Are server merges ever going to happen?

[Castanica]

300-400 people online now and it's going to get worse, can we at least be told when you plan or if you care to do merges ever?

Most MMO titles have a handful of servers, we have way too many.

[kaerin]

SE already said no. Spend the $9 and move to Asura

[bungiefanNA]

They said they will consider them after November's patch. They are holding out optimism that Rhapsodies will cause people to resubscribe and increase server population, and merging would make them really crowded if that actually happened.

Also, making $9-18 profit per person that manually switches servers is some nice income to miss out on by doing merges.

[Alhanelem]

There's no server merge planned, at least not until after Rhapsodies has concluded.

[Runespider]

They said they will consider them after November's patch. They are holding out optimism that Rhapsodies will cause people to resubscribe and increase server population, and merging would make them really crowded if that actually happened.

Also, making $9-18 profit per person that manually switches servers is some nice income to miss out on by doing merges.

Wow they are crazy and completely out of touch, they think announcing the end of life of an mmoe will bring more players instead of make more leave?

Amazing, there are less people online now than have ever been online on my server. How can they possibly think announcing an end will bring players back?

The level of out of touch with the people in charge of this game is off the charts.

[bungiefanNA]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/125391-Famitsu-Interview-with-Matsui-and-Saito-Vana-diel-Project

They feel the storyline is strong enough that announcing they are ending it will bring people back to try to finish it who played and enjoyed it in the past, but maybe didn't have the time to dedicate to the game anymore. By making it easier to compl;ete the content, they hope to recapture the interest of people. This seems mainly aimed at the JP player base, as they keep advertising for the game up in Japan, just not outside of the country. Heck, they've been doing lots of FFXI videos over the years in Japanese, and each expansion got at least one TV commercial. They just don't try for the English-speaking audience.

Heck, their advertising was so strong for the Quality of Life patch in 2013, they got Megumi Hayashibara, a prolific and famous voice actor and singer for video games and anime over the past ~25-30 years, to voice Shantotto explaining all the features they added. I don't imagine she's cheap to hire. She has also voiced Shantotto for every appearance she has had in a game or media where she has had a voice in Japan. They tend to not change a voice actor for a character often, and will tend to kill the character off if the VA dies (look at Zato-One in Guilty Gear, who became Eddie when his VA died after GGX, and only became Zato again over 10 years after the VA death).

Japan is very different to how things work for the relationship with consumers than the rest of the world. From our point of view, they are weird and out of touch. For their home market, they are effective. Heck, Japanese has a word for the nature of things being transient, and an appreciation of such a thing. Giving a goodbye signal will attract attention.

[Runespider]

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/125391-Famitsu-Interview-with-Matsui-and-Saito-Vana-diel-Project

They feel the storyline is strong enough that announcing they are ending it will bring people back to try to finish it who played and enjoyed it in the past, but maybe didn't have the time to dedicate to the game anymore. By making it easier to compl;ete the content, they hope to recapture the interest of people. This seems mainly aimed at the JP player base, as they keep advertising for the game up in Japan, just not outside of the country. Heck, they've been doing lots of FFXI videos over the years in Japanese, and each expansion got at least one TV commercial. They just don't try for the English-speaking audience.

Heck, their advertising was so strong for the Quality of Life patch in 2013, they got Megumi Hayashibara, a prolific and famous voice actor and singer for video games and anime over the past ~25-30 years, to voice Shantotto explaining all the features they added. I don't imagine she's cheap to hire. She has also voiced Shantotto for every appearance she has had in a game or media where she has had a voice in Japan. They tend to not change a voice actor for a character often, and will tend to kill the character off if the VA dies (look at Zato-One in Guilty Gear, who became Eddie when his VA died after GGX, and only became Zato again over 10 years after the VA death).

Japan is very different to how things work for the relationship with consumers than the rest of the world. From our point of view, they are weird and out of touch. For their home market, they are effective. Heck, Japanese has a word for the nature of things being transient, and an appreciation of such a thing. Giving a goodbye signal will attract attention.

Weird to the extreme, jp player numbers are very very low too btw. JP prime used to always be over 1k before the announcment, now numbers never go above 500 people at any time.

They are spending money on advertising while saying they don't want to spend money on the game anymore...

When you say a game is coming to an end all the grind seems pointless, how can they not see that.

End of the day you can watch the cut-scenes on youtube. Getting the gear rewards when they are putting the game into retirement is almost pointless.

