Increase Server Capacity

[Raist]

That's not what happens, though. What happens is that people who are joining because they want to play with their friends eventually end up just giving up on playing the game. I have personally seen three people do this exact thing-- they wanted to join Balmung because their friends were there, and after a week of trying they finally gave up and decided the game wasn't worth the trouble.

The advice of "well then the people who are already on Balmung should just go to a new server" is quite short-sighted. A lot of people don't really feel like grinding a brand-new character all the way through the story again, and as things stand, world transfers are $18 or so. There's all the incentive in the world for them NOT to leave Balmung, meaning that there's no incentive for the people who want to play with their friends to pick another world either.

There is another side to the situation that you are neglecting though... those that have moved to servers to be with their friends, or worse rolled new characters--because it was more important to them that they enjoy the game with their RL friends. I and some of my peeps fall into that category.

I was one of 3 in my FFXI primary LS that were in the original beta... I'm talking 1.0 and not 2.0. We were on different servers though. I didn't have much invested in that character, so when I got into Beta4 I ditched it to try to join people on Hyperion but was too late to get in after the patching and crud when it opened, so one of my other friends that never played XIV at all and I made characters on Midgard together and started farting around... finding creative ways to die, killing each other off on impossible fights and all. Why not? We were continually trying to get into Hyperion after all to be with other people we knew, and this would give him a chance to get comfortable with the different feel of the UI from XI as well before we had to get serious.

Well... it never happened. One guy managed to get a foot in the door, but we couldn't. We managed to scratch our way up the ladder a bit, had our own little LS with just friends, and had gotten into an FC. Eventually, we gave up on Hyperion and when they opened up the server transfers people jumped to Midgard and we got to endgame together and had a blast.

There is something they can do that will allow them and their friends to play together. Some may not feel compelled to make the sacrifice, others will. Apparently it isn't important enough to them to jump worlds or roll a new character. It's a shame too. Think about it... they would be starting out from scratch and could really benefit from their friend's experience with the game. Be that with a new character or with a transferred one. I mean, they were willing to shell out the cash to not only buy the game but also subscribe for a monthly fee in order to play with a friend... and said friend isn't willing to at least roll a new character on another world to play with them?

Sounds kinda like a fair-weather friend to me, which begs the question of people's sincerity on the issue...

And therein lies the rub. Everyone talks a big game about being upset about friends not being able to join them. Well, if it really was such a big deal breaker for them, they could reroll or transfer... but they aren't doing either. And so the problem persists where there are too many people on one side of the scale, so SE keeps locking up their servers trying to balance the population out amongst the less populated worlds. There is a potential solution that can be implemented by the players... just not enough people are willing to bite the bullet I guess?

[Ashren]

snip.

You're neglecting Option C, the people who already have a large number of real life friends and school mates who are already playing on that server who are trying to get a few more friends and school mates into the game. Sure, if it's only one person with little or no ties to a server it's probably not that big a deal to ask them to transfer to a lesser population server, but what about when it's 10 or more people trying to get 3-4 people onto the server? Is it fair for all 10 of those people to have to shell out $18 each? What if they were from Australia and it's closer to $30 each?

Playing on a server for a long period of time, even if we assume you started with 2.0 and stuck to one server, is a serious investment for many. You become familiar with the server economy, you know the guild politics and you network, make friends, find people you are comfortable playing with. Most friends would just rather not play the game than make their friends start over and waste years of time and investment.

[Raist]

You're neglecting Option C, the people who already have a large number of real life friends and school mates who are already playing on that server who are trying to get a few more friends and school mates into the game. Sure, if it's only one person with little or no ties to a server it's probably not that big a deal to ask them to transfer to a lesser population server, but what about when it's 10 or more people trying to get 3-4 people onto the server? Is it fair for all 10 of those people to have to shell out $18 each? What if they were from Australia and it's closer to $30 each?

Not neglecting it... just had nothing to do with Luna's post, which was making the point about 1 person. And I did not restrict it to just the $18 transfer either, which is what you are arguing.

You are conveniently leaving out the option of rolling a new character on their server. My subscription allows me to have 1 character per server. You can roll a new character for FREE.

Did you not even ponder the point made later in the post... that if more people weren't digging in their heels insisting that the new players come to their server that it might eventually help to balance the population somewhat. Possibly even to the point that SE might loosen the reigns on character creation?

Edit:
<paragraph edited in original quote after I started a reply>

Playing on a server for a long period of time, even if we assume you started with 2.0 and stuck to one server, is a serious investment for many. You become familiar with the server economy, you know the guild politics and you network, make friends, find people you are comfortable playing with. Most friends would just rather not play the game than make their friends start over and waste years of time and investment.

Again... rolling a new toon does not kill your access to all your progress on your current server. There are many players that already have multiple characters. I had friends in XI that did the same as well. It killed me when Neza's character got corrupted on Carbuncle and we lost it completely--restore failed. She was gone for months waiting for them to recover her account, but couldn't. While she was away, she started playing more with other friends on other servers and when she finally bit the bullet and rolled a new toon on Carby, we all busted our butts to help her rebuild.

That's what real friends do. If it's important enough... they find a way.

[LunaHoshino]

-snip-

I actually did make an alt on another server so that I could play with my friends there (my main is on Gilgamesh). It's a great idea in theory, but asking an entire group of friends to transfer or make alts on a new server just isn't going to happen in practice. Maybe if there are only a few of you, sure, but the larger the group, the less likely it is that you'll be able to convince everyone to come along just for the sake of one or two people who can't get in. What if you want to transfer but the rest of your friends don't? That means your only choice is to roll an alt, which is incredibly time-consuming. While I personally enjoy it, it's not hard to see why a lot of people don't.

Like I said, it's easy to say "people should just do this," but there are a lot of reasons why people can't or won't. I think a free server transfer week would be a great idea because it would remove one reason for people not wanting to transfer servers (the cost). As for the rest of it, well, there's not much you can do to provide incentives for people to roll alts.