Servers are fracturing communities

[Moonlite]

It's just for the launch of the new expansion. Give it about a month and it will likely reopen and you can go where you please.

I almost feel bad for Balmung players since the expansion launch will be hell for them.... then I remember most of them moved; so it was their choice to be on an overcrowded server.

And do the math. Balmung has double the amount of players (roughly based on outside numbers) then the locked EU servers. How will they get that many people to move? It was implied till population evens out. Se let this go on to long and housing system screws SE publicly over (nice job!). They can't split the server.

They should have done something before 2.1 to prevent the mass complaining.

Also to the OP you are getting free transfer off Balmung. They should just say where so you can start planning move to be with friends. Cause I am sure this isn't another I need to RP on Balmung with people. My RP peeps can't get on here with me. The current MMO formula isn't broken. The real world has physical limits. Go complain to who ever makes the servers that they aren't creating good enough tech for your MMO.

[Velthice]

You can transfer onto Excalibur just fine, which is a legacy server. It's just the extremely high pop servers that they locked, and rightfully so. They really should have put the lock on balmung a while ago imo.

Anyway could be worse. They could have just coldly split balmung into two or even three servers and just called it a day.

[savageink]

There are plenty of ways this can be fixed and done a lot more efficiently.

No there really isn't. Too many people on server causes lag and crashes. Not everybody can be in a single instance. The network can't sustain the transfers even if the machine can process it locally. They tried telling people for years the servers were getting too big. They tried discouraging new people by putting a pay wall in the way. Nobody listened. So, it's now locked. I expect it to be locked until the active population drops to a more normal level either through the transfer incentives they offer or general attrition.

[savageink]

Even Blizzard has had to lock up servers that were too full.

And they also implement instances during launches in key areas to soften network spikes. But I've played their stuff during launch of WoD and Legion and the instances were very lagged out. It didn't crash at least, but it was barely playable for the intro map. It's just a band aid for reducing general population to a manageable level. Once the launch was done and active population normalized it was fine and they cut out the instances, but I played wow on a mid pop server just like I do here. Balmung has something like twice the population of the larger to mid sized servers. It's screwed at launch.

[xxvaynxx]

Balmung is so big that when the Make it Rain event started, ul'dah was so packed that everybody crashed.....yeah I think balmung needs to stay closed for awhile.

[savageink]

Balmung is so big that when the Make it Rain event started, ul'dah was so packed that everybody crashed.....yeah I think balmung needs to stay closed for awhile.

a new haircut crashes the system... lol!

[CoolCat]

I worry servers will crash or have login issues when Stormblood launch. But then I stop worrying because it won't be as bad as Balmung server will overheat and catch on fire.

[KasumiCascade]

You have the Sice hair on Balmung. You've visited Ul'dah and the Gold Saucer during this event and you dont see the issue with Balmung's population? I gotta call troll on this one.

[KisaiTenshi]

I worry servers will crash or have login issues when Stormblood launch. But then I stop worrying because it won't be as bad as Balmung server will overheat and catch on fire.

At V3.0 launch at most there was a 220 person queue for Excalibur and it took about 10 minutes to clear.

Keep in mind that "the server" isn't generally one machine, but multiple, and that's why people get stuck being unable to enter or leave some zones during overload, because there's not enough player capacity in one zone that everyone is in, particularly in "starting zones" for quests.

[Nixxe]

I'm not really sure what you want SE to do about it. If you look at WoW, Blizzard has made a lot of changes that largely negate the ability of servers to potentially split up friends, but it also came at the expense of other organically forming communities, such as realm communities. Now everything is cross-realm, including current content, and overpopulation is handled by creating additional copies of the area. While it allows Blizzard to funnel tons of people into the same virtual realm, it's also rather disjointed and destructive in its own right. Having played WoW for over 10 years (albeit, somewhat off and on), CRZ was honestly one of the worst changes they ever made, from the perspective of being detrimental to my fun and gameplay experience.