Balmung is where the community is. It's kind of as simple as that.
Admittedly, the only thing I "don't like" about the idea of rolling up on Balmung is that people will be a much higher level than me from the start. My new character will be catching up to others in the community. That's purely a PvE (and possibly PvP) concern though, I suppose, and in time it probably won't matter. Both servers will no doubt have a notable non-roleplayer population.
In terms of the economy, I've seen how easy it is to get gil in the beta, and a taste of how many gil sinks there are. I'm not too worried about the economy.
I think people who are interested in remaining on Balmung aren't even interested in their characters, because they can remake them now with new customization options anywhere else and, level and gil aside, be in the same situation at launch.
Folks would be silly not to play through all the new content from the start of ARR anyway, and I'm sure many of them will.
I feel like the appeal of Balmung is most that that was the RP server before and there aren't many good reasons for old players to stray. Up until Gilgamesh and Behemoth were named as alternates, it was where all the roleplay had established itself. If SE had allowed non-Legacy people to roll on Balmung in the beta from the start, I wonder if things would have been different now...
In any case, if you discount the numbers of those saying they'll be on one server or the other, the only good reason to pick one server over the other is if you have friends going to one or the other. That's how it seems to me, anyway.
Admittedly, the only thing I "don't like" about the idea of rolling up on Balmung is that people will be a much higher level than me from the start. My new character will be catching up to others in the community. That's purely a PvE (and possibly PvP) concern though, I suppose, and in time it probably won't matter. Both servers will no doubt have a notable non-roleplayer population.
In terms of the economy, I've seen how easy it is to get gil in the beta, and a taste of how many gil sinks there are. I'm not too worried about the economy.
I think people who are interested in remaining on Balmung aren't even interested in their characters, because they can remake them now with new customization options anywhere else and, level and gil aside, be in the same situation at launch.
Folks would be silly not to play through all the new content from the start of ARR anyway, and I'm sure many of them will.
I feel like the appeal of Balmung is most that that was the RP server before and there aren't many good reasons for old players to stray. Up until Gilgamesh and Behemoth were named as alternates, it was where all the roleplay had established itself. If SE had allowed non-Legacy people to roll on Balmung in the beta from the start, I wonder if things would have been different now...
In any case, if you discount the numbers of those saying they'll be on one server or the other, the only good reason to pick one server over the other is if you have friends going to one or the other. That's how it seems to me, anyway.