Val

If you mean the final boss of the Castrum dungeon, all those bosses were FF6 references! Not only that, they're all enemies/bosses you find in the Magitek Research Facility, where Espers were drained of their magic in order to make Magitek Knights like Celes and Kefka. Fitting. Magna Roader Number 024 Number 124 (Recolor in Kefka's Tower is called Inferno!) ngl all the FFVI references made me super giddy. While I loathed a few dungeons in Heavensward, I don't think there has been a single one in Stormblood I haven't enjoyed.

Naruto eyes =(

It happened to me as I was leveling my alt to 70 as well. Relogging fixed it, but I also had to wait in a queue for two and a half hours. Fun times. They did eventually restart the Ruby Sea, so I think by now maybe it's fixed?

Ssssshhh guys it's okay balmung is great it's SE that's wrong everyone pile on and hold on to whatever bit of land you can. This is a good thing. It should all be embraced. :roll:

Ayyy welcome! Who were you on Moon Guard? I hit that server around WotLK, so I might actually know you if you were Alliance side

Not to derail but somewhat on the subject of ERP, I sometimes fondly think about those "books" that Val and Verad "wrote" and it makes me laugh every time.

I'll definitely say it seems more prevalent than it was. I've been RPing in MMOs since vanilla WoW, and while it didn't seem like it was around then, I know certain people did it. The MMO community has grown substantially since then and, with it, so too will the RPers and various people that come in. As people have stated before me, this will likewise lessen the chance you have to find what you're looking for as a certain mindset overcomes others. And yes, certain communities tend to have certain kinds of people in them. People fishing for ERP was always in WoW, but didn't seem to be all the majority was looking for. Maybe I didn't notice it back then, but I certainly see it now. People will RP with me or my partner separately, find out they're together, and then immediately back off or never contact us again. People will walk up to try to get them alone and when they fail, never contact us again. The result is a substantial waste of time and a constant reminder of how annoying this mindset has become. Even more so, it makes those that roleplay characters that are naturally like that look bad when they're genuinely looking for unique interaction. There are courtesans that RP it because they see it as an intriguing take on a story, not because they want to make gil for ERP or because they want ERP themselves. At this point when someone walks up to and flirts with Val or his significant other, it's hard for me to tell if they're fishing for ERP from one of us or just genuinely looking for a fun interaction. It sucks, but my suggestion would be to try and trudge through the filth and find the good roleplayers out there. They exist. Sometimes they even come to Ul'dah. A lot of people I've found seem to recluse away from the city in general, but there's also some great people I've met that I wouldn't have had I never put myself out there. All you can really do is be upfront with people. While I don't want to be rude, the moment someone whispers me asking what kind of RP I'm looking for, I immediately respond with "No relationship/ERP." Pretentious, yes, but it gets the point across and they either bail immediately or leave me alone. I also look at their search info. If I see "M/D RP" I get wary because for some reason people apparently think mature/dark RP is for nothing but sex or an avenue for sex. I can't tell you how many "mature/dark RP"-themed linkshells I've joined to be bombarded with nothing but trashy sex jokes and a bunch of desperate people gloating about how they're "sin queens/kings" ugh.

This. There's so many ridiculous and downright unnecessary filler/fetch quests that I have alts at level 1 that I've been waiting to buy these potions for in order to skip that crap

Not anymore. Thanks for that

How're PVP folks reacting to the news Idk how they're reacting but I really, really hope this changes how stale/slow the PvP was in general. My main gripe is that certain classes/things were crazy (but necessary) due to PvE requirements and had mentioned many times to others that they needed to balance hem separately. Now that they're doing it, I'm looking forward to actually giving PvP another serious shot.

Finally watching a stream. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh pvp might not suck anymore

\o/ I admittedly haven't done PvE content in (many) months because a lot of it grew very stale to me. Buuuut with these changes I'm pretty excited to get back to it. Looks like they're doing a ton of great improvements.

