Kage

The specifics of the data was patch 3.3 minion obtainment. I'm not sure if most RPers get past more than getting their characters to 60?

I'll probably make another line graph tonight to better show how the data centers' worlds are grouped instead of how the census put them all alphabetical like that. I'll order it by data center so it shows why Leviathan and Tonberry aren't as bad, yet.

I actually think Mandragora was chosen because it was top 3 of its data center. Leviathan and Tonberry have similar numbers but they're only the top in their data centers. There isn't as drastic a difference in populations. Based on Bahamut's 9-10k lock on a single server, I think that's more of the hard limit. 7-8k is a soft limit for 'highly congested'. I'm less sure of the "well there's no split coming" now. ; I didn't know FFXI had that similar situation.

No, it didn't tank because of this. That was FFXIV's job, GG there 1.0. Basically what I'm asking is: Did any user blowback actually make SE feel like it was a bad decision. It doesn't sound like it did. The real question is: Is Balmung so big that if it stays at its current levels during patch lull and pre-expansion lull, that SE will decide to split it anyway as it did the FFXI server?

This isn't an unheard of scenario either, FFXI forced a split on it's biggest server when it got too congested. Players woke up one day on a completely different server than their I see you've been having deja-vu crica 2008 as well. The entire time I've been speaking of this, I've been having flashbacks to this event. THIS CAN HAPPEN TO US. Reopening the gates to Balmung will 100% CAUSE THIS. How did FFXI fare afterwards? Did it still do well for long periods of time? Barely a blip in the profits etc? Did it start the decline in the game? Considering FFXI is still running, and still has subs, and has been running for 15 years now? I'd say pretty good. What I meant was, did player subscription tank or not? At the same time, I highly think people who have considerations for transfers to talk about what they want add to the current bonuses they listed and keeping it reasonable.

This isn't an unheard of scenario either, FFXI forced a split on it's biggest server when it got too congested. Players woke up one day on a completely different server than their I see you've been having deja-vu crica 2008 as well. The entire time I've been speaking of this, I've been having flashbacks to this event. THIS CAN HAPPEN TO US. Reopening the gates to Balmung will 100% CAUSE THIS. How did FFXI fare afterwards? Did it still do well for long periods of time? Barely a blip in the profits etc? Did it start the decline in the game?

I don't know if people think I'm being rational, thick-headed, or ragey or not. I'm just trying to come at this with the best possible foot forward with realistic expectations. While RP is and always has been secondary, what the community by and large decides will affect me. I am seeing, watching, and weighing in because while I have no real bias or desire towards any particular path (except I do think that consolidating -even more- on Balmung is the worst), I am interested in what will be the outcome and how it affects my friends, the communities they interact with, and myself. Would it be more likely to see a designated-by-SE RP server? Will that mean by and large Balmung's RP community leaves? Will my friends by and large leave? Balmung is locked and another community must now be the one to point to. Will people join there cause it's freer? How does this community do? What are pros and cons of everything being considered? Will people decide on another unofficial server and move en-masse with the incentives?

You're right. I tend to be over the horizon, long distance what-ifs person and sometimes can't see the shit right under my nose. I just want this endeavor and whatever else to do well. I've been fairly active or lurking from the moment I joined RPC. Since then, I've seen people turn to other places from Balmung. People will post free company or linkshell infos for their communities. Eventually, through a various amounts of reasons, people will trickle away or back. I've seen people upset because communities have stagnated or too insular that the other players feel that things are too clique-ish. Things seemingly held up strong because of a few pillars and end up collapsing so once again it's seemingly a struggle from the ashes. Nothing has flourished and blossomed yet with bounties of fruit. This is -not- to demean any of the communities who have tried, are living, or will continue to be tried. It's my honest opinion that there's so much strength in being able to gather each of these communities and bring them together, so that the reliance of the health of the community is not solely on a few leaders or a singular group. I just don't think it's good to, in the end, say "Here's the few you can go to" whereas there can be the new RP server, designated and chosen with the best possible efforts and information we can. One of which those efforts is yes, including any possible Balmung communities to join as well as consolidating other server groups.