I can't think of many old mmo titles that were canned, just go look at everquest 1. To say the game doesn't have enough players anymore to remain profitable and have a skeleton crew adding updates is nonsense, almost all mmo titles have 2-3 servers and are profitable. They have incredibly loyal players that will keep the game going for a long time. FFXI was killed by mismanagement, plain and simple.

[Obysuca]

Weird to the extreme, jp player numbers are very very low too btw. JP prime used to always be over 1k before the announcment, now numbers never go above 500 people at any time.


Eh, at least on Siren, it goes from about 300-400 during NA/EU time and skyrockets to around 1.3k-1.4k during JP time lately

[Zeargi]

I'm on the same server as the original poster, there was 1k people on two nights ago around 8ish PM EST. It's a small number, but it's still something.

[bungiefanNA]

WoW and EQ are also Western games aimed at Western audiences, with Western advertising principles, and on a platform a lot of Western people use for gaming. Notice how consoles took so long to get online multiplayer (since most consoles were Japanese)? Arcades fulfilled the need for multiplayer in Japan, and they prefer in-person matches. Internet has been more accessible on PCs here, and on phones in Japan, so of course online games matured in the west earlier, and we don't care so much about seeing the person we are facing. WoW was able to take advantage of a larger population because of that, while the average Japanese person doesn't have a mental concept of MMO being different from Online RPG.

[Runespider]

WoW and EQ are also Western games aimed at Western audiences, with Western advertising principles, and on a platform a lot of Western people use for gaming. Notice how consoles took so long to get online multiplayer (since most consoles were Japanese)? Arcades fulfilled the need for multiplayer in Japan, and they prefer in-person matches. Internet has been more accessible on PCs here, and on phones in Japan, so of course online games matured in the west earlier, and we don't care so much about seeing the person we are facing. WoW was able to take advantage of a larger population because of that, while the average Japanese person doesn't have a mental concept of MMO being different from Online RPG.

Don't give them a free ride just because they are Japanese, I don't care what country they run in they should still have basic common business sense. Square have made many horrible decisions that make zero sense and they keep doing it.

WoW is old but still the market leader, it's the top MMO in the world. How could this be, it's "old" right?
Everquest is ancient and shows no sign of ever closing its doors, it's still fairly popular and gets updates. It has a hardcore fanbase that love it it has devs that love working on it.
Lineage 1 (2003) is really old and beloved by the fans it has, it's one of the most profitable games Ncsoft runs and indeed one of the most profitable in the world.
I could list more like eve etc.

As you can see old in the mmo world is not a negative, only the company running it can make it so.

Old in the MMO market is good, all the most profitable and popular mmo titles are old titles, they beat every new title hands down. You know why? Because they paid for themselves long ago and they didn't have a 100 million development budget, they reuse assets and the devs can make content for these old titles easily. They are also not top of the line developers who need to push systems to the max so they aren't paid as much.

Old MMO titles are always the most profitable and easy to run. Whatever reason Square have for doing what they are doing it's not for profitability ones, maybe they think they can retain a large number of addicted players and not give them any content and as such save money. Maybe they have future plans for the game but wanted to see how many people stick around after they drop consoles and just didn't want to play their cards until they see that... I don't know but as of right now it makes no sense at all.

People have this weird idea and I keep seeing it that new in the mmo world is good, it's not. At least not in terms of profits. If people think FFXIV is anywhere near the top they are deluding themselves, I play it and I post on the official forums and I know how deluded a lot of them are about how the game is doing but again they are very wrong.

I don't know why Square are doing what they are doing here but it's not for basic business reasons, if they sold FFXI to another company I'm telling you right now that with how many players this game has spread over the many servers they could make it profitable and keep it updated very easily.

FFXI is in the state it is in right now because of mismanagement, there is no argument here about this because it's easy to list a large number of things they did and are doing to destroy the game and the players it had. The player loss was because of bad decisions the company made and continue to make, if run correctly FFXI would still be as popular as it ever was and I dare anyone to say otherwise.

[Alhanelem]

As you can see old in the mmo world is not a negative, only the company running it can make it so. Old isn't an automatic negative, but it is if you don't update your game to keep up with trends and technology. Many other MMOs have updated the tech, improved the graphics engines, and done other things over the years to help keep things fresh. The development mentality as well as the technology with FFXI just hasn't kept up with the times. Old problems are given old solutions, and far too late at that. Console as primary platform has majorly hurt the game's ability to recieve technical enhancements. A planned new UI designed for PC never made it past early testing stages (much to my dismay), and they never shifted their codebase over to PC in such a way that they didn't have to depend on ps3 dev hardware to continue development. If they didn't use PS2 in the first place, or at least shifted their development focus earlier, they could have done more to keep the game up-to-date. Some people cite gameplay changes midway though XI's history that hurt the playerbase, but if you ask me, not keeping up with the times technologically was just as responsible.

