(5/17/17) As of today with the "Preventing Congestion on High Population Worlds" update, transfers to and character creation on Balmung is now suspended indefinitely. You can't get in if you already aren't.
(Updated as of 09/06/2016) NOTHING HAS CHANGED EXCEPT NOW THERE ARE BARELY ANY MAINTENANCES AND THE WINDOWS ARE MINUSCULE. JUST TRANSFER
My proposal for this thread is to talk about the trials and tribulations of getting into Balmung. This way discussion can be funneled away from the thread "Balmung is open!" as it should be. Perhaps a new thread can be made for it when Balmung character creation windows are open again, if ever. At all.
We are now nearing 2 years past the 3.0 Heavensward Expansion drop and it is pretty much impossible to get into Balmung without doing the one thing people seem to hate (Transfer).
Tip! You can save character appearance data so that you don't have to completely create a character from scratch! This will save you time, so that come creation when your desired world is open, all you will need to do once you want to create a character is: Create a Character, Load Saved Appearance, pick a class and a name!
Way(s) to get into Balmung:
1. Character Creation at the dead of night for NA players.
Before the 2014 holidays and Heavensward, the usual window was something around 3am-6am Pacific. There is a website that would track the lodestone character creation restrictions page; however, the Lodestone only updates at specific times and hence it is possible you will never get an email from it. Â Or that you might get one but it is too late for you to do anything with that information.
Other websites I have seen do it similarly, pulling from the lodestone or they frequently go down and are unreliable.
2. Character creation right before Maintenance or right after it.
Again, before the 2014 holidays and Heavensward, there was about 5 minute window for a player to get a character in. You would logout, load the character saved data, and create the character right before maintenance. Unfortunately, now even just 1 minute before maintenance and both balmung and Gilgamesh are full.
Now, the windows last just about 1-2 minutes for open character creation and only when servers come online just after maintenance. The window to create a character after maintenance is less than 2 minutes now. This means that you have to be on before the scheduled end of maintenance as maintenance typically finishes early (and you will not know how early it will finish).
3. Server transfer from any other free world into Balmung. Cost $18.
Restrictions: Must be done through the mogstation. Character must be over 3 days old and completed the quests enough that you can speak to other players (not just NPCs). Gil limits! Player cannot own a plot or be in an FC. Can transfer more than 1 character** on the account using the same $18 charge when they're all on the same world and going to the same world as each other. (For example, all 8 slots transferred from Siren to Balmung.)
4. Character creation when Balmung Server has technical difficulties.
In February 2016, Balmung had server program issues that caused people to be unable to login to Balmung or they DC and are unable to login. The World data cannot be retrieved etc. When the server comes back, people had 5-10min windows to create new characters.
As of this moment, I have not seen #1 be a case regularly and #2 is usually only open for less than two (2) minutes. Case #4 depends on emergencies and are thus unreliable a method to get into Balmung. Only 2 times has it happened in recent months and that was all in the one period of the month of February 2016. The only sure fire way to get in at this moment is the $18* transfer.
To be honest, I do not foresee this congestion in character creation alleviating until well into the 3.X patches, if at all. As of 09/06/2016, I've updated this thread multiple times since I've made the thread, things have not alleviated. The Christmas Holidays of 2014 saw congestion for -three- months before character creation opened up in the reliable "windows" (Character creation was essentially just before and after maintenance from middle of December to End of February). FFXIV has had many sales since June 2015 including a Humble Bundle Sale and Steam sales. Gilgamesh and Balmung are the two most active populated NA worlds in the NA data centers. They're both on Aether data center. Character census data shows Balmung to be the most populated World in -all- worlds with active characters at over 20k in count.
My suggestion to get into Balmung at this moment? Transfer. Pay for the ARR license (up to $20) and create up to 8** characters on the same free world, play them a bit (to the point where they can see other active players that aren't NPCs, wait 72 hours and non-maintenance time, and then transfer all of those characters in on that single $18 charge. You wait only the 72 hours (and you can play the game during this time not wasting any game time) and are guaranteed to get into Balmung at $18*.
*$18 USD, price depends on conversion rates if outside of NA.
** There are different service payment account types. One allows only 1 character per world and another allows for up to 8 per world. If you pay for only 1 character per world you can only transfer 1 to Balmung.
