Balmung Restriction Discussion

[Warren Castille]

Whoops. Missed the last post on the previous page that couches this whole bit. My mistake.

 

RP servers DO tend to be fairly "backwaters" in terms of gaming attitude; We're basically never going to push world-firsts and tend to have a more laid back attitude in terms of progression. I could see folks wanting to break away from the "elitist" crowds and hang out here if they were so inclined. There's a recent thread about overcoming tanking fears; imagine how that would have gone on like, Excalibur, the alleged-end-game destination server.

[Dravus]

Guys, who outside of the RP community actually knows that Balmung is a RP server before joining up?

 

It wasn't made an official RP server.

 

It doesn't need to be official for word to spread. I post frequently on other discussion sites related to other games and I've seen people bring up FFXIV and then when people get curious and ask about which servers are the 'best' then Balmung is often brought up and painted as an RP server.

 

Then there's the numerous players from other MMO's who try out FFXIV who have gotten into the habit of sticking to official/unofficial RP servers because they like the atmosphere better. So they actively seek out where the RP community has settled.

[Kinono]

I happen to know from my time on reddit and seeing plenty of "which server should I join" threads that quite a few people who aren't RPers, at least those that are shopping around, tend to recognize Balmung as the RP server.  Some non-RPers even mention it as a plus in such threads as giving a bit more ambiance to the game, and even, making us a bit nicer and more relaxed when it comes to end-game.

 

Course, as mentioned, some people would see those as all negatives. Takes all types, after all.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Back when I joined the Besaid (which was merged and became Balmung) server in 1.0, I'd joined it because my roommate at the time scoured the Official Forums for where the English-speaking players were mostly centralized. 

 

While we have a large collection of RPers, Balmung was also considered one of the bigger English-speaking servers at the time, so we did have a decent chunk of non-RPers playing the game as well. In scope, I didn't start RPing until at least 2.1 was out, and I think 2.2 was on the horizon. Had it not been for a couple people egging me on, I'd still be 100% casual talking and progression oriented. 

 

--

 

Back on topic, I'm sure total amount of characters created has some pull in creation, but SE has stated it's based on total logged in characters on a server. But we do know that there's no issue logging in with an existing character even when creation is locked. And until SE comes out with either their algorithm for determining when a server should lock or write up something with more details, the best we can do is just guess and keep trying.

[Y'lani]

 

Related. It seems like Balmung is opening on its own once every week, for a few minutes at a time. This is... I am not happy about this. It's like promising a child candy, but they have to climb over a brick wall to get it, and the candy is only on the other side at 4 AM in the morning.

 

My recommendation for those wanting to get onto Balmung: either wait for maintenance or transfer. Those are the best ways to find your way here.

[Gurren Dai]

@Y'lani

 

I think I may just wait for my main RP characters (or at least, the ones I plan to use for that) to become eligible for transfer, then do just that. I was hoping I could catch a time but...jeeze, if it's only gonna be once a week, I think I'm better off with the transfer than hoping I find it at the right time.

[Vulture]

I like how hard it is to get on Balmung. It keeps non-RPers out because you have to be dedicated to get yourself on. The first time I got on Gilgamesh I noticed 60% of the people had names like Taco Supreme & Awesome Mcgee and the entire time I was there I never overheard two people speaking ICly.

Without things like difficulty getting in or bad reps (a la Moon Guard) RP servers quickly get overrun by *BLEEP* *BLEEP*ing *BLEEP*ers that "come for the community" and end up watering down if not outright destroying that community with their sheer numbers.

[Kailia]

So friday tried staying up late on into saturday, kept checking because I have a new char concept I want to do. Server never opened. Last night did the same, again, server remained closed even though all the other servers unlocked. This is what it was like all night long:

 

 

I'd love to make this character. Her concept for me will be interesting. A 7'3" Highlander Woman, that is a gladiator from Ala Mhigo, she's got the morales of a knight, but her major flaw: She's embarrassed about having odd-colored eyes, so she keeps her purple eye hidden under a lock of hair to obscure the view of that odd eye. Her name name is The Mountain Woman, because lets face it, a 7'3 all muscle woman with max sized bust, is quite deserving of the title.

 

Unfortunately the server seems to be under lockdown 24/7 now. And I have a suspicion it's because of what I was seeing last night. Myself and 2 friends were roleplaying in the drybone inn, in the one room that has an empty bed, and throughout the rp, suddenly about 15 lalafell black mages would appear. THey'd jump over to where a phased npc is, giving a weird after-image effect, then jump to the end of the bed and poof out of existence. This happened about 3 or 4 times with completely different named characters.

