Petition for level 75 cap server

https://www.change.org/p/official-sq...-75-era-server

Greetings all. Please join me in supporting this petition for Square-Enix to produce an official level 75 cap era server.

Many of us prefer older days. Legacy servers have grown substantially in popularity over the past 5 years for various MMOs. FFXI is one of the last older MMOs with no official legacy server.

This is not about current FFXI vs. old FFXI. Legacy isn't for everyone, just like current FFXI isn't for everyone. Legacy servers have no impact on current version servers. You are free to contact any of the companies with an official legacy server and ask them yourself.

Any questions or concerns, you can contact me at omegaffxi@gmail.com

Thank you.

Couple of points, one of which I believe was brought up by someone else.

1). Who defines what 'classic' actually is?
2). SE would have to produce two separate updates for the server(s). Unless you are suggesting it never gets updated?

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Originally Posted by Sirmarki

Couple of points, one of which I believe was brought up by someone else.

1). Who defines what 'classic' actually is?
2). SE would have to produce two separate updates for the server(s). Unless you are suggesting it never gets updated?

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Easy answer to 1 actually since #2 depends on who you really talk to (concept is easy in terms of retroactive content inclusion but process not so much.)

1. Classic is 75 era, 75 era only had the "classic gameplay" most people know of when referring to FFXI because it's what lasted the longest (2003-2009ish) - There's 3 very different versions of XI, Classic 75 Cap era, Abyssea era and Ilvl (current) era.

A lot of times we just use the word classic/vanilla/legacy/era when referencing FFXI just because we're lazy, but in fact there's probably almost none of us that actually played "real" FFXI classic - JP launch. I think we mostly don't want to invent some new word just for FFXI. :P

I can absolutely say, however, that most of the people I've talked to and read posts from regarding a 75 cap server want the server to stop at TOAU. People seem to be OK with the idea of a progression server as well (follows the expansion timeline, starts at classic/vanilla, progresses through ROTZ, then COP, then TOAU), but they still want it to stop at TOAU. No idea what kind of time frame there should be between expansions. Maybe 6 months? Everquest does 3 months on theirs.

There are a small amount of people that want it to stop at WOTG. But it doesn't seem to be enough to warrant an official WOTG era server. (Sorry folks! Most people say they enjoyed WOTGs story but the copy/pasted empty zones turned them off. Many believe that Dancer and Scholar were too strong.)

THAT SAID! People are on board with a few things from WOTG such as new spells, traits, and abilities. Some of those things helped with job balance (or so they say).

Oh and while I talked about it in the petition, I just wanted to say that just about every official (or private!) legacy server I've ever played on has had SOME quality of life/modern changes. Something like level sync should absolutely be in from the start. Probably extra mog inventory spaces (FFXI had one of the worst inventory management systems out of any MMO back then!). They should still charge for extra Wardrobes of course!

Honestly I think there's a lot of things that you could talk legacy players into accepting. Like possibly Home Point teleports only between cities. Maybe not needing your nation to own a region to do the supply quest for outpost warps (OP warps very important during those days, was one of the only forms of fast travel). Maybe changes to HNM timers or how they work like Fafnir etc. You just have to be careful not to add tooo much QoL/modern stuff, otherwise it begins to defeat the purpose of the server. Legacy players are looking for that level grind from the start of the game. They want to do it with other players. They want to beat story missions with other players.

I lastly want to say, most of what I just said is my own personal thoughts and opinions, not necessarily things I personally want or am pushing for currently. I think that should this come to fruition, we would need to discuss each feature on a case by case basis so that people can share their opinions on them. I don't want people to think I am speaking for the legacy community when I mention those things (yet anyway, maybe later when I have more concrete data). The only thing I know for absolute sure that most people want, is TOAU to be the last expansion. I told Blizzard this same thing: a legacy server is an opportunity not only to go back in time, but an opportunity to change time, to make it even better than it was. Each time I have played on a legacy server, I've always gotten the same feelings that I did back then. That's how you know they've done it right, despite things not being 100% exactly the way they were back then due to some slight QoL/modern additions. You just have to make sure that the spirit of what people want from that era is still there.

We already have a really lengthy thread on this. Even if they could do it, a "75 server" would be a terrible idea. There are many reasons why:

1) The game has continued on a very long time from when the level cap was 75, and there are those who still enjoy playing the game now, along with those who are but might be tempted by such a thing.
This idea would divide the community while not likely bringing in many old players who have long since moved on to other things.


2) Content. They would have to develop new content for both this and the normal game, and they just don't have the team to do something like that. If they stopped development on the current game to do that, that would upset a lot of people who put years of work into the game since then, and why should they lose their work so a few people can enjoy their rose tinted glasses for a bit?


