ArmachiA

Man, this was supposed to simple, guys. Balmung locked and we were all supposed to come together and put people somewhere else - temporary or not. It was supposed to be a simple community effort to put people somewhere while Balmung is not an option and while people set up camp to forge a new server or pushed for an official tag or whatever. It's turned into a bunch of people pushing their agendas and not listening. Telling people they are doing too much, telling people they are doing to little, fighting over whats the best server, fighting over "Balmung taking over" or "Balmung isn't doing anything" or "Balmung should be the only option" or "Mateus is a terrible option" or fighting over... I don't even KNOW what at this point? This was supposed to be an endeavor to help We all need to take a step back and look at what this is becoming. It's such a shame.

This is a weird way of thinking. I'm involved in my community in real life via politics. I pushed for a candidate pretty hard in my state, pushed the pavement when I could, went to events, went to protests - that sort of thing. I do not think that everyone should do that. People have lives, jobs, kids, other obligations. Just because I saw someone with a bumper sticker supporting the same candidate as me, didn't mean I knocked on their window and tell them they had to get out there. The bumper sticker was actually enough - it shows they new enough about Politics to tell everyone who they were voting for. I don't think you realize how big of a deal word of mouth actually IS. Because of Balmung players going "Mateus is your best bet" it's quickly QUICKLY risen above any other server that tried to have a foothold on RP. It's become the home of people ex-Balmung people like Kylin and Oswin - who don't hate Balmung but want to help grow a new community. It's become the second fastest growing server. The community has grown from 1 linkshell to 3. How is that not helping, exactly?

Man, you cannot expect Balmung people to start you're community for you. It's YOUR community. It needs to be build off the backs of people who are going to stay there, not a bunch of temporary Balmung-ians who are their to "help". That will HURT more than it will help - not only your community, but the Balmung community as well. Balmung can give support in the way of telling people to go there, or even some people wanting to transfer off. They have been doing that, but they cannot hold Mateus's hand. It's going to live or die by the people who are going to create a voice on THAT server. It needs to find it's own footing to be successful.

This is mostly because everyone knows of at least one way to bypass the 'timer auto-kick' True. One of my guildies linked to be a programs that basically "jiggles" your mouse so a game always thinks you're online. If you don't wanna get booted, you'll find ways

We owe it to Mateus to let it try, even if it ends up another Gilgamesh. There's no harm in letting them TRY really. If it fails and if Balmung ever opens up again, they'll just pull a Gilgamesh and mass transfer to Balmung. No harm, no foul really.

^ They do it every time an expansion comes out for the first few months. It actually doesn't help as much as you would think it does.

Every week? I think you mean everyday. To be honest, I only know of one person who was actually advocating for it and the FFXIV subreddit had a pretty bad backlash against them for it. To be fair, most RP related stuff that hits the the main reddit gets a lot of backlash. If it's the one guy I'm thinking of, who posted tried pushing it on reddit a year or so ago, well, he tried to match scorn with scorn and that escalation never goes well. The Mateus post was interesting. It dipped hard into the negatives when it came out, then someone gilded it and it swung back to positive. Most of it was the OP's persistence, infectious enthusiasm, and he was constantly positive despite the hate he initially got. Cactaur was my home server for a good while. It had a decent but casual / quiet RP community while I was still there a year or so ago. There were probably around 200-400 characters split across three linkshells, and a bunch of PVE folks that would dabble during hunts / etc. It's not closed, but it's not empty either. I still have a character there, but the SO and a bunch of RL friends play on Balmung, so... it is what it is. It's a larger server, yes, but it's one of those questions. Do you want your PvE structure / support there already, or do you want to build it more or less from scratch? A gathering / crafting economy that's busier or less busy. There are good arguments to either answer on any of these and it's really up to the reader to determine what they're looking for. It certainly won't get the bonuses for leveling on a low pop server though. It's not about what kind of server you want and mostly about if you added like... 500 more people Cactuar is probably gonna get locked down. Not really a good candidate.

Cactuar is full. I couldn't even imagine trying to shove RPers on that server, it's almost at 9k.

I think the disruption is a good thing though. The reason why smaller rp servers have such a bad rap is because if there's even a little drama it spreads through the community like wild fire and... there's really no where else to turn. The community is small, you either rp with those people you dislike or get off the server. Ain't like that on Balmung. When 2.0 hit, all the "old guard" on Balmung were basically swallowed up by the new people who stampeded into the server. There were WAY more of them then there were of us and within MONTHS the entire server's culture changed. There were no such thing as smaller server wide events anymore. I remember the first official RP event (Which I think Kylin ran?) had at least a hundred people who showed up. The line that was formed will be forever ingrained in my memory. RP was no longer quiet, it was everywhere and it was loud and proud. No one could control that many people who people basically shifted into their own pockets of community. The growing pains weren't so bad though, the old guard kept doing what they did and the new players either joined or formed their own bubble. It sounds scary, but it really isn't. You'll have people who want to be part of the "RPM" and you'll have people who want to go their own way, just like on Balmung.

Though your friends have bad experiences, a lot more people are moving to that server and therefore will change the culture completely. It won't even be recognizable to the Mateus they knew (Which is why some people don't like people the fact people are moving there btw). Give it a chance to find it's identity.

