Making characters on Balmung?

[FFXIVRP]

Just wondering if anyone here can share any tips for making alt characters on Balmung? 

 

I can't believe how lucky I was to make a couple characters on Balmung some weeks back.  If I had understood how rare of an opportunity that was, I would've just filled up all 8 slots and edited the characters later whenever I felt like making a new character. The server hasn't unlocked since as far as I've seen and I've checked it often,  from 2am-7am EST on all days of the week. This morning, I logged into the FF14 client within 5 minutes of the servers going back up after maintenance... and Balmung was still locked. 

 

Is Balmung always locked down this tightly or is it because of Eureka? 

 

I know a lot of people used server transfers to get characters on Balmung in the past but I read that SE supposedly issued some permanent bans over that so I'm hesitant to try it.  

 

Also, can anyone explain to me why SE doesn't allow you to make alt characters on Balmung if you already have a character on Balmung?  I mean, once you're on the server, you're never going to take up more space than you already are... right? 

 

I'm no server tech expert but it doesn't make much sense to me, as far as I understand how that stuff works.  Only one character per account can be logged in at once.  Offline characters are, I assume, stored in a text file or something like that elsewhere and shouldn't contribute to server congestion at all.  Each FF14 account should also already have a certain amount of data allowance reserved for it, as each account allows for something like 40 or 50 characters in total.  So, logically, that should mean that whether your account has 1 character or 8 characters registered for Balmung, it should equate to the same thing.  Right?   

 

 

[Skae]

 

Balmung is once again an officially Congested server.  That means it is impossible to create a character on Balmung, or transfer characters to Balmung.

(There are, or at least were, ways to get around the transfer stop - but using that exploit did get people banned.)

 

Balmung has been a Congested server ever since May 2017, except for a brief period between Feb 20 and Mar 13 this year.

 

[Faye]

5 hours ago, Skae said:

 

Balmung is once again an officially Congested server.  That means it is impossible to create a character on Balmung, or transfer characters to Balmung.

(There are, or at least were, ways to get around the transfer stop - but using that exploit did get people banned.)

 

Balmung has been a Congested server ever since May 2017, except for a brief period between Feb 20 and Mar 13 this year.

 

 

^ Only thing you can do is keep up with updates/announcements and wait until it's announced that Balmung is open once more, then you can transfer characters on or make new characters if you find the right time window.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

 

13 hours ago, Miqoseeker said:

Is Balmung always locked down this tightly or is it because of Eureka? 

 

Almost always. Balmung's always had one of the largest active populations in FFXIV. Character creation was closing regularly as of patch 2.2 / early 2014. It didn't start getting really bad until Heavensward (3.0) when it basically stopped opening altogether. During that time, people could attempt to squeeze in if there was an emergency maintenance or they could pay to transfer. After the Data Center move mid-2017 in preparation for Stormblood, SE started labeling servers as congested, which meant a permanent character create and transfer lock. 

 

13 hours ago, Miqoseeker said:

I know a lot of people used server transfers to get characters on Balmung in the past but I read that SE supposedly issued some permanent bans over that so I'm hesitant to try it.  

 

If it's visible in the Mog Station options, it's fair game. People were banned for code injections where the Mog Station didn't verify input and they effectively "tricked" it into letting them transfer into a server that wasn't available on the list.

 

13 hours ago, Miqoseeker said:

Also, can anyone explain to me why SE doesn't allow you to make alt characters on Balmung if you already have a character on Balmung?  I mean, once you're on the server, you're never going to take up more space than you already are... right? 
 

I'm no server tech expert but it doesn't make much sense to me, as far as I understand how that stuff works.  Only one character per account can be logged in at once.  Offline characters are, I assume, stored in a text file or something like that elsewhere and shouldn't contribute to server congestion at all.  Each FF14 account should also already have a certain amount of data allowance reserved for it, as each account allows for something like 40 or 50 characters in total.  So, logically, that should mean that whether your account has 1 character or 8 characters registered for Balmung, it should equate to the same thing.  Right?   

The basic process for adding a character to a server goes like this:
[Select Data Center] -> [Connect that Lobby Server] -> [Get the Character List from the last selected world] -> [Begin character creation] -> [Prompt to save character appearance] -> [Re-check all worlds to see which are open for creation] -> [Check if player can create a new character] -> [Create character on selected world, if available, or send an error saying the world is closed.]

 

In other games, the order of checks is likely a bit different, where a world open check is skipped if a character has already been created on that world. FFXIV will always check first, even if a person already has characters on that server.

 

It should be noted that there are two different FFXIV account types.

Entry - 1 character on a maximum of 8 worlds.
Standard - 8 characters maximum on a single world, 40 characters total maximum.

 

While SE likely doesn't treat these any different in terms of database storage, they aren't going to pre-allocate all that space. It'd waste storage and would be full of broken entries. When creating a character, the account type will be checked in addition to if the world is open.

 

[FFXIVRP]

11 hours ago, Skae said:

 

Balmung is once again an officially Congested server.  That means it is impossible to create a character on Balmung, or transfer characters to Balmung.

Balmung has been a Congested server ever since May 2017, except for a brief period between Feb 20 and Mar 13 this year.

 

5 hours ago, Faye said:

 

^ Only thing you can do is keep up with updates/announcements 

 

1 hour ago, Unnamed Mercenary said:

 

 

Almost always. Balmung's always had one of the largest active populations in FFXIV.

