Seekers of adoulin information updates where?

[hideka]

it has been nearly 6 months since the announcement of SOA and we have not gotten one single update as to ANYTHING about this expansion. no job demos, no area footage, no nothing. can you as a company, please do something to satisfiy your loyal fans dissatisfaction with the lack of information.

[Kalilla]

You shouldn't expect to hear anything new until at least near the end of December, and the expansion won't come until March-July at the very least.

[Demon6324236]

You expect info? Cait Sith & Atomos were 2 years ago we just got the most basic stupid video ever with them telling us they basically did no work, the expansion is probably far off, 2014 or maybe worse.

[hideka]

im basically just trying to confirm that due to the launching of ARR in ff XIV that no real work has been done on anything signifigant in FF11. if the community reps dont have a response of some form (outside of deleting the thread as theyve done so many times when a good point has been brought up) to this thread it does nothing but confirm my theory that SE is systematically trying to get everyone to move to FFXIV. i can see it now 2015: World transfer service to FF XIV.

[Zagen]

im basically just trying to confirm that due to the launching of ARR in ff XIV that no real work has been done on anything signifigant in FF11. if the community reps dont have a response of some form (outside of deleting the thread as theyve done so many times when a good point has been brought up) to this thread it does nothing but confirm my theory that SE is systematically trying to get everyone to move to FFXIV. i can see it now 2015: World transfer service to FF XIV.
Good luck with that, if they were to ever admit they have been doing next to nothing on FFXI and all of the money being generated was being funneled into FFXIV 2.0 they would be essentially be creating a PR nightmare at best.

[Mayoyama]

They did state in a post a long time ago that the dev team for 14 has nothing to do with what happens with xi dev team (and vice versa). But having said that, they are likely running xi on skeleton staff.. which is why it takes so long for anything to get done

[Luvbunny]

Yeah they don't really expect much sales from FFXI expansion, the people who play the game will buy it regardless so why waste effort and money to advertise. Marketing dept probably calculating return of investment and decided not worth spending any money to advertise or do any PR related for the expansion, it's a fixed number of sales, the addict will buy it regardless. It's sad really. They really hope ARR FF14 will be a great success lol. As usual, we can vote with our action, you can either buy it at $60 brand new, or wait till it hits discounted bargain bin for $10. Your choice really, we all know they will have no content worth paying at least for 6-8 months. This is not abyssea expansion.

[Castanica]

im basically just trying to confirm that due to the launching of ARR in ff XIV that no real work has been done on anything signifigant in FF11. if the community reps dont have a response of some form (outside of deleting the thread as theyve done so many times when a good point has been brought up) to this thread it does nothing but confirm my theory that SE is systematically trying to get everyone to move to FFXIV. i can see it now 2015: World transfer service to FF XIV.

They have done very little with it outside of design I would think.

As you said once they finish the majority of the work on XIV they will push the dev teams back out to work on other projects, including this one. That will mean the new expansion will probably be shovelware but at this point does anyone really expect anything else?

The FFXI players have long since been considered addicts and given very little respect, "put out anything, they will buy it" applies and the money is mainly to fund XIV anyway, none of it will be put back into making this game better.

I'm very close to ending my time with FFXI, not because I don't like the game anymore but just because I've had enough of being treated so badly by the company that runs it, all they care about is the potential XIV players. They used to care about us but but they really don't anymore.

When FFXIV fails they will try to fall back on FFXI and realise they left it too late.

[Secondplanet]

I think this expansion should be free to players who've had an account for atleast over 1year to make up for they way they've treated us lately. I feel the same as others, my faith in SE is almost non existent, if it wasn't for friends and family playing this game i would have turned my back on SE altogether and gone to Capcom for Monster Hunter.

[Vivivivi]

While I don't necessarily agree with the tone of this thread, I would like some new information regarding the expansion as well. I completely understand if it is too early to release concrete features or timelines, but maybe we could get a couple concept art illustrations? Some insight into the storyline or characters? Little tidbits would be great, I think we are all excited about it ^_^

[Hashmalum]

They did state in a post a long time ago that the dev team for 14 has nothing to do with what happens with xi dev team (and vice versa). But having said that, they are likely running xi on skeleton staff.. which is why it takes so long for anything to get doneThey were lying, of course. Neither their income, their financial reserves, their skilled development personnel, nor their managers' attention are unlimited; each of these things must be divided up among all their projects. In their report to investors--one of the few places where they are actually obligated under penalty of law to tell the truth--they admitted that the push on FF14 has harmed the rest of their development substantially.

