A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

[Azell]

Can't upvote this enough. FC recruitment is dead, can't invite friends to the game to play with us, unless we are willing to create an alt on another server and start from zero with no gil/support.
Gilgamesh is basically a raidlog server, people do weeklies tues/wed and be gone. SE is slowly killing the big servers and with that killing the raiding scenario imo.
And for those who'll talk about PF cross world, its a completely different experience, when you have all your friends/static on the same server, you can help each other out way better, crafting, items, gil, etc.
I see absolute no reason to keep the preferred worlds, and keep opening gilgamesh every day for 1h or so, like it was before.

[Azurelos]

Yeah I agree. We really need something to happen. I've been in Gilgamesh for 3 years and I've never seen it like this before.

[Sfia]

Do we specifically know how the unofficial census stats work? I personally have 4 characters on gilgamesh which I log into enough for all of them to be called "ACTIVE" however I will never be playing them all at the same time. As it is a high raiding population server this is probably the case for a very large amount of the server, more so than any other server at least.

So the census numbers thrown around are probably very skewed toward number of characters present, and not concurrent players. A better metric might be individual accounts on the server, however those sorts of numbers will never be released by SE and for good reason.

To say the server isn't stagnating because of a misleading number is an unfair judgement to make, and tangible metrics should be observed instead - markets, in game density etc.

[Alien_Gamer]

It works by scraping the lodestone for unhideable character information such as titles. Since the MSQ gives a title at the end of each section they use that as one of the metrics for who is "active". They also compare it to previous census data to look for changes in character data, ie. those that haven't changed probably aren't active.

For an unofficial census its a good guess but its hardly accurate and leaves a lot of people out that are active simply because they don't do those things the census looks for. The only one that actually knows how the server is doing is SE, the rest is speculation.

[Keydah]

They should unlock Gilgamesh & Balmung for creation, but keep it transfer-locked like Omega is. Characters being created wasn't the issue, it was people transferring in and bypassing the creation lockout that bloated the server. It wouldn't get a flood of people as they couldn't make characters there, as per the auto-lock when a certain number of players are online, but there would still be new blood entering the server slowly.

I'm guessing Gilgamesh is not actually having a population problem now, it's just as active as it should be. Which probably looks sad to players used to the overpopulation, but isn't an actual issue - though of course, not having new players to recruit into your FCs and such is harsh.

They also should've provided legitimate incentives for those transferring off so that it would've been more successful, such as transfers to preferred servers receiving the Road to 60 buff or a more useful currency than gold feathers...but it's too late for that now.

[AngelCheese77]

<snip>

For the health of our server, please unlock Gilgamesh.

I've played on Gilgamesh before I left FF14 about a year or so ago (before PoTD even came out). And truthfully, RP and Gilgamesh were kinda dying at that point as everyone was on Balmung. Though, yes, not surprised to see the circles and cliques are still around. And even before I left, people were leaving Giglamesh for different grounds.

But for the server to be locked, it must still be busy, but not in the lower levels. That sucks. And the time when it is unlocked (at least back then) was like, 6am EST. Where most people are heading to work or maybe school .. or sleeping.

[Ilenya]

They should unlock Gilgamesh & Balmung for creation, but keep it transfer-locked like Omega is. Characters being created wasn't the issue, it was people transferring in and bypassing the creation lockout that bloated the server. It wouldn't get a flood of people as they couldn't make characters there, as per the auto-lock when a certain number of players are online, but there would still be new blood entering the server slowly.

There would legitimately be no difference between unlocking transfers and unlocking creation. One just gives SE more money.

[Keydah]

There would legitimately be no difference between unlocking transfers and unlocking creation. One just gives SE more money.

There is a HUGE difference between "people can join the server all day long whenever they please for a moderate fee" and "people can only create characters while there are enough people logged out."

Players couldn't transfer back in in droves, and the server would be creation locked most of the day so that the population couldn't explode again. If they wanted to play on Gilgamesh/Balmung, they would have to make their characters then level up again, or pay SE to boost their character through the story and levels. The chance of making a character would be slim, but that's what happens when you try to join a bloated server.

[JunseiKei]

Do we specifically know how the unofficial census stats work? I personally have 4 characters on gilgamesh which I log into enough for all of them to be called "ACTIVE" however I will never be playing them all at the same time. As it is a high raiding population server this is probably the case for a very large amount of the server, more so than any other server at least.

So the census numbers thrown around are probably very skewed toward number of characters present, and not concurrent players. A better metric might be individual accounts on the server, however those sorts of numbers will never be released by SE and for good reason.

To say the server isn't stagnating because of a misleading number is an unfair judgement to make, and tangible metrics should be observed instead - markets, in game density etc.

Pretty much this. Cactuar is above Gilgamesh in terms of numbers according to the unofficial census. However, the only server to become newly closed since Balmung and Gilgamesh were completely blocked and the push to have people seek other servers has been Omega. If you look on their posts about the status of new characters and transfers, you'll see they specifically mention active players. Something that census does not track (they track character changes, not actual activity), but SE is keeping tabs on and calling the shots with. I can only surmise that even though there are more characters present here on Cactuar, the overall activity is less than Gilgamesh's.

Plus, you know, currently we're in catch up phase, as stated above. I would say wait and see how the server looks when Omega 5-8 are released.

[Karen_Cerfrumos]

I like how people use unofficial scrapes of Lodestone that isn't remotely able to represent much of actual state due to very shallow information available to gauge how active the server actually is.
Even though we don't have access to login per time or activity per time metrics at all, just a supposed number of people who are 70 and are on the server. That's "active".