[Balmung] Server Issues, safety, and overcrowding

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Over here on Faerie, I see scattered RP and meet plenty of people that have RPed in the past and would like to again if there were a thriving community for it here outside of Balmung. For me, I engage in light RP here and there, making it a low priority thing. In WoW, I was much more into it on Earthen Ring, one of the official RP servers. That server had a large thriving RP community up through Burning Crusade at least. I'd like to get involved more here, but I'm not willing to pay transfer to Balmung AND deal with its overpopulated condition. It's perfectly possible to have multiple thriving RP servers in an MMO without stuffing them in into one giant overpopulated server. WoW did it after all.

WoW also boasts a population several times that of FFXIV. Smaller communities cannot afford to splinter off as easily, hence why most MMOs have only one or two servers dedicated the "unofficial RP server." Pocket groups may form amongst friends, but for most people, they want to be apart of a bigger crowd. As for spurring, I have seen precisely the opposite at play. Probably most well known XIV roleplay site even attempts to promote RP on different servers whenever someone decides to try it. Rarely has any lasted because there just isn't enough people. FFXIV, in my opinion, would need far more players interested in roleplay to join come Stormblood to be able to pull off another RP server. Otherwise you're more likely to see people inevitably transfer over when everyone else hypes up Balmung. Granted, I do expect Balmung to be locked completely when Stormblood launches, even to transfer. It won't last, but we may actually have an opportunity to see if another RP community could thrive.

You mean server population limits are bypassed by transfers? They don't impost a limit at all?

Nope. If you pay for a transfer, you can pick any server regardless of it being labeled "closed" on the character creation menu. They allow this loophole so friends can theoretically play together if one happens to already have roots on a specific server. That is also why they almost never lock servers completely.

[Clethoria]

True some teens do but you know what if the person is 18+ and talks sexually with a someone under 18 that is illegal. Not all teens are sexually active either and wants to see that stuff.

Talking isn't illegal. See Sex Ed. It's not illegal for a parent or guardian to tell a kid how their genitals work, and if the Victoria's Secret, Lover's Lane, and teen pregnancy awareness adverts are to go by, it's certainly not illegal to show it to them either. Got plenty of free condoms in high school too. Just can't touch em.

[Mixae]

It would be nice if somehow there was a mega server or two like in Wildstar and ESO

[NolLacnala]

Moon Guard is one of Blizzard's most populated servers. Why? Not because the RP community is so large, but because Roleplayers typically are a mature and reasonable group of individuals who are good enough at the gameplay for Raiders to to see as viable.

Pffthhh

I remember my FC and I mocking Balmung for one of the censuses. Top three pop but something like 0.005% clear rate bottom three of all servers, with "dead" servers pulling more raid clears.

Lolmung is the lowest common denominator server. Stop trying to cover the poo gas smell with Raider brand deodorant.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Pffthhh

I remember my FC and I mocking Balmung for one of the censuses. Top three pop but something like 0.005% clear rate bottom three of all servers, with "dead" servers pulling more raid clears.

Lolmung is the lowest common denominator server. Stop trying to cover the poo gas smell with Raider brand deodorant.

If you go by % thats different than actual number of clears. I'd like to see the numbers though. Balmung has a pretty healthy raiding population.

[raela]

If you go by % thats different than actual number of clears. I'd like to see the numbers though. Balmung has a pretty healthy raiding population.

From the unofficial census data in august, balmung was #4 in NA for gordias mounts (258) and #6 for midas minions (61).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

From the unofficial census data in august, balmung was #4 in NA for gordias mounts (258) and #6 for midas minions (61).

Not getting where they see Balmung being bad then. Sounds like a personal vendetta against a popular server I guess.

[Rita1989]

If you go by % thats different than actual number of clears. I'd like to see the numbers though. Balmung has a pretty healthy raiding population.

Yeah Balmung was 4th in NA for A4S in the census from April which is funny enough more then Cactuar.

Raiding is quite healthy on Balmung regardless anyone on the server would be aware of that.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Pffthhh

I remember my FC and I mocking Balmung for one of the censuses. Top three pop but something like 0.005% clear rate bottom three of all servers, with "dead" servers pulling more raid clears.

Lolmung is the lowest common denominator server. Stop trying to cover the poo gas smell with Raider brand deodorant.

According to the November unofficial census, Cactuar posted .41% clears of Creator compared to Balmung's .33%. That's a difference of a meager .8%. So... congratulations? You beat a non-raid focused server.

[Harmonea]

The thing is, you do NOT want to spread the RP'ers out. [...] Moon Guard is one of Blizzard's most populated servers. Why? Not because the RP community is so large, but because Roleplayers typically are a mature and reasonable group of individuals who are good enough at the gameplay for Raiders to to see as viable.

I know this was a couple pages back, but I need to dispel this. There are fan sites that track this sort of thing VERY diligently thanks to the armory's open API and the devs' encouragement to players to make apps that hook into it specifically for projects like this. So let's look at these claims in detail.

Moon Guard is one of Blizzard's most populated servers.

Moon Guard is the 23rd most populated server of 120 US servers. It's certainly up there, but it's less than 1/3 the population of the top realms (Sargeras 35k vs Moon Guard 11k). You're looking at a Behemoth and claiming it's a Balmung, here.

Why? Not because the RP community is so large, but because Roleplayers typically are [...] good enough at the gameplay for Raiders to to see as viable.

Moon Guard is squarely in the middle of the pack for server progression--59th out of 120, and that's only within US realms. Their top guild isn't even in the world top 1000, and they can only scrape together five guilds who have killed even one boss in the top difficulty mode of the most recent raid. Which has been out for about a month? I think it released a week before 3.5.

I also think you're underestimating how many RP'ers do their homework.

Hmm~

I mean, if you like RP, more power to you. I wouldn't use Moon Guard as an example of anything you aspire to ever again, though.