Getting into Balmung - Not Happening Indefinitely.

[Kage]

(5/17/17) As of today with the "Preventing Congestion on High Population Worlds" update, transfers to and character creation on Balmung is now suspended indefinitely. You can't get in if you already aren't.

 

(Updated as of 09/06/2016) NOTHING HAS CHANGED EXCEPT NOW THERE ARE BARELY ANY MAINTENANCES AND THE WINDOWS ARE MINUSCULE. JUST TRANSFER

 

My proposal for this thread is to talk about the trials and tribulations of getting into Balmung. This way discussion can be funneled away from the thread "Balmung is open!" as it should be. Perhaps a new thread can be made for it when Balmung character creation windows are open again, if ever. At all.

 

We are now nearing 2 years past the 3.0 Heavensward Expansion drop and it is pretty much impossible to get into Balmung without doing the one thing people seem to hate (Transfer).

 

Tip! You can save character appearance data so that you don't have to completely create a character from scratch! This will save you time, so that come creation when your desired world is open, all you will need to do once you want to create a character is: Create a Character, Load Saved Appearance, pick a class and a name!

 

Way(s) to get into Balmung:

 

1. Character Creation at the dead of night for NA players.

Before the 2014 holidays and Heavensward, the usual window was something around 3am-6am Pacific. There is a website that would track the lodestone character creation restrictions page; however, the Lodestone only updates at specific times and hence it is possible you will never get an email from it.  Or that you might get one but it is too late for you to do anything with that information.

Other websites I have seen do it similarly, pulling from the lodestone or they frequently go down and are unreliable.

 

2. Character creation right before Maintenance or right after it.

Again, before the 2014 holidays and Heavensward, there was about 5 minute window for a player to get a character in. You would logout, load the character saved data, and create the character right before maintenance. Unfortunately, now even just 1 minute before maintenance and both balmung and Gilgamesh are full.

 

Now, the windows last just about 1-2 minutes for open character creation and only when servers come online just after maintenance. The window to create a character after maintenance is less than 2 minutes now. This means that you have to be on before the scheduled end of maintenance as maintenance typically finishes early (and you will not know how early it will finish).

 

3. Server transfer from any other free world into Balmung. Cost $18.

Restrictions: Must be done through the mogstation. Character must be over 3 days old and completed the quests enough that you can speak to other players (not just NPCs). Gil limits! Player cannot own a plot or be in an FC. Can transfer more than 1 character** on the account using the same $18 charge when they're all on the same world and going to the same world as each other. (For example, all 8 slots transferred from Siren to Balmung.)

 

4. Character creation when Balmung Server has technical difficulties.

In February 2016, Balmung had server program issues that caused people to be unable to login to Balmung or they DC and are unable to login. The World data cannot be retrieved etc. When the server comes back, people had 5-10min windows to create new characters.

 

As of this moment, I have not seen #1 be a case regularly and #2 is usually only open for less than two (2) minutes. Case #4 depends on emergencies and are thus unreliable a method to get into Balmung. Only 2 times has it happened in recent months and that was all in the one period of the month of February 2016. The only sure fire way to get in at this moment is the $18* transfer.

 

 

To be honest, I do not foresee this congestion in character creation alleviating until well into the 3.X patches, if at all. As of 09/06/2016, I've updated this thread multiple times since I've made the thread, things have not alleviated. The Christmas Holidays of 2014 saw congestion for -three- months before character creation opened up in the reliable "windows" (Character creation was essentially just before and after maintenance from middle of December to End of February). FFXIV has had many sales since June 2015 including a Humble Bundle Sale and Steam sales. Gilgamesh and Balmung are the two most active populated NA worlds in the NA data centers. They're both on Aether data center. Character census data shows Balmung to be the most populated World in -all- worlds with active characters at over 20k in count.

 

My suggestion to get into Balmung at this moment? Transfer. Pay for the ARR license (up to $20) and create up to 8** characters on the same free world, play them a bit (to the point where they can see other active players that aren't NPCs, wait 72 hours and non-maintenance time, and then transfer all of those characters in on that single $18 charge. You wait only the 72 hours (and you can play the game during this time not wasting any game time) and are guaranteed to get into Balmung at $18*.