The reason why is because the incentives can make or break whether or not people choose to leave. As someone quoted earlier there are indeed pros and cons to voting early and waiting for the designated worlds. There are many possibilities and their likelihoods aren't high but it does well to consider all the angles. Square Enix retains the option of merging some of the lower pop worlds. What happens if Mateus (which is currently my top choice) ends up being merged with goblin or Zalera and doesn't get a designated free world transfer bonus? What if some communities would be willing to uproot but only for a designated bonus? More communities means a healthier, more robust one that can facilitate differing opinions and possible breaks in thought. We all want this endeavor to succeed and want to give it all the best options and support possible.

I think it is actually a very low possibility and even lower likelihood of them splitting worlds but they do leave that option open in their Worlds Transfer page. As you said though, it is more likely that Balmung will just stay closed until it gets closer to the soft limits.

And if we keep refusing to balance ourselves out, it will happen. At that point, they probably won't even give incentives, maybe reimbursements on housing, but they'll just dump us all in a server. Indeed. I don't want to be on the timeline that happens. I will actively try to make sure it doesn't.

A forced split of Balmung would be a horrible fucking outcome for players. I would love to make sure this is not a world we go to.

The only way to consolidate the community to one server is to have everyone choose a low population server such as Mateus for RP and then all of the communities on Balmung+others go to the designated server. That is honestly the only way because I can say with 99.9% belief that Square Enix will not a) create a new server for Aether and b) will not ever put resources into supporting Balmung or Gilgamesh. This is based on the active populations and the restrictions they've set on top of their decision to add worlds for Chaos. Chaos has a fairly even distribution across all of their worlds. Aether is not because of Balmung and Gilgamesh. Gaia has Bahamut that's like a mini Gilgamesh. Mana has Chocobo, Mandragora, and Shinryu. Tonberry isn't Elemental's very big problem child yet and neither is Leviathan because the rest of their data center is fairly even and not nearing the soft limit. You're better off deciding whether or not Balmung being locked indefinitely (until it sees at least 4k leave) or a low-population server being designated (by Roleplayers and/or Square Enix) as the new RP world is going to make you leave or not. Cause in my opinion, that's where it's headed. Those six servers seem closed until their populations drop down to maybe 7-8k.

There, the OF version for you. Add ERP and you have the subreddit version.

The lock will take more than a few months. Balmung and Gilgamesh essentially needs to half what it is currently. So, if you look at these images we have one of the last unofficial census data taken from the lodestone. Based off whether or not there were changes in lodestone data along with minion obtainment from the MSQ. It’s not precise but it’s a good approximation. North America had 2 Worlds locked indefinitely for character creation and transfers: Balmung and Gilgamesh. Balmung has over 13k active players and Gilgamesh is at 11k. The third highest is Leviathan at 7.2k. Balmung is nearly DOUBLE the third populated. Some worlds are as low as 3k to 2k. Japan’s four worlds locked were Bahamut (9.2k), Chocobo (10.2k), Mandragora (7.2k) and Shinryu (9.9k). Tonberry is 7.7k. My surprise is Tonberry not being closed. EU is getting new worlds. Unconfirmed how many. But look at the near even distribution. 6 of 8 worlds are at 7-8k while the other two are 4.5k

This. Once the transfers become free, I'll be transferring a couple of my alts/starting new alts on the next RP server(s). Multiple choice is not a bad thing when it comes to communities. They are however limited to where you can transfer. Square Enix is trying to direct peoples so their bonuses are for designated worlds.

Guys, the Bonus incentives for transferring are not EU only.

When I read that part of the translation of the digest morning, this is what I take from SE's stance. All worlds in EU Data Center are being populated at a relatively high but not like the locked worlds numbers. Population is spread out etc. Thus, it makes more sense cost-wise to add another world to even out character population distribution. For Japanese and North American Data Centers, population distributions are extremely scattered and thus they want to even it out before adding worlds.

