(05-19-2017, 05:40 PM)Lydia Lightfoot Wrote:(05-19-2017, 05:28 PM)Kage Wrote: <snip>The real question is: Is Balmung so big that if it stays at its current levels during patch lull and pre-expansion lull, that SE will decide to split it anyway as it did the FFXI server?
I don't think we have any way to know, but my guess is they're probably already planning on a server split and they're waiting until after the expansion sales plateau so that they can prevent financial blowback (because if they reorganized servers right now, there would almost certainly be a significant dip in initial sales volume of Stormblood).Â
Locking down the server is, IMO, Step 1 of the plan. Step 2 will be incentives, which will be insufficient to budge most players because they will probably miss the mark as to what's important to the players. We have 26k according to that chart. Even if 25% leave due to incentives (which would be a spectacularly successful outcome), that still leaves 19,500 on Balmung, which is still more than the population of the next most populous server Gilgamesh which is also locked down right now. I just don't see another likely outcome for Balmung other than a split.
That's the 3 phases actually that happened in FFXI. Creation lock-down > Incentives to leave > SPLIT.
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I'm not a squareenix employee so I can't accurately say if they would or wouldn't. I don't think SE felt bad about doing it either. Remember, that from a business PoV, stable servers and not having server crashes means they'll make more money long term.
Even if Balmung shed 1k of that 25k(?) number due to rage quitters from a split. That'd still be 12k players per server. to give you an idea. The only people with all the account numbers, and number of instanced log-ins during any given time is SE.
Mentioning that was just to show it is not below SE to possibly do that, when a server is getting to full. It's why I fully endorse people, even those that don't want to change servers, to support people who are going ahead and helping other communities etc.
