Quote Originally Posted by SorrowsEnd View Post
We understand that can happen thats why we've listed other info as well however right now as it stands a regular upgrade is fine. Their is also different ways I.E

-Same w/invite a friend were Balmung players already on can invite 1 friend to be capable of transfering. That person can no longer invite someone and the invited cannot invite. This is implying SE has improved Balmung

-Merge some older less populated servers i.e the ones that give the bonus like Zalera Courel etc to one server/one population and the persons effected are given a chance to ether leave at a discounted or free price.
There are some problems with these ideas:

- This would help only a limited number of people on Balmung, while still undoing a lot of population balancing that has already been accomplished. The friends invited also have friends and some people have multiple friends, so this does not solve the issue of people not being able to play with friends. I can also imagine a reddit thread or few appearing for trading invite codes, ensuring it isn't friends alone who end up overcrowding the server again. In the end this method would allow the server to double in active population, which would make Balmung bigger than it has ever been. This would have an adverse effect on the stability of the data center and the health of smaller worlds where those invited friends would be pulled from.

- Merging servers would have a catastrophic effect on those who own housing. It was already tried on the Chinese/Korean (I forgot which) servers and the people on those servers had their houses taken away by force. This is a far worse situation than locking big servers and allowing people the free choice to give up their house and move out.

The way SE is handling player populations right now is just the best and fairest way, even though it isn't perfect. They are planning to make linkshells cross-world, and possibly other cross-world features as well, so that people will have more ways to play with their friends on other servers. Cross-world PF and private parties were a huge step towards this goal.