A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

[Excaliburnina]

It's Square Enix's fault for not providing an actual solution instead of a bandaid. Please stay the SE apologies. Accusing people of something like a hivemind being the reason they went to Gilgamesh is just ad hominem; there was a lot of legitimate appeal in a server like Gilgamesh. The raiding community is small as it is, it makes perfect sense people would pick a place they could all be if they were interested in raiding. Stop with the Balmung comparisons, this is not about Balmung and comparisons to Balmung are not valid as they exist purely on the foundation of server population which, I don't know how many times I have to say this, has nothing to do with the server being alive. This has plenty to do with SE because they were the ones who locked the server, the players who went to Gilgamesh and were/are on Gilgamesh never had some intention of overflowing it; it just became the place for the raiding population to be.

[Excaliburnina]

Which, again, means that people are not being objective. Servers change over time. It's a natural part of any MMO's progression. Up until a few months ago, for instance, Mateus was a very small server. Now? It's a lot bigger and is one of the three main unofficial servers for role-play alongside Balmung and Omega.

This is an inherently subjective topic. Enjoyment of a game is subjective, and it is entirely valid to provide subjective experiences as reason for something to change because the developers are partly responsible for enjoyment of the game they sell.

[Theodric]

This is an inherently subjective topic. Enjoyment of a game is subjective, and it is entirely valid to provide subjective experiences as reason for something to change because the developers are partly responsible for enjoyment of the game they sell.

A lot of the 'debate' is simply revolving around blaming Square Enix. Not liking their solution does not mean it is invalid. It clearly served the intended purpose and now Gilgamesh is set to boast a much more manageable player population. As a bonus, people transferring away from Gilgamesh and Balmung has served to breathe new life into other servers. Some of which were struggling to maintain a reasonable player population before the new policies were put in place, hence why I brought up Mateus earlier.

By all accounts, though, there's still plenty of people playing on Gilgamesh. So what, exactly, is stopping people from breaking into new social circles there?

[Oscura]

How is it SE's fault for Gilga for the longest time being over filed with players and being called " the raiding server" That isn't SE fault. The players have nothing but themselves to blame for THAt one, and because everyone is a hivemind ofcourse people followed. And over time like Balmung - which I was on both for a litle bit of time- got overcrowded and locked. You don't see any other servers being locked do you? SE locked the servers cause they were extra full, and noone but the players caused that. Stop trying to blame SE for those servers being too full for school. Is it full now? I dunno, should it be unlocked? If there's deman for it sure. But don't sit here and blame SE cause G and B were player favs for the longest time and noone wanted to make other servers alts for RP and raiding until it was too late. That is on noone but the players.

Yes explain to me how it is totally Random player A's fault he decided to play on Gilgamesh on August of 2013 during early access.
Yes explain to me how it is totally Random Player B's fault she decided to play on Balmung on August of 2013 during early access.

You are being ridiculous. Square Enix could've exercised preventive measures years ago and refrained. They could've locked transfers and only allowed new characters, and they refrained. Square Enix is entirely at fault for how bad Balmung and Gilgamesh got. Their population swelling for years obviously is because people joined, but it is absolutely small-minded to seriously imply that Square Enix didn't see the numbers steadily rising and were totally blindsided by this. They knew the entire time and only did something once it started to inconvenience them, which was when it became too much stress for their servers in general. Not because of dying or smaller servers.

Are you going to say that Housing is only a problem because people can't collectively form a line or agree upon where personals and FC houses should be bought based on Wards or subdivisions? Are you going to say Housing isn't SE's fault, and that it's simply yet again the players doing things with their "hivemind"?

Stop being ridiculous.

[Excaliburnina]

A lot of the 'debate' is simply revolving around blaming Square Enix. Not liking their solution does not mean it is invalid. It clearly served the intended purpose and now Gilgamesh is set to boast a much more manageable player population. As a bonus, people transferring away from Gilgamesh and Balmung has served to breathe new life into other servers.