 

Basically I suspect it's all the bloody RMT bots that are teleport hacking everywhere, and are online 24/7, that is the cause of people being unable to make new characters. I really wish SE would get off their derrier and just do something about them. And maybe even bring back the auto-afk kick feature while they are at it for people who never logout, just sit afk when they are at work or asleep.

[E'irawen]

Hi guys. I wanted to offer the same as I've offered in the other thread! It might help a bit. 

 

Try using World-alerts.com

 

If you put in your email and pick a server, it will email you literally the very second the world becomes open. (Had to do this to make an alt on Excalibur)

 

 

(I apologize, that's all I have to offer and not an actual discussion ;n;  Wanted to help!)

[Vanyris]

I like how hard it is to get on Balmung. It keeps non-RPers out because you have to be dedicated to get yourself on. The first time I got on Gilgamesh I noticed 60% of the people had names like Taco Supreme & Awesome Mcgee and the entire time I was there I never overheard two people speaking ICly.

Without things like difficulty getting in or bad reps (a la Moon Guard) RP servers quickly get overrun by *BLEEP* *BLEEP*ing *BLEEP*ers that "come for the community" and end up watering down if not outright destroying that community with their sheer numbers.

That's not a very healthy outlook to have on it. RPers having to crawl up a nigh-insurmountable wall is not going to help the server as a whole. I've had friends who wanted to use the trial to test the waters in RP on FFXIV, and haven't ended up getting the game because they were not able to get into Balmung for the entirety of it.

 

You use Moon Guard as an example. Despite Goldshire being a hub of ERP and bad roleplay, Moon Guard has an active, thriving roleplay community while still being a massive server with a fair amount of non-roleplayers. A server being large does not diminish the roleplay community, and maintaining exclusivity is going to end up excluding just as many (if not more) future roleplayers as it does non-roleplayers.

 

Fai's website is a good suggestion, though! Highly recommend that.

[K'nahli]

Hi guys. I wanted to offer the same as I've offered in the other thread! It might help a bit. 

 

Try using World-alerts.com

 

If you put in your email and pick a server, it will email you literally the very second the world becomes open. (Had to do this to make an alt on Excalibur)

 

 

(I apologize, that's all I have to offer and not an actual discussion ;n;  Wanted to help!)

 

Apparently this uses the Lodestone to determine if a server is locked and that page updates every 4-5 hours so this would be next to useless for Balmung I imagine, unfortunately.

 

Thank you for the link in any case, it's certainly a nice fan-feature ^^

[Gurren Dai]

So, I managed to get a character transfer to balmung. It said the transfer could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. I did it just a minute ago, so I dunno if It'll take too long. I'm sorry if this is a bit unrelated to the main chat, but I figured I'd ask here instead of going to make my own thread.

 

Wish I could have made a character on Balmung normally,but this works too.

[Vulture]

I like how hard it is to get on Balmung. It keeps non-RPers out because you have to be dedicated to get yourself on. The first time I got on Gilgamesh I noticed 60% of the people had names like Taco Supreme & Awesome Mcgee and the entire time I was there I never overheard two people speaking ICly.

Without things like difficulty getting in or bad reps (a la Moon Guard) RP servers quickly get overrun by *BLEEP* *BLEEP*ing *BLEEP*ers that "come for the community" and end up watering down if not outright destroying that community with their sheer numbers.

 

That's not a very healthy outlook to have on it. RPers having to crawl up a nigh-insurmountable wall is not going to help the server as a whole. I've had friends who wanted to use the trial to test the waters in RP on FFXIV, and haven't ended up getting the game because they were not able to get into Balmung for the entirety of it.

 

You use Moon Guard as an example. Despite Goldshire being a hub of ERP and bad roleplay, Moon Guard has an active, thriving roleplay community while still being a massive server with a fair amount of non-roleplayers. A server being large does not diminish the roleplay community, and maintaining exclusivity is going to end up excluding just as many (if not more) future roleplayers as it does non-roleplayers.

 

Fai's website is a good suggestion, though! Highly recommend that.

 

Call me an elitist but this is what kills RP servers. Not the non-RPers but the blind acceptance of non-RPers by RPers. You're the character at the beginning of every alien invasion movie that sees their menacing warship and says "maybe they come in peace", nope they see your planet/server is nice and they want it no matter the cost to the natives. Just replace iron/water/air/brains/etc with "community".

Non-RPers are parasites, I don't mean this as an insult but in the literal sense: Parasitism is a non-mutual symbiotic relationship between species, where one species, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host.

 

Why do you think RPers want to get into Balmung so bad? Gilgamesh is a lot easier to get into right? The second question is its own answer, Gilgamesh is easier to get into...

 

...for everyone.