[madmartin]

Server merges will most probably happen after the console support ends.

[Runespider]

Old isn't an automatic negative, but it is if you don't update your game to keep up with trends and technology. Many other MMOs have updated the tech, improved the graphics engines, and done other things over the years to help keep things fresh. The development mentality as well as the technology with FFXI just hasn't kept up with the times. Old problems are given old solutions, and far too late at that. Console as primary platform has majorly hurt the game's ability to recieve technical enhancements. A planned new UI designed for PC never made it past early testing stages (much to my dismay), and they never shifted their codebase over to PC in such a way that they didn't have to depend on ps3 dev hardware to continue development. If they didn't use PS2 in the first place, or at least shifted their development focus earlier, they could have done more to keep the game up-to-date. Some people cite gameplay changes midway though XI's history that hurt the playerbase, but if you ask me, not keeping up with the times technologically was just as responsible.

This isn't true, Eve online has not updated graphics, Lineage 1 hasn't, Everquest surely hasn't. I can't think of any outside of WoW that have, WoW only did it because they were worried about Wildstar.

You greatly overestimate how much impact you think graphics have on established players.

I've played FFXIV, the graphics are pretty but you know what? I prefer FFXI graphics over them any day, if they put the XIV engine here I would quit in a second.

[Alhanelem]

This isn't true, Eve online has not updated graphics, Lineage 1 hasn't, Everquest surely hasn't. I can't think of any outside of WoW that have, WoW only did it because they were worried about Wildstar.

You greatly overestimate how much impact you think graphics have on established players.

I've played FFXIV, the graphics are pretty but you know what? I prefer FFXI graphics over them any day, if they put the XIV engine here I would quit in a second.I really doubt that. Also, updating graphics != changing one game's graphics to be another's. I'mproving the graphics engine doesn't mean changing the look of the game, it means polishing it. Better shawdows, better texture resolution, better effects, etc. Also, the games you mentioned have at a minimum updated their engine internals to ensure their game runs properly on newer hardware. SE hasn't even done that. They could update the game to fully use DX9 or later without changing one pixel of the graphics and they haven't even done that.


Also, D&D Online updated its graphics, added DirectX 10 support, and without any other game to be allegedly afraid of (saying WoW was afraid of wildstar is absurd, especially when you look at it today)

This is the FFXI board, everyone here looks for any opportunity to bash FFXIV because they resent its existence as the reason XI is in its current state.

Finally, graphics were just one example of improvements. You ignored the other facets, like improving the UI, improving internal system stuff for better compatibility, and enabling them to implement new mechanics that the systems currently prevent them from doing.

The other reason FFXI is where it is is because of poor marketing. You see advertisements for WoW and other MMOs all over the place. They've run lots of promotions and incentives over the years. SE hasn't. Short of emailing its existing customers, when it runs promotions it doesn't even tell anybody. How is that supposed to promote anything? Even XIV's marketing could be a lot better than it is. Marketing is the biggest driver behind WoW's success.

[Runespider]

I really doubt that. Also, updating graphics != changing one game's graphics to be another's. I'mproving the graphics engine doesn't mean changing the look of the game, it means polishing it. Better shawdows, better texture resolution, better effects, etc. Also, the games you mentioned have at a minimum updated their engine internals to ensure their game runs properly on newer hardware. SE hasn't even done that. They could update the game to fully use DX9 or later without changing one pixel of the graphics and they haven't even done that.


Also, D&D Online updated its graphics, added DirectX 10 support, and without any other game to be allegedly afraid of (saying WoW was afraid of wildstar is absurd, especially when you look at it today)

This is the FFXI board, everyone here looks for any opportunity to bash FFXIV because they resent its existence as the reason XI is in its current state.

Finally, graphics were just one example of improvements. You ignored the other facets, like improving the UI, improving internal system stuff for better compatibility, and enabling them to implement new mechanics that the systems currently prevent them from doing.

