Will Balmung ever open again?

[Rufalus]

If there's space it will open so it's all dependant on players. We are *finally* approaching the World Visit patch (Apr 23rd) which will remove a major hurdle in playing together. After the patch you just need a character on any world on that datacenter to be able to access all of the worlds including Balmung. You can all freely roam between the worlds. If Balmung reaches maximum visitor capacity then your friends on that world can just meet up with you in any of the other available worlds.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Feel like you can walk into a room and if you want to scare them off just start screaming BALMUNG BALMUNG BALMUNG. The other servers don't know what's going on but leave you the space lol.

Also the server lock doesn't keep us in, as Billy said, it only keeps everyone else out.

We just had our monthly evil counsel meeting and we're going to each spread one bad question to the live letters and three alts to each server coming early May. Please look forward to it!

[laughs in evil]

On a side note I wish I could put my server title as Besaid, that's what I picked all those years ago! Balmung took over my country lol (server merge in 2012).

For OP though definitely have the server visitation system to look forward to, can come over to Balmung without having it be your home world. Just keep in mind you cant sell on another server, many of your FC features wont work on another server from it's home, and you can't own a house on another server (these things must be done on the home server).

I was on besaid too. It merged with fabul, thus becoming balmung. Was such a nice quiet server back then.

[Mikki]

You can travel there with the upcoming system and play there but if you're interested in roleplay then I would suggest trying out the Mateus server. It's become the second unofficial RP server after Balmung got locked.

[Gula]

I see a lot of World Visit suggestions, but as others have said, you still can't get in with it being congested. If all the people claiming to have quit over no male Viera unsub and actually leave, then one might have a chance.

[linay]

Even if you can't visit Balmung, friends from Balmung can visit you.

[Raim]

It will most likely open once more between the datacenter changes and the expansion launch for a week or so, but don't expect it to open again during most of Shadowbringers after it fills back up.

[Kazrah]

Even if you can't visit Balmung, friends from Balmung can visit you.

While true, I still have yet to see any direct line from devs saying that you can't visit congested servers.

In fact, it would seem counter-intuitive since the goal of the world visit system is really to strip players on high-pop servers like Balmung of any real excuse to stay on their servers.

[kamikrazy]

It’s awful, I wish I could send an invite to balmung. I have a friend who I introduced to the game, but he can’t even get on either of the roleplay servers because of them both being locked (yes Mateus is usually locked too). I have a house and an apartment on Balmung and there’s no way I’d ever compromise my place in the most popular RP server regardless, but because I want to be with the other RPers, I can’t play with my friend in my main other then just making an alt.

There really should be a better solution, the current status quote sucks.

[linay]

While true, I still have yet to see any direct line from devs saying that you can't visit congested servers.

In fact, it would seem counter-intuitive since the goal of the world visit system is really to strip players on high-pop servers like Balmung of any real excuse to stay on their servers.

Exactly. The idea is to move people out of congested servers, not have more people enter. Even if only to visit, that's still adding more people to an already congested world. That's why they said in the Las Vegas keynote that, even if you don't want to leave Balmung, at least visit other world and do your MSQ outside of Balmung.

As for sources:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...811-29-2018%29

the system will check to see how congested the Destination World is. If there aren't any issues, then you'll be able to visit that World similar to how you would enter a duty through the Duty Finder.

and

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...%281-7-2019%29

We understand there are some concerns with this system causing congestion on your home Worlds, but please do not worry. We have a system in place that will allow us to monitor activity, set the ratio of how many visitors can travel to the world based on population, and a system to prioritize players accessing their home world. However, please note that login queues will continue to exist for Worlds that have reached the maximum number of players allowed at any given time.

So maybe not an outright ban from visiting, but you will have to queue if a world destination has reached its population limit. And you may or may not be able to get in until more room is available, with those returning to their home world getting priority in line.

[Catwho]

Don't lose hope. In the week of JP's Fanfest lots of people supposedly said they were quitting/unsubbing over not getting male Vieras for ShB. Server space should open up in the near future, maybe?

Many of those same people are now driving cars.