Initially I was told it was great for social/fight RPs, something I was always doing on forums but that scene was swiftly dying thanks to discord so I took their word for it, I got the game, registered an account and they told me "Hey, go to Balmung and sign up there!", this begun an absolute ballache of a sign up process I have never since experienced. To call it "Almost impossible" to get a spot wasn't an understatement, I made a character on another world initially but didn't fancy paying to join Balmung (Since you have to pay to transfer characters, having spent already upwards of £60 another £15 to just play felt like a piss take) and this person wouldn't join me elsewhere so to play with my only FFXIV friend and someone willing to help me understand the game I had to play ball. It took me, no joke, 2 weeks to finally get a spot by sneaking out of work to return home, boot up the game and make it during the 3am lul (It was a US game, for me it was like 10am), I made the character and returned to it when I got home after work.
Initially I just noticed how many people were in the "Adventurer inns" I wasn't taking in avatars due to how many chat bubbles there were and just how densely packed this place was, it was a starting hub with literally hundreds of characters in one spot (For context, I've not seen this outside of balmung in the years since), I messaged my friend and they gave me all this regale about how they'd intro me to their friends and I should just play the story in the meantime for a time when they were all on. I played basically alone for about 30hrs (Across I think 2 weeks? Maybe 3?) and hadn't been invited yet, despite insisting, noone RP'd with me but I begun noticing all the ""Naked"" cat women lined up outside any major hub (Adventurer inns in every town) eliciting ERP from people, this was something I found kind of offputting but I also didn't pay it much mind and just continued playing, not really interacting "Normally" with anyone (Noone would talk normally like it was a game, it was all RP interactions), I got hampered by rampant bots which ruined certain spots (They'll have 20 bots in a huddle all camping enemies which can hinder major story quests with 'Kill X enemy' things) and I was enjoying the game, but noticing it's issues.
Finally, after about 3 weeks I got a proper introduction to this group of friends or "Free Company (Guild)", I got added and told to join their little event in a house, so I walk on over after being told by my friend in some fucking weird way how "We have a place in Ul'Dah, it's the best, like omg", like when those dudes talk about owning a BMW because anything else is a fucking joke of a car. I walked downstairs into the 'Basement' of this building and everyone was stood around RPing so I tried to introduce myself;
"Hello, I'm (character) ((IDR the fucking name)), I am a Dark mage!"
Everyone pauses and noone says anything or interacts, I get a very annoyed whisper from my friend;
"DUDE DONT SAY THAT, DARK MAGES ARE A BANNED CLASS!!!"
Lol what?
So, turns out ""in roleplay"" in this server certain jobs/classes are ""illegal"" due to stigma or what they do, even though yknow, the storyline has no reference to this, those guilds are open and public and at no point had this person pointed it out to me despite knowing I had picked this class. So I pivot and retry;
"Hey, I'm ( x ), I'm a traveller who's a Thautamage and I was interested in becoming a part of your company!"
Finally, they interact with me, unlike earlier where it felt like I had walked in and dropped a giant deuce on the floor, but the entire time my friend is banging my whispers to tell me "YOU CANT SAY THAT BECAUSE BALMUNG RP RULES SAY YOU CAN'T", like there was some unwritten set of laws and rules I was supposed to know *by playing the main storyline and not never roleplaying* immediately and sign up to. This session lasted maybe an hour since I made an excuse and stopped playing on that server and stopped playing with that friend (Which later led to the complete dissolution of our friendship), now Balmung has a rampant rep of being what OP states, an overflowing mass of ERP and overly pretentious "Awesome Roleplayers" who are so fucking elitist it's retarded. Infact now I write this out the experience was so awful I stopped any form of roleplay online afterward and only recently got back into tabletop roleplay as a result.