Oh boy, this thread again. I love these ones because I've spent the time doing the research on it.

Basically, OP, Balmung is operating at WAY above the suggested capacity of what the other servers are. Square-Enix should have actually locked it and kept it locked a much before so it wouldn't have ever gotten this bad.

The basic server architecture of FFXIV appears to be a centralized login server for all global datacenters (so not China and no Korea), a lobby server per data center, world servers, and zone servers. There are other things in the mix too, like servers for the duty finder, instances, housing wards, etc. All of these come together to make the game we play and their invididual load and limits are different.

The login server is probably rarely, if ever, affected by too many players. It just needs to validate your credentials, set up some session data, and launch the game to connect you to a lobby server.

The lobby server operates on a per-datacenter basis. These are your 2002 errors. If a lobby server goes down, you can't login to a world, but you won't get kicked out either. This is also where character creation and login queues are handled. Once the lobby server's retrieved your character data and it knows what world you're trying to login to, you progress to the world server.

The world server accounts for all zone-inspecific features of the game and also functions as a proxy for all zones. Things like your chat, party, FC features, and Linkshells sits here. Every single player on your world is connected to the world server. Based on the unofficial census data, a world server is typically deemed "full" when it hits about 7000-8000 active players at any time. They might have one or more connections. That is a SHITTON of concurrent data to process and manage and relay to other related players. And it has to happen near-instantly or we'd have terrible syncing issues. A server like Balmung can have around 19,000 active players at times. There are physical limits to what can be done about this. You can't just throw more CPU, RAM, or "servers" at the problem. You can't always just upgrade to a better ISP. Or increase bandwidth. This server is your 90k errors.

Zone/instance/housing servers are then what handle what you can see and interact with on any map. These servers handle NPCs, mobs, status effects, and other general content. I personally don't know where the inventory sits, but the zone server has to load it to process items and their effects. Perhaps it lives on the world server because your items have to be loaded on -any- zone server. When you move zones, especially in and out of instances, your character data is cached to that server so it can retrieve details easily. Anything your character does has to get broadcasted to every other player around you, if not possibly the entire zone. The same goes for everything else you can interact with. Monsters die. FATEs pop. Hunts. Someone doing an emote. The zone server has to relay this to other characters and relay what they're doing to you. And this -also- has to be near-instant or there's lag. It typically polls at 200ms, which is the magic number for FFXIV latency. If your ping is under this, your experience should be perfectly playable with lag. Things like your character state and position also have to be synced back to the main database should you get disconnected or should anything about your character have been changed. Like items. Or maybe if your HP is higher/lower. Or your character died. Or gained a level. When a zone server gets too full to safely handle more connections, it stops new players from entering. These are your "cannot enter X" errors. Like on Balmung, previous patched filled up Mor Dhona to the point people couldn't do quests or enter the map. In Heavensward, Square Enix implemented an attempt at split zones. More copies of zones = reduced load on that one zone. However, FATEs and hunts still need to be synced or someone could possibly game the system and create an unfair advantage. This system was polished for Stormblood by letters players pick a zone or a random one. Balmung needed them for much of 4.0 because the active number of players was making individual zones unstable. It still does for housing interiors, which run on a single instance server/cluster.

Now, I know that's a lot of text above to read. The forums are likely going to give me hell for the pitiful 1000 character limit we're forced on because people abused long posts previously. But give it all a read and then decide if it's really wise for Balmung to be opened up. Look at the unofficial census data, especially Europe's, which tends to have the best distribution. When the entire datacenter starts hitting that magic 7500-8000 number of active players per server, that's what tells SE they need to add a new one. Omega and Louisoix both got HUGE influxes of players and locked transfers. They did exactly what Square Enix needed to happen. On the JP and NA datacenters, we see servers over capacity or tiny populations. They're not going to add a server until the smaller ones are fuller and the fuller ones are smaller. That means for Balmung to open, its population is gonna need to decrease. At the end of the day, it's about keeping the game playable for the most users. It may be easier to suggest your friends and their friends to move to a designated free server if they don't really have any strong ties to Balmung in particular. (Supposedly, there is supposed to be a transfer house feature in the works.)