 

So basically... I'm wasting my time checking it in the middle of the night?  The system will never "auto" unlock Balmung when the currently logged-in server pop decreases below a certain amount as some people seem to believe?   The only time Balmung will ever be unlocked is when they would make an official announcement about it?  Would this announcement always appear on the patcher or do you have to go looking for it on their website somewhere?

 

I guess the reason I believed that Balmung has an "auto" lock that gets auto-released when certain conditions are met is because that seems to be the case for all the other "congested" servers.  Gilgamesh and Cactuar, for example, are two other servers I've noticed are locked often, but their locks appear to always "auto release" at times of decreased activity, like the early morning or right after server down time.  But Balmung has been made a very special case and its lock never auto-releases then?  Is it possibly the only FF14 server that seems to have this special case of "never auto-releases lock regardless of currently logged in players"? 

 

I mean, the fact that it was still locked out less than 5 minutes after servers being brought up from maintenance certainly seems to support that conclusion so I'm not trying to disagree or anything, I'm just a bit astonished I guess and I do find all of this interesting. 

 

At this point it sounds like its very unlikely it will be unlocked at all other than during a major decline in player activity, maybe some months before 5.0 or something like that. 

 

Thanks for the answers and sorry for all the questions, just trying to understand how their system works and what my options are if any. 

[Kismet]

33 minutes ago, Miqoseeker said:

So basically... I'm wasting my time checking it in the middle of the night?  The system will never "auto" unlock Balmung when the currently logged-in server pop decreases below a certain amount as some people seem to believe?   The only time Balmung will ever be unlocked is when they would make an official announcement about it? 

 

Unfortunately, yes.

 

33 minutes ago, Miqoseeker said:

Would this announcement always appear on the patcher or do you have to go looking for it on their website somewhere?

 

The last time Balmung unlocked, we were notified prior to the major update that was coming where it would happen via the Lodestone.

 

If you want to know exactly what to expect, here is the post so you can see what it looks like.

 

Basically, every time we're notified that a major patch is coming (as in 4.2, 4.25, etc.), you should keep an eye on Lodestone every day up until the patch hits and hope it gets unlocked. Major patches drop every 2.5~3.5 months, so you don't need to drive yourself crazy by checking every day or anything like that.

 

33 minutes ago, Miqoseeker said:

I guess the reason I believed that Balmung has an "auto" lock that gets auto-released when certain conditions are met is because that seems to be the case for all the other "congested" servers.  Gilgamesh and Cactuar, for example, are two other servers I've noticed are locked often, but their locks appear to always "auto release" at times of decreased activity, like the early morning or right after server down time.  But Balmung has been made a very special case and its lock never auto-releases then?  Is it possibly the only FF14 server that seems to have this special case of "never auto-releases lock regardless of currently logged in players"? 

 

It's understandably confusing due to wording on SE's part, but the world being congested is something separate from the world being permanently closed. You can transfer characters onto a congested world at ANY time and you can create a new character on a congested world at CERTAIN times (typically during the late night or early morning of that server's regional timezone/s), but they're reaching what SE deems to be their "limit". Being congested is like a prerequisite for the server to potentially be closed.

 

But once SE announces that the world is closed, it stays locked. And once again, whenever that happens, said announcement is posted on Lodestone.

 

Some folks honestly were beginning to think Balmung would be closed forever, but the fact that it reopened for 4.2 ensures us it will open again, eventually. Until that time comes, we just have to be patient. I hope that any of this helps you understand!

Edited March 28, 2018 by Kismet

[Unnamed Mercenary]

6 minutes ago, Miqoseeker said:

So basically... I'm wasting my time checking it in the middle of the night?  The system will never "auto" unlock Balmung when the currently logged-in server pop decreases below a certain amount as some people seem to believe?   The only time Balmung will ever be unlocked is when they would make an official announcement about it?  Would this announcement always appear on the patcher or do you have to go looking for it on their website somewhere?

 

I guess the reason I believed that Balmung has an "auto" lock that gets auto-released when certain conditions are met is because that seems to be the case for all the other "congested" servers.  Gilgamesh and Cactuar, for example, are two other servers I've noticed are locked often, but their locks appear to always "auto release" at times of decreased activity, like the early morning or right after server down time.  But Balmung has been made a very special case and its lock never auto-releases then?  Is it possibly the only FF14 server that seems to have this special case of "never auto-releases lock regardless of currently logged in players"?

 

Officially "Congested Worlds" are a different thing from servers that temporarily close due to high active populations. Balmung used to be in a perpetual state of the latter, but the data center relocation made official designnations.

We pretty much have the following tiers:
1. Open as normal

2. High active population during peek times -> temporary close
3. High active population during majority of time -> temporary close that "feels permanent."

4. High active population so often that it could cause server/data center instability -> becomes a Congested World

 

Since Balmung is now in the last tier again, we basically have to see if bot-banning and people transferring off will get its population back down to a number deemed safe enough for tiers 2/3. It likely won't hit the first tier of open character creation barring a significant large number of people transferring/leaving/unsubbing/etc.

Congest Worlds themselves offer benefits to people though. Like free transfers out, higher amounts of gil they can take, etc.

[Tregarde]

As people have pointed out, Balmung is on lockdown till further notice. Sorry.

 

As an alternative, Mateus (North America) and Omega (Europe) have become the major 'new' RP servers. I can attest that there is plenty of RP to be found on Mateus. Enough that I tend to avoid the Quicksand just because of the chat scroll at times. Hehe.