They announced how worlds would be shuffled.

[dinnertime]

I will bet you any amount of money you'd like that if they had moved Gilgamesh, Cactuar and Jenova instead of Balmung and Mateus (which would make Crystal and Aether roughly the same size instead of Crystal being slightly larger) the levels of outrage would reach insanity from the remainder of Aether.

Hah, possibly. Nobody here likes or likes being with the RP servers...

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I had plans on moving to Mateus cause I've been wanting to RP since I joined FFXIV. And since they didn't have servers listed as RP, PvE, PvP (like WoW which I came from) I just kind of picked a random server. It was til I had already lvled all the way to 70 that I had learned about Bulmung being the RP server unofficially. But it was locked.
I then meant some others from Cactuar and was invited to join their static. So I moved to Cactuar, hoping that I'd have better like there with everything, including RP since I was on a dead server.
Well no luck for the RP still. So I was going to move to Mateus since it had become the next 'best' place to go with Balmung not available. But now I'm screwed.
RP has always been something I enjoy doing in MMOs, so it sucks that they're moving like all the RP servers to one Datacenter. It really doesn't make sense imo.

People like to do both/everything you know? Why should we have to choose RP over Raiding over PvP, etc.
I like seriously raiding, so I wont be leaving my static. But it sucks that I'm getting shafted on being able to RP.
At least I didn't move to Mateus yet...even with the free transfer back, it would've been a waste of money. -sigh-

While it may be a long work-in-progress, there have been discussions of building a RP server on Aether. Jenova has been cited as essentially Balmung2. It'll take time to establish but there may be hope yet. And you'll at least be able to take advantage of the realm visiting system.

[Theodric]

Hah, possibly. Nobody here likes or likes being with the RP servers...

Balmung - and Mateus - have long been a scapegoat, unfortunately.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

There would never be enough incentives to get people to uproot their social communities unless it was something so extreme it would be a huge imbalance to the game itself. Like 100% guaranteed housing of your choice, free sub for x months, free item from the MogShop, extra retainer at no cost... look at all the pain in this thread. They've been trying for years to get people to redistribute themselves by offering the Road to 60 buff with free transfer to low-pop worlds but it hasn't been enough. Now they have to forcibly shuffle players around if they want to stabilize the datacenters (for all those people saying they'd rather go through Raubhan EX again... no, you don't really want to do that).

This situation sucks and it's terrible to see so much hurt from the community. I really feel for the people who have to choose between friends, statics, houses, and FCs. But it's happening because we didn't self-sort and everyone in Aether is tired of the weight of Balmung, Gilgamesh, and Mateus risking a meltdown when the next expac hits. It's all in the name of stability and performance and (hopefully) future feature improvements.

Speak for yourself, mate. I think people would happily take Raubhan EX again over having their communities uprooted. I certainly would, and I was on Balmung where five hours queues were considered a norm for the first two weeks. Why doesn't this bother me? Because it's two to three weeks tops out of two years. Not exactly much time lost in the grand scheme of things. I suspect many people feel similar, especially those currently on Balmung or have static mates and friends from what will soon be a Crystal server. A temporary inconvenience is far better than what we're going through now, in my opinion.

And this blaming the players need to stop. Square Enix had no qualms taking $18 from people wanting to transfer into Balmung for what, four years almost? Now it's suddenly our fault they couldn't control the mass population their own greed accumulated? Furthermore, the incentives to transfer simply aren't enough for many people. In my case, I had almost all my jobs at 60. So an EXP means nothing. Now factor in giving up your house and it just wouldn't be worth the transfer for a lot of people. Once again, that is on SE for a garbage housing system they have done very little to rectify.

Now we're in a situation that could very easily backfire on them because instead of having a congested server, they may have a congested Datacenter. They can't force us to transfer off Aether unless they want a financial backlash. So... they're banking on the idea people don't mass transfer back to Aether. We'll see how this gamble pans out.

[Enla]

Speak for yourself, mate. I think people would happily take Raubhan EX again over having their communities uprooted. I certainly would, and I was on Balmung where five hours queues were considered a norm for the first two weeks. Why doesn't this bother me? Because it's two to three weeks tops out of two years. Not exactly much time lost in the grand scheme of things. I suspect many people feel similar, especially those currently on Balmung or have static mates and friends from what will soon be a Crystal server. A temporary inconvenience is far better than what we're going through now, in my opinion.

