You're right that Balmung was long the Roleplay server, but eventually we got the World Visit System, so that "spread" to the entirety of the Crystal data center.

However, due to its popularity, Balmung has often had a Congested status that was created primarily for Balmung, to prevent people transferring to it as a workaround when it was overpopulated. This did cause a lack of new players at many points in its life, leaving it overrun with veteran players and lack of ways to meet people just getting into things or forming statics and FCs. So if you didn't RP it wasn't an ideal place to be anymore.

Quote Originally Posted by Elysande View Post
1. To run my own private FC, with a pretty good chance of being able to purchase a Small/Medium FC House for it.
Then I recommend a lower populated world for a higher chance at one. The worlds on Dynamis are least likely to be populated because Dynamis is relatively new. But you can visit other worlds or data centers and look at the plots on those worlds to see if there is a lot of space on them or not using https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...de/worldvisit/

2. A North American based server, doesn't matter where(even the dead Dynamis worlds), assuming said server's economy isn't also dead, and I can continue to make gil on the market board.
The economy may be dead on Dynamis, possibly, so for that reason it may be worth traveling around the worlds on other data centers to see if they have lots of plots free.

3. Being able to run content, including stuff I'm probably the last one to get around to doing like BLU spell farming/FATES/Bozja/etc. I have no interest in hardcore endgame raiding, just like the option to have people to run things with.
This can be done in Party Finder. Even if you were on Dynamis, you can use the Data Center Travel system to go to Aether or another data center and do this content.