[Llama]

When FFXIV fails they will try to fall back on FFXI and realise they left it too late.

as a longtime 11/14 player, I totally agree. Not because 14 is bad, it's just that 11 is KING.

[Neoraxis]

its going to be weird to launch ffxiv ARR and new ffxi expansion on the first/second quarter of 2012,just my opinion.

i think the expansion is coming on the third/fourth quarter.

[Elexia]

The FFXI players have long since been considered addicts and given very little respect, "put out anything, they will buy it" applies and the money is mainly to fund XIV anyway, none of it will be put back into making this game better.

Blame the people who bitched about the mini-addons.."Don't nickle and dime us!" and still bought the shit..but yes it's not a theory that XI pretty much has no dev team next to any other real projects while they work on XIV ARR.


all they care about is the potential XIV players. They used to care about us but but they really don't anymore

They used to care about us until they tried to move on from XI, now they only care about the whiniest group of end-game players for this game.


I think this expansion should be free to players who've had an account for atleast over 1year to make up for they way they've treated us lately.

Free for those of us who played since JP beta and you got a point.

[Damane]

They used to care about us until they tried to move on from XI, now they only care about the whiniest group of end-game players for this game.


they actually started to care for FFXI extremly when FFXIV initially failed hardcore on its launch. I remember back then Devs correcting stuff in FFXI in lightspeed, fixing things in abyssea/outside of abyssea that was annoying etc etc etc.

I'm not gonna touch another SE MMO. While I do understand to some degree that our monthly fees go somewhere else, it seems that lately (the last 1 year+) our monthly fee went everywhere ecxept into FFXI. This pisses me extremly off. We are paying for a service that is castrated to its core, because our money flows into another product instead of actually pushing content out for the product we pay for.

I was actually willing to give FFXIV another chance after SE cleaned so nice up in FFXI when FFXIV failed and listened to the playerbase and made really good decisions gameplay/gamedesign wise. But the last 1.5 years have been a nightmare again, filled with unneeded timesinks/RNG/limits to entering battlefield (new legion and new einherjar) over and over and over again. So i think FFXIV wont be better in that department. My guess is if FFXIV relaunches successfully and stays successfull until it gets its core playerbase, it will go down the same road like FFXI: getting filled with needless timesinks and bullshit.

[Sotek]

its going to be weird to launch ffxiv ARR and new ffxi expansion on the first/second quarter of 2012,just my opinion.

i think the expansion is coming on the third/fourth quarter.

How would it be weird? If they release them both at a similar time they can get people playing, and more importantly paying, for both. I know people playing XIV who are at least interested in SoA and I'm aware of plenty of people who are going to try out XIV after the End of an Era trailer alone. I find it hard to believe most people currently playing XI (people who obviously aren't that jaded by SE) aren't at least somewhat interested in seeing what their subscription fees have been going towards.

That said, I doubt SoA will be released until AAR is out. If they're smart, they'll wait until some of the developers working on XIV can move over and fix all the awful decisions they've made. If they're not, well... When Boost adjustments are set back several months I highly doubt their expansion is going to be on time, that 2013 promise from the trailer is probably more of a 2014 at this point.

[Afania]

That said, I doubt SoA will be released until AAR is out. If they're smart, they'll wait until some of the developers working on XIV can move over and fix all the awful decisions they've made. If they're not, well... When Boost adjustments are set back several months I highly doubt their expansion is going to be on time, that 2013 promise from the trailer is probably more of a 2014 at this point.

If SoA release after ARR, FFXI will be dead after ARR for sure. Most player would probably flock to ARR, once they're settled and attached to ARR, even SoA isn't bringing anyone back.

P.S: Unless SoA is as amazing as ARR, but that's very unlikely.

[kingfury]

it has been nearly 6 months since the announcement of SOA and we have not gotten one single update as to ANYTHING about this expansion. no job demos, no area footage, no nothing. can you as a company, please do something to satisfiy your loyal fans dissatisfaction with the lack of information.
----------------------
Not sure if this counts for anything "official" but here are some of the SoA monster concept art from the FFXI wiki (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Final_Fantasy_XI_Enemy_Artwork_Images).

