Quote Originally Posted by Miste View Post
That's not how the server locking works.
I think it is. It was explained at length back when we were starving for server space and subsequently got new worlds.

Servers lock in one of two ways. First, SE explicitly locks servers against character creation based on the population spread and density in starting zones. Alternately servers can automatically lock themselves based on the population in the zone you are attempting to join - or the total online population on the server. But that depends entirely on the server being available for character creation. Balmung is seldom open for new characters - which is a big part of what I was saying.

Even if it is open forvcharacter creation, if you start a new character as a conjurer and it just happens that Gridania is very busy (or Balmung is very busy as a whole), you'll be told you can't create your character. On a heavily populated server this translates to it being easier to create characters during the least busy times - assuming the server is open to new characters..