The other reason FFXI is where it is is because of poor marketing. You see advertisements for WoW and other MMOs all over the place. They've run lots of promotions and incentives over the years. SE hasn't. Short of emailing its existing customers, when it runs promotions it doesn't even tell anybody. How is that supposed to promote anything? Even XIV's marketing could be a lot better than it is. Marketing is the biggest driver behind WoW's success.

I'll explain why FFXI is where it is now:

FFXIV took most of the developers leaving a skeleton crew and a lot of the budget that was supposed to be for FFXI during it's creation, this was way back when they started working on ffxiv 4-5 years ago. FFXIV was basically a parasite feeding off of FFXI players money during development.
FFXIV is a sequel no matter how you want to play it, offering a sequel would be like blizzard making wow 2 and it would hurt wow just as much as xiv hurt xi. It splits the playerbase that would never usually move to another game.
The creation of FFXIV made 2 groups of players that hated each other and wanted the other game to die, the most vocal haters of each game play the other. If you're a regular on FFXIAH you will know of many XIV players there that fit this category and took extreme joy at the last SE announcment.
Square care more about ffxiv looking to be a success to the world than making a profit or running 2 mmo titles, this is why xiv has a blank cheque policy and ffxi is not worth the cost.

Having said all of that, again I like how XI looks I don't want extra shadows or whatever you think we all want. I've played all of the "pretty" mmo titles like Tera, FFXIV, B&S, Black desert etc and I still prefer the look of ffxi and would hate to see the characters "updated". To think all XI players want to see any updated engine is like thinking all star wars fans wanted CGI to replace all the old effects.

[Stuzey]

Not to be picky, but work on XIV started over 10 years ago, the first mention of it (Rapture) was back in 2005

But, when it failed after the 2010 release they did put a lot of additional resources into making sure ARR would be a success

[Alhanelem]

I
Having said all of that, again I like how XI looks I don't want extra shadows or whatever you think we all want. I've played all of the "pretty" mmo titles like Tera, FFXIV, B&S, Black desert etc and I still prefer the look of ffxi and would hate to see the characters "updated". To think all XI players want to see any updated engine is like thinking all star wars fans wanted CGI to replace all the old effects.
everyone's tastes and preferences are different. Just because you don't want something, doesn't mean nobody else does. I would love to see the game's visuals upgraded (But without changing the overall art style. I'm only speaking of improving the texture resolutions, and other technical stuff to make it look more polished- Not fancier, just less... dated. Let me take advantage of my hardware.). Of course, in saying this, that doesn't mean that I think the game looks bad now. It doesn't- but it CAN be better. Your analogy of star wars is poor, since it isn't even part of the same industry, much less the same kind of thing. Remastering isn't adding CGI and fancy stuff, it's just updating the material to look more presentable on modern equipment. Even some really small things would help, like increasing the drawdistance or eliminating the back clipping plane entirely, because no one with a PC made in the last 10 years needs to have this to improve performance. And before you say anything, this is something they could easily do, because people already do it with Windower. Windower also can apply some simple lighting enhancements. The game also needs to support antialiasing, so we don't have to fake a high graphics resolution to make edges look smoother. These are all very basic things, and they don't change the graphics at all, they just improve visual clarity and eliminate detail-reducing things that we don't need to have to enhance performance.

The engine needs to be updated to actually use our graphics hardware. Currently, even the fastest, most powerful machines experience slowdown in FFXI with many characters on the screen. There's no good reason for this. FFXI only uses one CPU core and doesn't really use your graphics card at all, which means even the most modern PCs don't run the game as well as they should. These are technical problems that need to be addressed. Sorry you don't want a quality game experience, but many of us do.


I'm not in any way suggesting that they transform it's visuals into that of FFXIV (or any other game for that matter.)

At any rate, that was just one example of things older games do to stay relevant. Another one of those things is something some people here oddly enough complain about often- reducing the grind. Most games have realized their clientele mostly doesn't have the same time to devote that they used to, so the newer content they create either has less grind as a whole, or is designed in such a way that you don't have to spend many hours in one sitting.


But, when it failed after the 2010 release they did put a lot of additional resources into making sure ARR would be a success The reason they put such a big effort into making FFXIV a success is because they feared its original failiure would irreperably damage the Final Fantasy brand (That is, the entire franchise, not just FFXI). They were afraid that after FFXIV 1.0, everyone would doubt their ability to produce quality games.

