As someone who kinda has feet on both sides of the fence, I actually like this lock-down a lot, though I think they should have given a bit of warning first. I started out playing this game on a smaller server (Malboro) and I really loved it when I first started, because even though it was small, there were a lot of people that I managed to gather up that I could hang out with and do content with. I have a personal and FC house, so until recently there was never really much of an incentive for me to transfer to Balmung. But then people started leaving to larger servers in general, some of them to Balmung. Malboro is technically a midpop server and when I started I could believe it, but as time went on, more and more people just transferred off for greener pastures and the RMT bots became our only company. Half the people I know and was on good terms with transferred to various other servers. Even my best friend who I started playing with (and who got me into XIV to begin with) briefly transferred to Lamia. They came back, but that was because according to them, Lamia's economy sucked even worse than Malboro's!
Things got really noticeable after my static broke up on bad terms, because 6 of the 10 people idling in Idyllshire would usually be my former static-mates who I really had (and have) no vested interest in seeing or speaking to. The server was effectively dead and I started spending more time on my Balmung character because frankly it was kind of depressing even back when we were together, because I'd only log on my Malboro character to raid or do Wonderous Tails because it was so empty. These past two months, I logged on pretty much for the express reason of keeping my houses from being autoreclaimed. I decided to liquidate my assets, and transfer to Balmung where I had people to actually play with. I planned on making the move when Stormblood dropped, so that I could do the MSQ with people I knew and do some RP with a new/different character. But because of the new transfer restriction I can't do that, so I'm going to look into holding onto what I have and actually seeing what the expansion brings to my home server. Who knows! Maybe I won't want to bring this character to Balmung after all, though I'd still love to give my Balmung character a care package of sorts since I'm basically set for life on Malboro.
As far as RP goes, before I came to the server I viewed Balmung largely as a parasite that kinda just sucked the life out of other RP communities on other servers. To be honest, I still kind of think of it that way; I have a lot of... fun (sometimes I'm not sure that's the word to use...) on Balmung but if my home server were viable for RP of PvE then I would spend a lot more time there, and my time would probably be split roughly 50/50. Leonnaux on Balmung wouldn't have become my main if it and other similarly large servers didn't suck all my friends off of my dying home server. They're all kinda scattered now so I don't think I'd bother tracking them down or joining them. I think part of the reason that other servers have had trouble establishing RP communities too is because why would you put in effort to get people interested and gather up people to RP with when you could just transfer to Balmung for the low, low price of $18 where everything is done for you? So while this might be "bad" for Balmung because no new players can come in and Balmung players may get a little tilted that they can't bring their friends over (though Balmungites could always just... Make an alt to play with friends on other servers... because servers that aren't Balmung open up fairly regularly for character creation... There are some where you have to catch it at an odd hour, but at least they open at all), I think this is a good change in the long run and hope they don't reopen transfers to Balmung until at least like, 4.1.
Balmung's size is definitely an attractive feature of its community but it's pretty much the sole reason I'm on the server as much as I am. I feel like I've gotten more than my money's worth at this point, and I genuinely like a lot of people I've met, but it's frustrating sometimes being unable to move through zones because there are so many people that I pull 5fps and NPCs don't load for like a solid minute (which is an issue with my laptop, not my internet or ping). I dislike many of the big RP trends, and I find it difficult to deal with the chat scroll in many populated areas. The economy is relatively good though, except for the housing market. Things are better now since they implemented cross-world stuff; if I had my home server on Aether then I would have started playing on it again when that was implemented, but my home server is on Primal so I can't reap the benefits. I understand why cross-datacenter stuff isn't a thing (yet), though, but the fact that both of NA's megaworlds are on the same datacenter kind of punctuates the problem. Aether during prime-time is a lot different than Primal during prime-time. Primal during prime-time, for example, is what Balmung prime-time before crossworld was. 20-30 PFs going, across the whole datacenter, which is more or less what I saw on Balmung prime-time before crossworld PF (if not more; on REALLY good days before the lull hit I distinctly recall there being 50+ at some point or another!). After cross-world PF, I've seen upwards of 60 on Aether. I'm not entirely sure that people who've been on Balmung for the whole time that they've been playing FFXIV realize that Balmung as compared to any "midpop" server, let alone a lowpop one is like night and day, and in a lot of cases that's not really a good thing. Because everyone's always encouraged just to come and transfer to Balmung or other similarly huge servers, the mid and lowpop servers that the people are leaving (without even trying, because why try when you can just transfer?) kinda suffer.
Anyway that's my two cents since I kinda have a vested interest on both sides of the fence. I was planning on transferring my character to Balmung to give my functional-new-main's funds a little boost (along with some items that I can make/get for free or cheap on my home server due to circumstances) and get a taste for what kind of stuff my other character, who is drastically different in terms of priorities, personality, and aesthetic could get into, but I still love my home server and if this is what it takes to get people to stop going to the megaservers and look at what can be scrounged up closer to home then I'm all for it. Maybe it'll breathe some life into the smaller servers, which in my opinion should be the main concern/benefit besides the obvious issue of server stability during the rush to play and complete Stormblood content, rather than "oh no, Balmung's closed; what ever are we going to do?!" Given that Balmung is larger than a lot of smaller servers would be combined, I don't think that its RP community is in any sort of existential crisis for the time being. It'll open back up for transfers before that happens, at which point we'll probably be back to square one... But eh.