And this blaming the players need to stop. Square Enix had no qualms taking $18 from people wanting to transfer into Balmung for what, four years almost? Now it's suddenly our fault they couldn't control the mass population their own greed accumulated? Furthermore, the incentives to transfer simply aren't enough for many people. In my case, I had almost all my jobs at 60. So an EXP means nothing. Now factor in giving up your house and it just wouldn't be worth the transfer for a lot of people. Once again, that is on SE for a garbage housing system they have done very little to rectify.

Now we're in a situation that could very easily backfire on them because instead of having a congested server, they may have a congested Datacenter. They can't force us to transfer off Aether unless they want a financial backlash. So... they're banking on the idea people don't mass transfer back to Aether. We'll see how this gamble pans out.

That's always been my issue with people screaming that Balmung is killing the data center. If SE had simply closed the server when it became too big for itself instead of letting people transfer over, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. Most of the people who transferred here were ignorant of the repercussions of doing so, many of them newbies who waited out the three days to transfer to play with their friends because they thought it'd be alright. Some people transferred knowing full well the server strain, but for the most part people did it in good faith. Then once the problem got too big for itself, most of them were well ingrained and couldn't very well leave for the reasons you pointed out. And now instead of upgrading their servers they're taking what appears to be the easiest way out to fix their server issues.

With how many people are talking about moving to Aether now it wouldn't surprise me if their next measure is to lock down that data center in another poorly planned bandaid attempt. It's just a mess.

[LordTiberiusRex]

I've seen more transfers going from Crystal to Aether, than Aether to Crystal.

And the reasons I've seen are primarily 1 of 2 things.

1. The raid scene is bigger/more established, therefore it will have a larger pool of raiders to clear content with, and Crystal's raid scene will die because the rest of the raiders are also going to Aether.
2. It won't deal with Balmung, its visitors, or the effect from economy when the cross-world MB system is implemented.

I've yet to decide if a transfer would be worth it for me honestly. But if the demand for raiding sharply declines on Crystal... then a fair number of markets are going to suffer.

On a secondary note:

I will bet you any amount of money you'd like that if they had moved Gilgamesh, Cactuar and Jenova instead of Balmung and Mateus (which would make Crystal and Aether roughly the same size instead of Crystal being slightly larger) the levels of outrage would reach insanity from the remainder of Aether.

I'd totally believe it. Not many like RP servers, but people especially do not like Balmung (compared to Mateus, despite being a RP server too).

[Bourne_Endeavor]

That's always been my issue with people screaming that Balmung is killing the data center. If SE had simply closed the server when it became too big for itself instead of letting people transfer over, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. Most of the people who transferred here were ignorant of the repercussions of doing so, many of them newbies who waited out the three days to transfer to play with their friends because they thought it'd be alright. Some people transferred knowing full well the server strain, but for the most part people did it in good faith. Then once the problem got too big for itself, most of them were well ingrained and couldn't very well leave for the reasons you pointed out. And now instead of upgrading their servers they're taking what appears to be the easiest way out to fix their server issues.

With how many people are talking about moving to Aether now it wouldn't surprise me if their next measure is to lock down that data center in another poorly planned bandaid attempt. It's just a mess.

You just described my circumstances, exactly. I was a new player who was shown a bunch of screenshots from a good friend of mine on her facebook. She told me FFXIV has a huge RP community. Why wouldn't I want to come into that, having been an avid RPer at the time? While I eventually left two years later after she took an extended hiatus and I sort of fell out with RP outside friend circles, other people likely developed roots they didn't want to lose. Mateus happened because SE finally did something about Balmung. Had they closed it earlier, then a second RP server may have happened to help alleviate Balmung long before it became an issue.

[DamianFatale]

Balmung is fine. Stop acting like it’s horrible to be seen with us.

[ElHeggunte]

Balmung is fine. Stop acting like it’s horrible to be seen with us.

Someone from Balmung saying "Balmung is fine" is just like that guy in a group of friends who always drinks too much and embarrasses everyone, but can never figure out why nobody wants to hang out with him.





Just kidding.






Or am I?!

[Miingno]

Someone from Balmung saying "Balmung is fine" is just like that guy in a group of friends who always drinks too much and embarrasses everyone, but can never figure out why nobody wants to hang out with him.

As longtime and non-rp-player from Balmung I can confirm, Balmung is fine.