Unfortunately, a mass logout wouldn't really work. THe amount of people who can login to the server is vastly larger than the amount of people who need to be logged in to stop character creation. That's why we have login queues and sometimes instanced copies of maps.
Even when SE puts up the AFK timeout, it's easily exploited and the amount of idle people doesn't make up a big enough gap to trigger an "open" status.
Currently, the easiest method is to make a group of characters on another server, and to transfer them all to Balmung for the one-time $18 server transfer fee, until SE catches on. I think our only saving grace is that bots and gilsellers are too cheap to do that. (But hey, we hardly have to deal with those anyways, because they can't get on the server either! ...not to mention that the moment Balmung would go open, it would receive a flood of bot/seller characters, who sit and spam the server during maitenance to get in).
Even when SE puts up the AFK timeout, it's easily exploited and the amount of idle people doesn't make up a big enough gap to trigger an "open" status.
Currently, the easiest method is to make a group of characters on another server, and to transfer them all to Balmung for the one-time $18 server transfer fee, until SE catches on. I think our only saving grace is that bots and gilsellers are too cheap to do that. (But hey, we hardly have to deal with those anyways, because they can't get on the server either! ...not to mention that the moment Balmung would go open, it would receive a flood of bot/seller characters, who sit and spam the server during maitenance to get in).
