Quote Originally Posted by Rymm View Post
And what exactly does new blood have to do with staying with your old friends? Nothing, that's what. Stay on Balmung, for all the reasons you listed and be happy. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
To be fair, people on both Balmung and Gilgamesh value the community aspects both servers have cultivated. That is slowly eroding since their markets have crashed, FCs cannot recruit and etc. A recent Mogtalk podcast goes into lengths about the negative impact to Gilgamesh's community this has had. Now with that said, much like the podcast emphasises, both servers needed to be locked initially. One could certainly argue Balmung still does, at least for a bit longer. The issue they touch upon is once these communities are damaged, people will either quit or move elsewhere, which will inevitably prompt more people to follow. There's a reason Leviathan and Cactuar's populations have exploded. All this causes is stagnation-- to where Gilgamesh and Balmung don't ever recovery and we're talking about Cactuar, Mateus and Leviathan as the three "popular" servers until the cycle repeats.

So what should SE do? Better incentivize other servers. A significant reason Balmung and Gilgamesh grew the way they did was due to there being no incentive whatsoever to play on a small server beyond personal preference.