I know, right? Something that requires a good bit of mechanics would be wonderful. Something thought-provoking, even, would make me incredibly happy. I'd also heard that they planned on allowing BRD/MCH to be able to move again so they're not just physical mages? Whoever thought that was a good idea in the first place needs to be tied to a car and dragged down a road full of jagged rocks and nails.

Iiiiis there a saved stream/update somewhere? I'm at work and didn't get to seeeeee D=

Clearly SE just needs to download more RAM and increase the pagefile size in order to make more server space for us all. That way we can also stop vaccinating our children and get rid of this ridiculous theory that the earth is round. That being said, I'd have to think long and hard about whether or not I'd actually move. It would depend on whether or not my partner/contacts go as well.

If I had to guess (well, an educated guess based on people's work doing packet analysis and reverse engineering on both 1.0 and 2.0 server architecture), our instance servers are nearly identical to our normal zone servers. They likely just have a different set of scripts on them and the client handles the rest of the connections. FFXIV utilizes a number of different servers at different stages of gameplay. I'll go over a few in text and then I'll link in a handy picture (and edit the post) for a basic explanation of the server setup that's likely in place. FFXIV uses the following (and likely more than one) Authorization Server - your login credentials Patch Server - self explanatory Once you've logged in on the launcher, it creates your basic session credentials, which are passed to the FFXIV game client. (Which is why you can't just run ffxiv.exe directly). For security's sake, I'll omit what that looks like. 3rd party launcher do exist (not including bots). They're insecure and not really useful if the real launcher is working. Once the game is running, you'll notice that it had initially asked you which datacenter you wanted to play on. This is important! It it was brings you to the next step of gameplay. Lobby Server - This is what loads your account information based off the session created from the Auth server and and game client. Traffic is encrypted now! (Good job SE. Don't turn that off again.) The Lobby Server handles everything until you actually get in game. It handles selecting other data centers (new lobby server), making/deleting/editing characters, and eventually passing off your session over to the next server in charge of things. World Server - These are the named worlds. Balmung, Gilgamesh, Mateus, whatever. This server handles global functions in the game for all players connected to it. Things like your linkshells, party, free company, market boards, retainers, and more! You are ALWAYS connected to this server. At the same time, it's rapidly passing data to a series of additional servers you might also be connected to. We're not sure, but status effects are probably stored in this server's working memory, even if they get handled below. Zone Server - Also known as Map servers, Instance servers, and probably a few more things. This server is where the magic really happens. It's what sends the game client constant updates on what you see and can interact with. All of the game's actors (players, mobs, npcs, interactable objects) exist in this level. It has a TON of things to do and also has to make sure it broadcasts that to every player connected. It's also needs to check in with the World Server to make sure that your chats and party information are synced. And that's on top of running all the events, scripts, monster AI, FATEs, hunts, and other cool things that make the game work. Now, there are multiple zone servers. There has to be or the game would only be able to support a very meager amount of connections. (Think like less than 1000). If you ever got that error message saying "cannot enter zone" it's because this server's overworked for that area. Most likely, we've got at least one of these for every map in the game and possibly per housing ward, although it's entirely possibly all wards are compressed together and that particular zone server just knows how to keep them separated from each other. (FFXIV supported creating private instance areas layered on top of normal maps. This is how levequests, instance battles, and inn rooms are handled, for example!) -- Now, what happens when a server's full? There are multiple places this can happen! The world is full. The world server's unable to handle more connections in a safe manner. This could mean the maximum amount of concurrent connections are all being used, it could mean that it's not able to broadcast packets to all players, and it can also mean that it's getting stressed from too much context switching if it's connecting/disconnections thousands of players at a time to try to keep up with all its global functions. The zone is full. Mostly explain above already, that particular zone instance is maxed out. It can't reliably broadcast packets for everything it needs to do in a timely manner because of CPU/network constraints. -- So why can't SE just give a world server or a particular zone server more resources? It doesn't work that way. When the lock these servers down, it's largely due to network contraints. I've explained this in earlier posts already, but there's no way to allocate more or "better" network connections to a server. When a server gets stressed in these situations, that typically means it's time to go into load balancing or to restrict how many connections are allowed. (FFXIV has done both!) Who remembers the split zones when 3.0 launched? I do! It was a MESS. This was an early attempt from SE to get multiple zone servers handling the same area. (Good on them. Their architecture allowed them to do this!) If any of you remember, it'd arbritrarily select a zone for you. Didn't get grouped with your party? Too bad so sad. The zone servers were split to make sure they could keep running. Not for your party and/or group! In some games, players re given the option to switch between these instances. (Sometimes referred to as a shard or channel). But this only works if the zone server can accept more connections to start. OK. Picture time. It uses some different names, but I believe you all. Please. (credit to the FFXIV private server projects. This one came from FFXIV Classic). This is a basic illustration of only a single World/Zone server cluster. Since at this point in the game, there's no reason to be connecting to the authorization server or lobby server. (But who knows. FFXIV might keep the lobby server too since it likes to kick us back often. ...or the session lasts a REALLY long time and that's how the Chinese bots hacked the game once.) Thanks for this, Merc.

