Official pre-Abyssea 75-cap server?

Let classic FFXI fans live in the 75 content era again?

You could keep Mythic weapons, a limited number of trusts and quality of life changes while players can enjoy 75 alliance raid content like dynamis, sky, sea, salvage and HNM's together again.

In reality many players want to journey together in 75 era Vana'diel again, not just reach the new destinations... Let us have that "slow life" once again:

https://www.finalfantasyxi.com/na/
SLOW LIFE
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Vana’diel® is more than just combat against your enemies. Enjoy a relaxing time surrounded by a beautiful expanse of nature.

it's been asked a thousand times, there's multiple many page threads about it, and SE has officially weighed in with a resounding "no."

There are mechanics within the game that allow you to stay 75 and do content at 75 if you want to. Just find like minded people to play with. Make a new character. Don't do the level 80 limit break quest. Bam. you have a "75 server." Plus you have the home point warps and all the QOL stuff we got since. You can also in many cases use level sync to play with people who haven't ch osen this path.

In reality you overestimate the number of people who want this. Yes, certain games have done it with some measure of success, but what works for one game doesn't always work for another. Making a 75 cap server won't bring back the community elements that made the game fun in the first place. Admit it, was it the grinding for hours upon hours to gain 1 level the fun part or was it the swapping stories and chatting and talking to your linkshell etc. while you were doing it the fun part? Because we've all done that already, it simply won't be the same doing it again. Gamers today just don't have the kind of patience for that, even the ones who played FFXI back in the day.

I played WoW classic. The only thing I liked about WoW in the first place was Alterac Valley before they turned it into a short battleground, when it was an hours long raging ongoing war. I did that a few times. Then I uninstalled. There was no reason to keep playing on a server that wasn't going to get any content updates. And that's perhaps the biggest reason why a classic server won't work for FFXI, and in fact why my solution to the people asking for it is arguably better than having a special server.

See, WoW can get away with it because it's vastly larger than FFXI was, even now. But with FFXI, it will fracture the already modest community. Some ppl will leave the live game for it, otehrs will divide their time, it will only harm current players because the community isn't big enough to support it. Any notion that making a special server is going to bring back huge amounts of players in droves is a pipe dream.

Here's a link as to why this isn't going to happen:

https://gamerescape.com/2020/04/10/11-questions-for-the-final-fantasy-xi-dev-team/

Quote:

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Gamer Escape: With the launch of World of Warcraft Classic, there has been talk of having classic servers for other games. We’re curious about your thoughts on having a classic server for FINAL FANTASY XI where maybe the level cap is at 75?

Akihiko Matsui: Truth be told, we have no snapshot data of the level 75 era, which would make it very difficult to replicate things as they were back then on this type of server.


Yoji Fujito: As things stand today, we are unable to meet these requests, simply from a version management perspective. If the goal was simply to limit level growth to level 75, that is something that could be done in theory, but we would be unable to provide any changes on top of merely adjusting the level cap and do not have the ability to provide any support for it with our current bandwidth.


Furthermore, it goes against our company philosophy to just toss something out there and say “Here, have fun!” without giving it the due care that our fans would rightfully expect, so a level 75 server it isn’t in the cards at present.

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With the anniversary around the corner I think it's still important to reiterate on the request for a classic server.

This optional server wouldn't be for everyone and that's okay, that's why it's being requested as an option for the many other players who exist in places that shall not be named and are not here to express their desires. You have your opinions on the matter and someone will always jump in to say "you don't really want that", but just to lighten up the mood I will say this, there are dozens of us!

Dude, these threads and requests are such a waste of time. We have a hard enough time as it is getting this company to update the GAME itself!! Imagine if they split off and made a 75 cap era server... it would die out in a year after all these people crying for a 75 cap server realize how boring and punishing it would be in 2021 and then quit. I really view the 75 thumpers as almost naieve. They literally just do not understand that it wasnt the content and level cap that made the game what it was, it was the community and time period of our lives we played it during. Most of us (in our 30s by this point) have lives and don't have the same amount of time to devote to MMO's, no current gen kid is going to even look at XI. Literally everything you loved about XI content is still alive today from that era in some form. The gameplay itself has not changed, only quickened in pace.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leeto

With the anniversary around the corner I think it's still important to reiterate on the request for a classic server.

This optional server wouldn't be for everyone and that's okay, that's why it's being requested as an option for the many other players who exist in places that shall not be named and are not here to express their desires. You have your opinions on the matter and someone will always jump in to say "you don't really want that", but just to lighten up the mood I will say this, there are dozens of us!

