See, and here you bring nothing to the conversation. I guess you did the exact same thing! I guess we are both string puppets! Wow!
Printable View
I'm just gonna pop in and say the Balmung issue is part and parcel of FFXIV's housing system, and not solely related to role playing.
Basically, if you build a system where houses cannot be moved because they're server bound -- on top of those houses being purchasable by both FC and single player -- then you forfeit the right to be surprised when players don't want to leave that server. Unpopular opinion, but I don't think single player housing was ever a good idea. At all.
And I still can't believe it took them this long to add apartments. Apartments ought to have been there at 2.3, with the new plots, and those new plots reserved for Free Companies.
This is my counterargument to this suggestion that someone had posted in a different thread...
Transfer Restrictions and Roleplayers
My bf and I just moved from Balmung to Cactaur this evening. We didn't have much tying us there, though. One friend and he's now thinking of moving, too. Initially my bf wanted to stay because he likes the economy, but the queue times just aren't worth it for us. He works mornings and gets off right when Balmung starts getting busy. Plus if anything d/c's you, gods help ya. I tried to get him to take a free transfer, but he was too worried those servers will end up "dead". At any rate? Stormblood = $40; World Transfer = $18; cue of 26 to sign in at 7:30 ESt? Priceless.
If not being able to play isn't incentive enough, then may you suffer the queue a thousand times over.
And I'd just like to say to those who say they like Balmung because it has so many people, it isn't going to last. They're going to reduce Balmung's size to that of every other server.
SE really needs to start classifying some servers as RP-friendly servers and some servers that are not.
At the end of the day, I bet many players on Balmung would be happy to transfer out of Balmung if they knew that they'd be going to a smaller server that still had a RP community, even if that RP community was smaller. The fact of the matter is SE failed to give us RP servers and so the community made their own. Now that community is holding on very tightly to the two servers that they can call their own.
It's not rocket science why the two RP servers are the most populated on the NA data centers. They are sticking to the server primarily because of RP and SE isn't willing to give us official alternatives.
But the incentive to move would be significantly greater if we knew where we were going was going to be designated as a new RP community. It might not be as big or as dense as Balmung, but that's fine, there's something to be said for smaller, close knit communities. For many, it'd also give them a chance to RP a new fresh start on a new server with some familiar and new faces. AND, you'd be able to get that house you've been after for so long.
For those of you who might suggest the community should take the lead on this... sure, they could. But the fear that a new server could fail is very real, and especially with transfers back to Balmung being locked for the foreseeable future, nothing short of an official alternative is going to really make people comfortable leaving.
I'm not particularly big on the Balmung RP scene, personally. I am an RPer, and I like being where RP is at so I can recruit interesting people to my FC. I'd totally be down to move, if I knew that a new server had been designated for RP and that I'd still be able to recruit people. Til then, Balmung it is.