Reopen Bamung, it is 7:30 AM for crying out loud

My friends have been waiting forever to make characters on the server Square Enix, why is it Balmung is always locked down? I's 7:30 AM!!!! There is hardly anyone awake at these hours!!

*looks at the thousand of bots that took up every character creation slot during the min its open* its a mystery :c

balmung is currently heavily plagued by bots :c until the next mass banning for it your friend may not be able to join us on blamung, :c i do hope your friend will be capable of joining you D: it would suck if he has to start on another server.

I camped it for three days before finally getting in right after maintenance took place. Balmung didn't open up from 0300-0900 EST during the days that I waited. Hopefully you will find a time that it is open, but you may want to look towards maintenance as well being a way in.

http://www11.pic-upload.de/10.01.15/35l3mt9ufnpd.png

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Originally Posted by KIka93

My friends have been waiting forever to make characters on the server Square Enix, why is it Balmung is always locked down? I's 7:30 AM!!!! There is hardly anyone awake at these hours!!

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If your friends have already created characters on a different server then what about a world transfer?

We shouldn't have to jump through so many hurdles just to get their characters made on a sever. Why isn't SE banning these bots? This is disgusting and I'm considering just telling my friends to not worry about subscribing, and I'm considering not renewing my subscription because I can't play with my friends.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

If your friends have already created characters on a different server then what about a world transfer?

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Why should we have to pay 18 more dollars just to play on the same server?

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Originally Posted by KIka93

Why should we have to pay 18 more dollars just to play on the same server?

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To be able to play together? Why would your friends want to start a completely new character when they've already been playing the game for who knows when? You also could move to your friends server also, is it easier moving one person or several?

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

To be able to play together? Why would your friends want to start a completely new character when they've already been playing the game for who knows when? You also could move to your friends server also, is it easier moving one person or several?

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I never said in my posts that they were current players.

I think we're reaching the point that Balmung may be hard capped. I do beleive FFXI's Bahamut was having that problem as well back in its hayday.

Some servers are underpopulated as well - people are wanting to bunch together and the servers are not going to be able to take that sort of pressure. Perhaps we should offer free transfers off of Balmung so people can congregate on other servers?

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Originally Posted by KIka93

We shouldn't have to jump through so many hurdles just to get their characters made on a sever. Why isn't SE banning these bots? This is disgusting and I'm considering just telling my friends to not worry about subscribing, and I'm considering not renewing my subscription because I can't play with my friends.

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SE DID just ban a crapload of these bots. The bans tend to take place in waves, probably so that they can track down the bank characters rather than just banning the farming characters. They banned something like 7000 accounts that were involved with RMT and other illicit activities. That's why there's a ton of new bot characters leveling up. As far as the server itself, it'll be open when it's open. It's kinda the price you pay for playing on an ultra high population server. If people keep cramming more and more characters onto it, eventually it'll reach a point where there will be literally zero room for anyone new there.

I'm sorry but as someone who has worked with gaming servers on MMO's, I can tell you that hard cap theory mentioned earlier, and the "No room for anyone" is complete crap. A company like SE has the budget to manage their servers a lot better than this, have you seen the populations of their servers? Also it's easy for you to sit there and go "It'll be open when it's open" when you already have your characters made where you want. Other customers want to play as well, and because someone is breaking the rules and botting up a storm in the game, legitimate paying customers are the ones suffering because they can't play where they want.

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Originally Posted by KIka93

I'm sorry but as someone who has worked with gaming servers on MMO's, I can tell you that hard cap theory mentioned earlier, and the "No room for anyone" is complete crap. A company like SE has the budget to manage their servers a lot better than this, have you seen the populations of their servers? Also it's easy for you to sit there and go "It'll be open when it's open" when you already have your characters made where you want. Other customers want to play as well, and because someone is breaking the rules and botting up a storm in the game, legitimate paying customers are the ones suffering because they can't play where they want.

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I'd love to see your resume.


Sorry, but you should know better. There's a safety margin all companys place on their server load based off of their average activity per day. Balmung likely has the highest average raiting. If every member in Blamung logged onto the server at once, it would likely fry the server.

As far as SE's budget. FFXIV is not its only nor its most profitable project as of yet. You seem to think they have limitless pockets, yet they've just announced that they've gotten rid of archived files from the 1.0 era. Archived data that would, honestly should be cheaper to maintain than advancing server structure (not including the man hours required to transfer the data to a more current server.) So if they can't get the budget out of corporate to do that, the no, it's not simple for them to do that. Their server expansion expenditure is likely caught up in creating that EU local database that they hinted at in London Fanfest.

