Increase Server Capacity

[kyuven]

Maybe, but at least then there is a good chance that the window of opportunity to join the server would be larger than a wink of an eye at the crack of dawn.

Then I suggest you be patient and wait for 3.0
Also keeping in mind that, due to being a large content update, the first 2 days will likely have congestion issues because of being a huge content update.

[Evergrey]

With the new expac coming out soon, I can only imagine that things will get worse with new players drawn in, returning players coming back, and the overall increased activity of current players.
.....
If I were the only person who felt this way, then I'd be happy to just pack up my things and leave, but that isn't the case, and thus the problem isn't mine. The ball is in SEs court to fix an issue that numerous players are having

Sooo... you want to invite your new players to an already over-pop server. But at the same time admit (imagine) that things will get worse with new players drawn in.
But, aren't you a part of the problem by wanting to draw in new players aswell?
To me it feels like you are missing that part.

Sure, it is not your fault alone. But I dont think SE locks down servers for the fun of it.
The problem lies with the Balmung community, the part that refuses to see other options then what they want.

Make an alt on a different server to play with your friends. It's not like you'll never have time to play with your main character again.

[Velox]

My suggestion to RPers would be to start creating RP communities on Zalera or another low pop server. Using Balmung as an unofficial RP server creates an artificial restriction. It's a legacy server and that alone means it carries one of the largest in the game. Since there is no official RP server (at this point it would behoove SE to create one, but that's a different argument), utilizing a legacy server in such a way is self-punishing because there is already a HUGE population of non-RPers there.

[Saccharin]

So since the launch of 2.4 I have managed to get six of my friends to buy the game and start playing, however every time one of them bought the game we have constantly run into road blocks with the server we are all on. I've been playing on Balmung since before it was Balmung (originally from Besaid), and over the years most of my friends have also joined this server. With it becoming the primary RP server, and the home of many large communities, it is easily the most popular (and populated) server in the game, at least based on the fact that the server is CONSTANTLY locked.

Occasionally you might get lucky at 4am to 6am PST and the server will open up briefly, and if you're fast enough you can get a new character in right after maintenance, but this is incredibly frustrating for me trying to get friends into the game, and I can only imagine how frustrating it is for people who paid to play a game they can't even technically access (I understand they could join a different server, but it kind of defeats the purpose).

Back in the early days of FFXI you used to be able to purchase something called a World Pass that would let your friends create a character on your server (because the game would otherwise pic a random server). I think that either SE needs to consider raising their server capacity, at least for these high pop servers, or including something similar to this, a code that will let players make a character on your server.

With the new expac coming out soon, I can only imagine that things will get worse with new players drawn in, returning players coming back, and the overall increased activity of current players.

NO.

SE need to get a backbone and just lock the server to all new characters. If they don't get a handle of this there will be overloaded servers struggling with the load and servers with very few people on it. Increasing capacity doesn't solve problems with people clustering to specific server, usually legacy. You are part of the reason why it's locked; you introduce new people to an already overfilled server. If you want to play with friends you either make a fresh character on another server or transfer off. SE should however offer free transfers off of high pop servers.

[tocsin]

NO.

SE need to get a backbone and just lock the server to all new characters. If they don't get a handle of this there will be overloaded servers struggling with the load and servers with very few people on it. Increasing capacity doesn't solve problems with people clustering to specific server, usually legacy. You are part of the reason why it's locked; you introduce new people to an already overfilled server. If you want to play with friends you either make a fresh character on another server or transfer off. SE should however offer free transfers off of high pop servers.

This. I 100% agree with this, and thank you for bringing it up. By being on balmung in the first place, you are part of the problem. by bringing more people in, you are adding to the problem, and should be ostracized.

I'm 100% for penalizing people who try to draw new players into the overfilled servers. take away their houses, give them a logon restriction, whatever it takes to get them to stop.

I'm really glad they introduced personal housing the way they did, for this reason. You are the reason why half the servers are dying. you should NOT be allowed to get a personal house, for being a venom in the side of your game.

[SarcasmMisser]

They have dozens of servers for a reason, someone has to populate the less popular worlds and make new communities. Having a friend invite system isn't much different from opening the gates, if someone has a server preference they will probably have a friend there that will invite them.

The above poster is right they actually should take a harder stance at least for new players, the lower pop servers are really suffering because of the insistence people put on being on one of a handful of worlds.

If you want a better solution to having friends cross-server, instead of insisting everyone is on one world and killing worlds how about just increasing the amount of things people can do cross-server? What about a cross-server PF or chat?

[LunaHoshino]

Population-wise, Balmung is actually not as large as some of the other servers out there. I have characters on both Gilgamesh and Balmung and I can say that the population on Gil is most definitely larger than the one on Balmung.

The problem on Balmung (that no one seems to want to talk about or address) is the fact that many, many people will go AFK for hours on end and remain logged in, thus taking up a login space on the server. I'm quite sure that Balmung would become much more accessible if they just reimplemented the AFK auto-kick feature.

[Raist]

Population-wise, Balmung is actually not as large as some of the other servers out there. I have characters on both Gilgamesh and Balmung and I can say that the population on Gil is most definitely larger than the one on Balmung.

The problem on Balmung (that no one seems to want to talk about or address) is the fact that many, many people will go AFK for hours on end and remain logged in, thus taking up a login space on the server. I'm quite sure that Balmung would become much more accessible if they just reimplemented the AFK auto-kick feature.

Login is handled by a different server... AFK players don't impact logins anymore. We used to log directly in to the worlds originally, but they changed that up a long time ago with the addition of the intermediary servers (Aether, Primal, etc). The queuing and "full server" statuses are now triggered and managed at those lobby servers and not by the worlds themselves like they were at launch.

[LunaHoshino]

Login is handled by a different server... AFK players don't impact logins anymore. We used to log directly in to the worlds originally, but they changed that up a long time ago with the addition of the intermediary servers (Aether, Primal, etc). The queuing and "full server" statuses are now triggered and managed at those lobby servers and not by the worlds themselves like they were at launch.

Interesting! Then it really makes me wonder why Balmung is closed off more often than Gilgamesh is despite Gilgamesh having a larger population (AFAIK).

[Raist]

Interesting! Then it really makes me wonder why Balmung is closed off more often than Gilgamesh is despite Gilgamesh having a larger population (AFAIK).

It has always been and continues to be about load balancing. All of this data is hosted on clustered servers. Basically, they are trying to keep things spread out as best as they can for stability and such. You can go all the way back to Beta4 and pre-launch and find notices about it:

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...68581b416c19ad

08/21/2013 3:06 PM
Procedures during Periods of High Congestion (Aug. 21)
We are expecting major congestion during the period starting with the Early Access on Aug. 24, 2013 at 2:00 a.m. (PDT) leading up to the official game launch on Aug. 27, 2013 (PDT).

If a large volume of players attempt to login to the game simultaneously, certain players may receive the following message: “This World is currently full. Players in queue: ##.” If you receive this message, we ask that you please wait until your login is processed.

In addition, in order to avoid server congestion related issues from multiple characters concentrating in the starting areas, we may implement restrictions on logins and/or the creation of new characters for a period of time after the servers open to the public.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.