 

*$18 USD, price depends on conversion rates if outside of NA.

** There are different service payment account types. One allows only 1 character per world and another allows for up to 8 per world. If you pay for only 1 character per world you can only transfer 1 to Balmung.

 

Something that is interesting? I haven't gotten RMT tells in months. Balmung being so closed off means RMT gil spam has been nigh non-existent. Bots doing the farming? Yes. Sending tell spam? Nope.[/size]

[WorstRPerEver]

The last time I tried to make an alt on Balmung, I got an error... think it was 3079, something about no more characters are able to be created on the server.

 

I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I think it hints that we've hit the "hard-coded" cap for characters on a server.

[Devyn Piper]

Went through this recently myself.  Ended up doing a transfer, as several days of trying immediately after patching/during the "time window" yielded no results (and I was really tired of waking up at 3am just to be disappointed).  Fortunately, the ownership restrictions were irrelevant to me, as I am a new player anyhow.  If you're going to do the transfer remember that the transfer fee is good for multiple characters - so long as they are all on a single server and all being moved to the same destination server.  I successfully transferred three characters over last week.

 

I do have a thought on how to alleviate the gil limit for those who are further along than I was.  This is pure speculation, but it should be possible to create a couple of alts for yourself, pass the gil along to them somehow (using a friend you trust or maybe selling things to yourself on the market for obscenely high prices) and then using the character transfer to move them all over to Balmung.  You'd have to wait the three days for those alts to be old enough to transfer, but you obviously spent more than three days building up all that gil, so it seems worth it to me.

 

Again, not 100% sure that would work as I didn't have that issue with my characters but it might be worth a try for someone desperate to bring their hard-earned cash with them.

[Threndual]

Well the after maintenance thing doesn't seem to work lately. This is the 4th time this morning I've woken up stupidly early to try and make some alts but it didn't work :3

[Kellach Woods]

Nothing works lately is the deal.

[Mhega]

Part of me thinks they are just keeping Balmung 24/7 locked down and aren't even letting there be a chance that it opens back up... 

 

A lot of zones are devoid of people... like ghost towns... and still locked. I don't think they are going to open it up.

[Berrod Armstrong]

Balmung was open this morning for about 5 minutes. Maintenance had ended early, about an hour and ten minutes before scheduled. I contacted who I could but by the time I moved to make my tumblr post on it, it had closed again. 

 

Only two friends got their characters in. The rest were either asleep or not prepared. A ton of RMT bots made it in though...

[Kage]

I find that trying to get into Balmung after maintenance is the very worst way to do it. If Maintenance ends early (and it usually does), it's not a reliable timing. You have to actually be awake (most likely because you are an early riser ESTer or other timezone), or you're lucky if you were in Pacific. At least if you tried during the old windows in April or if you did it before maintenance, it was a reliable time.

 

Now it's more "can you get in before the automated bots and lucky enough to be on at just that time" or transfer.

 

Transferring, for the moment, seems to be the most reliable. It costs a bit more but you save yourself the frustration of hoping it will be open right before maintenance starts or that you were lucky to get on when maintenance finished early.

[Dravus]

Even if someone manages to be around just before or after maintenance the window of opportunity seems to be getting smaller and smaller each time. I imagine this is due to more people catching on to the trick as well as the increased popularity of the server/game.

 

Creating a fresh character on a different server and then paying for a transfer really does seem like the most efficient option as it saves a great deal of time and frustration. Not an option for everybody, I suppose, but I don't expect the situation to change anytime soon if it hasn't already.

[Kage]

I honestly do not expect any relief on the situation until at least a couple of months from now. We had so much congestion that it took about 2.5 months to get the windows more reliably open. After summer vacation and an expansion?....

 

My opinion is that server transfer while perhaps a little costly, is the most reliable way to get a character(s) onto Balmung.

 

(Perhaps even Gilgamesh too)

[Naunet]

SE needs to stop trying to run their game on toasters.