It was really fast, so most of the RP Community had to make a decision where to tell people to go relatively quickly. I can see why most people went with the one that spoke out the loudest, even if Siren and/or Faerie were "better" alternatives. THAT BEING SAID, I hear Mateus is getting a lot of people, and only having Mateus as a fall back will eventually land us with the same problem Balmung has, especially when Transfers and it's incentives will be available for us NA folk. I see no reason why other servers shouldn't gather their folk when transfers become available and come and pitch to the community either. We're going to need other alternatives besides "Mateus or Balmung" especially since it's going to be "Only Mateus" for awhile. People want to feel comfortable and welcomed to go somewhere, it's those RP communities on those servers responsibility to do that. It sucks but it's true. Be loud.

Mateus actually came to us and pitched to us as soon as Balmung was locked down, that spread around and people were comfortable using it as a viable option because it seemed like the server actually wanted Balmung players there. The other servers didn't pitch or say Balmung players were welcome, so they sort of went to the background. That's how these things work really, I remember the HEAVY PITCHING that went into people wanting Besaid (I wanted Rabanastre damnit!) Also YMMV here, I have someone in my guild from Diablo who absolutely hated the community there. Same with Faerie. People have different experiences.

I'm sure there is smack talk by exBalmung players over whatever drama they were a part of and still salty over, but I hope they know they are shooting themselves in the foot here by telling the only RP server right now that its members aren't welcome there. Maybe if there were more servers one could get away with disparaging remarks toward a server but Mateus needs Balmungs support if it wants a chance to survive. I still support Mateus because a few Salty Susans shouldn't ruin the effort trying to be made here, but they should know they are only hurting themselves. Also, I saw someone make those remarks about how "Balmung wasn't welcome." On the official forums and someone actually DID step in and told them to cut that shit out.

While I sympathize with Balmung exploding to be the only RP server, I can tell you that really wasn't the intent. I'm one of the "old guard" who helped build Besaid (But eventually left after a few months because JFC that game) and we had pretty much the same struggles. 1.0's RP community wasn't that big at all, but we powered through. Building a community is difficult, not a lot of people -want- to do it. When 2.0 was released, there was a large attempt for there to be diversified RP servers (Some were uncomfortable with the "old guard" and wanted to start fresh) and, for a time, Gilgamesh was actually running quite well. From what I heard from people who joined after Gilgamesh's rp community collapsed there were various reasons within the rp community there for this, but it -wasn't- the intention of Balmung to swallow them all up, they just had no where to go. People are pushing Mateus now, hell I'm pushing Mateus now, but Mateus needs upstarts. It needs to make sure it doesn't get dragged down by one or two FCs trying to lead the server, it needs diversity in RP styles, it needs people. The only way to get people is for new people to head there and give it a try. I've SEEN people from Balmung supporting the endeavors of Mateus, right now, that's really all we can do. We can lead the horse to water, but we can't make them drink.

If people go to Mateus they can still raid with folks from Balmung. Oh! That's true! I never even considered that. This actually gives me a reason to level my alt on Mateus because I can still raid on her with my team if I feel like it.

Is there anyway to do this though? I feel like Balmung is going to crash a lot when Stormblood hits.

I honestly couldn't believe it, Stormblood is going to be a mess. The situation really is pretty dire.

I think it's a good idea for the higher ups to kind of stay out of it, so it seems more like a grass roots movement then the leaders of the RPC trying to direct people. No offense to anyone here, but I could see people telling people not to roll on Mateus simply because the mods and admins of the RPC said to. And this needs to be about more than our petty grievances on our server. HOWEVEr, there's no reason all of us in the community can't come to that consensus about it and start spreading it everywhere. It seems to be spreading around. I've seen it on Reddit and on the main forums. So everyone is doing a pretty good job so far!

Gotta agree here. I've been at this for... almost ten years, now, and can't remember a time where romance/sex didn't feature heavily in MMO roleplay culture. Balmung's culture is fairly open about it compared to some servers/games I've been on, but compared to say, Moon Guard in WoW, Balmung is still kind of tame. It all depends on your own experiences and perspectives, I guess. I'm pretty old compared to most of you (35) but yeah this is true. My first experience with seeing any RP in any game was two people public ERPing in a church in FFXI. That was in 2003. The day 1.0 launched, my boyfriend caught three people erping in the wards were you went to sell stuff. Also in public. I think it's a little more vocal nowadays but it's never not been a thing. Back in my day you had to be kinda sneaky about it or you were shunned (Smaller communities, don't ya know). Bit people are right, it's YMMV mostly. We all have stories about people wanting to to just erp with our characters but that doesn't mean it's a common thing to happen to us. I've been here three years and blatant erp has only been offered... once or twice.

^^ That's a good idea actually. It would basically be a server split but you choose if you wanna go or not,.

Can I say that was something I didn't see coming? My character got married and after that she was far less sought after for RP. It was actually a little shocking.

I'm actually on this side too, and apparently so is my FC. If we see transfers open up and we get some pretty good incentives (We want to be able to keep our formation date intact), we'de be willing to move off the server if there's a concerted effort of the rp community to do so. I went to Mateus and it's pretty lively, rolled an alt there and people seem friendly - I just haven't had time to level that alt there yet haha. If they opened transfers off, I'd be willing to plant my FC there if I saw others were willing to do the same.

Uldah? Uldah.* (I'm joking before people get their panties in a twist about how Ul'dah really does have good rp)

The answer is yes because games with less subscribers do it all the time. WoW has also never had a problem with it, even with it's major dip in subs. The answer is yes because we can see evidence of it being fine in other mmos

The 25 thumbs up have to count for something? And yes, a fine petition, I daresay. I'm surprised the PVEers didn't burn me alive. I've had better with less page count. So he did make a thread and didn't want to link it because it's a flame war just like this thread? Why are we even in this thread again? Maybe? It's me.