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120818062551/finalfantasy/images/7/73/Adoulin_Monster_1.jpg

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120818062661/finalfantasy/images/7/7d/Adoulin_Monster_5.jpg

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120818062723/finalfantasy/images/6/68/Adoulin_Monster_6.jpg

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120818062761/finalfantasy/images/0/0e/Adoulin_Monster_7.jpg

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120818062608/finalfantasy/images/6/6a/Adoulin_Monster_2.jpg

[Vivik]

I think this expansion should be free to players who've had an account for atleast over 1year to make up for they way they've treated us lately.


Free for those of us who played since JP beta and you got a point.

Bit too much self entitlement going on here, mixed in with a bit of hipster. Giving the expansion away would be pretty stupid in either case.

[MarkovChain]

They didn't touch anything, won't be out until one year.

[Phogg]

----------------------
Not sure if this counts for anything "official" but here are some of the SoA monster concept art from the

I saw all of those images during the live streams when they announced the expansion at Vanafest, so those are nothing new.

It would be nice, especially given the slow pace and skimpy content recently, to have some concept of confidence the expansion won't come out half complete a year from now.

[Elphy]

I see SoA as a failsafe in case ARR bombs out the way 1.0 did.

They released aby around the same time as XIV, making mega weapons/gear easy to obtain and removed obsticals like exp grinds, lvl restrictions from storyline quests like CoP to gear up ppl fast and rush them through the story so they could feel they achieved what they wanted in the game and could move on. Then when XIV bombed they rushed to fix a few things and slapped together some time killers like NNI and Meeble Burrows. Adjusting the lvls on already existing endgame and adding a few new gears, some that they didnt even bother to reskin, gave the playerbase more to do.

Then they announced SoA, my guess to bring back the ppl leaving XIV as it wound down and went free again, keeping the fees coming in. They will release ARR and if it bombs go all out with SoA and if ARR is a mega-hit they will likely release SoA with minimal fanfare.

However if ARR delivers what its promising I can see it being a hit and XI just winding down with servers merging as they loose thier playerbase.

[Elexia]

Bit too much self entitlement going on here, mixed in with a bit of hipster. Giving the expansion away would be pretty stupid in either case.

That was the point.

[Luvbunny]

Yup exactly as I mentioned in other post. It's all bait and switch strategy and playing it safe. If they are smart at all and learned from their mistake, they will and should make SoA a fantastic expansion that abolished old school and completely reinvent the game yet again similar to what they did to Abyssea. Make better crack, more rewarding and addictive than ever and focus on casual gamers, the ones they can hook line and sinker for a longer period of time than your typical hardcore that consume contents like ravenous pigs. As FF players, you probably will want to try ARR, out of curiousity and whatnot. Please learned your lessons from FFXIV, stop being the idiots who will get suckered the second time around. Wait till it hits bargain basement price of $10 before you spring for subscription, it should be free to play anyway. Their last attempt to save their online game can be releasing FFXI HD version, sort of a realm reborn for FFXI :)

[Elphy]

Yup exactly as I mentioned in other post. It's all bait and switch strategy and playing it safe. If they are smart at all and learned from their mistake, they will and should make SoA a fantastic expansion that abolished old school and completely reinvent the game yet again similar to what they did to Abyssea. Make better crack, more rewarding and addictive than ever and focus on casual gamers, the ones they can hook line and sinker for a longer period of time than your typical hardcore that consume contents like ravenous pigs. As FF players, you probably will want to try ARR, out of curiousity and whatnot. Please learned your lessons from FFXIV, stop being the idiots who will get suckered the second time around. Wait till it hits bargain basement price of $10 before you spring for subscription, it should be free to play anyway. Their last attempt to save their online game can be releasing FFXI HD version, sort of a realm reborn for FFXI :)

Spoken like a true hater who either has never played xiv, or just played it when it was bad and got too comfortable with xi's many flaws. And yes it has many flaws.

A company is allowed to make new games and graphically, playability and coding wise ffxi, while fantastic in 2002, cannot live up to the 2012 gamers standards, hence the relatively small (albeit loyal) playerbase. The amount of money they have spend redoing xiv is a drop in the bucket of the amount they would have to spend to redo xi and the ever shrinking playerbase cannot make up for it.

And if they redid xi everyone who is raging would rage even louder simply due to the amount of things they would have to change to make it viable in the current market. And they would have to change alot to pull in enough ppl to pay monthly fees to make up for the cost or an overhaul. Its just not realistic from a business point of view.

So be careful what you wish for, FFXI reborn would most likely not be what you think.