FFXI's biggest problem, more than anything else, has always been marketing. The game always has been and still is marketed poorly. They don't even try. Think of how many players might be in this game if they actually advertised it throughout the last 10 years. I still know lots of people who haven't even heard of the game other than my mentioning it to them. SE just doesn't know how to market things. Even FFXIV could be getting marketed better than it is.

The resentment in this forum definitely runs deep... in spite of the fact that FFXIV was being developed less than 2 years into FFXI's existence- largely because at the time they didn't expect the game would run for 10+ years. They figured they'd need to replace it in half that time. The fact that people are still here is a testament to how much better of a product they created than even they thought- but that doesn't mean they deserve to be hated on for making a new game.

[bungiefanNA]

They market it poorly outside Japan. In Japan, lots of commercials and advertisements, and crossover events with things.

When they made weddings available to Japanese subscribers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuM8ZEXdaUk

Xbox 360 release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmJ2dF4cz2w

PS2 had 3 commercials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmJ2dF4cz2w?t=13m40s

I recall NA having one or two commercials, one for PC and one for PS2. I recall seeing maybe one or two magazine ads.

I may be able to find other commercials later, I'm not equipped to search in Japanese on my current system. Will be able to do so from home.

[Isal]

Seems to me like the biggest mistake was designing the game to rely on the PS2's devkits rather than building it for PC and porting it over... Then again, like it's been pointed out many times already, they weren't expecting the game to last as long as it did. I remember reading an article years ago that seemed just as shocked then that the game was still running.

I was never able to spend much time on FFXI until recently, and I'm taking a short break (MMO overload and RL situations), but I can sympathize with those who don't want to see the game's story come to a close, or even see the graphics change one iota (I have a similar attachment to the city of Kelethin in EverQuest, hated what they did to it in EverQuest 2's expansion). Would be cool if/when SE makes a third FF MMORPG, that it was a full blown return to Vana'diel. I know, not likely, but a gamer can dream, right?

[Alhanelem]

Seems to me like the biggest mistake was designing the game to rely on the PS2's devkits rather than building it for PC and porting it over...How else would you design a game to run on the PS2? Do it all on a workstation and take a shot in the dark as to whether or not it's going to work? Of course not. They originally set out to create an MMO on a console platform (which was a mistake), so it was developed primarily on ps2 hardware such that they could ensure that 1) it would work and 2) that it would meet but not exceed PS2 performance requirements (which, eventually it did exceed them, that's why ps2 version has blackout problems so often).

[Runespider]

everyone's tastes and preferences are different. Just because you don't want something, doesn't mean nobody else does. I would love to see the game's visuals upgraded (But without changing the overall art style. I'm only speaking of improving the texture resolutions, and other technical stuff to make it look more polished- Not fancier, just less... dated. Let me take advantage of my hardware.). Of course, in saying this, that doesn't mean that I think the game looks bad now. It doesn't- but it CAN be better. Your analogy of star wars is poor, since it isn't even part of the same industry, much less the same kind of thing. Remastering isn't adding CGI and fancy stuff, it's just updating the material to look more presentable on modern equipment. Even some really small things would help, like increasing the drawdistance or eliminating the back clipping plane entirely, because no one with a PC made in the last 10 years needs to have this to improve performance. And before you say anything, this is something they could easily do, because people already do it with Windower. Windower also can apply some simple lighting enhancements. The game also needs to support antialiasing, so we don't have to fake a high graphics resolution to make edges look smoother. These are all very basic things, and they don't change the graphics at all, they just improve visual clarity and eliminate detail-reducing things that we don't need to have to enhance performance.

The engine needs to be updated to actually use our graphics hardware. Currently, even the fastest, most powerful machines experience slowdown in FFXI with many characters on the screen. There's no good reason for this. FFXI only uses one CPU core and doesn't really use your graphics card at all, which means even the most modern PCs don't run the game as well as they should. These are technical problems that need to be addressed. Sorry you don't want a quality game experience, but many of us do.


I'm not in any way suggesting that they transform it's visuals into that of FFXIV (or any other game for that matter.)

At any rate, that was just one example of things older games do to stay relevant. Another one of those things is something some people here oddly enough complain about often- reducing the grind. Most games have realized their clientele mostly doesn't have the same time to devote that they used to, so the newer content they create either has less grind as a whole, or is designed in such a way that you don't have to spend many hours in one sitting.

The reason they put such a big effort into making FFXIV a success is because they feared its original failiure would irreperably damage the Final Fantasy brand (That is, the entire franchise, not just FFXI). They were afraid that after FFXIV 1.0, everyone would doubt their ability to produce quality games.