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I mean, the answer will be the same, they don't have a snapshot of the game code etc. from that era so they can not do it on a technical level.

That's pretty definitive, and it isn't going to change whether you ask now or in 10 years, because they simply don't have it. And few if any of the people who originally developed the game are still working on it, or even working at SE most likely.

It could at best be simulated using a current version of the game and changing some of the rules. But, as noted in the interview quoted above, they are not going to toss something out there that they can't fully support.

As I told you, your best bet is to create your own "75 server" by starting a new character and leaving the level 80 limit break quest uncompleted. If there are as many people out there as you seem to believe that want this, you should have no problem finding a party to play this way.

I respect your stance Alhanelem, I'm sure many others feel the same. I'm also sure players have found their own solutions thanks to the recent rise in popularity with streamers like Ninja. However, this isn't about bringing back players in droves or splitting up the existing player base that's maybe holding out hope for a new expansion or FFXI: A Realm Reborn.

This topic exists to remind SQEX that there is desire from an entire community not present to have an official 75 cap home again and to have that era of FFXI rebuilt and preserved.
Especially with the possible resurgence of a large scale dev team thanks to XIV's success and the 20th anniversary, maybe the preservation of FFXI's 75 era can one day be official.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leeto

I respect your stance Alhanelem, I'm sure many others feel the same. I'm also sure players have found their own solutions thanks to the recent rise in popularity with streamers like Ninja. However, this isn't about bringing back players in droves or splitting up the existing player base that's maybe holding out hope for a new expansion or FFXI: A Realm Reborn.

This topic exists to remind SQEX that there is desire from an entire community not present to have an official 75 cap home again and to have that era of FFXI rebuilt and preserved.
Especially with the possible resurgence of a large scale dev team thanks to XIV's success and the 20th anniversary, maybe the preservation of FFXI's 75 era can one day be official.

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The mod community has already taken care of that, for the people who really want it.

All MMOs change and evolve over time, and one of the more frustrating aspects about the people who ask for this is nobody can really agree on exactly where the game should be. one of the popular mantras is that "abyssea ruined the game (I don't agree- at least, not directly- the problem is more that later content couldn't possibly hope to live up to the power playground that was abyssea)" and it should be right before that moment. Others would rather see it go back to the original US launch when the level cap was just getting to 75, and if you're not from the US, you might want the level cap at 50, even. Take a poll and you'll probably find an even split among what expansion people think they should put the game back to.

As for some "large scale resurgence," that's really not a thing. FFXIV's sudden popularity increase isn't (and has shown no signs of) going to increase demand for a big FFXI update/upgrade- and that goal itself conflicts with the goals of a "75 server."

In the end, it's not a stance- I'm simply quoting the dev team who themselves said that it wasn't in the cards, thus making it a fact. And nostalgia is really a pair of rose tinted glasses, without a time machine it's not going to feel the same because your expectaitions are going to be colored by your past experiences, and things simply aren't going to be exactly the same as they were before.
You can't preserve something that doesn't exist- SE has themselves said they don't have an old version of the game they can just put out there. It would either have to be rebuilt from the ground up, which would take years and a new dev team trained to understand the spaghetti mess that was designed by other people. It is very hard to go through software built by some other team and then rework it yourself without being trained b y someone who made it on how everything was designed to work.


If you really think so many people want this, you should show it in the game today- make a linkshell of people who want it, do things under the suggestions I posed for simulating it, and show SE there's a demand for it by having people actually do it in the current game. What I can tell you is, at least on my server, I'm not tripping over people who want to do this. I've never seen anyone shout about it, i've never seen any parties doing it.



Presumably, the people who want this have already taken matters into their own hands with technically illegal private servers- which themselves are not great because they're really hacking a more recent version of the game, and reverse enginneering the servers and such so it's really their own invention that merely simulates things, and since it's not controlled by SE, you don't know what else they've done to it.

Since SE has weighed in on the issue, you can be certain that theyve done cost-benefit analyses, and concluded the money to be made isn't worth the cost of the development. It will take a concerted effort by a very large number of people - i.e. more than the occasional poster coming here asking for it - to convince them otherwise.

Aside from ALL of this, my opinion will always be that it's unnecessary in the first place due to having the ability to restrict yourself to level 75 already, and that having a seperate server for it will fracture a community that really isn't large enough to support multiple different versions of the game. On top of that, the other poster above has a valid point, updates for the game we already have are coming in pretty slow. We're not seeing them invest enough into the game now, the chance that they're going to invest in an unproven idea like a special 75 server seems very very low to zero.