[Kinono]

As an aside, but aren't RP server in WoW official, and labelled as such? It's been a long time since I've played WoW (a long, long, long time) but I remember reading when the menu first came up to pick a server that lore-abiding names were expected and not having one would actually get you a talking-to by a GM. Was that not the case?

 

 

More to-topic:

There's a big difference between an official RP server and Balmung, an unofficial one, which might I add wasn't even an RP server to begin with. It was just a plain ol' regular server that got merged with the server that happened to be the other unofficial RP server in 1.0.

[Kage]

As far as I know Balmung did not exist in 1.0. Besaid and some other one was made Balmung. I belive a lot of the old RPERS were on Besaid so Balmung naturally became its home.

 

 

And honestly I find the notion that "non-RPers" being blindly accepted is what kills RP servers is just... I can't even hide my disgust against that idea.

[Vanyris]

As an aside, but aren't RP server in WoW official, and labelled as such? It's been a long time since I've played WoW (a long, long, long time) but I remember reading when the menu first came up to pick a server that lore-abiding names were expected and not having one would actually get you a talking-to by a GM. Was that not the case?

 

 

More to-topic:

There's a big difference between an official RP server and Balmung, an unofficial one, which might I add wasn't even an RP server to begin with. It was just a plain ol' regular server that got merged with the server that happened to be the other unofficial RP server in 1.0.

Yes and no. Roleplay servers are official, but most aren't filled with roleplayers. Most are filled with players that happened to get stuck there because the game suggested it for them based on population/proximity to the server's location/timezone. Back in vanilla they sorta-kinda used to care about lore-abiding names in theory, but that was ten years and several expansions ago.

 

Now you can have any ol' name you like as long as it's not an outright offensive word. Even on the large, popular roleplay servers like Moon Guard you have a sizeable population of non-RPers. There are some that come there because RPers are nice folks to be around and the ambiance of roleplay is pleasant, or because their friends play there, or perhaps they just get recommended by the game to play there.

 

As to Vulture, I wasn't aware I was discussing role play with one of Gotham's finest super villains.

[QueenFrejyalen]

Judging people and wanting them to stay out of your "super awesome RPers-only fort" is a bit much.

 

Elitist attitude is not something to be proud of; it is a harmful ideology that you belong on a pedestal and others are not valued as high as you or your friends are.  Someone can't contribute as much to the RP community as you, so you think they should be barred entirely or thrown out because that makes them a "parasite"?

 

It is the patience, understanding, and cooperation of a community that makes it strong - we do not live in times that require a "thinning the herd" mentality, especially in regards to an extra curricular in a game.

 

We are not blindly accepting non-RPers, we are rightfully accepting them.  This server and this game were not made for RPers only, and if you're willing to bar "non-RPers", then I assume that attitude will extend to "bad RPers" and "RPers I don't like".

 

A slippery slope, indeed.

[Naunet]

Why do you think RPers want to get into Balmung so bad? Gilgamesh is a lot easier to get into right? They second question is it's own answer, Gilgamesh is easier to get into...

 

...for everyone.

 

You're finding causation when there's only correlation. Balmung is a legacy server and when ARR launched had the benefit of retaining its 1.0 RP community. Gilgamesh had to start from scratch. It makes perfect sense then that Balmung has a larger, more entrenched RP community and is thus seen as the more desirable server to be on from a roleplayer perspective.

 

The creation restrictions hurt everyone, not just non-RPers. Potential roleplayers and current roleplayers who desperately want to make alts are all harmed by the policy, and that's just not a good thing.

[Dravus]

Elitism isn't always a harmful thing. Sometimes it's a necessity, especially if it ensures that some people maintain base standards. You'd be surprised at what certain individuals let slide as acceptable within role-play communities these days. Though like with so many terms such as 'troll' it's essentially become a buzzword thrown around at the drop of the hat. I've been labelled an 'elitist' for not wanting to have my character sleep with someone else's character within a few minutes of them meeting.

 

Putting that aside, however, we're not an official role-playing server and even if we were I'd much prefer to have non role-players around as they benefit the server as a whole in terms of PvE/PvP and the economy.

 

Honestly, most of the problems role-players face on Balmung don't come from non role-players at all. They're just made into convenient scapegoats. Most of the trolling, harassment and other nastiness stems from role-players themselves. It's something that I've seen happen in every MMO with a strong unofficial or official community of role-players.

[Flickering Ember]

So, what is the alternative to the character restrictions? Yeah, the restrictions suck but they are there for a reason. Capped servers are...well...capped and they depend on restrictions to avoid things like 2 hour long wait times or server crashes. 

 

Previous MMOs had different but similar restrictions that IMO were not better than ffxiv's. Moon Guard would be locked several times. While old members could make alts freely, no new people to the server could roll there. Though, WoW servers probably have a higher cap overall.

