Bring Back The Newbies!

Yeah, I know it says Gilgamesh on my profile. My Bahamut character is an old mule I've taken to leveling in a desperate desire to return home to my original server that had its doors closed shut on me while I was away.

Speak out and protest! Bahamut hardly seems even remotely crowded anymore (although I can't speak for the end game scene) but if the overall average total of currently online players says anything, its not even close to what it was this time last year. I've been sending daily email complaints/suggestions to SE via the POL email system pleading with them to stop ignoring Bahamut. The complete lack of new characters is like a slow death for our world (not to mention the newbie market).

You can't tell me that no one has noticed our steadily declining market. Ever try to sell a piece of 1-20 gear in a starter city lately? It can sit there for over a week.

My linkshell is a mostly social linkshell whose members get the majority of their enjoyment from assisting new players into adapting to the game. For us, the closure has been like a plague sucking our very life and ruining our enjoyment of the game.

SE won't tell us anything about when/if the server will ever re-open. I say we ask them in force. I get that a lot of people may not care, but I'm sure a lot of the rest of us do.

How many out there want to invite your friends to come join you on Bahamut?
How many out there miss seeing all the dead people near starter zones?
How many of you wonder why it is you can't seem to make gil anymore?

Protest to SE. Demand some info. We're the customers, they're supposed to make some effort to please us and not just ignore us.

I miss the newbs.

Not on Bahamut, but glad to see people like you exist anywhere on this sad game where 98% of people just want gear. Needs more people who get enjoyment from helping those who haven't yet reached a point to help themselves. Hope you get what ya want.

Bahamut is hardly crowded nowadays, SE needs to wake up and see that they are letting their game die by not allowing new people on a server that is slowly dying.

A single letter change in the topic name and this could've been a completely different story. lol

Stop paying your monthly fee, otherwise SE don't care :<

I've decided to start writing actual letters to SE customer service office in California. Got the address from an agent earlier:

PlayOnline Information Center
999 N. Sepulveda Blvd. 3rd Floor
El Segundo, California 90245

This is what I've come up with so far:

I want to know exactly when, if or how the closed server Bahamut will reopen. From what I can get from the customer service reps I've spoken with and the GMs I've chatted with the closure is directly related to the number of active characters attached to that world.

What I want to know as a customer is (1) the exact number of current active characters, (2) the number of characters Square-Enix wants there to be before it will reopen the gates to Bahamut and (3) the average number of characters that permanently leave the server by way of transfer or ban each month, since deletion is not final as the re-activation campaign allows for a user to re-active any deleted characters even if on a closed server. Also, (4) please give me SE's estimate of when the server will be re-opened.

As a customer I cannot make a sound judgment as to whether I should stay on Bahamut and suffer a continued poor play experience in direct result of the server closure or seek a world transfer to a new server.

I don't know if anyone that would read this plays on the Bahamut server or even if they'd agree with my assessment, but I know that I personally am having a horrible play experience because of the lack of new players coming into the world.

I know how you feel. Most of my fun in game was helping new players and going on adventures with newbie friends. I really miss it. And I have a lot of friends that would love to start playing... or would love to switch to my server to play with me, but they can't, which just hurts the experience even more. =/

They close servers so people get off it. When you have 1000+ people in Whitegate alone you can't do anything, let alone get in the zone. It's not that they want people to be blocked from playing with friends, it's that the server just can't handle it.

Honestly, with Odin closed longer than Bahamut, I actually prefer it the way it is. If they opened Odin again 3 things would happen, prices would go up, idiots that left the server would come back, RMT would come back. The only benefit for me is that more Australians could play with us.

They won't open the servers until the number of players drop to be close to the lowest populated server levels. Once they open it there will be an influx of players that will just make it jump up again. It doesn't matter how much you complain, SE won't give you an answer because it's not up to them, it's up to the players on the server.

Failing all that, it'll open or merge once FFXIV is out.

That is A LOT of people. I think there's usually only 1000 people on all of Kujata. The most I've ever seen in a single zone was 400 during Besieged.


Bring back the boobies? :D :D

Bahamut, in my play experiences, fluctuates between 900-2500 active players, peaking on weekends.

As a previous resident of Odin both before and after the lock I can say with 100% certainty that Bahamut never even reached half of Odin's numbers, before the lock.

Most I have seen on at one time before lock was 3k people.

