Help Choosing a Server

[LloydShade]

Greetings!

I decided to come back to the game. I want to take another shot to rekindle the feeling of experiencing a journey in a shared virtual world. This time around, I wish to put more efforts interracting with players and take better advantage of the MMO part of a MMORPG. This is what brings me to write this message.

My original character is from Hyperion (Primal DC), because that is where my friends were when I started back in A Realm Reborn. My friends are now gone and my Free Company has a handful of people left. On top of that, my old character is in Shadowbringer, which is pretty much a ghost town. That is fair. Shadowbringer is like middle game now. It lies outside the free trial, while being two expansions aways from current content. My bad, lets try again.

I made research and decided that Coeurl (Crystal DC) was possibly best suited to my playstyle. I have some background with RPing (mostly from tabletop RPGs) and I feel a bit too casual for the competitive mindset that pushes people toward the Aether DC. From the information I was able to gather, Coeurl felt like a good mix of community, RP and population to do various form of content. Immediately after I made a new character (to try out the server), the entire Crystal DC became locked for weeks and back to ghost town. Plus, I could not recreate my character to fix character creation mistakes.

Now, things look more open, character creation-wise. And so, I feel now is a good time to make a third attempt at restarting the game. I therefore wish to invoke the ancestral knowledge of the wise players browsing this forum. Which server(s) would be a good place to give this game an honest go around? It is to note that I have only vague memories of the story. I am therefore going to either create a new character or use the NewGame+ feature to properly catch up.

[GraceHorizon]

Short answer: for a player in your position, Coeurl is indeed a great choice.

Long answer: with easy world visits within the same datacenter, unless you want to join a specific free company or participate in a particular person’s Eternal Bonding ceremony, you only really need to pick a datacenter, not a specific server. The reputations as I see them are:

Aether: The “raiding datacenter” where hardcore players go. Very high population but suffers from congestion and overpopulation preventing world visits. Players may be impatient with sprouts.

Crystal: The “roleplaying datacenter” where you’ll find more casual long term players. High population but not as congested as Aether. I lived there for a long time, and liked it.

Dynamis: The “empty datacenter” of world servers that were created in the last 2-3 years and never got much of a population. This is the place to go if you want to buy a house or frequently go virtual-clubbing at one of the newer RP venues, but roulette queues take a while to pop and it may be prohibitively difficult to play higher level or optional content with other people. I moved there for a house.

Primal: The “other datacenter.” Decent population. I went there for more variety in duty roulettes when I didn’t want what was on offer on Dynamis. I have no particular opinions about the place, either positive or negative.

So I would recommend Crystal to new players because folks are friendly there and there are plenty of people who have unlocked all the duties and can fill slots in your queues.

[Jeeqbit]

I made research and decided that Coeurl (Crystal DC) was possibly best suited to my playstyle. I have some background with RPing (mostly from tabletop RPGs) and I feel a bit too casual for the competitive mindset that pushes people toward the Aether DC.

You're right that people often go to Aether for raiding, and that Crystal is seen as the roleplaying data center. And while Coeurl is on Crystal, the roleplaying started from Balmung and leaked outward to worlds like Mateus, so Coeurl will have some but not necessarily as much as the others.

I could not recreate my character to fix character creation mistakes.

It's actually possible to get a Fantasia from a quest which allow you to remake the character. You can also pay for a character rename.

Which server(s) would be a good place to give this game an honest go around?

As long as it's not the Dynamis data center, you're good. That data center was brand new and never was able to establish a strong playerbase, so queues are difficult.

It's probably also good if a given world isn't locked that often, because it causes it to be too full of veteran players and you need that mix of old and new players for things to feel healthy. I don't think Coeurl has ever been locked too often and when I used to hang there for a while 5-6 years ago, it was really nice there, but can't say how it is now.

It is to note that I have only vague memories of the story.

For what it's worth, I did the story as each patch came out. That means there is 4 months between each patch story, and around 2 years between each expansion story. So you can imagine how I, having played since ARR, have to routinely remember what the story was about and only have vague memories of it whenever a new patch comes out.

Usually, the vague memories come back just enough. What the NPCs say jog your memory to an extent, and it might be very vague and you might forget/miss things for a bit, but it's just going to happen no matter what. The story is too complex to truly remember and comprehend all of it, all of the time, especially on the first playthrough. All you can do is try your best.

New Game+ is certainly an option. You can also watch through cutscenes of the quests and the duties via "The Unending Journey" at an Inn. Another option is to read through the quest journal, which provides a historical summary of each quest you did, if you click the Complete button on the Journal. However, this is very tedious to read through and takes a long time, compared to just watching cutscenes or replaying it, although I personally use it when reminding myself of what happened in class/job quests.