 

Though I guess as long as people keep paying them $18 to get around their roadblock, they have little reason to fix anything.

[Berrod Armstrong]

SE needs to stop trying to run their game on toasters.

 

Though I guess as long as people keep paying them $18 to get around their roadblock, they have little reason to fix anything.

I hope they use the money to buy better toasters

[Devyn Piper]

Yeah, they have basically zero incentive to lift the block since people (like me!) are willing to give them money to get around it.

[Kage]

Yeah, they have basically zero incentive to lift the block since people (like me!) are willing to give them money to get around it.

They don't lift or place blocks on character creation manually.

[13uddy]

If I had known the server would be this impossible to get into, I wouldn't have deleted my old characters when I came back at the 1st of the month after over a year away due to RL reasons (they weren't very high level and I just wanted to start fresh after so long away).  So I'm just waiting until I have the spare cash to transfer over.  It might not seem like much, but with all my med bills, medications costs and such, it just isn't something I have lying around most of the time.  

 

I keep hoping I'll get lucky and get in, but after being up well before maintenance ended most times this month in case it ended early and still no luck, I'm not holding my breath.

 

Worst comes to worst, my birthday is in October, so I'll have plenty of time to level up a character on another server until then and use some birthday cash to transfer.  Hopefully it won't come to that, but if it does, it does.

[111]

Yeah, they have basically zero incentive to lift the block since people (like me!) are willing to give them money to get around it.

 

It's sort of a lesser of two evils situation.

 

People always want to play on the more populated servers, however its better for the game long term if people are spread out. Otherwise the new player experience is pretty shitty. Without character restrictions, people would get more and more concentrated and new players would be left with two choices:

 

1) Play on the server with lots of people, which is laggy, slow, and has queues

 

2) Play on a low population server, and walk around in a ghost town.

 

Square enix doesn't want either of of those, because they cause complaints:

 

1) Game is laggy, game sux

 

2) Game is ded, game sux.

 

So they have limits. The alternative is megaservers, but I rather like the oldschool server based communities.

[-no longer matters-]

Honestly, it's worth the $18.00 to get to Balmung, there's always RP around. It's refreshing really.

[Sig]

Honestly, it's worth the $18.00 to get to Balmung, there's always RP around. It's refreshing really.

 

Agreed.  $18 is very little to pay for voluminous amounts of high-quality RP.  Most bottles of decent wine cost more than that.  Refrain from drinking for a few days or eat some ramen, !  It's worth it!

[Gegenji]

I think the issue being raised isn't the price of the transfer itself. It's the number of transfer sales keeping them from trying to fix the issue. Why do anything about the server congestion if it just results in more money?

 

But, as mentioned, it's also kind of needed to get people to actually go to the other servers instead of all piling up on whichever ones have the most people.

 

Personally, I wonder how much it'd be helped if there was a better system in place to deal with AFKers or (more importantly) the gil-seller bots. Especially the bots, since they're entities that are breaking the rules of the game. It might not solve the population issues, but I would figure it would help at least a little if the open windows let in more actual players than bots.

[Berrod Armstrong]

I think the issue being raised isn't the price of the transfer itself. It's the number of transfer sales keeping them from trying to fix the issue. Why do anything about the server congestion if it just results in more money?

 

But, as mentioned, it's also kind of needed to get people to actually go to the other servers instead of all piling up on whichever ones have the most people.

 

Personally, I wonder how much it'd be helped if there was a better system in place to deal with AFKers or (more importantly) the gil-seller bots. Especially the bots, since they're entities that are breaking the rules of the game. It might not solve the population issues, but I would figure it would help at least a little if the open windows let in more actual players than bots.

The bots are a huge issue. This morning during the opening when my friend got in, his character popped up in the midst of at LEAST 20 RMT toons. They kept popping up then logging. It lasted for the last two minutes of the five minute window (since they needed to suffer through the opening stuff and then get to Momodi). He was the only player created character I saw come up in Ul'Dah.

[Flickering Ember]

What I'd really like is for SE to upgrade server sizes but I don't foresee that happening. I've seen previous MMOs do it and I think it is absolutely better than creating new servers. Though I don't recall SE expanding on their servers anyway.