How can you disagree with hardware limitations though? These limits exist whether you believe in them or not. The strain on the entire Aether datacenter continues with or without the power of you imagination. People with expertise are telling you on a concrete, material level that sustaining Balmung is physically impossible. Unless you have invented some quantum servers and are ready to roll them out right now (and even then, I don't know). . . Yeah, but.. he disagrees. It's them alternative facts :cactuar:

1.) Literally no MMO has ever had a centralized server for RP and it's worked just fine. Yes, eventually they died. And guess what? Eventually this RP community will to. That's what happens. 2.) Change isn't bad. If you're afraid of it, that's on you. But it needs to happen for multiple beneficial reasons. 3.) And we've pointed out a million times that reversing the transfer restriction will destroy the servers and cause more issues. You, on the other hand, apparently don't know how infrastructure and servers work. They don't have infinite space. Balmung alone has caused the entire branch to crash. Designating an official RP server may be on their list but it's not the most important thing they can do. I'd rather they make sure the launch for Stormblood isn't complete ass before investing the time, money, and resources in either making a new server or putting on the end of a server's name just to appease people that don't have the capability of making decisions on their own.

I've had better with less page count. Correct ideas are not always popular. oh my god could you not You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one. "Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.' "But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful." "Yeah well I need you to lift it." "But th---" "I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE" Dissenting (and entirely valid) opinions over the internet sometimes attract vitriol. See post above. Honestly, Val -- you're a good roleplayer. I expected more than petty personal attacks. The points raised in the OP are both coherent, achievable, and would benefit RPers the most. It's not the easy option, but it is correct the one that will benefit the overwhelming majority of RPers. The problem with your argument is that you're not listening to anyone's opinion. You're taking what you say as fact and not remotely considering the truths of what anyone else is saying to you. I--and pretty much literally everyone else here--have told you time and time again that while your ideas are great, they cannot be achieved for multiple reasons. And yet, you choose to ignore it with simple responses that more or less boil down to "because i want it to happen". It's not realistic. Expecting them to shit out a new RP server isn't realistic. Thinking that it costs nothing isn't realistic. Personal attacks? No. I have not attacked you personally. I refuse to do so. I will, however, point out how incredibly unrealistic/ridiculous your arguments and responses have become. This isn't some sort of heroic "let's band together friends!!!!" moment. This is real. You have a handful of options. Nothing is going to change. You can try to change it, but expecting it is a fool's errand. People have tried telling you this over and over and over, and yet you bullheadedly rush through and dismiss literally any valid option they're offering, sometimes even going so far as just ignoring it outright. You take whatever common sense they give you, consider it a personal attack (like I assume you're going to do with this), and push past it. And yet, even if we try to tell you "Hey that's not what we mean" it doesn't matter. It's not even an issue with "well this community will break apart." The servers literally can not handle the stress. It's just how it is. That's not even touching on the subject of social and economic issues that Balmung is facing because of the overpopulation, both in RP and PvE. To assume that none of them exist is another issue altogether.