3) The passage of time. The game has recieved a modest amount of modernization over the years, and that would be lost by going back in time with the game version. Anyone who comes in and tries this will only find things eve more lacking compared to other modern games today. And unless the "classic server" recieves new content, the novelty of going back to the way things were will wear off quickly.


4) Just not the same- Because we've all already done it before, the experience won't be the same as you remember. There will still be far fewer people playing than there were back then, and while t his is debatable, it was the community that truly made the game fun, more than the content, level cap, or anything else. I challenge you to disagree with this- Was it really fun bashing snippers for hours on end to gain a level or two, or was the real fun interacting with your friends and fellow adventurers, swapping stories and chatting while you play? I don't know about you, but it was the community that made this game so much fun for me, and you can't bring that back to a "classic server" without a time machine and a memory wipe.


5) Potential for confusion- There aren't that many new players these days, but having different kinds of servers with different content would be confusing to new players, who could end up in one place or the other without really realizing it or what the difference is.


6) Disagreement on what "Classic" is- Who decides when the game was the most "classic?" Was it before WoTG? Sometime during it? Maybe go back to Zilart? Do we keep the jobs released after that? No matter what SE chooses, some people aren't going to be happy. There are various theories on what led to the game's decline. Personally I think it was less content related (i.e. not caused by abyssea or WOTG or some other specific game feature) and more just players moving on to more modern games after so many years. WoW's growth far exceeded FFXI's at all times, not just at that point that some people believe the game was "killed." I think WoW and other games like it simply eclipsed the game to the point that people couldn't simply ignore it anymore, and FFXI just couldn't hope to compete without the big overhaul it couldn't get because of the PS2 at the time.


Personally I wouldn't have time for the old grind anymore- I don't have time to do 5 hour raids every three days, and waiting days or weeks to collect upgrades and rewards sucks. It is really beyond me why anyone wants this or thinks it will be "just like the good ol' days" again, when it really won't be.

Yes, a lot of my opinion is in this, but I feel I've raised some legitimate issues.

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1. Classic is 75 era, 75 era only had the "classic gameplay" most people know of when referring to FFXI because it's what lasted the longest (2003-2009ish) - There's 3 very different versions of XI, Classic 75 Cap era, Abyssea era and Ilvl (current) era.

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This isn't even true anymore. The game has been 99 cap longer than it was 75 cap at this point.

1. Is the community not already divided though? It began during WOTG, back then there were 500-600K active subscriptions. Disappointment arose with the severe lack of content and all of the copy/pasted zones. Then Abyssea launched and it was more copy/pasted zones, which was the final nail in the coffin for most. During this time, active subs dropped by over half, and by the time Abyssea was over the game was in such bad shape that no one even cared to parse the sub numbers anymore. Today, it's estimated that FFXI has somewhere between 35K-40K active subs. I'm glad there are people who still enjoy current FFXI, but there are a lot of people who don't and they have nowhere to go except to other games. They moved on years ago after being burned repeatedly between 2007-2011. Between Wings of the Goddess, the 3 mini addon scenarios, and Abyssea, the game lost around 90% of its player base. Lastly, I don't expect anyone to leave retail for legacy. They're two different games marketed to two different types of players, just like every other legacy server.

2. You would need to ask all of the other legacy server communities and companies if their legacy servers took away development and staff from the current version. From my experience it seems like two different versions are operated by two different teams. The legacy team is obviously a fraction of the size, since once the server is finished, there's no more development.

3. Legacy servers are mostly developed for those who have experienced all versions of the game, and prefer the older version. That said, it does give an opportunity for people who have never played the older version the chance to experience it, and I've personally met people who are playing older eras and even the game for the first time on legacy servers. I still see players in-game that I met on legacy servers years ago.

4. I have been playing on legacy servers for nearly two decades, and I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. It absolutely feels the same as it did back then, for every legacy server I've played on. The population depends on the game and the server. As for the community, it's the same too. I've already gone back and bashed snippers for hours, and the equivalent in other games too. And yes I prefer it and so do others.

5. Doesn't seem to be an issue for other games, though I can certainly see the need for an explanation on the game's website.

6. Ultimately, Square-Enix chooses. But they should probably discuss it with the community first. And yes, not everyone will be happy, as with every game and every thing in life. Most of the legacy players I've talked to want nothing beyond TOAU, and a small percentage of players want WOTG.

The most successful implementations of "classic" servers ive seen still have all the game content as normal, they just lock all the expansions/addons/whatever until you decide you want to open them. That could be done with fairly low difficulty I would imagine. The way FFXI is designed you wouldn't even need special servers for that. It sounds like a far better idea to me than taking a time warp. Aside from that, SE would basically laugh at you if you asked them to form a second team to develop the "classic" version of the game. It really seems like a big investment to me with little potential payout.

Very few people prefer the older versions of online games. Some games are big enough that they can make a niche bit of extra cash by having such a thing. FFXI isn't big enough for that IMO. The community is not already divided. THere is only one version of the game. People playing other games are not part of the community to divide.

Really, you can't tell me that it's not going to get boring with an old version of the game frozen in time with no new content. It will be a fun nostalgia trip for a little while, for sure. But nobody is going to stay on that version of the game for years and years with zero updates/improvements.

And honestly, we should really take this back to the original thread which is still right on the front page of the forum.

Legacy Ultima Online (private only), Everquest, RuneScape, and Lineage 2 servers are all more popular than their live version servers.

Progression is definitely an option. Everquesters enjoy progression servers. However with the nature of FFXI, I don't think progression is as necessary and won't feel the same as it does with Everquest. Expansions generally mean level cap increases but the only level cap increase in FFXI back then was between vanilla and ROTZ. A very tiny amount of NA players ever experienced the game pre-ROTZ so going from vanilla to ROTZ could be interesting. Also regarding EQ progression servers, once the server gets to around the 4th expansion, the population starts to drop because the game starts to get to the point that people begin to dislike (this would happen with FFXI if it progressed beyond TOAU), the company creates a new progression server from the beginning, most players start over there and it becomes the new most populated Everquest server again, rinse and repeat (EQ's level grind is WAY longer than FFXI's BTW). It's been happening since 2011. Everquest isn't more popular than Final Fantasy XI and neither is Ultima Online, by far. FFXI is more popular than live RuneScape but not Old School RuneScape. Not sure about Lineage 2, probably depends on region (they have legacy and live servers for NA, EU, RU, and SEA regions, so I'd say it's probably more popular one way or the other).

You're right about most legacy servers simply disabling expansions and features. It's very easy to do and is something I have experience doing myself. It's also the most time efficient and cheapest way to achieve the goal. To my knowledge Blizzard is the only company to completely recreate an older version of a server from the ground up. They also didn't move employees to the Classic team, they hired a whole new one. I wouldn't expect SE to hire employees (maybe one?) for this nor create the server from scratch.

People get bored of games, it doesn't matter if there is new content or not. People play until they get bored and then they move on to something else. MMO devs will tell you that the majority of MMO players play for 1-3 months and then move on, to do the same with another online game (with the older slower paced progression-wise games and more community based games keeping subscriptions a bit longer). A lot of them eventually come back around. There is of course those players whom never quit. That goes for legacy and live.

The other thread isn't about this petition, and petitions don't get seen at the back of a 4 year old thread.

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Originally Posted by OmegaFFXI

The other thread isn't about this petition, and petitions don't get seen at the back of a 4 year old thread.

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1) petitions never do shit, and you're wasting your time with that
2) It's on the front page, it will get seen. The fact that the thread has been around a long time means nothing. The "tales from the duty finder" thread dates back to practically the beginning of the FFXIV forums, and is still seen and posted in to this day.
3) popularity in one game doesn't translate into popularity in another. All of those games were also bigger than FFXI. Also despite your opinion and the opiinion of others who are asking for this, many people have continued to enjoy the way the game has progressed. (I throughly disagree with any notion that the cap increase, or abyssea, or any content in particular "killed" the game, it was already on a downward trend before any of these things happened.)

I mean, its pretty much an open and shut case. SE has *already* explicitly shot this idea down. They've clearly done a cost benefit analysis on it and determined that it wasn't worth essentially halting the current game in order to develop this. I myself would much rather see improvements and additions to the current game that let people play things they way they want to (i.e. level sync to a specified level instead of only being able to sync to a party member) without the need for special servers. From here, I"m going back to the well established thread if I have anything more to say on it.

Your petition description is also full of really false statements about the current game and I wouldn't sign it for that reason alone. You also make a lot of loaded, unverifiable weasel-word statements to exaggerate the amount of interest. In particular I really took issue with this:

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Now I am going to attempt to talk about FFXI’s current community while hopefully not being too offensive. It is not my intention to offend anyone, I am just going to reiterate my experiences and what I’ve seen both in-game and on various FFXI forums. First I’ll talk about job acceptance. Many people get turned down for party invites simply due to the job they are playing. Even if they’ve beaten the content on the job before, they’ll still be turned down due to “meta mentality.”

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If you think this is worse now than it was back in the day, you clearly haven't played the game. My main jobs were Summoner (my character is galka btw), scholar, and Puppetmaster. I got crap for summoner mostly because of my race, but the others were just not that popular. WHenever a new job came out, I inevitably fell in love with the least popular one and had a real hard time getting parties. It was true at the beginning of the game, it was true at the peak of 75 content even more. If anything, it's less true today than it was back then. All the jobs I play that were always unpopular now get to see use in a lot of content. I have far less difficulty being accepted for content now than I did back in the 75 days. And that's with a smaller commounity too. So you're dead wrong here.


Frankly I think if people can't accept that MMOs change and evolve as time goes on, then they shouldn't play MMOs.

Finally, if you actually did look at the other thread, it may actually be literally impossible for them to restore an old version of the game, because the original devs failed to keep an archive of all their old builds- unclear why but given that FFXI was a huge game (in terms of data size) for its time, they might have not had the storage capacity to keep every single build.

(edited slightly to sanitize language a bit)

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Originally Posted by OmegaFFXI

They moved on years ago after being burned repeatedly between 2007-2011. Between Wings of the Goddess, the 3 mini addon scenarios, and Abyssea, the game lost around 90% of its player base.

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Pretty sure that was less to do with what was going on in XI and more to do with the advent of XIV.

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Originally Posted by Haldarn

Pretty sure that was less to do with what was going on in XI and more to do with the advent of XIV.

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You mean a game that the community thought so poorly of that it had to be completely recreated and (forgive me) reborn? I might believe that if people left for FFXIV 1.0, experienced what it was, and then came rushing back. But not many did. Instead, both of SE's MMOs took massive hits.

There probably wouldn't be a Square-Enix today if they hadn't recreated FFXIV successfully.

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Originally Posted by Haldarn

Pretty sure that was less to do with what was going on in XI and more to do with the advent of XIV.

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A lot of people like to blame WOTG or abyssea, but that's a load of crap. The game was beginning to decline in population before any of this.


If abyssea did harm the game in any way, it's because of its nature as a power playground- which upon completing it all, left you feeling weak when you did regular content outside of the abyssea areas. Some content like Voidwatch tried to bring some of this back, but basically, when you make people feel powerful and then indirectly take it away, it may have left a sour taste in some mouths. But neither of these things "cost the game 90% of the playerbase." There were a lot of factors at work, from already declining populations to content issues, to the advent of FFXIV (dulled by its initial failiure, though), to PS2 limitations getting in the way of needed improvements, and so on. There were a lot of things, it wasn't just any one thing.


It is however true that SE was in a bad spot after FFXIV 1.0 bombed. They had a lot of other things also performing poorly at the time as well. It was a huge risk to them financially, but at least in that respect, the remaking of the game proved to be a good decision.

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If you think this is worse now than it was back in the day, you clearly haven't played the game. My main jobs were Summoner (my character is galka btw), scholar, and Puppetmaster. I got crap for summoner mostly because of my race, but the others were just not that popular. WHenever a new job came out, I inevitably fell in love with the least popular one and had a real hard time getting parties. It was true at the beginning of the game, it was true at the peak of 75 content even more. If anything, it's less true today than it was back then. All the jobs I play that were always unpopular now get to see use in a lot of content. I have far less difficulty being accepted for content now than I did back in the 75 days. And that's with a smaller commounity too. So you're dead wrong here.

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And that is one of the reasons why I cannot support any sort of resources being diverted away to a stripped down version of the current Final Fantasy XI, especially any that aims to stop at ToAU. I remember the hostility that WotG received from a very particular subset of players at that time, particularly about Campaign.

Yes, Campaign was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But it was first time in the game's history where it felt like it gave players the opportunity to pick-up-and-play on their own terms. People were hostile to it because they felt it degraded the quality of skill and that it siphoned potential candidates for parties away from the Seek pool. And yet I've yet to see anybody reckon with the question "What is making these people choose to make 3K/hour limit points over 10K/hour limit points?" Frankly, I read any attempt to stop at ToAU as an attempt to once again remove the low barrier of entry from the game.

I play jobs that fulfill many different roles in parties now and, for the most part, I can identify areas where some will excel over others, and in a far more egalitarian way than back pre-75 cap. If there are still players making blanket exclusions of jobs across content, that's not a product of the current game. On the contrary, that is part of the pre-75 increase's exulted "legacies".

Personally, I prefer much of the game's designs before all this lunacy about iLevels, and yes, I miss the way gear was made to last pre-75 cap. But that's only one aspect of the game. If there are no concessions made for retaining some of the quality of life enhancements that have made the game less of a slog and less of an exclusionary experience, I can only conclude that the people who want legacy FFXI the most are sociopaths who enjoy getting to decide who leaves Whitegate and who doesn't.

I'ts pretty obvious why I wouldn't want to go back to "classic 75 era" when the jobs i loved were reviled and not accepted for content.
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A lot of people like to blame WOTG or abyssea, but that's a load of crap. The game was beginning to decline in population before any of this.

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The only thing I truly fault Abyssea for is introducing a way of leveling a job from 1 to 99 essentially by following somebody around. This continues on into Escha, as we know. If they had never done that, the game would not feel as centralized as it does now. The rate of leveling by fighting appropriate mobs actually feels comfortable now, and you would see more people spread throughout, making use of zones that are largely going to waste now.

It was really the only major step into absurdity that I found unforgivable. More the pity now especially since you can level at a pretty brisk and tolerable pace without rushing to 99.

EDIT: It's easy to oversimplify this and say "There were hundreds of thousands of subscriptions to FFXI prior to WotG. So something must have gone wrong when WotG was introduced."

If the criticism is that Abyssea and WotG were reusing too many resources, then the argument for a legacy server makes even less sense. Rather, back then, the criticisms of the game were about how top-heavy the playerbase was becoming. Most of the playerbase was stagnating at level 75. Additions like Fields of Valor, for example, may have been a step in the right direction for accommodating different playstyles. But there was little willpower to shake up the hierarchical structure the game had always been built upon. There was no low level content that was worth doing if it didn't somehow add value to your character at level 75, then 99, and now 119.

Rather, with Abyssea, they doubled down on making the only worthwhile experience in this game the level capped one. And, to reinforce this further, rather than lessen the EXP requirements to reach cap, they just made it possible to reach level cap without ever having to engage in a battle. They effectively made irrelevant a massive amount of the game's content that simply could have been made less of a slog.

I brought up Campaign because I thought the attitudes about it at the time were very telling. A subset of players were angry about it for the reasons I briefly touched upon- it "dumbed down" the playerbase, it siphoned potential party members away from the Seek pool, it encouraged deviant playstyles. And yet it was clearly meeting some kind of need at the time- people doing Campaign were willfully choosing to forego the clear advantages of a merit party in favor of maybe 3K/hour limit points at best.

I say the FFXI team never had the willpower to shake the hierarchical structure of the game because they clearly had a vision of how they wanted people to play. That also extends to content like Fields of Valor, which was supposed to be an alternative to 6-man parties. But they still wanted the 6-man party to produce the best EXP output by a wide margin, all while retaining the stringent level-up requirements. Yet, the 6-man party just wasn't working for a growing number of players anymore for one reason or another. Nor were they interested in making the jobs more egalitarian- some jobs were unquestionably at the bottom of the hierarchy. They knew this, but refused to take meaningful steps to change it.

Legacy servers aren't marketed for or created for current version players. That's not to say that none of them wouldn't at least try it. But these servers are created for old players who aren't happy with the direction the game took.

Everquest is getting it's 25th expansion next week. They started making legacy servers in 2011 and release one every 2 years or so now. 8 expansions have been released since 2011. We could ask Everquest players how they feel about legacy servers "taking away" from current version development and staff.

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Originally Posted by OmegaFFXI

Legacy servers aren't marketed for or created for current version players. That's not to say that none of them wouldn't at least try it. But these servers are created for old players who aren't happy with the direction the game took.

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I'm not saying they are, but it would have some effect on the current game playerbase who may have been holding out for something like this.

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Everquest is getting it's 25th expansion next week. They started making legacy servers in 2011 and release one every 2 years or so now. 8 expansions have been released since 2011. We could ask Everquest players how they feel about legacy servers "taking away" from current version development and staff.

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If you play MMOs like a single player game, I can see how this is working there. But there can't possibly be enough palyers on each of 8 different legacy servers to play them just the way you did in the good ol days finding parties and stuff. But you'd have to ask current game players about this, not legacy server players.

Also, if only FFXI was getting its 25th expansion....

Honestly however, the discussion is moot, because SE doesn't have a full archive of all old versions of the game (They saw no reason to keep them probably since old versions of the game were immediately unplayable when a new version came out, coupled with the impracticality of keeping that much essentially useless data on hand) and can't realistically construct something like this, other than by faking it by letting the player launch the game with access to specific expansions turned off or unlocked by optional quests. That's basically the only way it could happen. And a lot of purist players might not like the idea of playing 75 content with all the rebalancing the jobs have recieved over the years, much of which may not have been made with lv75 in mind.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

Honestly however, the discussion is moot, because SE doesn't have a full archive of all old versions of the game (They saw no reason to keep them probably since old versions of the game were immediately unplayable when a new version came out, coupled with the impracticality of keeping that much essentially useless data on hand) and can't realistically construct something like this, other than by faking it by letting the player launch the game with access to specific expansions turned off or unlocked by optional quests. That's basically the only way it could happen. And a lot of purist players might not like the idea of playing 75 content with all the rebalancing the jobs have recieved over the years, much of which may not have been made with lv75 in mind.

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How do you know they don't have an archive of the older versions of the game? Most development teams tend to keep archives of major releases/updates.
Even Blizzard was able to find a World of Warcraft archived version to use for their Classic WoW project, despite the developers original position of claiming to not actually have the assets.

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Originally Posted by Xel

How do you know they don't have an archive of the older versions of the game? Most development teams tend to keep archives of major releases/updates.
Even Blizzard was able to find a World of Warcraft archived version to use for their Classic WoW project, despite the developers original position of claiming to not actually have the assets.

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It has been discussed before, and is one of the failings of the original dev team. IIRC the current producer commented on this when the classic server idea was originally shot down as a matter of practicality. You're right, most dev teams keep an archive of their work as they progress. But apparently SE did not keep everything (Not nothing, but not everything).

Everquest and old FFXI cannot be played as a solo game, with the exception of a few classes, and that's only for easier content like leveling and farming in mostly outdoor zones. The majority of the game must be played with others. Solo classes can't really just waltz around in dungeons in Everquest either because most of them are designed for pulling multiple mobs at a time.

Not having old versions of server code doesn't matter, because that would also require having the old client. As far as I can tell, most of these companies aren't even using old server/client versions for their legacy servers, they are using the current client. You see legacy and live version servers on the same server list within the same client. They simply add extra lines of code within the same server code, to distinguish between legacy and live content. Also for the record: Everquest's legacy servers require a subscription, the live version servers are free to play, with the exception of I believe the most recent expansion's content.

You call it "faking it" but that's exactly how these companies are doing it... and it's the most time and cost effective way of doing so. Having a separate client and a completely separate server code is utterly pointless for this.

This needs to stop. Here and everywhere else.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

It has been discussed before, and is one of the failings of the original dev team. IIRC the current producer commented on this when the classic server idea was originally shot down as a matter of practicality. You're right, most dev teams keep an archive of their work as they progress. But apparently SE did not keep everything (Not nothing, but not everything).

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Ah okay, I see then. That is quite unfortunate. I wonder how much effort it would take SE to try and reconstruct relatively authentic older versions in the newest client, like reverting back job balancing, stats, locking out new features and zones, and other such changes.

Level 75 Server! No thank you!

Splitting the playerbase is almost always a bad idea. I would rather see a 'self-level-sync' where we can cap ourselves at 75 and play the 75 era content but also participate in the current content.

There is just no way to travel back in time to the days where people were willing to wait days (more likely to be weeks to months now) for parties to accomplish basic things like leveling up.

The player base is already split, look up Final Fantasy XI on Twitch and browse through all the channels. Besides, do you know any players who play the current version of FFXI that would want to play on a legacy server?

And if you think people aren't willing to go back to those days... again, look up FFXI on Twitch.

Stop asking.

Dev team said no; end of story.

... because they can't, don't have old code builds & resources and back builds, and the time involved for small dev team is not worth it.

So either make a character on an account, level cap it to 75, enjoy your limited lvlcap character as if you are still on a legacy server.

Can you name any MMO that uses two separate client/server code for legacy and current version servers?

Restricting one's own level would be a much more realistically implementable idea should they choose to consider it. You can enjoy 75 content at 75, and it would also be great for other things like hunting for blue spells and stuff. This is something I would actually advocate for and would go a long way to letting everyone enjoy the game exactly how they want to.

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Originally Posted by OmegaFFXI

The player base is already split, look up Final Fantasy XI on Twitch and browse through all the channels. Besides, do you know any players who play the current version of FFXI that would want to play on a legacy server?

And if you think people aren't willing to go back to those days... again, look up FFXI on Twitch.

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It really won't be the same without th e old community in place to back it up. THere's really just no way to restore the days of yore other than to invent a time machine and go back to them. and even THEN you'd have to be Obliviated so it would be a new experience all over again. It's not the same when you've done it before. I understand some people like the earlier game mechanics etc. but technically you can still have them without a special server.

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Can you name any MMO that uses two separate client/server code for legacy and current version servers?

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If you actually use an older version, every single game that does so, because those systems get updated over time as well.

It IS the same. How many legacy servers have you played on? And how can you say the community isn't there? Why are you so vocal about something you've never even experienced before?

Every legacy server I've played on made me feel the same way the game made me feel back then. And the communities are the same as well. How can you say they aren't when you've never played on a legacy server before?

How can you act like "it's not the same" when you haven't tried it?

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

If you actually use an older version, every single game that does so, because those systems get updated over time as well.

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English?

learn yourself some words. That doesn't need any explanation. Read your post which I referenced and put two and two together.

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It IS the same

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I've played classic servers in other MMOs, and i've gone back and done old content under old conditions in this game many times. It doesn't feel the same when you've done it before and you don't have all the friends you had before doing it with you. The community is a big part of what made this game so fun and without that it simply is not the same. It is just a fact of life, there is something different about the first time you experience something that can not be replicated when you do it again. The 40th time I did dynamis was not quite as fun as the first. The 50th KCNM I did was not quite as fun as the first. It was still fun, yes, but when you arleady know how to do something, you can't unlearn how to do it, and it's that feeling of discovery that makes the first few times you do something better than after that. That is of course one of the things that helped keep FFXI fresh for so long, the game hid a lot from you so you discovered new things all the time. But again, what was new can not be new again.

The rose tinted glasses wear off very quickly. If that wasn't true, you could make an MMO and never release a single patch or update and keep the majority of your playerbase with zero effort. The evolution of an MMO over time is exactly how they keep so many players for so long.

lol, suddenly, you claim to have played on legacy servers before, despite all the effort you've put into claiming you don't understanding why people play on them or how they function, or how they are developed, and that no one wants to play on them. So, you gonna tell us which ones you played on?

Whether you enjoy them or not, legacy servers are making money and making players happy. With or without you.

Today I helped 12 different people with subjob items, even helped a dude camp Leaping Lizzy so I could tag it with Treasure Hunter. He said he was 0/21 so far. 0/22 now I guess.

If it wasn't night time I escorted people to Gusgen Mines to get their Magicked Skull. Some of them grabbed the Dem tele crystal on the way.

Used all 7 charges of my Empress Band in a Zitah outpost party, started at level 32 sync, disbanded at level 37. Started off with WAR, MNK, THF, RNG, SMN, BLM but the taru RNG died a few times so he left. Replaced him with a DRG. I was MNK/NIN for SATA target.

Was given two linkpearls.

And that's just on my first day of returning.

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lol, suddenly, you claim to have played on legacy servers before, despite all the effort you've put into claiming you don't understanding why people play on them or how they function

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Why does this not make sense to you? I've tried it and my opinion is not altered by having done so. There is nothing wrong with the statements I made.

I'm glad you had a good experience playing the game and helped people do stuff. That's wonderful, but it's not relevant to the discussion, nor do you really have a point. I help people and receive help every day I play the current version of the game. This isn't an occurrence specific to a special server.

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Whether you enjoy them or not, legacy servers are making money and making players happy. With or without you.

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That's great. But in this case, SE has already made the decision that they are unable to do this. They don't say things like this for no reason. Any company worth their salt does cost benefit analyses on any suggested project or idea and clearly they have determined that because of various outstanding issues (such as they don't have the data for a version of the game from over a decade ago) they are unable to do so or it isn't worth the cost.

Juist because company X is finding success with an idea doesn't mean company Y will. Different products, different circumstances, different customers.

We have a firm "no can do" from SE on this subject, so there's really no point in continuing the discussion or holding a petition (not that an online internet petition ever accomplished anything)

Eh, while I personally have less than 0 interest in a legacy/progressive server as well, I have to disagree with you here Alhanelem, there are a lot of people who do desire such, and SE is, frankly notoriously known for completely reversing their stances on things, not just cancellation, but complete course changes on decisions.

Just because they say it's impossible today, doesn't mean they'll say it's impossible tomorrow, there's really no such thing as a "firm" position historically from SE, this is the place for someone to lobby for things they want, even if I personally have 0 interest in a progressive/classic server for XI, I have no doubt there's a market for one, enough to be worth the cost to SE to try to re-engineer the classic product like WoW is having to do now? IDK, but I see nothing wrong with people coming out to display that there's an interest in something they desire, especially considering SE's history of changing their stance on things.

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Eh, while I personally have less than 0 interest in a legacy/progressive server as well, I have to disagree with you here Alhanelem, there are a lot of people who do desire such, and SE is, frankly notoriously known for completely reversing their stances on things, not just cancellation, but complete course changes on decisions.

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Quote where I said nobody desires it. While I still don't understand it myself, there are certainly some who do or this thread wouldn't exist. I'm not that dense.

But SE isn't going to reverse their stance on this, most likely for two reasons:

1) They've already said they won't do it because they don't have the data for the old versions of the game people are requesting or the resources to implement this even if they did.
2) There's still the FFXI mobile thing which is still supposedly in development, which while not the same, is focused on the early era of thegame at least in terms of the content. And if anything, they probably want to try to get you to play that (But that wasn't something anybody actually asked for, so who knows how that will play out)

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Everquest and old FFXI cannot be played as a solo game, with the exception of a few classes, and that's only for easier content like leveling and farming in mostly outdoor zones. The majority of the game must be played with others. Solo classes can't really just waltz around in dungeons in Everquest either because most of them are designed for pulling multiple mobs at a time.

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And there we have why, in any discussion about a potential legacy server--especially one where its supporters are specifically asking for it to stop short of WotG--it is important for there to be advocates for enhancements that were added after the start of WotG.

It is a distortion of the facts of the game to refer to some classes as "solo classes." There were no "solo classes." There were "invited" classes and "uninvited" classes.

Let me be clear: I preferred gear in this game when it was made to last, rather than whole sets becoming obsolete through a single update. I also preferred the game when people could not just passively get from 1 to 99 effortlessly. I also liked the game most (and this is a note probably specific to the Siren server along with one other server whose name escapes me) when Ballista was popular- it died right after the cap was raised to 80. I think Abyssea and Voidwatch did a lot of damage to the game, which following content were somewhat able to address, but by then the damage is done.

But I also thought it was insanity that some jobs were joining parties that got 15K/hour merit points while others were sniping beastmen pets. I also thought it was unacceptable for some jobs, such as DRGs, to be saying their typical lived experience was to seek for 3 hours, then party for 1- waiting in Jeuno hoping for an invite is not gameplay. People may reminisce fondly about the time when reaching top levels was 50K+ experience points and getting KO'd was punishing. But it was punishing to some players more than others. As somebody whose main jobs were RDM and BST, I got to see both sides of this spectrum- it was disappointing how players could actually be less considerate based on which I was presenting as.

It should not divide the playerbase for the game to include some of the enhancements that were meant to alleviate problems caused by the playerbase's less inclusive tendencies. Group content was still group content after WotG was added. Gear that was good during RotZ was still good after WotG was added. In fact, some of the enhancements didn't negatively affect the dominant playerbase- it just made the experience less onerous for others.

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Let me be clear: I preferred gear in this game when it was made to last,

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I don't.

There are pros and cons and ultimately i think the latter outweighs the former but I admit it's largely up to opinion:

+ It's cool to find tools that can still be useful much later in your adventure.
+ Your effort feels more meaningful and less wasted when you complete a challenge and get a cool item that will last you a long time.
+ It encourages greater variety in stats and effects that appear on the gear which is fun particularly for more hardcore players.
+ It can be fun experimenting with all the different options available to try to find what's best.


- Results in too many overly situation specific pieces which clutter up inventory when not being used
- Results in it taking way too long to change jobs since many players end up needing to go through every inventory space and sometimes switch to mule characters or accounts.
- Results in a lot of created content that, because of the range of stats that can be hard to compare and also the amount of stuff you probably already have, doesn't get played because the content doesn't have a clearly attractive reward. FFXI got so much content added that was dead on arrival because of this.
- After getting new items, an obnoxious amount of set-up is often required to put the gear to use through macros, or you need to use TOS gray-area third party tools.
- After filling out your gear portfolio, it gets to the point where you can't get that cool feeling of winning a hard earned upgrade anymore because there are no upgrades- only sidegrades that you'll use for two seconds for a single ability.



+- (not so much a con or pro as an observation) In some cases you had to make your character seriously ugly to use a popular gear piece. This would change, although far after the 75 era, with style locking. (I'm looking at you, Yinyang robe. God I hated that thing and didn't want to get it despite it being useful, because I'm a mage and it makes me look like a monk!)

-+ (Another observation) You say "when gear was made to last" as if th at's no longer a thing. Once you get to i119, options expand- and aside from that, nonvisible gear is still generally non-ilevel, and in some cases there are old items that are still useful. Major well known gear sets can be upgraded to stay relevant, so you can keep the gear you loved with a little effort. So I really don't feel like it's a problem. This upgrading process also helps drive some content in the game. Yeah, it's not perfect, but lasting gear largely still exists.


The one thing above all that annoys me most about FFXI vs FFXIV, for example- If I need/want to be a different job for something, I can tap one button and be ready to go in an instant, barring the need to repair or restock on consumables. In FFXI, when I invite someone to do something, it routinely took 10-20 minutes (or more!) of people rummaging through their mog house and mules for every super situational niche gear piece to change jobs before they were ready to go. Granted, the addition of the mog wardrobes has improved this considerably, but they didn't exist until long after the alleged "golden age" of FFXI. One of many reasons I'd take the current game over a lv75 time warp any day- mog wardrobe was the best thing to happen to the game in like, ever.

I vote for this great idea! And I had a discution with alot of old friends/player from old LS, and they could comeback with this, because nostalgia have no price

(1). Segregating the playerbase is not viable, at this stage.
(2). Why are you promoting the use of 'private servers' on an official forum, when they break copyright laws? FFXI is IP of Square Enix. End of discussion.

Nope to classic servers. Planning 10 hours for coffer runs. Never again.