Complain as much as you will, all you're succeeding in doing is annoying community members who are chafing under similar problems, while others are struggling from underpopulated servers.

Heck, it's even in doubt at this point that your Balmung character is your main, as there is an identical superior geared Tatsu Yamashiro on Phoenix, and your Balmung avatar is currently naked.

I'm well aware of the reasons why people want to roll on Balmung - it's the primary and most thriving Roleplaying server, and it looks like you're a part of an RP guild. However, it's getting to the point where there may have to be a third server for RP (Gilgamesh is also chafing under registry load.)

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

I'd love to see your resume.

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Still less likely a hardcap and more likely they want to spread people to other servers and hope this works. They don't have a dedicated server to anything. So it's not like people can't RP on another server, instead of the unofficial RP server. But people want to go where people want to go!

Only way i managed to make a toon on Balmung was reaaaaaally early...like 4am early lol.

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Originally Posted by Korilynn

Still less likely a hardcap and more likely they want to spread people to other servers and hope this works. They don't have a dedicated server to anything. So it's not like people can't RP on another server, instead of the unofficial RP server. But people want to go where people want to go!

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If SE's at the point where they're no longer comfortable having additional people on the server, then no, they don't go where they want to go.

I'm not saying it doesn't bother me as well. They set their restrictions on character creation as a whole: Meaning players with characters already rolled on the server cannot make more characters from the same account, on that. Meaning, as as Storyteller, I can't roll alts to play. Alts that would not, in any way, effect the server load. That's annoying.

But feeling that you and all your friends should be allowed on an already crowded server? You're not going to make headway in that argument if the company isn't comfortable with the server load. That's why I recommended free transfers off as an alternative. I feel as if that's a good compromise given the situation.

best chanse to make character on balmung is right after server open from a maintenance

Hard cap is not a theory. I'm not sure where you got this information that its a theory. You can take any MMO currently online to date and jam it with your unlimited amount of players and it will crash. Even World of Warcraft has population caps with its much much larger budget caps compared to SE.

Keep in mind, your not the only individual who wants to go to Balmung. You can check out the threads in which asks for which servers they should xfer to and Balmung would probably be one of the top listed to other players.

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Originally Posted by KIka93

I never said in my posts that they were current players.

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Ugghhh.... why not create a character in other servers then? If you really are their friend, you'd transfer to a less populated server. It's a win-win for you because you don't have to deal with these bots again.

Sounds like they need to start offering free server transfers

I know I'll catch sh*t for saying this but it really sounds like people like the OP think SE is keeping them from making characters on Balmung on purpose. Well, in this case, it is OP's friends which are prevented from doing making characters on Balmung.
To be perfectly honest, it is a frustrating situation. Being able to play with your friends is awesome so when something like this happens it is very frustrating and disheartening.
While there is a legitimate reason to be frustrated it doesn't make the mentaly of people like OP a fairly selfish mentality. SE isn't doing this to spite you and your friends. =\

However, as others have said, Balmung is quite possibly the most populated server on the NA side of things. These sort of frustrations are expected.
Also, as others have stated, I would consider a different server if this is becoming too frustrating for you. Alternatively, your friends and you can just do your best to stick it out.

Best of luck!

All I can say is the RP community should keep hassling SE for an Official RP server. Having Balmung (a Legacy server) be the "unofficial RP server" is what makes it so crowded. You have the ppl that go there for the RP but you also have a lot of 1.0 players who don't want to leave the server they've been on for years. But I bet if SE came out tomorrow and was like "here's a server with the (RP) tag after it" That's where most if not all the roleplayers would go.

They had said awhile ago they would add one but then nothing happened. That's what I would do instead of making more threads about it constantly being locked. Best of luck.

I think you're right. Balmung is the most popular server in the NA data center, followed closely by Gilgamesh, and creating a character on there is nigh impossible. It's not just the bots, it's the fact that everyone hears what a great and active RP server Balmung is and decides in their heart of hearts that it's the server for them. But there are many other great servers that DON'T have the high population problem. Unless you're hardcore into role playing, there really is no reason to go to Balmung or Gilgamesh at all.

