New player here needing lots of help

[Boredhuman]

Im trying out the trail right now and its a lot of fun, im fully considering buying it. but before i do i have a few questions. first off I dont understand how servers were restricted for me I wanted to go play on the server Tonberry after hearing some good things about it. Will i be able to make a new character on that server anytime soon?

also whats the difference between buying the game or buying the game for steam. what makes the steam version any different? Is it worth getting on steam, or just out right buying it from the website?

another question, is my server good and social or is it known for being one of the low end servers? I noticed this game doesnt have a general chat but ive been seeing a lot of players.

any information you have on these topics will help. thank you!

[Anova]

The servers generally reset at certain times. Depending on the number of players on the server at that time, those servers will be locked to new players. This ensures that all servers are about the same. Unfortunately, there are servers where people have friends and those popular servers tend to be impacted more.

There is a work-around. The server checks the population at regular intervals and after one such check where the active population is low, you may create a character at that time. The full list is here, in pacific standard time. Just stay up late one night or set an alarm and create a character on an off-hour like 3AM. Once you do, you'll be able to log in to the server at any time as long as it is running (not down for maintenance/patches/etc).

If you buy it off steam, you can use the steam wallet to pay the subscription. It is much more difficult to connect your ffxiv game to your steam account if you don't buy through valve. You still have to make a SE account play the game either way. You can just have your SE account draw from your steam account for cash (if you don't want to put credit card info on SE's servers) by buying through steam.

It's difficult to determine how active a server is without seeing it for yourself or hearing from a well-connected player already on the server. Be aware that there is no general chat in the game. Shouts only extend as far as the map your character is in. Meaning, if you are in Central Thanalan, only players in Central Thanalan will hear your shouts. You'll see more shout activity in certain nodes like revenants toll, marketboards, and raid zones, but chat activity is largely restricted to fc and linkshell chat which are global but require invitations. You can join up to 8 linkshells though and they tend to be very social (lowbie-friendly groups and chat groups) or very focused for specific content (e.g. raids). As far as server populations, some players are tracking it on this website, http://xivsoul.com/.

Hope that helps. Ask if you have any more questions or need clarification

[KagatoAC]

okay so you use xivsouls stats and then claim right next to it that Famfrit is a low pop server? huh? among the US servers its in the top 3 and the other 2 are comparable with less than 1k difference? why are people always trying to put Famfrit down? I mean unless you are counting European and Japanese servers in the mix, which you really shouldn't as they are different regions and timezones..

Brynhildr 102038
Exodus 103256
Famfrit 102611
Lamia 100244

[Ruri]

okay so you use xivsouls stats and then claim right next to it that Famfrit is a low pop server? huh? among the US servers its in the top 3 and the other 2 are comparable with less than 1k difference? why are people always trying to put Famfrit down? I mean unless you are counting European and Japanese servers in the mix, which you really shouldn't as they are different regions and timezones..

Brynhildr 102038
Exodus 103256
Famfrit 102611
Lamia 100244

That site cant be right, shows Hyperion near the bottom and we are one of the most populated.

[Garlyle]

That site cant be right, shows Hyperion near the bottom and we are one of the most populated.

It does regular scans of the Lodestone database for player characters attached to each server. Unless a hell of a lot of people on that server are hiding their Lodestone profiles entirely somehow, it should be accurate.

[Anova]

I'm not certain how that site determines the number of active players on each server. I will admit I didn't really check the statistics for Famfrit before posting and just assumed the OP couldn't find players online at their preferred playing time.