Square, I beg you. I've lost a dozen friends signing up already. Please open Balmung.

I know this will probably fall on deaf ears, but after turning away another friend this evening I broke down and came to make a hopeful thread. Over the past several months I have had more than a few friends eager to play the game and yet they inevitably turn away because Balmung is never. Open.

No matter what time of day I've looked, no matter when THEY'VE looked, never open. And we're adults, with responsibilities and jobs and so on. None of us can sit around all day hoping to catch the 20 minute window the server might actually unlock for, if it even DOES anymore.

As far as I know we're not even the most populated server anymore, not by half. Of course we are fairly active which plays a part in things but STILL.

Why don't I just leave? Because I'm a roleplayer, and many of my friends are roleplayers. We want to stay where the RP is. I also have a FC and a Linkshell here that I enjoy very much. They have become my friends as well. I am not going to just up and leave server because I haven't known them as long as I have other friends.

Just, please, Square. I'm begging you here, stop leaving Balmung under permanent lockdown, it's ridiculous. ESPECIALLY when you aren't even decent enough to tie the server limits to accounts instead of characters. God forbid any of them ever want to make an alt in the future...

I just made a new person on Balmung not three days ago. Granted, I tend to look in the early morning my time (Central Time, 5-6 hours from the time of this post).

Simplest option, really, is to just try and look at times where people aren't often on, like early morning US time.

Pretty sure that for the busier servers, new players can just wake up a bit early to create a new character on that server before going to school or work. Maybe see if they could try between about 6-8am server time, idk otherwise.

I made a character on Balmung not too long ago~ You just need to have them be on at the right time XD Believe me, it took a long time to get a character there, but it is not PERMANENT. XD It was about 5-6am CST

Have they tried making a character on another server and then transferring them over to Balmung? When my friend started again, she was on Balmung, I was on Cactaur. I tried to make on on Balmung, it said it was full, so I xfered my original character and I was in.

Balmung is almost always open at 11 am GMT.

I can sympathize. I had a friend start up the game but due to our work schedules (we work late shifts so we're usually asleep when the "windows" are open) it took him two weeks to make his character. If I ever invite another friend to play this game then I'll probably just leave Balmung for a low pop server.

I can sympathize. My bf was having a hard time getting 3 of his friends to join us on Balmung. They were all able to transfer/create characters but it was in the wee hours of the morning (2-6am EST) which seemed to work best then. Might be the only way. Good luck =3

You want to stay on Balmung, so does everyone else who plays on that server. :/ SE can't do a thing about player activity. You have a couple options, as others have mentioned:
1. Put your friends before server and move elsewhere. Start your own rp there.
2. If they are determined, they can wait for the open window during a weekday (as in take a vacation day from work or go home during lunch). It actually does open. You can check here: Character Creation Restrictions (it is open right now actually, 1030 am EST.)

Good luck!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ilenya

I just made a new person on Balmung not three days ago. Granted, I tend to look in the early morning my time (Central Time, 5-6 hours from the time of this post).

Simplest option, really, is to just try and look at times where people aren't often on, like early morning US time.

---

Fortunately this recent attempt is a friend in Europe, so trying at 3am EST was no big deal for him. ... Except in the span of 20 minutes when he first looked and the time it took to make his character, it closed again. It's not like he even missed the end of a window, it literally opened and closed in the span of 20-30 minutes. It's ridiculous. :\

Open right now, friend just made a new alt to clog up the server.

All the friends that I've brought to balmung were able to make their characters with little to no issue around 6am-9am pst. it's tough but just keep at it and it'll work out eventually (We didn't know that we could just easily transfer a character made from another server, that's also a very viable option if your friends have a little extra cash to throw down to play with you)

Balmung is both the RP server and the largest pop legacy server. I never see Sarg or Gilgamesh open, so I just swallowed the transfer fee to Sarg.

I HAVE seen it open at Six AM PST on many occasions as well.