FFXI's biggest problem, more than anything else, has always been marketing. The game always has been and still is marketed poorly. They don't even try. Think of how many players might be in this game if they actually advertised it throughout the last 10 years. I still know lots of people who haven't even heard of the game other than my mentioning it to them. SE just doesn't know how to market things. Even FFXIV could be getting marketed better than it is.

The resentment in this forum definitely runs deep... in spite of the fact that FFXIV was being developed less than 2 years into FFXI's existence- largely because at the time they didn't expect the game would run for 10+ years. They figured they'd need to replace it in half that time. The fact that people are still here is a testament to how much better of a product they created than even they thought- but that doesn't mean they deserve to be hated on for making a new game.

You made it seem like the only way an old mmo could remain popular was to upgrade graphics, just because you like pretty hi-spec graphics it does not follow everyone else thinks the same. A fine oil painting doesn't look better if it's redone in CGI with photoshop and lens flares.

The point was that almost every "old" mmo has not done what you're talking about and all these old titles are still the mass of the mmo market, the new mmo titles like ffxiv, wildstar, gw2, tera etc are still the minority by comparison (and mainly made up of people that care more about graphics than a good game). I know XIV has pretty graphics, the problem for me is the art style. I personally don't like it at all, I like the original character designs of FFXI more. You probably find that incredibly hard to believe but it's true.

As for what you said about "the problem with FFXI was advertising"....well, you do know that FFXI and FFXIV have the same peak subscriber numbers right? If you're saying that the subscriber numbers for ffxi were bad due to poor advertising then you're also saying that the 600k subs ffxiv had is bad too because FFXIV has never gone above 600k subs, I would bet it's significantly lower now since they stopped releasing numbers a while back.

FFXI was as popular as FFXIV is right now at its peak so whatever they were doing was good enough, the reasons for the player loss from the peak 500k subscriber numbers I have already listed and had nothing to do with advertising.

[Alhanelem]

You made it seem like the only way an old mmo could remain popular was to upgrade graphics, just because you like pretty hi-spec graphics it does not follow everyone else thinks the same. A fine oil painting doesn't look better if it's redone in CGI with photoshop and lens flares.No, that's not what I was saying. I mentioned it because it was easy to talk about and it is an example of something some MMOs have done to stay relevant. If you show someone who's never seent his game before some screenshots, they will probably prejudge it as ancient looking. You and I have been here a long time and can appreciate the work, care and attention that went into it a lot more because we're used to it. Even though I look back at XI's appearance fondly, I'd hardly describe it as a "fine oil painting" that can't be improved in any way. It looks great, but it's showing its age. The great masterpieces of paintings don't show their age because few to no artists of today can match the quality of their work, unlike computer graphics which can always get better because of advancing technology.

But again, that's just one example of things games have done to keep up. There are many other things, most of which tie in to adapting to the changing needs and wants of your clientele, something SE has been pretty slow to do in XI (Ten+ years to get a range indicator (9 I suppose if you count the color changing arrow thing) function? Come on.).


FFXI was as popular as FFXIV is right now at its peakThat's incorrect, as FFXI peaked at a little over 500k subs. For XIV, we only have total accounts data, where the last number given was 2.3 million accounts. Although that isn't subscriptions, in its last financial report SE said it had a total subscriber base of somewhere in the ballpark of 1 million total players. Given XI's state at the time, and Dragon Quest 10 only being available in Japan and the surrounding area, it is likely that XIV represents far more than half of that subscriber total. XIV has more players than XI ever had in any point in its history. And I can tell you, it has not a whole lot to do with the game itself. It's mostly about marketing - SE has done a far better job marketing the game than it did with XI- it could have been as successful, if not more, if XI invested more in marketing it outside Japan.

(Unfortunately, one of the few sites that tracked numbers for all MMOs has stopped updating the site because everyone has stopped giving out numbers. Not just XIV, not even WoW is giving out its numbers anymore. EVE, which was reported to still be growing in size last year, stopped giving its numbers as well. XIV isn't on the charts because 1.0 never gave out its data and ARR came out after this site stopped updating. But here's the link to the chart that includes XIs numbers: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png - peaked at around 550k subscribers. If you go to the site, there is even an excel file to download containing all their datapoints and their sources where available.)
Unfortunately there isn't any other sites that devoted themselves to tracking this data, and as was said, most companies don't give it out anymore.