Something that is interesting? I haven't gotten RMT tells in months. Balmung being so closed off means RMT gil spam has been nigh non-existent. Bots doing the farming? Yes. Sending tell spam? Nope.[/size]
(Updated as of 09/06/2016) NOTHING HAS CHANGED EXCEPT NOW THERE ARE BARELY ANY MAINTENANCES AND THE WINDOWS ARE MINUSCULE. JUST TRANSFER
My proposal for this thread is to talk about the trials and tribulations of getting into Balmung. This way discussion can be funneled away from the thread "Balmung is open!" as it should be. Perhaps a new thread can be made for it when Balmung character creation windows are open again, if ever. At all.
We are now nearing 2 years past the 3.0 Heavensward Expansion drop and it is pretty much impossible to get into Balmung without doing the one thing people seem to hate (Transfer).
Tip! You can save character appearance data so that you don't have to completely create a character from scratch! This will save you time, so that come creation when your desired world is open, all you will need to do once you want to create a character is: Create a Character, Load Saved Appearance, pick a class and a name!
Way(s) to get into Balmung:
1. Character Creation at the dead of night for NA players.
Before the 2014 holidays and Heavensward, the usual window was something around 3am-6am Pacific. There is a website that would track the lodestone character creation restrictions page; however, the Lodestone only updates at specific times and hence it is possible you will never get an email from it. Â Or that you might get one but it is too late for you to do anything with that information.
Other websites I have seen do it similarly, pulling from the lodestone or they frequently go down and are unreliable.
2. Character creation right before Maintenance or right after it.
Again, before the 2014 holidays and Heavensward, there was about 5 minute window for a player to get a character in. You would logout, load the character saved data, and create the character right before maintenance. Unfortunately, now even just 1 minute before maintenance and both balmung and Gilgamesh are full.
Now, the windows last just about 1-2 minutes for open character creation and only when servers come online just after maintenance. The window to create a character after maintenance is less than 2 minutes now. This means that you have to be on before the scheduled end of maintenance as maintenance typically finishes early (and you will not know how early it will finish).
3. Server transfer from any other free world into Balmung. Cost $18.
Restrictions: Must be done through the mogstation. Character must be over 3 days old and completed the quests enough that you can speak to other players (not just NPCs). Gil limits! Player cannot own a plot or be in an FC. Can transfer more than 1 character** on the account using the same $18 charge when they're all on the same world and going to the same world as each other. (For example, all 8 slots transferred from Siren to Balmung.)
4. Character creation when Balmung Server has technical difficulties.
In February 2016, Balmung had server program issues that caused people to be unable to login to Balmung or they DC and are unable to login. The World data cannot be retrieved etc. When the server comes back, people had 5-10min windows to create new characters.
As of this moment, I have not seen #1 be a case regularly and #2 is usually only open for less than two (2) minutes. Case #4 depends on emergencies and are thus unreliable a method to get into Balmung. Only 2 times has it happened in recent months and that was all in the one period of the month of February 2016. The only sure fire way to get in at this moment is the $18* transfer.
To be honest, I do not foresee this congestion in character creation alleviating until well into the 3.X patches, if at all. As of 09/06/2016, I've updated this thread multiple times since I've made the thread, things have not alleviated. The Christmas Holidays of 2014 saw congestion for -three- months before character creation opened up in the reliable "windows" (Character creation was essentially just before and after maintenance from middle of December to End of February). FFXIV has had many sales since June 2015 including a Humble Bundle Sale and Steam sales. Gilgamesh and Balmung are the two most active populated NA worlds in the NA data centers. They're both on Aether data center. Character census data shows Balmung to be the most populated World in -all- worlds with active characters at over 20k in count.
My suggestion to get into Balmung at this moment? Transfer. Pay for the ARR license (up to $20) and create up to 8** characters on the same free world, play them a bit (to the point where they can see other active players that aren't NPCs, wait 72 hours and non-maintenance time, and then transfer all of those characters in on that single $18 charge. You wait only the 72 hours (and you can play the game during this time not wasting any game time) and are guaranteed to get into Balmung at $18*.
*$18 USD, price depends on conversion rates if outside of NA.
** There are different service payment account types. One allows only 1 character per world and another allows for up to 8 per world. If you pay for only 1 character per world you can only transfer 1 to Balmung.
Something that is interesting? I haven't gotten RMT tells in months. Balmung being so closed off means RMT gil spam has been nigh non-existent. Bots doing the farming? Yes. Sending tell spam? Nope.[/size]
![[Image: tumblr_ojgu7zoaag1robwlio1_540.png]](https://68.media.tumblr.com/80be4033cdf57fb6268473ef9ce37db6/tumblr_ojgu7zoaag1robwlio1_540.png)
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
