Best Medium Population Server

[Trand]

Good Day all,

I recently picked up the game and after dealing with the lovely unable to patch 30413, 20496, 20495 error codes I am looking forward to playing the game. Just wondering what are the best medium population servers?

I don't want to play on a empty server, and I also have no interest in trying to login at a certain time of day to stand a chance of making a toon on Gilgamesh or Balmung.

[KungPaoChicken]

Ultros, Hyperion, Cactuar

Ultros = med, more new players
Hyperion = med-high, has more veterans and tends to be locked at certain times too
Cactuar = low-med, I've seen more lalafell bots there

[Mhaeric]

Good Day all,

I recently picked up the game and after dealing with the lovely unable to patch 30413, 20496, 20495 error codes I am looking forward to playing the game. Just wondering what are the best medium population servers?

I don't want to play on a empty server, and I also have no interest in trying to login at a certain time of day to stand a chance of making a toon on Gilgamesh or Balmung.

Ultros, Hyperion, Cactuar

Hyperion = med-high, has more veterans and tends to be locked at certain times too

I recently moved from Hyperion to Balmung recently to meet up with real life friends, and both servers were/are good to me. Can't go wrong with either, in my opinion. Here's my take on the differences I've seen first hand between the two:

1. Hyperion is definitely lower population relative to Balmung, although it's not low population. I.e. It's not empty feeling at all, but you won't see the crowds that Balmung has going on, particularly in starting cities.
2. Balmung really is a RP server. It's like night and day between the servers. You can't go 2 steps on Balmung without coming across someone RP-ing in a main city, and it's not uncommon at all to find people out in the middle of nowhere doing it too. I kind of like the atmosphere of it even though I don't participate, and there's no requirement at all to participate. I can't ever recall seeing much public rp on Hyperion at all, although I'm sure there's some dedicated FCs that do it regularly.
3. Even though they're both Legacy servers, Hyperion feels much more saturated in that legacy atmosphere. You'll find more players who are legacy than on Balmung for example, possibly due to Balmung's rp making it more likely for newer characters being played more often for rp purposes.
4. Certain status quo ways of dealing with mechanics are different since they're on different data centres. The most obvious example is The Labyrinth of the Ancients' Bone Dragon fight. Hyperion's data centre uses the fight at the north edge strategy, whereas Balmung's data centre uses the fight in the middle strategy. There are other examples here and there, so be prepared to adjust your tactics for a few fights here and there if switching data centres.

P.S. It's not too difficult to find a time when Balmung is available to create a new character on if you decide you want to go that route. You won't be able to do it during prime time, obviously, but it's not as extreme as needing to wait until 4 in the morning to do it either thankfully. You can always dabble around with starting storylines to see what they're about on one server until you are able to find a time to create one on a high population server as well.

[KungPaoChicken]

OP said he wants a medium population. Why would you bring more people into Balmung? I have nothing against Balmung but BS. When I first played a few months ago and my friends were in Balmung, I camped out for a week hoping for a spot to open in Balmung. I stayed up till 7am and took only an hour naps around noon just so I can get to make a character in Balmung. Alas, not single one. I fucked up my sleeping schedule and it still has not opened. Not worth.

Maybe it was easy for you months or years ago, but its definitely not now. Only way to get in Balmung and Gilgamesh is by transferring.

[Mhaeric]

Maybe it was easy for you months or years ago, but its definitely not now.

Rolled an alt last week. It's possible.

OP said he wants a medium population.

He said he wanted a medium population with the reasoning that he didn't want to have to deal with trying to get onto a high population server, mentioning Balmung specifically. I pointed out that it's still possible to join a high population server (admittedly with some effort) and so offered a comparison between the two to help decide if it was worth it.

[Trand]

I appreciate both suggestions, thank you both.

[Niwashi]

When I first played a few months ago and my friends were in Balmung, I camped out for a week hoping for a spot to open in Balmung.

Rolled an alt last week. It's possible.

The difference is likely where we're at in the patch cycle. Our last major patch came out at the end of September, so if you tried rolling a new character in say, early October, you would have hit the big crowds that new patch excitement draws. Right now, we're at a mid-patch lull, three months since the last major patch and two since a minor one. Crowds tend to thin significantly. Though people sometimes complain about that effect elsewhere, here's an instance where it's actually kind of helpful. If someone wanted to make a character on Balmung (or Gilgamesh), this is likely a good time for it.

Other concerns about overcrowded servers remain however, like Balmung's lack of sufficient housing, so I still wouldn't recommend it for players who aren't trying to get on the server their friends are already on. I've heard some of the bigger servers (though I don't recall if it was specifically Gilgamesh or Balmung or not) also have a lot of issues with hunts, since the number of hunt marks isn't a good match for the number of players some servers have trying to fight them. I think that tends to go better on medium pop servers as well.




As for a medium population server to recommend, the only one I know well is Coeurl. I can attest to it having a friendly welcoming community, though I don't know specifically how its endgame or PvP communities are, as I don't do either. Though there are generally lots of people around, and public chat at least in Limsa, the Party Finder tends to be rather quiet. (A quiet Party Finder isn't as much of a problem in this game as it would be in some, since we also have a Duty Finder that will draw in people from all servers on the data center to form parties. With Duty Finder, it's random who you get, though, whereas with Party Finder you have the option to be a bit more selective.)

[Mhaeric]

The difference is likely where we're at in the patch cycle. Our last major patch came out at the end of September, so if you tried rolling a new character in say, early October, you would have hit the big crowds that new patch excitement draws. Right now, we're at a mid-patch lull, three months since the last major patch and two since a minor one. Crowds tend to thin significantly. Though people sometimes complain about that effect elsewhere, here's an instance where it's actually kind of helpful. If someone wanted to make a character on Balmung (or Gilgamesh), this is likely a good time for it.

Yeah, it was also Christmas week, so I can see not as many people being logged in for whatever reason too.