Have to also remember that probably a tenth of the people on the server are mains + mules + mains that have 2-4 accounts (whats the damn point of that?)

I never could get dual boxing, but maybe I just can't multitask enough for it. But then, I can't see paying for two accounts either.

We would have over 5k during peak JP time. Haven't really looked lately. Tuesday nights JP time (probably the quietest night) we used to have about 3k, now we're down to about 2k.

Also use this link:
http://www.ffxiah.com/data.php

Gives you an idea what active player levels are like. Bahamut is still 3rd on that list of Active players. I can't remember exactly so I could be really wrong in saying that we were up towards 15/16k. Bahamut wasn't far behind.

Bingo! lol /hi5andrun

i wish remora had 2k in players >< we're lukcy if we reach 1.3k now and durning the week, a little over 900+. Yeah i miss helping the newbies too. It gave me something to do other than just doing end-game ONRY and when not solo leveling a pet job.

SE -should- make the smaller dying servers mesh together. When will they do it, don't know yet. =/ Our server open but i haven't seen a flood of new players and we're a balanced mix of EN,JP and EU Players.

Was just over 3k in peak JP time last night (Wednesday, holiday in Japan though). Also I posted a screeny from Zven's live journal in a similar thread. Just over 6k people on-line at around the time the server was closed.

I don't think the problem is just closed servers, many/most servers (won't say all) have suffered "active player" decline. I know on Pandy I've seen as few as 800 durring Off-Peak hours, and we max out near 1,400 or so even on weekends. we're 7th? from the bottom on the list (posted above) for active characters on Jeuno AH.

Instead of opening closed servers i would like to see the lowest population servers closed (maybe 5~7 of them even if pandy gets closed). Free transfers from closed servers over a 1 month period.

After 4~5 months then open all servers for free transfer. This WILL hurt HNM but almost everything else should be improved. FFXI is severely top heavy, and after 7 years it's hard to garner new players, but too few players and too much "space" hurts a PvE system.

3 ppl in dunes, 1 duo pt and a soloer. Do i need to say more? i would've loved to lvl my /SAM in the dunes but i had to solo it. 2 ppl (including myself) were lfp lvl 10-19. Sure you can camp VE without trouble but for people who want to start new jobs/lvl subs it sucks

That data isn't really useful. Its a counter, not a month by month status report.

In hades i waited 12 painful hours to get a party for my WHM, and gave up after that..

Actually it is useful. The total accounts is a counter, the active players only displays active players based on what FFXIAH can report on which is Jeuno transactions. What you're seeing is active transactions within a finite period, giving you accurate results.

The finite period being from July 2006 to now.

Its really not helpful. There's no break down of what actual current situations are like.

The numbers only go up, never down.

No, that's for all characters. Read my last post.

it can't be denied..

that once they re-open the server said to be largest, people will zerg to that ***like it's willy *** wonka's.

then it'll be stuffed again..

The proof is in the pudding.

asura: most gangsta server in the game

No ***I can read. That's how long FFXIAH has been recording.

There's a thing called "Active". Meaning, active players based on the FFXIAH transactions. If you use the player search functionality there's an option to only search be active players, this excludes inactive players. That 3rd column shows how many people on that server have active transactions as of now.

That's the last time I'm going to explain it. Not going to waste my time with morons that don't listen.

Too bad FoV came a year and a half too late.
It likely would have prevented many casual players from quitting.

But they don't remove people from that list who have not used Bahamut's AH for X period of time, so the number really doesn't go down, because they don't just remove people because they can't know if the person really moved, quit or what not. Notice people with accounts last updated 484 months ago, still on that list no doubt.

I can tell you from being on this server, we have lost A ***TON of people, I reckon over 2k, no way in hell we are #1 in active players anymore, we struggle to have 1400, avg maybe 1.1k on when we used to be at 2.2k no matter time of day.

Do /sea all, on Baha and Asura at the same time, I can almost bet Asura will have about 500+~ more. Our active number can't still be that.

Did /sea all now, JP primetime I believe? 7 am est, 1600 people. Only people I see on are JP so I assume JP prime.

Edit**

How I believe that list works, it never goes down, but every time someone new uses Jeuno AH it adds one, speculation, but no way in hell we are #1 active, so that list has to be off.

Edit2**

Contrast, did /sea all about 12 hrs ago and it was 1200.

Edit3**

Ask an admin how the list works.