It's not an SE only thing about capping and offering transfers off high populated servers. I've asked players of other MMOs and this seems to be about standard. They also expressed surprise or no knowledge about games usually increasing population caps. Though, I do agree that this is also by and large a money issue. Instead of investing more money into certain worlds is far easier and less costly to encourage those on that population to level out the areas that could get an increase. Yes, those worlds can get merged but that doesn't fix the high population congestion issue. It honestly makes sense to close transfers without notice even though it -sucks-. They don't want more people on the worlds in the first place. They're trying to cut down, not give people time to move in. The signs of something like this coming were all there, people were unwilling to or didn't want to adapt to it. We've been hitting the soft limit for nearly 2 years and Square Enix is now saying we (along with Gilgamesh, Chocobo, Mandragora, and Bahamut) are hitting the hard limit. It's also possible that these implementations to relieve the high populations and congestion are more viable because of the increased space and possible to increase more with the new location of the data centers. There's a lot of good weight and reason to consolidating those who weren't able to get into Balmung. I also think it's far easier and far likelier to get SE to give us more compensations and reimbursements for those who are willing to do that.

Consider this example (all of these are hypotheticals): Right now Mateus has pretty high odds of being absolutely considered for free world transfers. Other options being Faerie and Siren. Faerie and Siren don't get the free world transfer. Faerie has 100 more roleplayers than Siren which has 50 more than Mateus. There are multiple completely free housing wards on Mateus that are completely untouched. Faerie and Siren's housing wards are 3/4ths full. Of the roleplayers in Faerie, not many Raid but those on Siren do as well as those on Mateus. So overall, the roleplayer population on Faerie and Siren each is more than Mateus. But, Mateus has more housing open. Faerie has the most population but now more of them have access to more raid groups and houses too. There may be a net gain for those groups to consolidate on Mateus because of the incentives. Some portion of your housing costs are liquidated to provide you with more housing options that weren't available. The money cost is waived which eases the highly likely disgruntlement of whichever community ends up needing to transfer. Having multiple groups come together is most likely a better option then doing what has been done before which is sending people to the various communities. It's also highly unfair to the other communities to just choose a place to send people to.

I will state this, I am aware of them. I have already said my peace to them (I'm Koti on the SE Forums). They are not the RPC and they are not at all the face of most of the community on Mateus. I don't know who they are, but when I was shown this by one of the members on the RPC, I was quick to reply. Sadly the SE Forums can be a very toxic place that speak very ill of a community. It's one person making a characterization of Balmung because someone from Balmung said that Balmung needs to be labeled RP server and essentially force out everyone else who isn't an RPer off the world. Is that what started it all... Gods.... I feel like bring out my rocking chair now with my cane and going "I remember back in 1.0 on Besaid... We didn't worry about no fuddle duddle RP tags. If you were looking for RP, you just had to go searching for it... with the lag and sometimes zones trying to eat your computer. Mmhm." That, and the official forum's general populace posting has always been a "Balmung's issues are created by Balmung itself." No matter if people were there because of the Besaid merger etc. Just don't let the official forums' posters represent a sample of who you will see in-game. They're just another example of a vocal minority. Does Mateus' RP community have any representation on tumblr? Or Faerie's? Other's? I know Balmung's RP community is barely represented in part by those here on RPC (hydaelyn roleplayers coalition, this site here). I know there's a sizeable portion of Balmung roleplayers on tumblr. Would it be possible to gather some of those communities to come and speak about themselves here?

I will state this, I am aware of them. I have already said my peace to them (I'm Koti on the SE Forums). They are not the RPC and they are not at all the face of most of the community on Mateus. I don't know who they are, but when I was shown this by one of the members on the RPC, I was quick to reply. Sadly the SE Forums can be a very toxic place that speak very ill of a community. It's one person making a characterization of Balmung because someone from Balmung said that Balmung needs to be labeled RP server and essentially force out everyone else who isn't an RPer off the world.

I didn't say that you can't do that. I am just saying that I think actually voting on a world to transfer too is jumping the shark a little. Having a list of choices is not a bad idea. Looking into the communities to congregate is not a bad idea. Specifically choosing a world that you may not be able to even use the incentives to move is a bad idea.

Considering Square Enix has not announced the designated low population worlds that receive the incentives to move, I do not believe having a poll as to where to go for a secondary community right now is a good idea. In my honest opinion, a community would have the better results if it ended with some loss to assets but you're able to keep the community in large ie using the free world transfer.

Most people didn't even want to leave their grand companes because of how that affected pvp. A move? lmfaoooooo