My friend paid and immediately quit, as will I

[Malzian]

Let's go log onto WoW since I have just hitting refresh every 3 minutes...

Area 51 - Full, create new character. "Are you sure you wan't to create a new character you may have long wait times...blah blah blah" Yes.

Oh look I have a new character.

I swear, if we ever have a MMO feature discussion that doesn't end up involving 'This is how WoW does it' I'll probably die of shock....

[KagatoAC]

Well lets see right now the publicly available info on Primal servers I can create character on says:

○ Malboro - Locked
○ Brynhildr - Locked
○ Famfrit - Locked
○ Lamia - Locked

Clearly they don't update their information often enough. Last night there were 0 servers in the Primal data center that were allowing character creation.

Let's go log onto WoW since I have just hitting refresh every 3 minutes...

Area 51 - Full, create new character. "Are you sure you wan't to create a new character you may have long wait times...blah blah blah" Yes.

Oh look I have a new character.

Wow! Famfrit is Locked? thats gotta be a first.

[Sikkun]

I swear, if we ever have a MMO feature discussion that doesn't end up involving 'This is how WoW does it' I'll probably die of shock....

Maybe when it stops being the most successful MMORPG of all time, that might happen.

If they allow you to do a PAID server transfer to a server regardless of character creation status, obviously the server isn't full.

[Malzian]

Maybe when it stops being the most successful MMORPG of all time, that might happen.

If they allow you to do a PAID server transfer to a server regardless of character creation status, obviously the server isn't full.

Being successful like that doesn't always mean having the best features or experience. The fact is that WoW is as popular as it is because it was one of the early successful MMOs out there when there weren't many other good options. A lot of players have simply stuck with it, partly because of the time and money they've already sunk into their characters. That being said... WoW suffers from a massive issue of subscriber sway where they gain and lose subs in the millions at and between patches. I'm not sure if I can really call that successful in the long run... but everyone has their own opinion. This still does not mean we should hold every game up to it as a standard. XIV is very much not WoW.

[Sikkun]

Being successful like that doesn't always mean having the best features or experience. The fact is that WoW is as popular as it is because it was one of the early successful MMOs out there when there weren't many other good options. A lot of players have simply stuck with it, partly because of the time and money they've already sunk into their characters. That being said... WoW suffers from a massive issue of subscriber sway where they gain and lose subs in the millions at and between patches. I'm not sure if I can really call that successful in the long run... but everyone has their own opinion. This still does not mean we should hold every game up to it as a standard. XIV is very much not WoW.

Really...swaying between 7-10 million subs for over 10 years is not successful. WoW being the second generation of popular MMO's, not the first.

I get it though. Create a character, pay $18 for a transfer to a "full" server. That is the better model right?

They need to update this information more often.
Character creation queue would help solve the problem.
Don't allow paid transfer if you claim the server is full. It is either full or it is not.

[Nutz]

Really they should just lock the full servers and allow for free transfers away from them. Unless they have plans (in the near future) to greatly increase the capacity of concurrent connections, I don't see why they should want any new characters on the high population servers at all. There's regularly complaints about having to wait until late at night to make a new character and how people want to invite their friends to play on the overstuffed servers, and then, of course, more and more complaints about the very same servers being too congested.

Outright lock them, allow for free transfers from them, and wait for the populations to stabilize before reopening them. It seems like it's needed.

[Malzian]

Really...swaying between 7-10 million subs for over 10 years is not successful. WoW being the second generation of popular MMO's, not the first.

I get it though. Create a character, pay $18 for a transfer to a "full" server. That is the better model right?

Yes, second generation of successful MMOs, the first generation having a rather limited list as well. And yes, swaying between that many subs is a problem, because it's not gaining and losing them in an extended period. The sway happens rapidly, within a month of an expansion which Blizzard doesn't do all that often. Despite your retention rate of the other 7 million, having a turn over rate that is roughly 1/3rd of your gamer base in such a short amount of time isn't exactly a healthy sign. However, we can sit here and debate all day as to whether or not WoW will continue on as it has or take a drastic turn up or down... that's not the point.

SE made the decision to restrict the servers for character creation for stability purposes. Yes, they let you transfer onto the servers that are full but that's only because it's a pay-for service so they feel you should be able to choose any server you want to play on since you are actively paying for it. I'm sure if it was a free transfer service, they wouldn't let you pick servers with those caps in place. They also know that if they open up one of those "full" servers to character creation they're likely to get a flood of people trying to create on them and thus cause stability issues really... really quickly. So they say, 'Hey, if you really want it, here's an option' but because it's a pay-for they know a lot less people will opt for it and that will inherently flood-control the server for them. Does it suck for people who want to play together on a server? Yes, it does, but they're making sure the people who are already on the server have the ability to play the character they created potentially well before yours.

-Edit-
Also, let's not forget there's a huge issue of population sway of RMT characters and the like on servers, so this is also another way of limiting the amount of characters they can create on a server at any given time (not that it seems to help much).

[Sikkun]

Point being Nutz is right. If your server is FULL it should be locked, period. If I can wake up at 5am and make a character but not at noon the server is not full. What is the point of continually allowing the creation of character on off peak hours if the server is in fact FULL.

I could argue about WoW all day, but in the end...It's not going anywere anytime soon. We all know that.

[Causality]

The World populations are bloated because of Early Access. Famfrit is usually open otherwise. OF the four Famfrit is the lowest population and most likely to reopen.

[Naria]

I agree that the queue system needs to be expanded, both for character creation and the lobby server. SE should probably designate or open a few RP servers for the NA and EU data centers as well (honestly this should have been done at 2.0's launch). I don't think PvP is really a big enough part of the game to have its own servers. We don't have open world PvP.

That said Balmung and Gilgamesh need to be completely locked for a while. The popularity of those two servers is causing stability problems for the entire data center.

Part of people's reluctance to transfer is coming from the housing system, however, so that needs to be in addressed in conjunction.

For now, having a post stickied in New Player Help about how the character creation restrictions actually work would be nice as there is plenty of confusion from people who don't realize that the list is only posted on the lodestone every four hours, while the servers are self automating and changing the restrictions constantly. Most people don't read the fine print.