[Naunet]

Yeah, they have basically zero incentive to lift the block since people (like me!) are willing to give them money to get around it.

 

It's sort of a lesser of two evils situation.

 

People always want to play on the more populated servers, however its better for the game long term if people are spread out. Otherwise the new player experience is pretty shitty. Without character restrictions, people would get more and more concentrated and new players would be left with two choices:

 

Eh, you're ignoring that SE's server load issues are in large part due to them using pretty crappy servers to begin with. So yeah, they put limits up, but why did they have to put limits up? Because they don't want to invest in sufficient infrastructure.

 

Megaservers are superior to isolated servers anyway. They can handle far more traffic far more efficiently and handle changes in traffic better, too.

 

No reason to give SE a pass when their problems are self-made.

[Kage]

I think the issue being raised isn't the price of the transfer itself. It's the number of transfer sales keeping them from trying to fix the issue. Why do anything about the server congestion if it just results in more money?

 

But, as mentioned, it's also kind of needed to get people to actually go to the other servers instead of all piling up on whichever ones have the most people.

 

Personally, I wonder how much it'd be helped if there was a better system in place to deal with AFKers or (more importantly) the gil-seller bots. Especially the bots, since they're entities that are breaking the rules of the game. It might not solve the population issues, but I would figure it would help at least a little if the open windows let in more actual players than bots.

The bots are a huge issue. This morning during the opening when my friend got in, his character popped up in the midst of at LEAST 20 RMT toons. They kept popping up then logging. It lasted for the last two minutes of the five minute window (since they needed to suffer through the opening stuff and then get to Momodi). He was the only player created character I saw come up in Ul'Dah.

I hear currently that North Thanalan has a bunch more bots than before.

Or possible that people are just botting a bunch.

 

Surprisingly enough though, either RMT is cashing in big or they too have issues.

 

The last tell I got about RMT $ to Gil, the price was like $10 to 1mil in gil. It used to be a bit less.

[Dravus]

Yeah, they have basically zero incentive to lift the block since people (like me!) are willing to give them money to get around it.

 

It's sort of a lesser of two evils situation.

 

People always want to play on the more populated servers, however its better for the game long term if people are spread out. Otherwise the new player experience is pretty shitty. Without character restrictions, people would get more and more concentrated and new players would be left with two choices:

 

Eh, you're ignoring that SE's server load issues are in large part due to them using pretty crappy servers to begin with. So yeah, they put limits up, but why did they have to put limits up? Because they don't want to invest in sufficient infrastructure.

 

Megaservers are superior to isolated servers anyway. They can handle far more traffic far more efficiently and handle changes in traffic better, too.

 

No reason to give SE a pass when their problems are self-made.

 

Not to derail the thread but that's debatable. I can't speak for anybody else but I loathe the megaserver model and I'm quite pleased to have a unique server with an established community that I can indulge in.

 

Finding random role-play in ESO and GW2 proved to be a chore largely because of the megaserver model. If anything it's likely the PS3 that is holding FFXIV back when it comes to a lot of technical stuff but even then the stuff that the developers have accomplished despite that limitation is very impressive.

[-no longer matters-]

Yeah, they have basically zero incentive to lift the block since people (like me!) are willing to give them money to get around it.

 

It's sort of a lesser of two evils situation.

 

People always want to play on the more populated servers, however its better for the game long term if people are spread out. Otherwise the new player experience is pretty shitty. Without character restrictions, people would get more and more concentrated and new players would be left with two choices:

 

Eh, you're ignoring that SE's server load issues are in large part due to them using pretty crappy servers to begin with. So yeah, they put limits up, but why did they have to put limits up? Because they don't want to invest in sufficient infrastructure.

 

Megaservers are superior to isolated servers anyway. They can handle far more traffic far more efficiently and handle changes in traffic better, too.

 

No reason to give SE a pass when their problems are self-made.

Going to have to really disagree with you here. I have yet to see a games RP community survive as strong as it was before a Megaserver merge. Even games that start out with Megaservers don't foster great RP communites.