A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

[Lazaruz]

This stance can lead to irreparable damage to their respective communities. Say both Balmung and Gilgamesh remain locked for another six months, bleeding enough players to finally unlock. By this point, many will have moved on and neither server recovers. Now Mateus, Cactuar and Leviathan are the top servers. Should everywhere who went there cross their fingers and desperately try to re-direct people to other servers for fear they'll get moved into congestion and suffer the same decline? Now you could possibly argue Balmung needs to stay locked a bit longer, but I'd prefer the devs stop taking the easy approach and offer better incentives for other servers.

I can see where you're going with this, but I have to agree with Kokonoe that this is unfortunately a continuous cycle particularly because it's impossible to predict where players migrate towards (I mean just look at the incentives from leaving a congested world. Some likely took SE up on that offer, while others didnt, and the only way to know is case by case), with one possible exception, and it's a exception I feel like you're overlooking and, coincidentaly why I firmly believe Balmung got so drasticly overinflated in the first place, that being its status as the "official" RP server.

I know a good number of people who with as much as a passing interest in roleplaying where either looking to transfer into Balmung, or lamenting that only Balmung has a "proper" roleplay community, as (atleast in my experience and heresay) the roleplaying scene is nowhere even close as established as it is on Balmung anywhere else (I even knew about Balmung's role as a "RP server" before I even started playing FF14!).

Unless another server completely usurps the position as the "official" RP server from Balmung, I find it hard to believe the community would have to be locked as long as Balmung have and likely will be, as you're not drawing in players in quite the same way, especially now with the constant improvements to cross-server capabilities

[Zojha]

Unless another server completely usurps the position as the "official" RP server from Balmung, I find it hard to believe the community would have to be locked as long as Balmung have and likely will be, as you're not drawing in players in quite the same way, especially now with the constant improvements to cross-server capabilities

That depends a lot on how long they're gonna let people circumvent the restrictions via transfers. Large servers attract people, so they're going to grow further and further until you lock them. They might not attract people at the same rate as Balmung, but they still do and it's mostly a matter of time until the lock is needed and the next biggest server is being flocked to.

Cross-server capabilities would have to make quite a few more steps before that's gonna change - You'd need a cross-server market board and the ability for people of different servers to meet in the same overworld instance, so that servers will feel lively regardless of players on it. And then smaller servers would still be less popular due to the prevalence of RMT in them, which in turn is due to the unrestricted character creation.

[ScootPatoot]

Once your population isnt in immediate risk of exceeding server capacity, they will.
It's as simple as that, especially since it took SE FAR too long to stop the ability to transfer in, one could make the argument Balmung even went beyond what would be considered stable numbers

The thing is, they aren't. The only time there was a queue was when 4.0 came out (3000 people in the queue or so that day), and then when housing came out (maybe 1000 in the queue). Every other day? No queue at all. Like I said, only latent players who come out for one day or so and then go back to doing nothing. It's a ghost town out here.

[OliverB]

Cross-server PF works as intended. Players only came here for raids, the lockdown on gilgamesh is therefore uneeded at this point. There's no benefit from being on this server anymore, unless you are into rmt.

[NotOliverB]

Shoutout to my boy Y'shtola Cat for AFKing in Limsa since 2013

[MaybeOliverB]

Yeah big up :0k_hand:

[Xerek]

SE did this to themselves by not setting official RP servers.

For people saying Balmung and Gilgie aren't connected, they are. History lesson, the roleplay community for FF XIV voted on Besaid as the unofficial RP server, and that server was later folded into Balmung. When ARR was in development, the RP community asked for official RP servers. Yoshi-P initially suggested there would be, but then went silent. A number of new players decided they didn't want to play on a Legacy server, feeling it was unfair to have new characters on a server with a large number of max-level toons. The roleplay community was split.

Ultimately, one group decided to keep Balmung as the unofficial RP server. The othet group decided to pick a non-Legacy server to set as a second unofficial RP server. There was a vote, and Gilgamesh was selected. I remember concerns being raised because while the vote was going on, raiders on reddit were simultaniously choosing Gilgamesh as their home. It would lead to an odd dynamic where RPers and raiders both flocked to the same place. It's no coincidence both unofficial RP servers were the two most bloated, and the two initially locked. So sorry, Balmung and Gilgamesh will always be seen as siblings.

[Senn]

I think the lock on gilgamesh should be removed now.

[Oscura]

So sorry, Balmung and Gilgamesh will always be seen as siblings.

I have literally never seen a single person roleplaying in Gilgamesh except in private, like basically any other server. For years. Meanwhile, when I was on Balmung, I almost could never go anywhere without seeing roleplay. Gilgamesh was for a very, very short amount of time a "RP server." There is a reason that Balmung has substantially far more people than Gilgamesh. The people who tried to migrate to Gilgamesh eventually gave up because the "elitists" gave them hell and they all moved back to Balmung.

Everything you posted is complete hearsay. Even Mateus has a far larger roleplay community than Gilgamesh has had at almost any point.

[Xerek]

I have literally never seen a single person roleplaying in Gilgamesh except in private, like basically any other server. For years. Meanwhile, when I was on Balmung, I almost could never go anywhere without seeing roleplay. Gilgamesh was for a very, very short amount of time a "RP server." There is a reason that Balmung has substantially far more people than Gilgamesh. The people who tried to migrate to Gilgamesh eventually gave up because the "elitists" gave them hell and they all moved back to Balmung.

Everything you posted is complete hearsay. Even Mateus has a far larger roleplay community than Gilgamesh has had at almost any point.

Heresay?

http://www.ffxiv-roleplayers.com

The RPC. Run a search on Balmung and Gilgamesh and you will see a million threads debating it and the actual vote setting it as the unofficial non-Legacy RP server for ARR. Go to the FC section of that page and check the entries for Balmung and Gilgamesh. Heresay? Sorry, what I posted was raw facts.

Actually, here is just one relevent thread of many. If need be, I can dig up more...

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=2601

Oh here, have another...the thread when people were concerned raiders were choosing Gilgie too...

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=3311

...still wanna claim what I say is heresay?