Annnnnnd They're Gone

[Angellos]

Annnnnnd every house and apartment on Balmung is gone.

200-600 bids on any one plot.

Losing by less than 10 numbers after putting in 8 bids? Priceless.

This sure feels great guys.

Maybe some houses will come open when auto-demoli------ Oh. Right.


#InstancedHousing

[Jojoya]

Actually, you have 24 houses left with most in the personal wards.

It does look like apartments finally filled in, though. Not bad, they last just over 3 months.

[Briardien]

Welcome to Balmung. Where apartment shortages are normal and getting housing is notable one of the worst. Some things never change.

Honestly I expected more entries on the one mansion, but yeah. Getting a mansion on Balmung is now literally winning the lottery lol.

[Oizen]

No!!!! The Server resources!!! The Community Feeling!!!! The small indie dev!!!

btw if u could buy the $160 Final Fantasy VII™ Cloud Strife Digital Deluxe NFT that be great.

[Drakengarde]

That still boggles my mind how balmung ran out of apartments like that.

[MilkieTea]

No!!!! The Server resources!!! The Community Feeling!!!! The small indie dev!!!

btw if u could buy the $160 Final Fantasy VII™ Cloud Strife Digital Deluxe NFT that be great.

So like, fundamentally I agree with you but the people working on FF7 stuff are not the same people working on FF14 stuff. They're under two separate teams with separate team leads, and make separate decisions.

One could argue that since they're run by the same company with the same CEO that it'd have an impact, but that's like saying the production and team behind Black Butler impacts the production and team behind Kakegurui or Fullmetal Alchemist.

[Jojoya]

That still boggles my mind how balmung ran out of apartments like that.

Alts. Every character can get an apartment (if they're available) since it's not a per account restriction and there are only 21,600 apartments per world. As of the last Lucky Bancho census (end of June) Balmung had more than 33,000 active characters over level 60.

Also wouldn't surprise me if some enterprising souls made some alts to buy up apartments to "resell". The apartments in the other districts had been sold out for several months before Empyreum opened so it was fairly obvious the same would happen again. Since apartments are first come, first serve with no timer it's pretty easy to resell them. Find a buyer, have them pay you to relinquish the apartment then they can immediately purchase the now vacant apartment. Even as a prohibited activity, it's extremely unlikely to be reported or caught since it's just an apartment and the apartment shortage is limited to Balmung (at least for now).

[DPZ2]

Alts. Every character can get an apartment (if they're available) since it's not a per account restriction and there are only 21,600 apartments per world. As of the last Lucky Bancho census (end of June) Balmung had more than 33,000 active characters over level 60.

What you might not know is that if you belong to an FC, there are FC rooms that are the exact same size as apartments for the low price of 300,000 gil. It is true that FC rooms are limited to 512 per FC house, but that limit is not dependent on the size of the FC house.

[Drakengarde]

Alts. Every character can get an apartment (if they're available) since it's not a per account restriction and there are only 21,600 apartments per world. As of the last Lucky Bancho census (end of June) Balmung had more than 33,000 active characters over level 60.

Also wouldn't surprise me if some enterprising souls made some alts to buy up apartments to "resell". The apartments in the other districts had been sold out for several months before Empyreum opened so it was fairly obvious the same would happen again. Since apartments are first come, first serve with no timer it's pretty easy to resell them. Find a buyer, have them pay you to relinquish the apartment then they can immediately purchase the now vacant apartment. Even as a prohibited activity, it's extremely unlikely to be reported or caught since it's just an apartment and the apartment shortage is limited to Balmung (at least for now).

That is one way to make gil and it shows how overcrowded balmung is compared to other worlds.

[Jojoya]

What you might not know is that if you belong to an FC, there are FC rooms that are the exact same size as apartments for the low price of 300,000 gil. It is true that FC rooms are limited to 512 per FC house, but that limit is not dependent on the size of the FC house.

What you may not know is that your character has to belong to a FC that owns a FC house to be able to purchase a FC room. If your character leaves or is removed from that FC, you lose that room and the gil you paid for it (though you have 35 days to reclaims your furnishings from the Resident Caretaker).

Getting an apartment is worth the extra 200k gil because you never have to worry about losing it even if you take a break from the game for a year. How many FCs are going to leave absent members in their rosters that long?

That is one way to make gil and it shows how overcrowded balmung is compared to other worlds.

It's honestly hard to say that Balmung really is that overcrowded when all we have to go by are character numbers, not account numbers. If Balmung players are averaging 3 Balmung characters per account while players on other NA worlds are averaging 2 characters per world on their accounts, Balmung's real population is about the same.

If we want to stick to active character numbers, Balmung isn't the worst. Mateus is and has been since Endwalker's release.

Keep in mind that Balmung's been considered the "massively overcrowded" world for years. We can go back to the census in July 2017 (Stormblood release) when Balmung had 21k and the other NA worlds were averaging 14k. If 21k was massively overcrowded then, then all NA worlds are massively overcrowded now.

Once 6.2 is released, some of the Primal and Aether worlds are going to jump back up close to Balmung and Mateus numbers like they had been at the start of the expansion (Famfrit, Gilgamesh, and Jenova had been within 2k of Balmung). Then their numbers will slowly die back down as raiders complete their Savage clears, finish farming what they want and quit to go play other games. RPers and players into more casual content are more likely to stay subscribed the full patch.