By all accounts, though, there's still plenty of people playing on Gilgamesh. So what, exactly, is stopping people from breaking into new social circles there?

I respect your point, it has caused players to transfer to other servers which I accept was their intention. But then, why is it fair for Gilgamesh to suffer for these advantages in other servers? Why is it not fair for people to have problems with this side effect and seek a different solution? It being a necessary evil is not fair, the people on Gilgamesh pay for the game all the same as the people that are beneficiaries to this lock. By statistics, which still don't correlate to the actual activity of the server, people are playing on Gilgamesh. A dying community that raidlogs is no place to form social circles, especially circles that have been broken up by the transfers and lack of new players.

[Oscura]

I respect your point, it has caused players to transfer to other servers which I accept was their intention. But then, why is it fair for Gilgamesh to suffer for these advantages in other servers? Why is it not fair for people to have problems with this side effect and seek a different solution?

One would argue it's fair since we have a huge population or because at one point we were congested to the point of bloating.

Though many seem to forget that a certain company allowed limitless transfers* into our server for a very long period of time.

*Which they took your money for, I might add.

[Kewitt]

I've seen a few people leave balmung, But I want it to stay locked for as long as it can.

[Hikuras]

I'm not being ridiculous because I remember nothing but players " if you want to raid.. Go here. " Said by many players over YEARS of it being first said. SE did do something, you couldn't just make a character there anytime. you had to cheat the system and make one at some crack hours in the morning to get a character there if you didn't want to spend money. Yes you could've transfer there and I'll give you THAT one. But again, even with that out in the open it was players who told other players to go there for whatever reason. Sooner or later ofcourse it was going to get locked. Yes it should've happened sooner.. but it happened now. SE only issue is they didn't lock it fast enough, but it's still was on players for telling everyone and their mother with their sick dog to go there. Thats all I'm saying, if people wasn't doing THAT it would've been locked. So thats why I'm saying the players put themselves in that boat. Not all of them no. Some random person in 2013 at the start? No.

[Demotts]

It's worth noting that the whole "raiding server" stigma isn't the only reason a lot of people came here. I made my character on Gilgamesh in 2.0 because I knew it was going to be a server that actually felt like I was playing an MMO. You know, that whole "massive multiplayer" part makes a pretty big difference. The fact that I happen to raid had nothing to do with it. Gilgamesh wasn't just a "raiding server"...it was the example of what a healthy server in general should look like, and we're losing that every day. I'm not lacking sympathy for the smaller servers that have been struggling this whole time, but cheering and clapping because a healthy community is deteriorating helps literally nobody.

[Kalia]

Raiders congregated on Gilgamesh because the raids became so difficult that getting a strong pool of players was important for actually being able to clear the content. Gordias is the biggest culprit in this, and Midas continued the trend. In the wake of such challenging content, many groups fell apart on smaller servers and without a large enough player pool struggled to fill their ranks with a team strong enough to beat the content.

Coming to Gilgamesh was hope for a more serious population when it comes to clearing content for a lot of us (myself included), how is it so difficult to empathize with that situation and instead blame the players? The symptoms that created Gilgamesh have largely been cured - we can pool our talent from all the servers in a data center now when it comes to raid groups. We've gotten stronger as a community at tackling difficult content through PFs and better recruitment ethics. Population growth on Gilgamesh has little reason to be more than other servers at this point, especially when the last 4 months have made great strides in spreading out the populations to other servers like Mateus.

So why keep the gates closed? There's plenty of Gilgamesh player testimony in this thread telling you that we are not ok, that things are getting worse, and we want to still be a healthy server when we are unlocked. There's been testimony that our hubs are not very crowded during prime time.

Also, since some people are asking for Rhalgr's Reach, here you go. I just took these, so they're from around 6:20pm EST on a Friday: This is as crowded as it gets during prime time.