data centers of their vitality when their party finders dried up and people moved away to the promised lands as a result? The fact of the matter is the bleeding needed to stop for the health of the game overall. Cross finder party finder has has a lot to do with stopping the exodus from smaller servers and the incentives to repopulate the smaller ones appears to be working very well.

I can feel for those who aren't happy with people leaving but it's no more of an issue then having had the smaller servers suffer for a long time because of their people leaving. Rebalancing is necessary and hopefully locks will be a thing of the past soon enough.

Relative to the OP I can identify with Gilgamesh seeming less populated at the moment because I have a fully leveled toon there and run content. Yes it does seem less populated but I will say that when xpac released having queues of over 3500 was ridiculous. Perhaps it's time for SE to give the population of Gilgamesh a hard look and perhaps open it again because the incentive to move there now with cross finder pf isn't what is once was.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers. Now Mateus, Cactuar and Leviathan are the top servers. Should everywhere who went there cross their fingers and desperately try to re-direct people to other servers for fear they'll get moved into congestion and suffer the same decline? Now you could possibly argue Balmung needs to stay locked a bit longer, but I'd prefer the devs stop taking the easy approach and offer better incentives for other servers.

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I can see where you're going with this, but I have to agree with Kokonoe that this is unfortunately a continuous cycle particularly because it's impossible to predict where players migrate towards (I mean just look at the incentives from leaving a congested world. Some likely took SE up on that offer, while others didnt, and the only way to know is case by case), with one possible exception, and it's a exception I feel like you're overlooking and, coincidentaly why I firmly believe Balmung got so drasticly overinflated in the first place, that being its status as the "official" RP server.

I know a good number of people who with as much as a passing interest in roleplaying where either looking to transfer into Balmung, or lamenting that only Balmung has a "proper" roleplay community, as (atleast in my experience and heresay) the roleplaying scene is nowhere even close as established as it is on Balmung anywhere else (I even knew about Balmung's role as a "RP server" before I even started playing FF14!).

Unless another server completely usurps the position as the "official" RP server from Balmung, I find it hard to believe the community would have to be locked as long as Balmung have and likely will be, as you're not drawing in players in quite the same way, especially now with the constant improvements to cross-server capabilities

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Originally Posted by Lazaruz

Unless another server completely usurps the position as the "official" RP server from Balmung, I find it hard to believe the community would have to be locked as long as Balmung have and likely will be, as you're not drawing in players in quite the same way, especially now with the constant improvements to cross-server capabilities

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That depends a lot on how long they're gonna let people circumvent the restrictions via transfers. Large servers attract people, so they're going to grow further and further until you lock them. They might not attract people at the same rate as Balmung, but they still do and it's mostly a matter of time until the lock is needed and the next biggest server is being flocked to.

Cross-server capabilities would have to make quite a few more steps before that's gonna change - You'd need a cross-server market board and the ability for people of different servers to meet in the same overworld instance, so that servers will feel lively regardless of players on it. And then smaller servers would still be less popular due to the prevalence of RMT in them, which in turn is due to the unrestricted character creation.

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Originally Posted by Lazaruz

Once your population isnt in immediate risk of exceeding server capacity, they will.
It's as simple as that, especially since it took SE FAR too long to stop the ability to transfer in, one could make the argument Balmung even went beyond what would be considered stable numbers

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The thing is, they aren't. The only time there was a queue was when 4.0 came out (3000 people in the queue or so that day), and then when housing came out (maybe 1000 in the queue). Every other day? No queue at all. Like I said, only latent players who come out for one day or so and then go back to doing nothing. It's a ghost town out here.

Cross-server PF works as intended. Players only came here for raids, the lockdown on gilgamesh is therefore uneeded at this point. There's no benefit from being on this server anymore, unless you are into rmt.

Shoutout to my boy Y'shtola Cat for AFKing in Limsa since 2013

Yeah big up :0k_hand:

SE did this to themselves by not setting official RP servers.

For people saying Balmung and Gilgie aren't connected, they are. History lesson, the roleplay community for FF XIV voted on Besaid as the unofficial RP server, and that server was later folded into Balmung. When ARR was in development, the RP community asked for official RP servers. Yoshi-P initially suggested there would be, but then went silent. A number of new players decided they didn't want to play on a Legacy server, feeling it was unfair to have new characters on a server with a large number of max-level toons. The roleplay community was split.

Ultimately, one group decided to keep Balmung as the unofficial RP server. The othet group decided to pick a non-Legacy server to set as a second unofficial RP server. There was a vote, and Gilgamesh was selected. I remember concerns being raised because while the vote was going on, raiders on reddit were simultaniously choosing Gilgamesh as their home. It would lead to an odd dynamic where RPers and raiders both flocked to the same place. It's no coincidence both unofficial RP servers were the two most bloated, and the two initially locked. So sorry, Balmung and Gilgamesh will always be seen as siblings.

I think the lock on gilgamesh should be removed now.

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Originally Posted by Xerek

So sorry, Balmung and Gilgamesh will always be seen as siblings.

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I have literally never seen a single person roleplaying in Gilgamesh except in private, like basically any other server. For years. Meanwhile, when I was on Balmung, I almost could never go anywhere without seeing roleplay. Gilgamesh was for a very, very short amount of time a "RP server." There is a reason that Balmung has substantially far more people than Gilgamesh. The people who tried to migrate to Gilgamesh eventually gave up because the "elitists" gave them hell and they all moved back to Balmung.

Everything you posted is complete hearsay. Even Mateus has a far larger roleplay community than Gilgamesh has had at almost any point.

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Originally Posted by Oscura

I have literally never seen a single person roleplaying in Gilgamesh except in private, like basically any other server. For years. Meanwhile, when I was on Balmung, I almost could never go anywhere without seeing roleplay. Gilgamesh was for a very, very short amount of time a "RP server." There is a reason that Balmung has substantially far more people than Gilgamesh. The people who tried to migrate to Gilgamesh eventually gave up because the "elitists" gave them hell and they all moved back to Balmung.

Everything you posted is complete hearsay. Even Mateus has a far larger roleplay community than Gilgamesh has had at almost any point.

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Heresay?

http://www.ffxiv-roleplayers.com

The RPC. Run a search on Balmung and Gilgamesh and you will see a million threads debating it and the actual vote setting it as the unofficial non-Legacy RP server for ARR. Go to the FC section of that page and check the entries for Balmung and Gilgamesh. Heresay? Sorry, what I posted was raw facts.

Actually, here is just one relevent thread of many. If need be, I can dig up more...

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=2601

Oh here, have another...the thread when people were concerned raiders were choosing Gilgie too...

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=3311

...still wanna claim what I say is heresay?