A humble request to Square Enix: please unlock Gilgamesh.

[TensaiSogetsu]

Not
Going
To
Happen.
Get
Over
It.

[Raikki]

Not
Going
To
Happen.
Get
Over
It.

Posting
Like
This
Is
Rude,
Please
Stop.

[Alien_Gamer]

stuff

People really need to stop blaming SE for the situation, this is as much the players fault as it is SE. SE restricted character creation on the server for months (years?) before closing it completely. They left transfers open because they don't like to say no; it was also a hope that the community would realize the server was getting full and would police themselves to not crowd the server...that failed. Players deliberately used the transfer loophole to continue crowding onto a server they already knew was overcrowded and now they want to place all of the blame on SE for not closing it? Sorry, the players need to take responsibility for their own actions too.

SE has also shown us they are monitoring the populations, the notice about the status of the worlds updates several times a day, its just that the status doesn't change every day so most people ignore it. And the players have given no reason for SE to trust us not to repeat the same behavior as before, especially when people still post about wanting to move their friends to the locked servers as soon as they open. I'm sure SE is going to leave the servers locked until they have a big enough safety margin so when players do flood the server again, they won't have to lock it immediately; so no I wouldn't be surprised if they left it closed until it hits 50% of the total size they want it to be at.

Yes communication is key. SE has communicated what the situation is and shown they're monitoring it. The players have communicated their intention to flood the server as soon as it opens, so SE has every reason to not open it sooner. What other choice do they have? We've proven they can't trust us to monitor the population levels and act accordingly.

[Theodric]

Square Enix will have hard data that players do not have access to. It's not unreasonable to assume that Balmung and Gilgamesh are locked down because every time a new bit of content goes live there's a massive influx of existing and returning players...even accounting for character creation and server transfers being forbidden. A lot of people have also made it very obvious that if the servers open up they intend to bring their friends over which will likely lead to both servers being locked once more not long after they open up.

[Talraen]

Are we really going to sit here and pretend that posts denying this and/or basically saying "no" aren't riddled with bias? Are we really?

The argument of bias need not apply here, you can see very clearly in some replies that people flat out have it out against Gilgamesh and Balmung. People who spite the server for generally no reason except virtue-signaling. "Oh I didn't go on Gil/Bal because I'm better than everyone who flocked there like sheep!" How individualistic of these people.

The only "proof" or "fact," is that Square Enix hasn't unlocked the servers yet. Though people need not be reminded of all the other things that they've made mistakes on, or flat out ignored for as long as possible.

You claim to look at the bigger picture but really you're just as biased as everyone else you are criticizing. You are saying that people are viewing things a certain way because of bias or because since things aren't exactly the way they want it, it's not "dying." Who's to say that just because Balmung and Gilgamesh are locked, people like you and others aren't just deceiving or lying to yourselves that it actually has any sort of positive or meaningful impact? I greatly dislike that people complain about false narratives and then spout one on their own. You cannot prove that the server lock has done anything for stability or how "positive things have come of it for other servers." Especially when, as far as I've seen from friends and my alts, the economies of the grand majority of servers have hardly changed.

At this point, it just sounds like you're repeating yourself if only just to tell Gilgamesh/Balmung players who care about this to shut up. How that isn't supposed to reek of bias is beyond me. It feels like I'm reading the same posts you made before regarding this subject all over again.

For the record, I still don't care if Gilgamesh is dying, and I like seeing less people, but I'm also tired of people seriously acting as if anything from Gil/Bal is "bias" or a "lie" or "not the whole picture," as if they know any better. Just because you agree with what Square Enix did, doesn't mean you're right. They're definitely not infallible.

My legacy character started on Balmung (well, Fabul), but all of my FFXIV-playing friends were starting anew in 2.0 and chose Gilgamesh as their starting world. I created a new character to play with them, and once server transfers became available, I moved my original character to Gilgamesh as well. Over the years, I got frustrated that every time I asked a friend to try FFXIV, I had to add the caveat that they needed to wake up at some ungodly hour to make a character on my server, or make one elsewhere and pay to transfer. Most balked at that (fairly, I might add).

Eventually, I got fed up with not being able to ask anyone to play without jumping through hoops. My FC, which I had been a part of since day 1, had no intention of moving, but with the cross-server party finder in place I reasoned that I could still do basically everything except maps with them anyway. So I looked around, and decided to transfer to the smallest server on the same data center, Mateus. I got me an FC house from the dozens of open plots, and I haven't seen a queue greater than 10 since (and even that only at Stormblood launch or after a DDoS spike).

A few months after that, they introduced free transfers. Yes, that's right, I paid money to transfer my characters to Mateus, and got no incentives for doing so. And it was one of the best moves I've made. My old FC remains on Gilgamesh, frustrated at the inability to recruit anyone knew. Frankly, I think they, and the people in this thread asking for Gilgamesh to be unlocked, are being selfish. Everyone cites that they've made a home on the server, as if anyone on the server hasn't. Free transfers are available. If "new blood" is really your concern, then use them.

I should also note that when I transferred to Mateus, the server was completely dead. It is now bustling with activity. There are no houses available anymore, the markets have stabilized, and this is entirely due to locking Gilgamesh and especially Balmung. To say that locking the servers has "hardly changed" the smaller servers is nonsense. Everyone on Aether wanted to be on Balmung or Gilgamesh, and it was obviously problematic. Square Enix did something about it, but the problem isn't that they've left the servers locked, it's that they took too long to lock them in the first place.