[bungiefanNA]

There were PC games that were orted to PS2, like Deus Ex and Oni. It could have been done. However, SquareSoft was going for the world's first console-MMORPG, which they achieved. They were a console game company, not a PC game company back then. Sony claims EQOA was the first console MMORPG, but that was only in North America, because they delayed PS2 FFXI until after EQOA's release. FFXI ported amazingly well to PC considering how bad the FFVII and FFVIII ports were... Console gaming was also much simpler compared to PC gaming back in 2002, and you can understand how they didn't expect PC gaming to become so much more popular in some regions. Games were plug-in and play. PC games before XP required all sort of installation process, then getting drivers to work right, and possibly IRQ configuration. XP came out the same year FFXI launched. PC gaming dramatically improved under XP and Win7, versus Win2k/9x/etc. SE also had very little PC game-making experience back then, before ti was even SE.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

You should read the link that bungiefan provided under my thread with an guy describing the differences of culture or the audiences and comparisons for games and ffxi in japans years compared to america's types of play over many years in which this guy explains it lengthily detail. Be patient as this a is a rather long and separated into 2 section posts.

The Link was included under this forum:What's the Plans for FFXI's Future with Newer OS's\Operating Drivers/Software Coming?> (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/47258-Whats-the-Plans-for-FFXI-s-Future-with-Newer-OS-s%5COperating-Drivers-Software-Coming)

[bungiefanNA]

Or you know, you could have just linked it again rather than the game of promoting your own thread...

http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/online-games-japan-part-1-no-mmo-mans-land/

[Runespider]

No, that's not what I was saying. I mentioned it because it was easy to talk about and it is an example of something some MMOs have done to stay relevant. If you show someone who's never seent his game before some screenshots, they will probably prejudge it as ancient looking. You and I have been here a long time and can appreciate the work, care and attention that went into it a lot more because we're used to it. Even though I look back at XI's appearance fondly, I'd hardly describe it as a "fine oil painting" that can't be improved in any way. It looks great, but it's showing its age. The great masterpieces of paintings don't show their age because few to no artists of today can match the quality of their work, unlike computer graphics which can always get better because of advancing technology.

But again, that's just one example of things games have done to keep up. There are many other things, most of which tie in to adapting to the changing needs and wants of your clientele, something SE has been pretty slow to do in XI (Ten+ years to get a range indicator (9 I suppose if you count the color changing arrow thing) function? Come on.).

That's incorrect, as FFXI peaked at a little over 500k subs. For XIV, we only have total accounts data, where the last number given was 2.3 million accounts. Although that isn't subscriptions, in its last financial report SE said it had a total subscriber base of somewhere in the ballpark of 1 million total players. Given XI's state at the time, and Dragon Quest 10 only being available in Japan and the surrounding area, it is likely that XIV represents far more than half of that subscriber total. XIV has more players than XI ever had in any point in its history. And I can tell you, it has not a whole lot to do with the game itself. It's mostly about marketing - SE has done a far better job marketing the game than it did with XI- it could have been as successful, if not more, if XI invested more in marketing it outside Japan.

(Unfortunately, one of the few sites that tracked numbers for all MMOs has stopped updating the site because everyone has stopped giving out numbers. Not just XIV, not even WoW is giving out its numbers anymore. EVE, which was reported to still be growing in size last year, stopped giving its numbers as well. XIV isn't on the charts because 1.0 never gave out its data and ARR came out after this site stopped updating. But here's the link to the chart that includes XIs numbers: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png - peaked at around 550k subscribers. If you go to the site, there is even an excel file to download containing all their datapoints and their sources where available.)
Unfortunately there isn't any other sites that devoted themselves to tracking this data, and as was said, most companies don't give it out anymore.

Why would you even bring up accounts when the number is irrelevant? any mmo with a free trial during its prime will have millions of accounts... subscriber numbers are what matter on a p2p title as well you know. Square have only given 2 subscriber numbers for final fantasy xiv and the most recent was 500k exactly, and to be completely honest if final fantasy xi had a universal release date and not staggered it would of beat the subscriber numbers final fantasy xiv peaked at by a large margin too.

So in real terms Final fantasy XI is and always will be more successful than Final fantasy Xiv, guess pretty graphics aren't everything huh? This is not my opinion, it's just how it is. A game that cost 15 million to make that had 500k subscribers is more successful than a game that cost hundreds of millions to make twice, which has the same numbers.

