Classic Server

[mattkoko]

I'd like them to put in a classic server so it could fail and everyone could stop asking for it.

Alright, let's use your logic with a topic you care about. I have seen the bst thread. Using your logic, I am going to say, I hope they give you new pets and hope they fail just so you can stop asking for new pets. Better yet, let's just erase the job all together. That will shut them up.

Now of course I don't actually wish that. The point is the people that are for a classic server are obviously passionate about it. And they should be allowed to express their interest, just like you are allowed to express your interest with the improvements on bst. It is one thing to debate and disagree but to wish something fails is just selfish. Personally speaking, I probably would not use the classic server if it ever got put up and I have my reasons.

Whether it succeeds or not is another story. I personally think it wouldn't succeed and again, I have my reasons for that which I will not express, mainly because I share my reasoning with a couple of other points both with others as well as some of my own in previous posts. We have talked circles about it through out this thread and the other thread. but I am also open to the fact that I could end up being wrong. But to hope it fails just so you can prove a point? Grow up.

With that said, I hope they make a classic server and hope it succeeds, because it will both shut everyone up, and so everyone would be happy. Just joking about the shutting everyone up part. Figured I would try to lighten the mood. But hey, I am all for making everyone happy. The more people they make happy, the more money they bring in, meaning more opportunities to create better content and make bst a better job just to shut the bsts up. Jk again. Okay this is where I shut up .

[madmartin]

how about instead of an outright classic server, they make like a hybrid server, which would include level 75 cap and no abyssea but all the expansions before that up to wotg and the 3 mini expansions. but it would still include increased rates of xp gain so people can still low man xp instead of 6 man group onry! fighting eps as a duo group would still net a fair bit of xp this way! no trusts, let people group again, no fov, as we dont really want those real fast 18 man alliences. maybe keep the home point warps and some other quality of life adjustments. maybe keep level sync, that happened way before abyssea anyway. id say put the cop level caps back otherwise everyone would just low man them at later levels, keep the challenge. i'd like them to reverse the mpk patch but thats just me!

[FrankReynolds]

Relevance right here.

A Ford Mustang is about as relevant to FFXI as that other game you linked to, in that it is not relevant at all. That was the point. I'm all for your classic server, but your argument is horrible.

[PlumbGame]

A Ford Mustang is about as relevant to FFXI as that other game you linked to, in that it is not relevant at all. That was the point. I'm all for your classic server, but your argument is horrible.

A Ford Mustang is is about as relevant to FFXI as the other game that was linked to? Lmao

[FrankReynolds]

A Ford Mustang is is about as relevant to FFXI as the other game that was linked to? Lmao

Yes, I'm not the first one to point it out either. I just found my way more amusing. Glad you liked it.

[PlumbGame]

Yes, I'm not the first one to point it out either. I just found my way more amusing. Glad you liked it.

Not only did I like it, but I find you amusing in general. Thanks for the laughs.

[Olor]

Alright, let's use your logic with a topic you care about. I have seen the bst thread. Using your logic, I am going to say, I hope they give you new pets and hope they fail just so you can stop asking for new pets. Better yet, let's just erase the job all together. That will shut them up.

That doesn't make any sense. At all.

I say this because, frankly, if people cannot get even 3 people on any given server together who want to do content the old way, there is ZERO chance that a "classic" server would succeed. Since I came back to the game I've seen people start 'classic' shells etc and none of them last. If people can't find people who want to play like that on existing servers it makes no sense to spend the dev time and money on a classic server that will not have enough players to work anyway.

Asking for fixes to a job is nothing like asking for a special server. Improvements to BST help every player in the game if they should so choose to use BST. Having a classic server would be a waste of resources. Also there are far more BSTs than people who want to grind tediously through 10 year old content.

[PlumbGame]

There is currently at this time of posting, more likes for a classic server than your bst got screwed thread. Which is also higher than 3. There is also fundamental issues with "classic" LS. First, and most importantly. It is 100% impossible to recreate the classic experience no matter how hard you try. Though the content exists, there has been changes to the game that cannot be removed or reverted, and if they could, I'm assuming it actually may solve a lot of the issues since people could come and go if they want, but they cant. There is also this human flaw to do what everyone else is doing / take the easier route. If the people around you aren't forced into doing the exact same thing, why would you, rather if there was an easier route, why not take it. In this case though, why would people then play on a "classic" server vs just playing on the normal server then. It's mostly the mentality that X person next to you in port jeuno didn't have an easier route, they had to go through the same crap you had to go through and experience, almost making the "grind" more worthwhile, rather then just hopping back onto the normal servers and just playing solo. That is how I view it at least when I view people trying to create the classic experience on a normal server.

[Apie]

I'd like them to put in a classic server so it could fail and everyone could stop asking for it.

THIS!

I wish I could Like your post 1000 times. A classic server is such a horrible idea, I've been playing since USA launch (technically before US launch) and FFXI is now 100x better than it used to be. Sure, I have fond memories of alliances doing things together. However, I didn't block out the HOURS upon HOURS of waiting just to do a 1 hour run. I don't miss having to level a job I didn't want to play as just because my preferred job wasn't needed in any party to do anything at all, plus since nothing was soloable. I don't miss how an alliance would work together in a Dynamis run just to make the relic weapon for 1 person while the rest just lotted over relic gear, which many times was already promised to a LS owner's friend, so most times you didn't even get anything for your work in Dynamis. I don't miss having to spend a ton of time gathering a party together only to have 1-2 people quit right after starting cause "this took too long to get started" or "I have to go to work/school now." I don't miss having to leave my mule out in Rolanberry fields just cause of the jeuno tax. I don't miss having to camp a NM for hours only to have people claim it the millisecond it pops, and this happening 10 times before finally getting the claim and not having the item drop cause of the lower treaure hunter, if TH was even part of the equation. I don't miss having to switch to BLM cause WHM couldn't have warp due to the lvl75 cap. I don't miss have CoP areas reducing my hard earned level75 to lvl30. I WILL miss the ability to /DNC any job to make staying alive a realistic option when soloing. I don't miss Emperor Ring being the only option for quicker solo leveling. I don't miss the long wait between dynamis runs...See my point? We only remember the fun times, but we ignore the countless hours wasted to have that short period of fun, whereas now you can do whatever you want, whenever you want and without having to gather a billion people to do 1 thing.

However, most tend to forget the pointless hard times, so making this classic server is a good thing, so those that don't remember the hard times as they were, will have a chance to re-live it, realize how much it sucked and then come back to the improved ffxi. Of course they probably will find other reasons to complain about it, like saying that the classic server sucks cause most that left ffxi didn't come back, so now we have too few people...etc... lol

[Bluestar2kx]

I can see a few problems with this.
First, what do we define as classic, and how do we go about doing so?
Pre abby? Pre Toau? Wotg? What about Adoulin content that's a part of the lore? Is cutting out large chunks of lore ok?
Is level sync classic? what about Fellow NPC's? And quality of life improvements such as those listed below, or uncapping promathia missions?
Is blue mage classic? What about geomancer and rune fencer? Scholar and dancer?
Would ranger be god again like it used to be? Or samurai the hot topic?

One you'd be setting the server back to before the december update of 2009. (Which was when fields of valor was added)
You'd be cutting out A LOT of content by doing that, Adoulin would have to be completely removed as there's no way Lv 75 players, even alliances couldn't roam through that zone in one piece. Either that or Adoulin would have to be scaled down, and mobs radically adjusted on this server to match that of either a scaling area like the original zones, or a 75 only region like Sea, because people will want to play a pack they paid 30-40$ for.

You'd also remove part of fellow NPC adjustments, quality of life improvements like movement speed, teleporting, WS adjustments, TP changes, gearsets, spells, job abilities and traits, hp and mp adjustments, avatars, mog wardrobe, mog case, RoE, and numerous other things, including half of the porter moogle. I'm not sure if campaign skillups would be in or out, I'd have to look through all the updates to find when they stopped it. And obviously relics would become scarce again, and mythics would be... mythical.

You'd also have to patch, update, and create content specifically for a 75 capped environment, this would double the workload for all future expansions as well, and you'd run into the same problems in the end: People don't want to do the same thing forever (Hell people in my old shell skipped sky 90% of the time, as well as dyna zones they didn't need), so you'd have to spend a lot of time creating new things for this server to keep the population, however big or small, happy.

And to even do this, you'd have to write a lengthy program to go through some tens of thousands of accounts of potential users, and possibly hundreds of thousands of characters for this server and prune all data relating to any gear, zone, or quest above 75 or related to any expansion data, then setup server transfers for those accounts, because a lot of people aren't going to want to lose their characters and start all over again, esp those who left because of abby. (I know a lot who did) But you'd have to be careful, people won't be happy if 75 or lower gear is stored in mog bags that will be removed and they lose it.

You'd then have to ensure server rollbacks didn't effect the client, because some video cards might stop working if rolled back to the old days (windows 8 platforms likely would). I know my geforce 600 series card has crashing issues with FFXI and high shadows when songs or spells go off. And players would have to run 2 seperate FFXI directories, one for mainstream (if they choose to play it too, not everyone will goto this server, so keeping in touch with friends would be essential) and one for the classic. This would be hard for some people who run FFXI on older PC's with limited space, or like me who just have limited HDD space (I run FFXI on my SSD), and could be impossible for PS2 users (Which is most of japan), though the 360 likely wouldn't be too hard once you programmed all of this into the viewer.

I don't believe FFXI has a skeleton crew, and it maybe the most profitable game in their history, but I don't know if Square is going to hire extra devs to make this server.
Would they charge extra to being on this server? What if only some characters per Id are there, and some on the main servers, do you pay full price for both? And would this interfere with the mainstream servers production and updates?

Because a lot of people likely won't move, I'm not sure entirely, if I would use the classic or not, my time is a lot more limited then it was in 2003 when I could play all day after work, so being able to login and go do the things I need or want to with my partner and not seek group in jeuno for 4 weeks just to get from lv 45-46 (I was a taru monk at the time), or watching pickup group after group fail to be promathia, or dynamis wipes because people don't know wtf they're doing anymore, and new players in FFXI proper don't have the skill sets needed to run in the old days.

I know a lot of people miss the old days, but I think a lot of people also forget how hard those days were.
After all, the number one complaint from almost everyone was: It took so long to do/get anywhere in FFXI. We'd be removing everything that made that easier, both the grind, and the travel, and get right back to where we started, with people leaving because of that.

As great as the community was back then, and the socialization, some things are best left to the pages of history.
This could be one of them.