[Vivik]

Spoken like a true hater who either has never played xiv, or just played it when it was bad.

Considering ARR has not been released yet how is anyone able to deduce that it is now good?

[Sotek]

Why do people still think ARR is going to fail? People must literally have no information on it to believe that.

XIV failed because, at launch, all it had was a poorly designed server (and that's putting it lightly) leveling which was inhibited by the stupid fatigue system and a few class related quests and missions. That was it really.

Currently, XIV has the same shitty servers, leveling without fatigue and Inns in fact boosting EXP while you're logged off (so the opposite of the fatigue system basically), job quests, quests in general, three Primal fights (old school SMN fights with better rewards), a greatly expanded upon main quest line with an amazing finale, two low-mid level dungeons (one instanced), three endgame dungeons (all instanced with stupid speed run requirements), Hamlet Defense (instanced version of Campaign, due to server limitations) and Relic weapons (which are far more like Mythics). Oh, and an absolutely amazing soundtrack.

ARR will have a shiny new functioning server, leveling without fatigue + Inns, job quests, quests in general, the three existing Primal fights + at least two new ones, an entirely new main quest line, at least two low-mid level dungeons, three endgame dungeons with the speed run requirement gone, Hamlet Defense non-instanced thanks to a server that can actually handle it, Relic weapons, one new class at launch with SMN following shortly after, Free Companies which act like a LS which can summon a beaten Primal in a far more spectacular manner than SMN, the ability to buy a house in three separate areas ranging from small to large (iirc) and you can even work together as a group to build a LS HQ, Chocobo Breeding, reworked battle mechanics, PvP in a separate zone with separate spells/abilities to not impact game balance as a whole, Crystal Tower which comes off as an alliance based Nyzul and Grand Labyrinth of Bahamut which is alliance based and set to be expanded upon for at least a year after launch (similar to how they continued expanding on WoE but that's as close a comparison to WoE as I hope to make).

That's all off the top of my head so of course I'm probably missing a few things, but that still comes across to me as the most content in a MMOs launch ever, the first major update after launch should be releasing SMN and possible raising the level cap, too.
If ARR fails it'll be because SE has jaded too many people over the past couple of years and as usual fail completely at marketing (for the life of me I do not know how anyone would find the information I just listed from the relaunch site). I don't quite know why this thread has shifted so much towards XIV discussion, but if you go looking there is plenty of information to hopefully remove any skepticism you have about XIV, meanwhile there is absolutely no information to remove any skepticism I have over SoA being another WotG shaped trainwreak. We got monster concept art with Voidwatch, didn't make that event suck any less.


Considering ARR has not been released yet how is anyone able to deduce that it is now good?

Well, probably because of what they've managed to achieve with XIV as it currently stands. Even with the shitty server it was good, if not great when you played with the right people. Since most of that is coming back in ARR and we already know the development team is competent this time around, why should anyone expect ARR to be anything less than what they've already shown us they can do? There's already alpha footage and leaks too which I've not heard much negativity about so far, and thankfully even if there was a lot of negativity from alpha they're not releasing the game the week after they start it this time so they've got plenty of time to fix any problems they do find.

[Vivik]

Well, probably because of what they've managed to achieve with XIV as it currently stands.

The mere fact that it has to be put up against a game almost a decade older says it's not good. It was horrible on release and it was still horrible when they shut it down a week ago.

I love how people who play FFXI "got use to it" but the same does not seem to hold true for the FFXIV crowd. Maybe you people should look in a mirror.

[Sotek]

Where exactly did I say XI players "got used" to playing XI? I played XI because I liked the Final Fantasy series and a MMO was appealing at the time. I moved on to XIV because recently XI become so unenjoyable, I was practically already subscribed to it and I'm still a fan of the Final Fantasy series and a MMO is still (if not more) appealing because of the friends I've made in XI.

If I compare XIV to XI it's because, surprise surprise, people here primarily play XI and not WoW. It doesn't have to be put up against XI, the only reason it is is because this is a XI forum.

And for the record, I don't think I even played XIV long enough to get used to it. A month or two at best and I didn't have to get used to Garuda or the Raven battles to enjoy them, they were simply enjoyable from the start. At best I had to get used to the shitty server, but that's gone with ARR so I don't quite see the issue here. Yes when they shut the servers down it was absolutely abysmal, unplayable even, but again, that's an issue with the server, not gameplay.

