
(02-15-2015, 02:24 AM)Vulture Wrote: I like how hard it is to get on Balmung. It keeps non-RPers out because you have to be dedicated to get yourself on. The first time I got on Gilgamesh I noticed 60% of the people had names like Taco Supreme & Awesome Mcgee and the entire time I was there I never overheard two people speaking ICly.That's not a very healthy outlook to have on it. RPers having to crawl up a nigh-insurmountable wall is not going to help the server as a whole. I've had friends who wanted to use the trial to test the waters in RP on FFXIV, and haven't ended up getting the game because they were not able to get into Balmung for the entirety of it.
Without things like difficulty getting in or bad reps (a la Moon Guard) RP servers quickly get overrun by *BLEEP* *BLEEP*ing *BLEEP*ers that "come for the community" and end up watering down if not outright destroying that community with their sheer numbers.
You use Moon Guard as an example. Despite Goldshire being a hub of ERP and bad roleplay, Moon Guard has an active, thriving roleplay community while still being a massive server with a fair amount of non-roleplayers. A server being large does not diminish the roleplay community, and maintaining exclusivity is going to end up excluding just as many (if not more) future roleplayers as it does non-roleplayers.
Fai's website is a good suggestion, though! Highly recommend that.