Things got really noticeable after my static broke up on bad terms, because 6 of the 10 people idling in Idyllshire would usually be my former static-mates who I really had (and have) no vested interest in seeing or speaking to. The server was effectively dead and I started spending more time on my Balmung character because frankly it was kind of depressing even back when we were together, because I'd only log on my Malboro character to raid or do Wonderous Tails because it was so empty. These past two months, I logged on pretty much for the express reason of keeping my houses from being autoreclaimed. I decided to liquidate my assets, and transfer to Balmung where I had people to actually play with. I planned on making the move when Stormblood dropped, so that I could do the MSQ with people I knew and do some RP with a new/different character. But because of the new transfer restriction I can't do that, so I'm going to look into holding onto what I have and actually seeing what the expansion brings to my home server. Who knows! Maybe I won't want to bring this character to Balmung after all, though I'd still love to give my Balmung character a care package of sorts since I'm basically set for life on Malboro.
As far as RP goes, before I came to the server I viewed Balmung largely as a parasite that kinda just sucked the life out of other RP communities on other servers. To be honest, I still kind of think of it that way; I have a lot of... fun (sometimes I'm not sure that's the word to use...) on Balmung but if my home server were viable for RP of PvE then I would spend a lot more time there, and my time would probably be split roughly 50/50. Leonnaux on Balmung wouldn't have become my main if it and other similarly large servers didn't suck all my friends off of my dying home server. They're all kinda scattered now so I don't think I'd bother tracking them down or joining them. I think part of the reason that other servers have had trouble establishing RP communities too is because why would you put in effort to get people interested and gather up people to RP with when you could just transfer to Balmung for the low, low price of $18 where everything is done for you? So while this might be "bad" for Balmung because no new players can come in and Balmung players may get a little tilted that they can't bring their friends over (though Balmungites could always just... Make an alt to play with friends on other servers... because servers that aren't Balmung open up fairly regularly for character creation... There are some where you have to catch it at an odd hour, but at least they open at all), I think this is a good change in the long run and hope they don't reopen transfers to Balmung until at least like, 4.1.
Balmung's size is definitely an attractive feature of its community but it's pretty much the sole reason I'm on the server as much as I am. I feel like I've gotten more than my money's worth at this point, and I genuinely like a lot of people I've met, but it's frustrating sometimes being unable to move through zones because there are so many people that I pull 5fps and NPCs don't load for like a solid minute (which is an issue with my laptop, not my internet or ping). I dislike many of the big RP trends, and I find it difficult to deal with the chat scroll in many populated areas. The economy is relatively good though, except for the housing market. Things are better now since they implemented cross-world stuff; if I had my home server on Aether then I would have started playing on it again when that was implemented, but my home server is on Primal so I can't reap the benefits. I understand why cross-datacenter stuff isn't a thing (yet), though, but the fact that both of NA's megaworlds are on the same datacenter kind of punctuates the problem. Aether during prime-time is a lot different than Primal during prime-time. Primal during prime-time, for example, is what Balmung prime-time before crossworld was. 20-30 PFs going, across the whole datacenter, which is more or less what I saw on Balmung prime-time before crossworld PF (if not more; on REALLY good days before the lull hit I distinctly recall there being 50+ at some point or another!). After cross-world PF, I've seen upwards of 60 on Aether. I'm not entirely sure that people who've been on Balmung for the whole time that they've been playing FFXIV realize that Balmung as compared to any "midpop" server, let alone a lowpop one is like night and day, and in a lot of cases that's not really a good thing. Because everyone's always encouraged just to come and transfer to Balmung or other similarly huge servers, the mid and lowpop servers that the people are leaving (without even trying, because why try when you can just transfer?) kinda suffer.
Anyway that's my two cents since I kinda have a vested interest on both sides of the fence. I was planning on transferring my character to Balmung to give my functional-new-main's funds a little boost (along with some items that I can make/get for free or cheap on my home server due to circumstances) and get a taste for what kind of stuff my other character, who is drastically different in terms of priorities, personality, and aesthetic could get into, but I still love my home server and if this is what it takes to get people to stop going to the megaservers and look at what can be scrounged up closer to home then I'm all for it. Maybe it'll breathe some life into the smaller servers, which in my opinion should be the main concern/benefit besides the obvious issue of server stability during the rush to play and complete Stormblood content, rather than "oh no, Balmung's closed; what ever are we going to do?!" Given that Balmung is larger than a lot of smaller servers would be combined, I don't think that its RP community is in any sort of existential crisis for the time being. It'll open back up for transfers before that happens, at which point we'll probably be back to square one... But eh.