[MarkovChain]

Why do people still think AAR is going to fail? People must literally have no information on it to believe that.


Because WotG was released with no content, because the 2 jobs that they announced don't have empy, one of them being a DD.

[Vivik]

Because WotG was released with no content, because the 2 jobs that they announced don't have empy, one of them being a DD.

wut?......

[MarkovChain]

Yeah the 2 jobs they announced already sound that they will suck. One is a fake bard only useful if people constantly stay at the same position (useless most of the thing right now) and the second one is a DD-tank that will never pull good damage because 1) his weapon is a sword and 2) no empy.

[Caketime]

Yeah the 2 jobs they announced already sound that they will suck. One is a fake bard only useful if people constantly stay at the same position (useless most of the thing right now) and the second one is a DD-tank that will never pull good damage because 1) his weapon is a sword and 2) no empy.

Devs mentioned specifically that super weapons for both of those jobs will be released as part of the expansion. Use Search Fu to find it, I don't feel like going post fishing.

[MarkovChain]

Tehy said they will have AF3+2 and no empy.

[Caketime]

Read the post again and stop being so high.

[Demon6324236]

Rune is going to fail for a different reason entirely. It uses Great Sword as its main weapon, while it would be good for DD, it was announced as a Magic Tank. The very ideal that it could be a Magic Tank is broken, PLDs can hit -87.5% MDT I think, and thats basically taking to down to nothing, especially when you put in Magic Defense Bonus. Basically, without having Reflect the job will have no tank use because its very foundation is flawed. Its DD will be shit unless it gets the OAT GS, Resolution, and enough good DD gear to support it doing good damage. Even then, the fact its supposed to be a tank means its damage will likely be weaker by default due to lower STR/Attack than your average DD.

Geo sounds like it will be screwed because it has 2 types of auras. The buff auras are either on the Geomancer, in which case it acts as a sphere effect, in which the Geo must stand near the people its buffing. The problem with this is that thanks to the mass of AoEs we currently have, and will likely have later on as well, the Geo is sentencing itself to death in order to buff people. The other is placed on the ground, however they can be destroyed by AoEs and damage, which is again, a problem with mobs having such high amounts of AoEs. Debuffs are the same I believe however the 1st targets the mob not the Geo, which means its better but also is worse thanks to the fact its Enfeebling, which is generally worthless.

[MarkovChain]

Are we sure it is using GS ? the pic show them using one hand only.

[Demon6324236]

Read the post again and stop being so high.He is correct. The 2 new jobs will have AF, Relic, and Emp gear, as well as access to Mythic weapons. However they will not have a Relic or Emp weapon, due to the fact the weapons were balanced for the jobs they are on, adding 2 new jobs to them would cause SE to go back to them and rebalance the weapons for the new jobs as well. This is the same reason Relics have not been expanded to jobs which can not access them, such as DNC getting Mandau or BLU getting Excalibur.

In either case, these are not the reasons why the jobs are doomed to fail anyways, Geo has hope at least, and is the least effected by this anyways because its mainly a mage type job, unlike Rune which is built on the ideal of being a tank which is broken if a few different ways, and would need great weapons to put it in a DD position.

[Demon6324236]

Are we sure it is using GS ? the pic show them using one hand only.Yes, I recall a post from Camate not long after Vanafest in which he confirmed Rune would be maining Great Sword, in response to alot of people assuming it from the picture with a large sword, even though it was in only being held by 1 hand.

[Caketime]

I never said they'd be added to Empyreans or Relics, the dev post mentioned a different set of super weapons entirely. You know, ones that are not Relic or Mythic or Empyrean. It's an expansion after all, shouldn't it have different content and new systems?

[Demon6324236]

That I do not recall but I wont rule it out, if there is a new super weapon then thats something different entirely, but it sounds possible. I would have to wonder what they will be about. Relics are about Attack/Acc bonus, unique Aftermath, and additional effects. Mythics are about job specific super weapons to augment the job itself, while giving a boost to a job specific WS. Emps are built on a great WS, with an extra boost in the form of +10~20 of the attribute that is the mods on the WS. So I am kinda curious what would come next.

[MarkovChain]

The weapons won't come right away, which already is problematic. The situation is not the same as pre abyssea ; nowadays anyone that plays several times a week has an empy or a relic. When pup/cor/sch/dnc were released it was ok to not give them relics but nowadays, they are entirely part of the job.

