I'm of the mind that the Balmung lock is still a good thing. We shouldn't be sacrificing the stability of our server (which does have actual hard limits) and possibly that of the datacenter simply to keep all the people with a common interest on a single space.
As said in other threads, SE deems a server "large enough" to start restricting new characters when it hits about 7500 active connections at any given time. That's a LOT of people. When we look at the unofficial census to see how many active people are on balmung, that number breaks 10,000, which is an extremely large amount of people. And that doesn't include people who took a break from content to RP or anything else, which is why the numbers likely underestimate the total amount of people active on the server.
Given that the server lock has stayed despite incentives to move off, I'm under the assumption that there is still a staggering amount of people playing on our server. I still see new/sprout characters on a regular basis as well.
I suppose my bigger issue is "why does someone have to be 'new' to have new experiences?" I see talk about how everything is going stale because there are new people, but are they really a requirement for a server that has so many people it's been locked? If the server caps were lower like "classical" MMOs where the cap was maybe 1000-3000 characters, I could justify someone knowing all the other characters on the server. But we're nowhere like that.
I would also like remind that we do have cross-world functionality. People who transferred from Balmung to Mateus, or any other Aether world for that matter, aren't "gone." You can still party, chat, and do content with them. They even persist on the friendslist. While it is probably wise to keep a character on Balmung to be able to access the actual zones, we are in a state where people moving servers can continue to stay in contact with the friends from afar. ...hopefully done even easier once those mobile app and cross-world group chat features are implemented.
So to the people who are frustrated about the server being closed, what is the appeal of "new blood" over new experiences with the people already on the server? We're certainly not hurting for diversity or lack of participation.
As said in other threads, SE deems a server "large enough" to start restricting new characters when it hits about 7500 active connections at any given time. That's a LOT of people. When we look at the unofficial census to see how many active people are on balmung, that number breaks 10,000, which is an extremely large amount of people. And that doesn't include people who took a break from content to RP or anything else, which is why the numbers likely underestimate the total amount of people active on the server.
Given that the server lock has stayed despite incentives to move off, I'm under the assumption that there is still a staggering amount of people playing on our server. I still see new/sprout characters on a regular basis as well.
I suppose my bigger issue is "why does someone have to be 'new' to have new experiences?" I see talk about how everything is going stale because there are new people, but are they really a requirement for a server that has so many people it's been locked? If the server caps were lower like "classical" MMOs where the cap was maybe 1000-3000 characters, I could justify someone knowing all the other characters on the server. But we're nowhere like that.
I would also like remind that we do have cross-world functionality. People who transferred from Balmung to Mateus, or any other Aether world for that matter, aren't "gone." You can still party, chat, and do content with them. They even persist on the friendslist. While it is probably wise to keep a character on Balmung to be able to access the actual zones, we are in a state where people moving servers can continue to stay in contact with the friends from afar. ...hopefully done even easier once those mobile app and cross-world group chat features are implemented.
So to the people who are frustrated about the server being closed, what is the appeal of "new blood" over new experiences with the people already on the server? We're certainly not hurting for diversity or lack of participation.