 

Simply increasing server capacity is ideal but unrealistic and probably not going to happen since they built ffxiv on dated tech.

 

Interested to hear from you guys: What alternatives are there? Realistic alternatives.

[Telluride]

As far as I know Balmung did not exist in 1.0. Besaid and some other one was made Balmung. I belive a lot of the old RPERS were on Besaid so Balmung naturally became its home.

 

And honestly I find the notion that "non-RPers" being blindly accepted is what kills RP servers is just... I can't even hide my disgust against that idea.

 

There's a big difference between "Non-RPers"....

 

...who are perfectly fine people, and who may once have been RPers. I've still got contacts who still play, but put aside RP because of RL concerns, or lack of time, or changes in life experiences. Then, there are those who might be RPers later. I welcome good and mature players - more people = faster queues, more buyers in the market.

 

.... and those who actively cause problems for RPers. We know who they are, and we know that many of them cluster in groups and, lets be honest, probably deserve steel-toed boots up their rectums. For every troll - like the Miqo'te who was jumping from occupied table to occupied table last night, just because he was apparently bored and didnt' have sufficient functioning brain power to find something else to do - there are a dozen to a score of people who just want to play the game and enjoy it.

 

And I have to agree with Graeham - there are people who RP who are every bit as much of a problem.

[Telluride]

 

Interested to hear from you guys: What alternatives are there? Realistic alternatives.

 

Frankly, rather than alternatives, I'd simply like the current restrictions to MEAN MORE, specifically regarding Bots. I would be much, much more accepting of the restrictions if I could see more evidence of SE really choking down on the bot population. Yes, it's not as bad in FFXIV as in some other games, but then, I have never been on a server as tough to get into as Balmung, either, not counting ones that were just completely, totally closed.

[Y'lani]

So, what is the alternative to the character restrictions? Yeah, the restrictions suck but they are there for a reason. Capped servers are...well...capped and they depend on restrictions to avoid things like 2 hour long wait times or server crashes. 

 

Previous MMOs had different but similar restrictions that IMO were not better than ffxiv's. Moon Guard would be locked several times. While old members could make alts freely, no new people to the server could roll there. Though, WoW servers probably have a higher cap overall.

 

Simply increasing server capacity is ideal but unrealistic and probably not going to happen since they built ffxiv on dated tech.

 

Interested to hear from you guys: What alternatives are there? Realistic alternatives.

 

This is some good food for thought. Sticks to the topic, as well.

 

Let's not delve too deep into the ethics of the restriction, guys. This thread was made to serve the purpose of talking about the restriction itself, not about calling the non-roleplayers on Balmung "parasites". We have to remember that Balmung does not only belong to roleplayers, and whether that impedes on the roleplay community or not does not concern us. We cannot control it, nor do we have the right to.

[Naunet]

Simply increasing server capacity is ideal but unrealistic and probably not going to happen since they built ffxiv on dated tech.

 

They need to bite the bullet and invest in architecture appropriate for the level of popularity their game has garnished. They're in for a world of hurt come the expac if they don't do this. (edit: Though on second thought, with how easily people just toss money at SE to buy server transfers to get around the restriction, perhaps they'll just languish in their outdated architecture because people are freaking stupid. )

 

At the very least, they need to let players who already have characters on a server to freely make alts.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

This is some good food for thought. Sticks to the topic, as well.

 

Let's not delve too deep into the ethics of the restriction, guys. This thread was made to serve the purpose of talking about the restriction itself, not about calling the non-roleplayers on Balmung "parasites". We have to remember that Balmung does not only belong to roleplayers, and whether that impedes on the roleplay community or not does not concern us. We cannot control it, nor do we have the right to.

 

This, exactly! Way, way, way back when Balmung didn't even exist, I joined the Besaid server in 1.0 for the PvE (I didn't know better...). People flocked there because it was the "unofficial English-speaking server", because every server was in the Japanese data center. When Besaid merged with another server and became Balmung, we all stayed, despite transfers being offered, I think. When 2.0 launched all the old players were given another transfer opportunity. I'm sure few used it, but many stayed because Balmung was where their friends were. I know I did. RP wasn't even on my radar until about.....April-May-ish post 2.1. Sure, we have couple RP trolls, and a LOT of people who don't RP, but it was their server too. If SE ever opened an "official" RP server, I don't know if I would leave, even if there were free transfers to it for RPers. I'm on Balmung for both communities.

 

...it would be nice to see restrictions open more often, and for bots to be killed more often, but I am also under the opinion SE is doing a pretty good job with the resources thye have. ...perhaps they need to expand more on that part.