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

[dice137]

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.

[Natashio]

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

[Seoulstar]

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.

[Sadana]

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. :/

[Sakasa]

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.

[Tiggy]

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.

[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)

[Noshpan]

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.

[Sadana]

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.

[Terrini]

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.