Balmung's high population is making it harder to play the game, too. I saw the total wipe to Odin that got splashed all across Tumblr the other day. So many dead bodies... presumably because the thousand or so people in the zone trying to kill him caused everyone to lag out terribly.

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Originally Posted by Gemma

All I can say is the RP community should keep hassling SE for an Official RP server. Having Balmung (a Legacy server) be the "unofficial RP server" is what makes it so crowded. You have the ppl that go there for the RP but you also have a lot of 1.0 players who don't want to leave the server they've been on for years. But I bet if SE came out tomorrow and was like "here's a server with the (RP) tag after it" That's where most if not all the roleplayers would go.

They had said awhile ago they would add one but then nothing happened. That's what I would do instead of making more threads about it constantly being locked. Best of luck.

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RP is split between two servers, actually. Gilgamesh also has crowding issues. I'm guessing having a fairly large RPing community is the cause for both of them, as Gilgamesh is not a Legacy Server.

Balmung and Gilgamesh are not the only servers suffering from this problem. There are other servers that are often barred from creating new characters, even when the list says that they are available. Behemoth, Leviathan, Exodus, every Legacy server, these are the popular servers that people want to make new characters on. And as much as I would love to introduce new players to this game, I don't bother because I'm not going to force them to wait until Behemoth and Leviathan are available.

Someone suggested free transfers, thing is, that tends to not help alleviate the issue. Sure, it can but it won't because the number of people transferring off of a capacity server is far less than those transferring to (or creating) other servers. Blizzard has tried this tactic multiple times over the past decade with minimal success.

Be that as it may, I keep in mind that the budget that Square Enix has allocated for FFXIV isn't as vast as the budget Blizzard has allocated for World of WarCraft. I'm pretty sure that the FFXIV staff is doing what they can with the budget constrains, just as I am sure that there is more that they wish that they can do. Perhaps they will add more servers once this rumored EU data center is in place?

The RP community should just come together and focus their resources on making Zalera the RP server. Its population is low enough that it will be open for a long, long time. Instead everyone wants to cram onto the same server as the legacy population and then bitch about everyone cramming onto the same server.

if you try, right before or after maintenance, it is open every single time.

I made a new char on both balmung and gilgamesh like 3 days ago in this way. its open for almost 15 minutes, so its easy.

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Originally Posted by KIka93

We shouldn't have to jump through so many hurdles just to get their characters made on a sever. Why isn't SE banning these bots? This is disgusting and I'm considering just telling my friends to not worry about subscribing, and I'm considering not renewing my subscription because I can't play with my friends.

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please do this. Helps to alleviate a problem, and creates a spot for someone that actually wants to play, rather than complaining.

Balmung is too populated, it is locked as it should be.

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Originally Posted by KIka93

as someone who has worked with gaming servers on MMO's

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Then you should also know leaving server population unchecked - having some server with extremely high populations and some servers with extremely low populations does not work very well either. High population puts heavy strains on the servers - as looking at launch day issues with many big name MMOs, unable to connect - or massive lag/disconnects during game play because the server just cannot handle it. Some companies choose to put log-in queues to alleviate this problem - ArchAge where you wait over 2hrs to log on. As Balmung already have log in queues every night as well as pretty much majority of the day during weekends - I do not want to see an increase to this.

EDIT: Using your subscription as a threat is piss poor attitude. All the developers hate it when certain players are using the "I'm paying you money so do what I want" attitude. They also have other customers to think about, not just you. Think of your problem this way - do they just want to please the hundred(?) of players wish to join an overcrowded server or please the tens of thousands of player already on the server with smoother game play.

You must be a spoiled little princess. You won't be missed, but your slot will be happily enjoyed by someone who wants to enjoy the game.

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Originally Posted by Chihaya

Think of your problem this way - do they just want to please the hundred(?) of players wish to join an overcrowded server or please the tens of thousands of player already on the server with smoother game play.

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This is also the Japanese way of looking at things and probably why they haven't had free transfers off balmung yet, even though at this equivalent time in the game's life, WoW did (though again, they had the enormous budget to allow it and more than two hyper congested servers to deal with). Of course counter THAT with the fact that a lot of financial flop games like SWTOR did server MERGERS at this same point...well, life is complicated.
While yes, the best option would be to allow transfers off servers that are locked, it wouldn't necessarily make the problem go away.
Being on a smaller server is a unique experience. I get to sit back and watch as people try to cram into the FFXIV equivalent of Times' Square on New Years and just laugh.