So no, I have no bias towards Gilgamesh or Balmung players. I've been both, and neither time did I go out of my way to transfer there despite character restrictions. They really were my home. I spent a lot of money, both real and in-game, to get off that server, and sacrificed a lot because I thought being able to recruit people was important. And I made that decision before the servers were locked.

The Aether community created this problem by insisting that everyone had to be on the most populated server. I can't muster much sympathy for people who embraced such an obviously unsustainable model.

[Oscura]

I should also note that when I transferred to Mateus, the server was completely dead. It is now bustling with activity. There are no houses available anymore, the markets have stabilized, and this is entirely due to locking Gilgamesh and especially Balmung. To say that locking the servers has "hardly changed" the smaller servers is nonsense. Everyone on Aether wanted to be on Balmung or Gilgamesh, and it was obviously problematic. Square Enix did something about it, but the problem isn't that they've left the servers locked, it's that they took too long to lock them in the first place.

So no, I have no bias towards Gilgamesh or Balmung players. I've been both, and neither time did I go out of my way to transfer there despite character restrictions.

I'm saying servers have "hardly changed," because Mateus is one of the, if not the only server that has been impacted by this whole change. I've yet to see anyone mention another server by name at all. It's all well and good that Mateus is doing well and things have improved there, but it's the only server I ever hear about. "Mateus is being ruined by Balmungians!" "Wow Mateus is so active now!" etc, I never see anyone mention Zalera, Jenova, Adamontoise, Siren, etc. Mateus seems to be the only one who had a "big boom." Instead of just a "mild increase."

Also, it's great you have no bias, but as I told the last person, the grand majority of people in the multitudes of "unlock gilgamesh and balmung" threads do. You don't have to read very hard to see it. It'd be great if more people can be like you but sadly you are a minority. I'm also glad you acknowledge that Square-Enix taking so long to lock either server was ultimately the biggest mistake here, despite what anyone wants to even claim. Square Enix didn't care about the health of other servers, they simply only locked Gil/Balmung once it became too big of a problem for them to ignore. They had no reason to care because it meant that people were spending money very often to transfer to either server. People can claim it's "the player's fault as much as Square Enix's," but it's just dismissive nonsense. It's the players fault that the servers bloated, but it would've never gotten so bad had Square Enix simply locked the servers much earlier. One cannot expect a mass amount of people to regulate something as complicated as entire populations shifting and moving between servers, whereas Square Enix has both the manpower and money to do it. Hell, we even pay them to. It's undeniable that Square Enix continued to let people buy transfers, and not because they "don't like saying no," as someone said, but just because the population imbalance was not an actual problem for them, and if anything just another gain. It wasn't until Stormblood where it threatened instability do they suddenly take action. Yoshida and some of his team may care for the playerbase, but the investors and most of Square Enix don't. This was never about "dying servers," as people keep going on about.

[CaTi]

In fairness you hear about Matteus more because of it's status as "Balmung II", the particularly vocal subset of players who went there (RPers especially) and the more vocal subsection of natives who are unhappy about said flood of players and the Balmung status. Other servers have profited nicely even if it isn't as loudly stated. Hell even the EU servers have balanced out nicely these days (maybe not Lich so much and the bloated whale of Omega)

[MistakeNot]

In fairness you hear about Matteus more because of it's status as "Balmung II", the particularly vocal subset of players who went there (RPers especially) and the more vocal subsection of natives who are unhappy about said flood of players and the Balmung status. Other servers have profited nicely even if it isn't as loudly stated. Hell even the EU servers have balanced out nicely these days (maybe not Lich so much and the bloated whale of Omega)

Also, Mateus used to be the smallest server of them all, so of course any change of population there will be more noticable than on other servers.

The EU servers were fairly balanced even before SE started with congested/preferred servers. While not perfectly balanced, the difference between the largest and the smallest servers was much smaller than on any of the other data centers.

[CaTi]

Also, Mateus used to be the smallest server of them all, so of course any change of population there will be more noticable than on other servers.

The EU servers were fairly balanced even before SE started with congested/preferred servers. While not perfectly balanced, the difference between the largest and the smallest servers was much smaller than on any of the other data centers.

True, in retrospect I think that might've been more the cross world PF on that one.

[Talraen]

I'm saying servers have "hardly changed," because Mateus is one of the, if not the only server that has been impacted by this whole change. I've yet to see anyone mention another server by name at all. It's all well and good that Mateus is doing well and things have improved there, but it's the only server I ever hear about. "Mateus is being ruined by Balmungians!" "Wow Mateus is so active now!" etc, I never see anyone mention Zalera, Jenova, Adamontoise, Siren, etc. Mateus seems to be the only one who had a "big boom." Instead of just a "mild increase."

I checked the housing situations on several other Aether servers before deciding on Mateus, and there are far fewer (if any) houses available even on current preferred servers. I can't speak with any authority to the market situation, but Mateus is definitely not the only server that has benefitted here. (Also, as a non-RPer, I am pretty chagrined that every server I've ever been on has become an "official RP server" after I got there.)

Of course, maybe housing is a terrible metric and there are still plenty of dead servers on Aether. That would be a pretty good argument on why Gilgamesh should not be unlocked yet, would it not?