Petition to Lift Balmung Server Lock / Impact of Server Lock on FFXIV RP Community

[Xerek]

RP created this mess on Balmung though, and advocating paid transfers to get in made it worse.

SE created this mess by not creating official RP servers, despite consistant requests during the betas for FF XIV and ARR. Had they done so, the RP community would have spread out over multiple servers. Instead, everybody piled into Besaid for 1.x, which was later folded into Balmung. When ARR came out, a signifigant number of RPers didn't want to play on a Legacy server, so Gilgamesh was picked as a backup RP server. That's what got us to this. If SE gave us 3-4 official RP servers, the populace would have been a bit better distributed.

[Hausti]

As a Balmung Player since 2.0 and also as a Non-Rpler i will just wait... for more popcorn because threads like this are hilarious XD

[Vrankyl]

Honestly the unlocking of Gilgamesh has pretty much shown now that SE is actually paying attention, and they aren't going to repeat their mistakes by ignoring populations again until it's a problem in either direction. Our RP community is still strong so I'm not certain where this whole situation of it stagnating is coming from. Yes there are some concerns as FC recruitment has slowed down for some, and the fact that public event runners are a very small portion of the population that there is the possibility of fall off there if they get burnt out. But these are things that aren't likely to be a really big problem for our community for some time. It's actually nice to see that Mateus has grown so well, and Tumblr is full of their rp events that they are starting to get going. The community there has found its footing, and from what I have seen Omega on the EU data centers is doing just as good. Even WoW had several RP servers, though there were the two big ones where it was easier to find things... Moonguard and WrA iirc. Please correct me if I'm wrong there, I haven't touched that game in years. It's only natural that FF14 as a growing game does the same. So the lock is fine, we've gotten confirmation that SE is actually watching so there is light at the end of the tunnel. My only concern is the state of our MB, but if there does become a Cross-server MB that will be a concern fixed as well.

[Hakuro89]

I have my blacklist maxed out, so they were there at some point. Not dealing with them is nice, but having to have locked server to keep them out isn't fun. I haven't met EVERYONE on our server, there's quite a few people, but it's nice to have new people coming in.

I do remember my time on Levi, and how my blacklist was constantly maxed out. To the point where once a week I had to go through and removed all the "(deleted)"s from it to make more room. Some of my old screenshots have that macro I used to insta-BL the last person to send me a tell.
Don't get me wrong, there isn't anything really wrong with new players, and I welcome that, it's just that there's already a ton more people here than anywhere else. While yes, the do offer incentives for people to transfer off Balmung to somewhere else, I don't feel they're enough, and it's why people aren't really leaving. Waiving the transfer fee, lifting the restriction on transferred gil, and 2/3 of a Twintania mount really don't provide much incentive, since nothing is really gained compared to what you'd potentially be losing (FC, friends, etc).

[Oaken]

The amount of blind, uncritical deference to baseless representations made by SE regarding the supposed "excessive population" levels on Balmung is both disturbing and sad.

There is no evidence at the present time of any population problems on Balmung. The crux of the argument for keeping SE locked assumes their undisclosed opinions regarding server stability are valid, and refuses to consider any critical assessment of their business decisions. The argument amounts to little more than the following tautological nonsense: "the server is locked because SE says its locked and SE is right because it says its right." This is not valid reasoning or the basis of any respectable opinion.

The hostility of disinterested members of the community towards opening the server is also disheartening. It's almost like certain people have nothing better to do than post baseless, circular arguments on the internet, and simply cannot understand the concept of voicing valid and reasonable opinions. Sad.

[MoroMurasaki]

Argument in Support 2: There Is No Evidence That Balmung’s Current Server Population is Excessive or Detrimental.

There has been no evidence that Balmung’s population has caused server instability, or that the extraordinary act of barring all character creation and transfer to the server is necessary to abate any harms.

I was on Balmung when SB launched. I remember the queues. Unless the population of Balmung falls in line with the likes of Cactuar and Levi I say leave it locked for good.

It's just selfish to ask for it to be unlocked at this point, if you want to RP move to Mateus. Start another RP world like they did with Mateus. Take control of your situation and stop whining about your problems, fix them.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Neither is baseless assumptions that unlocking the server wouldn't cause any issues. You yourself are also doing circular arguments and baseless reasoning to your own points. Lets see your evidence, since its so strong, that nothing bad would happen. Have you worked on SE's servers or do you know how they are coded? Anything less is not facts, but assumptions and opinions.

[Oaken]

I was on Balmung when SB launched. I remember the queues. Unless the population of Balmung falls in line with the likes of Cactuar and Levi I say leave it locked for good . . . Take control of your situation and stop whining about your problems, fix them.

See response to fallacious argument 1. Many servers that actually have healthy communities where people play were complete clusters when SB launched. Again, I don't expect individuals who have limited knowledge about the RP community to understand the importance of centralized roleplay hub, and why fragmenting the community across multiple servers is not feasible or desirable in the long-term.

By your logic, let's just close down this entire forum, as any and every argument could be considered "whining" and people should "fix [their problems]." Great, innovative suggestion.

[Oaken]

Neither is baseless assumptions that unlocking the server wouldn't cause any issues. You yourself are also doing circular arguments and baseless reasoning to your own points. Lets see your evidence, since its so strong, that nothing bad would happen. Have you worked on SE's servers or do you know how they are coded? Anything less is not facts, but assumptions and opinions.

Yeah, it's called logging onto the stable server and encountering no issues. Give it a shot sometime.

But, goodness, I forgot that we - lowly consumers - could never, possibly question SE, and that SE has never, ever made any sort of organizational mistakes or errors in the development of this second reiteration of an MMORPG.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yeah, it's called logging onto the stable server and encountering no issues. Give it a shot sometime.

But, goodness, I forgot that we - lowly consumers - could never, possibly question SE, and that SE has never, ever made any sort of organizational mistakes or errors in the development of this second reiteration of an MMORPG.

Did you not play, at ALL during 4.0's launch? 4k in queue, 2-3 hours to get onto the server? Man, what selective memory we have.

I'm pretty sure I have a better idea of how stable the server was, considering that I was on it 7 years.