Don't go by "server status" or anything like that.

I'm from Excalibur, and like Balmung, has a narrow character creation window in early morning (by North American standards) time. Idk about Balmung, but Excalibur's window is around 6-7 am Eastern time.

I've heard people "can't make characters" but the thing is, you won't know until you actually try to click that "create character button"

Have your pals get their characters made and saved ahead of time. That way they can just load the preset and make their character as quickly as possible.

The window is always exactly the same every day. It never changes.

Remove the lock from Balmung. Put the lock back on Leviathan, kthnx. RMT here have been throwing out tells and friend requests every few minutes for weeks now and it's beyond ridiculous because they can just make new characters non stop.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AvalonBright

Fortunately this recent attempt is a friend in Europe, so trying at 3am EST was no big deal for him. ... Except in the span of 20 minutes when he first looked and the time it took to make his character, it closed again. It's not like he even missed the end of a window, it literally opened and closed in the span of 20-30 minutes. It's ridiculous. :\

---

The solution to that is save your character's appearance. It shouldn't take 20 minutes to select your patron diety and class - so have him create the look he wants now, save the appearance, and then load it when he goes online the next day. Balmung has always been open at around 6am EST.

They really should just add in the world pass system (or whatever it was called) that they used in ffxi. If a server was locked but you had a friend on that world they could spend some gil to get a "pass" to allow one account to create a character on that world. Having the world locked kept swarms of new players from randomly picking it, but if someone wanted to join a friend they could use that pass to do so.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Souljacker

Balmung has always been open at around 6am EST.

---

It's 6:15 AM EST right now and it's closed. :\ I've been trying since 3 AM.

Was closed Yesterday Morning too

I tell people on Hyperion that they'll need to wait until about 3AM EST all the time.
It's hardly a 20 minute window. Nobodys had trouble getting in.

If the server was wide open all the time, I can only imagine what little RMT issues we have now would get worse.

I bet there would be fewer problems with personal housing on Balmung if everyone and their mother and the RPers weren't all on that server.

I'm just saying.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ilenya

I just made a new person on Balmung not three days ago. Granted, I tend to look in the early morning my time (Central Time, 5-6 hours from the time of this post).

Simplest option, really, is to just try and look at times where people aren't often on, like early morning US time.

---

This.

I had to wait till 4 am local time to be able to create a new character on Odin server on "EU" Chaos DataCenter. It was closed the rest of the time (I think at about 8 am it's already closed again).

Albeit Ragnarok Legacy server seems to NEVER be open at all.

Is Balmung a Legacy server?

Maybe if we'd start kicking all these AFKers it be easier to make characters since the lockout is a function of congestion and traffic tot he server.

I've had some friends give up trying to make characters and therefore the entire game due to these restrictions. Something needs to be done.

Less useless RP mules that serve no purpose other than sitting in Ul'dah to get whomever their rocks off.

/rolleyes

WTB RP server so the rest of us can actually play.

Tuesday to Thursday its been open at 8 AM, my hubby wants to make another character but he is at work at that time.
Finally we are getting RMT spam again so it has to be opening up.

What SE needs to do is open up Free server transfers off over populated servers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kewitt

What SE needs to do is open up Free server transfers off over populated servers.

---

I think they did this in XI, so it's not outside the realm of possibilities.

If wanting a slot thats guaranteed to have open characters rather than sitting around for hours, see if you can be around as a maintenance ends. Its -always- open right as maintenance ends. Its still an inconvenient hour, but at least its only for a moment rather than sitting around half the night waiting.

Had that happen to a few friends, so they ended up just starting on Jenova. My gf and I created alts to play there. Honestly, I'll probably keep that alt there. It's really nice to be on a server that's not so crowded. If I didn't have so much already invested in my Balmung characters and so many friends on Balmung, I would transfer my Balmung characters to Jenova as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kewitt

What SE needs to do is open up Free server transfers off over populated servers.

