Balmung has been locked half a year. Enough is enough please.

[BillyKaplan]

I would argue that it’s their clients that take the most priority. Without us XIV would of died, or gone free to play, because of lack of subscriptions.

You come to a restaurant. The host at the entrance smiles at you, nods, then checks the restaurant. There are no more available tables. There are no more available seats at the bar, either. "Apologies," the host says; "It seems we have no room available for you at this time."
"How dare you!" you cry out, enraged. "Did you not know I am a customer?! I take top priority!"

Or like a normal person, you sign up for a waiting list, or go somewhere that has room. As good friends are you are with that gang of dozen or so merry people at table five, the restaurant has a fire safety limit of 50 people and it is dangerously at 55 already.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

I think they should offer one last incentive to balmung to convince people to transfer. If this doesn't work then they should take the decision out of the players hands and split the server. The servers then should both be named RP servers. I think SE so far has done everything they can to try and alleviate the problem but the players are not willing to help/compromise.

2. Since so many roleplayers are leaving for Mateus, we’re losing our community. I also fear that Mateus now has the ability to grow, and we don’t. It might be the end of us in the future if Mateus looks more enticing for RP. If Mateus gains more role players than us, we might begin to die out, especially if new players interested in RP can’t join Balmung. I think this is why Balmung should open. Then we could divide into two RP servers much more easily. Otherwise all Roleplayers may do another exodus, and just create a new Balmung all over again. That isn’t what the players or the developers want, but some problems just create themselves if there is no action.

See here's the problem, it shouldn't be and/or you guys should be working together as a community to make both servers a success thus helping the RP community grow. Yet atm all you guys are doing is holding it back via a pissing contest of who has the better RP server.

The only people that have done the right thing are the ones that petitioned players to move to mateus and create a new community of Rpers.

[Baci]

OP is the best example why balmung is still overcrowded and why its never solve its problem

[Kerwin]

Balmung is a Legacy server. It has all sorts of players new and old. The problem is that most of the new characters are alts. I would like to see it open one day as well, But remembering the housing rush, I'm ok with the server being locked still. People who make trouble will be easily recognizable too.

[Crysten]

We the players have power. If we wish, we can cancel our subscriptions, and demand to be heard. Every subscription is power.

And yet you're still here.

[Reinha]

If you and everyone you know are not going to leave, then I don't see the problem. If your friends are leaving, follow them to the new server.

And the server doesn't need new players as long as it remains the most populated. You can get to know more of the people who are already there. I'm sure there are many thousands of existing Balmung players to get acquainted with.

[MistakeNot]

I agree that the lockout is becoming problematic. I hope that the servers can be opened up, and that the reasons for them being locked can go away.

Problems of Balmung in my perspective.

1. No new players anymore. There’s no growth, and no new people running around the zones. It makes me sad. It also makes mentoring almost pointless.

This will be only partly due to transfers being locked down. It has been a very long time since it was really possible to create a new character on Balmung due to the fact that it was always so busy that character creation was always blocked.

2. Since so many roleplayers are leaving for Mateus, we’re losing our community. I also fear that Mateus now has the ability to grow, and we don’t. It might be the end of us in the future if Mateus looks more enticing for RP. If Mateus gains more role players than us, we might begin to die out, especially if new players interested in RP can’t join Balmung. I think this is why Balmung should open. Then we could divide into two RP servers much more easily. Otherwise all Roleplayers may do another exodus, and just create a new Balmung all over again. That isn’t what the players or the developers want, but some problems just create themselves if there is no action.

Mateus AND Omega. Personally I am very happy we finally got an (unofficial) EU RP server (Omega). That would not have happened if Balmung hadn't been locked down hard.

There are enough RPers in the game to sustain a viable community on more than one server.

All the roleplayers moving to a single server would not be a major problem populationwise - there aren't that many of us. It is when other people follow that it may become a problem.

3. If we leave, we leave our friends forever. As much as I want to leave, I just can’t bring myself to do that.

So persuade your friends to leave with you. Or leave an alt behind for interaction with them. Or create a new character elsewhere while keeping the old one where your friends are. Or keep in touch with them outside the game. Or utilize the many cross-server services that have recently been added to the game.

[Zojha]

And there being so many people that make the server feel so alive is exactly the problem and reason why SE is locking it.

Instead of bolstering the servers to support it so that neither the stability is in danger nor the players have to give up something they want. Bluntly put, the server lock is a low-cost solution that saves SE money at the cost of the players. They benefited from the transfers while the realms were filling, merrily continued until the servers 'sploded, went "Aw shame!" and now expect the players to fix it. Big surprise, many players aren't willing to cooperate with that plan and Balmung is still highly populated.

As for the community: Frankly, people will just congregate to the next thing anyway, RPer or not. It already happens - In the last unofficial census, half as many people paid for a transfer to Leviathan as there have been people using the free transfer to Zalera, which was the highest amount of paid transfers in the tallying period. A lot of people simply want to play on a "full" server and SE simply doesn't want to enable them, because large server support costs money.

For RPers in particular, a smaller RPing population (like, a single FC) simply means you'll be restricted to small cliques and if you don't fit in with the theme, timezone, the people's style or there's drama (And there's an abundance of drama in the RP community, it's not a cohesive unit at all), you're SOL. Spreading people out over the servers only achieves one thing: If you don't fit with the local groups, you need to transfer off the server instead of just leaving the FC/linkshell and searching a new one. Great for SE who gains money off that, bad for the players. As such, the most healthily sized community for RP is one big cluster in which you have a large diversity on the same server. And consequently, that's what people attempt to create, not just in this game, but others as well. The issue then is that this is not the most healthily sized community for the server hardware.

SE did what everyone would have done: Pick the solution that benefits themselves the most. And they're going to continue it, it does what it's supposed to do. If the process is slow, they'll just keep it up longer, they don't care, it's just a switch to flip for them. No point to be delusional about that. It's cold, harsh economics at work and shouldn't be glorified to anything else.

[Alien_Gamer]

I would argue that it’s their clients that take the most priority. Without us XIV would of died, or gone free to play, because of lack of subscriptions.

So your solution is to ignore the problem, let balmung grow until the server collapses and risk having player data corrupted? Sorry, protecting the server is a greater priority than your satisfaction. No server, no game.

[Rinuko]

I would argue that it’s their clients that take the most priority. Without us XIV would of died, or gone free to play, because of lack of subscriptions.

Lol! You seriously mean that one whole server has been holding XIV afloat? Seriously?