[Vivik]

Yeah the 2 jobs they announced already sound that they will suck. One is a fake bard only useful if people constantly stay at the same position (useless most of the thing right now) and the second one is a DD-tank that will never pull good damage because 1) his weapon is a sword and 2) no empy.

You should probably go back and read the original post you quoted. They were talking about XIV not XI.

On another note, the devs did confirm back when they announced the new expansion for XI that Rune Fencer uses a GS. As a matter of fact I'm pretty sure it was Camate here, on the O.F.

[Luvbunny]

FF14-ARR is listed as December 2013 release for both PS3 and PC on Amazon. Granted this could change, but basically they need one full year before the game is ready to be shipped and released. No information on when SoA is going to be released. I have a feeling there is delay lol, and they will not ship this close to Fall 2013, which means we are going to deal with over 10 months of dry spells here in the land of FFXI. With no new road map, it's pretty much on life support until SoA is being released.

[MarkovChain]

the beta starts early february so no.

[Sotek]

Rune is going to fail for a different reason entirely. It uses Great Sword as its main weapon, while it would be good for DD, it was announced as a Magic Tank. The very ideal that it could be a Magic Tank is broken, PLDs can hit -87.5% MDT I think, and thats basically taking to down to nothing, especially when you put in Magic Defense Bonus. Basically, without having Reflect the job will have no tank use because its very foundation is flawed. Its DD will be shit unless it gets the OAT GS, Resolution, and enough good DD gear to support it doing good damage. Even then, the fact its supposed to be a tank means its damage will likely be weaker by default due to lower STR/Attack than your average DD.

Magic tank can work just as long as they don't make it an actual tank. Rather than a job which holds the mobs attention it just needs to tank magic, similar to how Cover works but as a magic lightning rod (or Runic for anyone who's played FFVI). That could couple with the runes concept of the job quite nicely as well; Runic absorbs magic attacks and refreshes the jobs rune counter, increasing the RNFs damage output and protecting the party from various spells. As long as its damage output isn't horrendous (which it will be at launch) it could be a viable DD which helps mitigate a significant amount of AoE damage.

That said, I have no faith in the development team to pull that off and I certainly don't expect it to be a worthwhile job for at least half a year after launch regardless of what they do with it.

[Elexia]

FF14-ARR is listed as December 2013 release for both PS3 and PC on Amazon. Granted this could change, but basically they need one full year before the game is ready to be shipped and released. No information on when SoA is going to be released. I have a feeling there is delay lol, and they will not ship this close to Fall 2013, which means we are going to deal with over 10 months of dry spells here in the land of FFXI. With no new road map, it's pretty much on life support until SoA is being released.

ARR will be out no later than Summer 2013.

[odericko]

Even if the release date is a year off, some teasers and such would be appreciated. FFXIV:ARR is putting out official videos of alpha gameplay. We could at least get that.

[Elexia]

Even if the release date is a year off, some teasers and such would be appreciated. FFXIV:ARR is putting out official videos of alpha gameplay. We could at least get that.

Would be nice, since you know if(when) ARR fails, they're banking on XI to keep them afloat.

[Elphy]

Would be nice, since you know if(when) ARR fails, they're banking on XI to keep them afloat.

Look another person who either never played XIV or only played when it was broken.

I will see you in XIV later this year when SoA is postponed again and serve you a nice big helping of crow

[Luvbunny]

Look, FF14 looks nice, the new alpha footage looks nice, and very exploration driven, the world looks alive and pretty. But we all know gameplay and contents are the king here, and those two are severely lacking in the previous versions. We shall see if the relaunch will be a better one. In the meantime, SE should still keeping focus in FFXI, it's a solid investment that already paid them back in spades. One that is still going strong with loyal subscribers that actually do care about the game. No reasons neglecting the ones that is a cash cow.

[odericko]

Not gonna get in a numbers war, but XIV kept up a world population similar to XI's when it had a subscription fee before closing. It's actually was shaping up to be a nice game.

[Sotek]

Look, FF14 looks nice, the new alpha footage looks nice, and very exploration driven, the world looks alive and pretty. But we all know gameplay and contents are the king here, and those two are severely lacking in the previous versions. We shall see if the relaunch will be a better one. In the meantime, SE should still keeping focus in FFXI, it's a solid investment that already paid them back in spades. One that is still going strong with loyal subscribers that actually do care about the game. No reasons neglecting the ones that is a cash cow.