---

That's actually an excellent idea, it would open up creation on that world as well as encourage people to populate less populated servers, add more spice to their life. ;D

I think the fact of the matter is that we need more RP servers. I mean, We have Balmung, we have Gilgamesh, but we don't really have another, and none of the RP servers are official.

Honestly? A quick solution would be to give everyone on the most popular servers (Balmung, Cactaur, etc.) two free 7-day Server Transfer Tickets. That way, people who want to leave Balmung won't have to start everything over again.

To echo earlier comments, just get up super early. And for all that's good in the world, do NOT try on the weekends. Try Mon-Thurs.

Edit: Also, I agree with the person who said 11am GMT. From reading around in various places, that does seem to be the magic time range.

Balmung is open...Get in now..>!!!

Have to try in the early mornings. I remember being able to create my character around 7am my time..that or late at night since a friend of mine was able to do it around 2-3am.

The problem with the idea of offering free transfers is that NO ONE WANTS TO LEAVE. :/ A better idea imo is to offer free transfers for entire FCs that includes moving housing and rooms, etc. I play on Balmung and have heard from people who are not RPers and bitch about this group every chance they get. I asked a couple why won't they move and they said all their friends are there and they'd lose gil. :/

Specifically Balmung being a legacy server has more to due with it's population then it being the unoffical RP server. The merge that happened way back when was with fairy which was 1.0 unofficial rp server. The people that did it threw the phrase around and invited their friends and on lookers which lead to some of the packs of people that do RP. But the overall population dwarfs rp the contributing factor was the fact it was an NA legacy so it as well as the other NA legacy server received a huge boon from people transfering from the JP legacy. Then their friends join them and on and on where the population issue came from. Pair that with people making mules/alts as legacy players having more free slots we have the huge numbers. And then when people cap out and not log in we see a drop and bigger open windows people come in older players come back with the update and the population problem appears again. It is not an easy fix on any side.

Sakasa, there are many servers quite a bit larger than Balmung. There are even some new servers that aren't legacy that are bigger. The legacy stigma is not as accurate as it used to be.

And... for those of you that simply don't know how/where to find the information about when they change the lock/unlock status of servers....

Updates on Character Creation Restrictions can be found here.
During periods of high congestion, we may institute a temporary restriction on the creation of new characters.
This information will be updated at the following intervals:
3:00 a.m./ 7:00 a.m./ 0:00 p.m./ 5:00 p.m./ 10:00 p.m. (PST)

They need to update the servers that are still restricting new characters being created more often than once every 4 hours. I've had the list say a server was allowing new characters, but only to log onto the game, make a new character and the server I wanted to make on wasn't accepting new characters.

Balmung isn't the only server that's nigh perpetually closed. A fair number of NA servers, not just all of the NA Legacy servers, are frequently closed. The Japanese world servers rarely have this problem (at least according to the list).

There are a couple of people that I would love to RAF, but if they can't make a character on Behemoth or Leviathan there is no point in me even mentioning FFXIV to them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rhas

And... for those of you that simply don't know how/where to find the information about when they change the lock/unlock status of servers....

Updates on Character Creation Restrictions can be found here.
During periods of high congestion, we may institute a temporary restriction on the creation of new characters.
This information will be updated at the following intervals:
3:00 a.m./ 7:00 a.m./ 0:00 p.m./ 5:00 p.m./ 10:00 p.m. (PST)

---

I posted the actual link, page 1.

I Roleplay with a bunch of friends on Brynhildr and have been trying to promote roleplaying there more with mt Free Company. The sad thing is everyone who roleplays is told "Oh Balmung's the place to be for Roleplaying" and no one is willing to give other servers a shot... heck I love making characters and I'm thinking of expanding to another server for more RP but I'm scared of Balmung because we had a brief member of our group that had come from there and didn't like how oppressive the atmosphere was there and how much pressure there was to RP. I'm pretty casual, I like having fun but I need OOC time too.