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. Correct ideas are not always popular. oh my god could you not You're not Martin Luther King. You're some guy that's trying to talk about things he obviously has no idea on how they work, both from a common sense point of view and an infrastructure one. "Hey this restriction you have sucks. I need you to lift it.' "But if we do it'll keep breaking things and the economy will continue to be awful." "Yeah well I need you to lift it." "But th---" "I need you to lift it. IT'S FOR THE GOOD OF (ME) THE PEOPLE"

And what many of us are saying is: YES, we need a new RP Server, BUT we would like it be officially sanctioned. That is the big difference between what you are comparing our situation to. Those servers are official RP servers designated by the company, if that were the case here, we would just choose a second server to occupy and be done with it, RP tagged servers draw RPers on their own, so it would make things a lot easier for future RPers. People have been saying this for 2+ years now. We're telling them that while it's cool to wish it, expecting it isn't gonna make it happen any faster than it already has been. OP just seems to love to gloss over every fact/statistic thrown his way in light of unrealistic expectations.

Yeah at this point there's no point in even trying to carry on the conversation. They didn't come here to debate. They came here to preach.

Snipped to prevent the quote spam You can request it, sure. But expecting it is something else. Claiming that it's never been done because you personally didn't see it is another something else. Assuming that constant whining/crying about it will get it done faster when there are things far more important than you/RPers(of which I am) that need to be handled is super snowflakey and absurd. Yes, make a post about it. No, don't expect it to get things done. Hope and find an alternate solution. Telling people to hop on Balmung regardless is just going to make things worse for both the community that decides to play on Mateus and the people staying on Balmung thanks to how ridiculously overpopulated it already is. It isn't helping as much as you think it is.

How do you know this? None of us know what SE would or would not do. I certainly think our chances would be better if even 10% of FFXIV roleplayers made a concerted effort to request SE to designate an official RP server! Nero did a great job posting this issue to the official forums (see my OP for the link), and we should be working to support the proposal to designate an official RP server. The point is that 10%--and more--of XIV RPers have already made a concerted effort to request them to designate a server. You're assuming your importance is far beyond anything than it actually is. I'm sure they may (and already have) consider it, but with the expansion, server move, and other bugs/game issues making a new server specifically for a very small percentage of the population is not going to be on the top of their list. I doubt it even makes top 10, meaning you can fuss and scream and whine and yell as much as you want but it isn't going to get it done any faster. That's strange. I haven't seen this effort. Outside of Nero and perhaps 15 RPers who made posts in support of his thread, I haven't seen any other type of effort recently to convince SE to designate an official RP server (because it has not been needed). Slapping a tag on a new server that says costs minimal resources, and if enough consumers are asking for it -- SE will likely oblige. That's what happens when consumers "fuss" and "whine" about things [aka: make reasonable requests]. But nothing you're saying is remotely reasonable. "I haven't seen this effort" - it's been a request since the game went live. I can't help that you never saw the various threads. "Slapping a tag on a new server costs minimal resources" - no. No it doesn't. That's not how this works.

You under-estimate the ability of angry consumers to demand and receive the changes they request. SE's opinions towards RP have become more reception, as demonstrated by the RP tag. It's this alone that makes gamers into the entitled, pretentious pricks that they are today---to the point that a lot of them have become insufferable. Well, maybe not a lot, but the vocal majority certainly are. Companies don't owe people anything unless they thoroughly screw something up. And even to that note, when a majority of consumers demand something you are likely to see it. RPers in XIV are not the majority. I'd argue they're hardly even a fraction.