I already gave a list (an incomplete list) of content slated to be in ARR. GLoB, CT, FATE (which is several things), PvP, Relic weapons, Primal battles and several dungeons. ARR has more endgame content at launch than SoA is going to offer three years down the line when they finally finish updating it. Gameplay wise, well... They're apparently adjusting a lot of stuff for ARR but I'd say 1.0 wasn't bad. The only time I fell asleep playing XIV was when idiots took 30 minutes to gather between Raven runs, the only time I fell asleep playing XI was every bloody VW run. Rather than auto-attacking and doing the same WS over and over (or cycling through pathetic abilities for staggers) you're using all your abilities in combos, ARR is introducing a new Limit Break system which pretty much looks like a flashier (and worthwhile) version of SCing so there's some pretty good new gameplay aspects coming too. The only annoying gameplay aspects I found in 1.0 were server latency (fixed in ARR) and Raise being on a retarded recast. That's it. I could list gameplay aspects that annoy me ad nausium for SCH alone and that's one of the better jobs in XI now.

It's actually pretty silly to say SE should focus on XI instead of XIV. Nothing they do to XI will ever bring new players in, with XI its a matter of keeping their existing playerbase. Lets face it, most of the people still playing XI are either incredibly loyal or borderline addicts, they'd have to be to put up with what the developers throw at them. These are people who aren't going to leave even with the current development team, SE doesn't need to try keeping these people playing and paying. ARR on the other hand, that already has its own fairly loyal fanbase which means even if the launch is a failure they're increasing their number of subscribers by far more than they could ever hope to doing anything to XI. If ARR is a success (and I see no reason for it not to be at this point) then they bring in even more new blood and it has the added effect of retaining plenty of XI players who do decide to quit XI.
Heck, saying XI is neglected is pretty asinine. You've got an expansion in the works and presumably they had to get the OK to work on that, at some point after XIV someone asked "Can we give them a whole new area to explore with some new content?" and somebody said "Yes". If XI was being neglected you wouldn't be getting SoA in whatever state it'll be in, or even new 2Hrs, rehashed L75 content or any of the new content. The only neglect in XI is the developers neglect for your opinions and it's been that way since before XIV and short of stealing a developer who has had their career made by XIV, that isn't going to change. In short: Deal with it.

ARR gives them a pretty good shot at increasing their number of subscribers and retaining old XI players. At best development in XI can help them retain XI players, even if they did try to do something massive with the hopes of bringing new players into XI, it would never be as successful as ARR is going to be, regardless of how successful ARR turns out to be. SE can only do what SE can do, if FFXIV:ARR fails then there is absolutely no reason to expect FFXI:ARR to fair any better.

[Luvbunny]

Yes we know you love your FF14 :) I actually really like the new guy who is in charge of FF14 a lot. And I do wish him well and very curious on how he will change ARR. I am really glad he is given free rein on how to make it work and get to completely demolish the piece of crap from the Tanaka regime. Seriously watching him and secretly hoping he get to be the new visionary on SE Online division and charge forward destroying all the old regimes and castrate the rest of the old team. I hope he also gets to change the way a content is made and released, aka not the FFXI way of giving you empty shell and releasing content in 3 years time. Just wish he also get to steer the FFXI ship and demolish the Tanaka blue print on this game and give us FFXI: ARR.

[Sotek]

I'm in two minds over how Yoshi-P will actually handle expansions, the only reason ARR has plenty of content at launch is because XIV had quite a bit of content already. Any expansion they do isn't going to have that benefit so I could easily see them eventually falling pray to the XI methodology of expansion delivery. That said, CT and GLoB should be present at launch so that is already 200% more endgame content at launch than any XI expansion has ever had, its the equivalent of Nyzul Isle and Salvage being part of ToAUs launch.

After ARR they should be moving more people back to XI though, Yoshi-P must feel like the second coming of Christ to SE at the moment, so after his done rebuilding the Titanic before it sinks I can picture them telling him to go shout at the XI team for being so incompetent (saying no to 100 piece Alexandrite? Seriously you guys?). I doubt XI will ever get ARR treatment though, because they only did that because XIVs server and maps were both complete trash. The current content they had in XIV was pretty much fine, it was simply crippled by the server. XI doesn't really have those issues so much, you're not prevented from beating certain HNMs because server latency kills you every run, you're just prevented from enjoying rewards by an inept development system. If anything the constant rehashes of L75 content could be likened to ARR, it's just been poorly done for the most part.