So no I'm not incorrect, they had almost the exact same peak subscriber numbers. They are both as successful or failing as each other, you can't bash final fantasy xi for having low numbers without bashing the numbers of final fantasy xiv by comparison.

[Isal]

Seems to me like the biggest mistake was designing the game to rely on the PS2's devkits rather than building it for PC and porting it over... [...]


How else would you design a game to run on the PS2? [...] They originally set out to create an MMO on a console platform (which was a mistake), [...]

I'm a bit confused by your response, but in the end, it seems like we both agree it was a mistake. :)

Edit: I'll add in, in all fairness, hindsight being 20/20 and such when it comes to the mistake.

[Alhanelem]

I'm a bit confused by your response, but in the end, it seems like we both agree it was a mistake. :)

Edit: I'll add in, in all fairness, hindsight being 20/20 and such when it comes to the mistake.
I would agree that in fairness, they probably didn't forsee the limitations they would run into in the future by placing this kind of game on a console. They ended up making it a lot bigger than they originally had sought out to. However, I think it's fair to say that even at its launch, FFXI pushed the limits of the PS2.


Why would you even bring up accounts when the number is irrelevant? 1) you saying it's irrelevant doesn't make it irrelevant. It's the number of people who played the game for any amount of time, so it has meaning. If the game is not free to play, it also represents the number of copies sold. There are also games like Guild Wars 2 where it's the only statistic because the game is buy to play and has no subscription- so you have no way of knowing how many active users there are.
2) It's the only data available, so it's the only thing we could make any kind of judgement on.

However, even that data is quickly becoming hard to find because all MMOs are keeping those numbers close to their chests, because people will throw those numbers around to unfairly judge a game. Even a small decline in numbers made public can cause a trend of "oh god, game is dying, everyone leave now!, so you can't really blame companies for keeping the numbers secret. By keeping them secret even when they are favorable, they can shield themselves from conspiracy theories (e.g. they're hiding the numbers, so they must be bad!). Now we have no idea if the numbers are good or bad because they aren't being shared regardless.

[Runespider]

I would agree that in fairness, they probably didn't forsee the limitations they would run into in the future by placing this kind of game on a console. They ended up making it a lot bigger than they originally had sought out to. However, I think it's fair to say that even at its launch, FFXI pushed the limits of the PS2.

1) you saying it's irrelevant doesn't make it irrelevant. It's the number of people who played the game for any amount of time, so it has meaning. If the game is not free to play, it also represents the number of copies sold. There are also games like Guild Wars 2 where it's the only statistic because the game is buy to play and has no subscription- so you have no way of knowing how many active users there are.
2) It's the only data available, so it's the only thing we could make any kind of judgement on.

However, even that data is quickly becoming hard to find because all MMOs are keeping those numbers close to their chests, because people will throw those numbers around to unfairly judge a game. Even a small decline in numbers made public can cause a trend of "oh god, game is dying, everyone leave now!, so you can't really blame companies for keeping the numbers secret. By keeping them secret even when they are favorable, they can shield themselves from conspiracy theories (e.g. they're hiding the numbers, so they must be bad!). Now we have no idea if the numbers are good or bad because they aren't being shared regardless.

No it's irrelevant because it is. A lot of those accounts tried the game in free trials (you know, the f2p thing) or from v1 and didn't play it past the first hour.

It's a pointless boast number that has no real meaning because it doesn't even mean copies sold. As I said, accounts covers such a wide range of things that it means almost nothing. when people use such numbers it's because the real numbers aren't very good.

No matter what pointless numbers you want to boast about, at the end of the day peak ffxi sub numbers = peak ffxiv sub numbers. They basically made a game that cost 10-20 times as much that has the same amount of subscribers. The really funny part is given that, many of them even pay LESS subscription.

Maybe they need to upgrade the graphics engine on FFXIV so it can get more subscribers or bring back the many that quit.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

Or you know, you could have just linked it again rather than the game of promoting your own thread...

http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/online-games-japan-part-1-no-mmo-mans-land/

Yeah, I had thought about just showing the link but then I had got into thinking maybe they would rather read our responses that prompted the post of the link you shared as well instead :D

Edit: I wasn't promoting but just showing, end it there :p

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

:eek: Just thought this terminology or um... let bigons be bigons quote mite help you out?

You ever heard of this as an end all and nothing more being said afterwards..o.O?
Like: Lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that!! -or- {kind of the same}> Lets just "Agree" to "Disagree" and say nothing more!! ;) [Hope it helps!] :cool: