Where's OUR discount?

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Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo

Most likely, but can they at least be honest about it?

If this policy has been changed, we deserve to be told.

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Their policy hasn't changed. Its just how you view it. They're leaving it up to us as players whether we change games or not. They're not gonna force it, but in my mind, with the re-release and the change in the game mechanics (again, this is from what i've been reading), they do want us to move. XIV has better graphics, more character customization, etc. They won't do that for FFXI which is why I think they want us to move. I mean, I think of it like this. Say you're living in a slum lord's rent house. The landlord owns a house right next door. It's pretty house, with nice hard wood flooring, new paint, and in general it's a hundred times better than the one you're living in. He offers you up this house next door for a couple hundred more a month. You can choose to move and pay the extra rent for a better house, or you can stay, but either way, its up to you. He wants you to move because he gets more money out of it, but will be okay if you stay in the other house, because your still paying rent to him. That's how I view it.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

Also need to consider they've drastically cut the expenses to maintain XI, without reducing the costs to the consumer. Multiple server mergers, and they gutted the dev and support teams a while back, and have been reaping the increased profit from the XI sector since (hence the speculations that XI has been funding XIV development, as that is where most the personnel likely went).

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So your belief is that they're making mad bux off allowing FFXI to crumble? Well, I suppose there's no rule in business saying that you can't do that. I don't share your belief, but I'll acknolege it is a possibility.

But if that is the case, they're not required to tell us anything. We can't even really seek legal action against them for siphoning money from FFXI to other projects (or just pocketing the money). They probably don't even read these posts, or if they do, they probably don't even really care. Even if we get a response from them, who's to say it's not a lie? So what can we really do?

As a side note, if it turns out they really are making bank by downsizing the work force, merging the servers, etc... I'd rather they just reinvest that money into FFXI than get a discount.

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Originally Posted by Yinnyth

But if that is the case, they're not required to tell us anything.

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They're not required to, but it would be a Bad Idea to breed ill-will among the XI base while pushing desperately for goodwill from XIV players. It's only natural for XIV players to look at what's happening with XI to get a feel for what lies in their own future.

At any rate, it occurs to me that it is probably not a coincidence that the new 2012 timeline was published the same day as XIV got its new patch. It feels like management is at least trying to pay lip-service to the idea of supporting both games simultaneously.

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If this policy has been changed, we deserve to be told.

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?

2 years later, vanadiel is still persisting. You're not being told because it hasn't changed.

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Originally Posted by Yinnyth

So your belief is that they're making mad bux off allowing FFXI to crumble? Well, I suppose there's no rule in business saying that you can't do that. I don't share your belief, but I'll acknolege it is a possibility.

But if that is the case, they're not required to tell us anything. We can't even really seek legal action against them for siphoning money from FFXI to other projects (or just pocketing the money). They probably don't even read these posts, or if they do, they probably don't even really care. Even if we get a response from them, who's to say it's not a lie? So what can we really do?

As a side note, if it turns out they really are making bank by downsizing the work force, merging the servers, etc... I'd rather they just reinvest that money into FFXI than get a discount.

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Well, it's not a difficult concept to grasp. You had 32 servers running and reduced it to 24, but kept roughly the same number of players. You no longer have to include any operational/maintenance/warranty costs for 1/4th of your servers--that includes payroll for employees that burned up time managing them, possibly even removing some personnel from the project and moving them somewhere else, along with those servers. That's another thing too, that hardware and manhours can now be repurposed elswhere. So, in this arena, you've had potentially a 25% savings with negligible loss of income.

Combine this with how we know for a fact that they have scaled back personnel working on FFXI and repurposed them elsewhere in the organization. Some of the many employess they've lost/let go in the past two years (as posted in their annual reports, there has been considerable reduction in personnel as a whole) could have also come from the FFXI project. Some employees may have been replaced, but as a whole, there has been a reduction in their work force. And yet, again....they've maintained income from FFXI despite the reduction in costs to have people available to work on it.

I would hazard a guess that the cost per player to maintain it now is significantly less then it was in 2005 when I got into it--broadband is cheaper per unit; initial investments for hardware has been paid for, upgraded, and probably that re-investment has been recovered by now as well; personnel demands are now lower to support it as it is (mostly) debuggged and for the most part running on auto-pilot now (it in fact feels like a lot of the support may be farmed out); and as far as we know has no major development projects in the works--at least not in the scope of the pre-WotG expansions that added completely new areas and such.

Simply put, it is costing them less and less to support the game, and those players are still paying the same rate now as they did 5-7 years ago.

Fenrir: 2 servers got merged, and there's still fewer people on the merged server after the merge than were on both servers before the merge. How can you dismiss this as "but kept roughly the same number of players"? You don't get to just toss out factors that don't reinforce your preconceived notions that FFXI is making someone a millionaire because they cut so many costs. If you really feel like their revenue has not dropped significantly, then I suppose that's the big place where we disagree and we can't really move on until we resolve that issue.

it seems like we have nearly double the players on our server. Certainly caused a bunch of drama with competition for camps/NM's and such shortly after the merger. It's still an issue, but less so in the older areas now that so many have moved on to VW and such. Perhaps it's just your server.

Regardless, some simple facts remain: revenues are still high, costs to support the game have remained constant or been reduced on a per server basis, and the number of those servers have been reduced, no major development in the works (in comparison to previous expansions). Thus operational costs have been reducedsimply because they are in more of a maintenance/reduction mode than expansion. Even if you loose a small % of your player base while cutting operational costs by more then that % when you were already pulling in crazy profits, you can still be increasing your profit margin. They had at least a 25% flat reduction in server maintenance contract costs alone, not to mention reductions in personel, power usage, etc.

Pretty sure there are still more than enough players generating more revenue than is needed to sustain these basic costs. Possibly even the same or more revenue still coming in now then there was several years ago when they were throwing more money into running FFXI. They may very well be pulling in a higher profit margin now simply because of the reduction in money they are putting into (not just reductino in servers and personnel, but a reduction in new development as well--have to factor that in there too).

No matter how you slice it.....they are now spending considerably less on this game than in the past while still pulling in a reasonable profit margin--possibly even higher profit than in years past because of the drastic cut in those costs in comparison to the number of players still paying them. The problem is this has resulted in providing a lower quality of service, without a commensurate reduction in the price charged to the players. Were this to happen to any other industry if competition comes in (and let's face it, some really good stuff is on the horizon), usually it results in loosing customers to someone else that either a.) provides the same value product for less, or b.) provides a better quality product (possibly even for the same price). To combat the losses, one of two things should logically follow: a.) reduce the price to make it a comparable value to the lower priced competition, or b.) improve the quality to better justify price--basically, make the product more attractive than the competition by either lowering the price or increasing quality.

Unfortunately, SE hasn't seemed to grasp this concept yet.......

um, Yinnyth, worlds merged not servers, each FFXI world is made up of multiple servers, some of the servers are 1 per region, others are 2 or 3 per region, and some of those servers from the old world in the merge were retained to reduce lag.

back to the policy thing, Squaresoft started with the policy that as long as there was maintained interest FFXI would remain open and maintained, that policy has not changed, they are reducing a lot of costs because people are leaving the game due to lack of interest.

now lets think about that for a moment, you have a product, you made a promise to keep the product available as long as there was maintained interest, now there is less interest than before but still quite a lot of interest remains, what do you do, if you keep your own costs at the same rate it will eventually kill the ability to keep it open, so you reduce the costs in whatever way will have minimal impact

So each region (ie Norvallen) is one server? And worlds are a cluster of these servers? I always had a suspicion that was how it worked, but never any proof. Well, I still don't have proof honestly, but at least I can cite you as the source of my info if I say that in the future. Thanks for the correction though, I thought I was using the proper terms.

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Originally Posted by Yinnyth

So each region (ie Norvallen) is one server? And worlds are a cluster of these servers? I always had a suspicion that was how it worked, but never any proof. Well, I still don't have proof honestly, but at least I can cite you as the source of my info if I say that in the future. Thanks for the correction though, I thought I was using the proper terms.

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If you run a tool to monitor network connections as you zone about you can eventually catalogue a list of varying IP's associated with each zone. For example, in Rang. Pass, pol.exe is currently connected to 202.67.54.125. I've never seen that IP pop up when I've had issues connecting in Bastok, Jueno, or Windy and I traced connections to try troubleshooting my connection problems.

Granted, seperate IP's doesn't necessarily mean each is a seperate server, as they could be hosted them in groups via VMWare with multiple NIC's in each server I guess. But, it would be a long enough list to exceed what could reasonably be run on just one server without running into some serious performance issues with 1200+ users logged in at any one given time for a particular world. Databases have a limit on how many connections can be made at once as well, so there is that potential issue as well. As large a scale operation as this is, it's reasonable for most any IT person to see there would be clusters assigned.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

As large a scale operation as this is, it's reasonable for most any IT person to see there would be clusters assigned.

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I'm not an IT guy, but I am a techie at heart.

Wouldn't this also be apparent (or at least "implied") in that maintenance can be isolated to specific zones rather than the entire in-game World?

not really, as it is all interconnected at varying points for various reasons. Lobby servers, registration servers, etc--all that has to be linked and synchronized as well.

It took a while to dig it up, but here is an article written a while back about SE's messaging system. This is just for messaging (layout of the hardware is on page 3). Compare this to how many businesses manage to house everything on one single server--I'm talking email, website, accounting, customer data, file server...EVERYTHING about their orginazation on one server with a large disk array. I have seen resorts manage to put EVERYTHING on a single server and only use a second one as a mirror for failover purposes.

FFXI is a HUGE operation that hosts a TON of data (in that article, they mention that they may one day hit the petabyte mark on storage needs for SE's development channels) and it all has to stay synchronized to each other in various ways, as well as the need to have it backed up continually. For large scale projects like this, they aren't backing up to tapes---it's too slow. Sometimes they opt to actually mirror the servers, so you have a 2:1 ratio for at least every critical server involved in the project. Otherwise, they may have server(s) and massive storage arrays dedicated to just the backups--sometimes they will still have this type of backup that takes a backup from a mirrored server as a failsafe.

In short....it's a huge complicated web of hardware.


{edit}

Oh yeah, and here's an old pic of the racks they use over at FFXIVCore for their forums, sites, and stuff:
http://www.ffxivcore.com/index.php?a...attach_id=6574

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Originally Posted by RAIST

[Technical Mumbo-Jumbo Ramblings]

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This is why I'm not an IT guy. I like soft-code, not hardware.

Neat stuff, that's seriously just for their forums? I'd love to get a look at what the servers look like for FFXI... but yeah, pipedream.

http://www.rombay.com/images/console..._dreamcast.jpg

A bunch of these soldered and scotch taped together.

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Originally Posted by Prothscar

http://www.rombay.com/images/console..._dreamcast.jpg

A bunch of these soldered and scotch taped together.

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It's nice to see they upgraded from the PS1s they were originally using.

"Designed for Windows CE"

Did it really say that on the console?

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

"Designed for Windows CE"

Did it really say that on the console?

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Yup! Lol I had a DC and I loved that lil' machine. I do miss SEGA being in the console wars.

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Originally Posted by Camiie

Yeah I guess they caught me with their deal/scam/marketing ploy/whatever lol. I admit I feel a bit guilty going for it, but what the heck. I guess if it turns out too badly I can always go on the XIV forums and make a (TOS compatible) fuss like I do on this one!

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Heh, I know the feeling, though I wouldn't feel too much about it.
If there is any likeliness for you to play it in the future, it would just be smart to take advantage of this opportunity.

Too bad they got rid of the server name Selbina.
I liked it there. >.>

First change I noticed there was that they added an icon '>>' for showing you that you are running, and '>' for walking, and nothing when idle. Just... why?!


But yeah, that is as they say, that.
And that is off-topic!

I still think we could use a discount, even if it has to be tied to XIV even, now it would work for me teehee. :>


Ominous post-count for the topic, too!

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Originally Posted by Elexia

Discount makes zero sense for FFXI beyond entitlement. I also found the "skeleton crew" thing funny, since people payed $20 for a beta of Minecraft which had far less people than XI ever has/will have.

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I'm sorry that this is so many pages behind, But, other than the fact you're wrong, There is a difference between a monthly fee of 12.95 to a company that is at current giving a game the bare-minimum required to pump out semi-new content every so often, and a one time fee of 20$.

Thats a vast difference. VAST difference. They aren't even in the same ballpark as far as comparisons go.

As far as this whole topic?

I don't really mind either way. 12.95+1$/mule is a bit steep for a game basically functioning on Bare-minimum staff, But the game has a lot of content to offer. Despite what the SE Chocobowand-riding Fanboys will have you believe, You can't cut your production and quality in half and expect customers to continue paying the same price, without any sort of complaints.

If nothing had changed in the last 10 years as far as development goes, asking for reduced pay would be arrogant. But as it stands, They've removed the majority of the dev team, and new content is mostly re-hashed old content. We're not getting our moneys worth, and while some of you are perfectly content paying 12.95 for a 6.95 product, These people aren't, and while some may certainly base their complaints in self-entitlement, A lot of the argument is very valid.

Theres two sides to this though, and this is ultimately the reason they will be unlikely to reduce pay. They, Square ENix, aren't going to attract any new customers being a pay-by-month 12.95, 10-year MMO with a skeleton crew, But they have nothing to gain by dropping the price. Chances are any of you complaining about price drop will continue to pay regardless of it still costing 12.95 or 6.95, or 3.95. You're going to continue paying, so the only thing they gain by dropping the price would be a loss in their bottom line.

You'd all still complain everytime an update hit, you'd still complaing the jobs are adjusted how you want, They'd gain absolutely nothing from it. You guys have doomed yourselves by bitching about everything that ever happens, they have no reason to appease you on something like this, because in the end it won't matter in any positive light, because You'll just move on to the next thing to focus on complaining about.

I think a better solution would be to openly give us more Dev members. Show us you're giving us more commitment to the game, that'd slow down the complaints. Showing 3 people in a room that looked like it used to house 40 just makes FFXI Players realize how understaffed this game is.

To be honest, That is a giant c*ckslap to the face for loyal customers. We didn't pay for 10 years just to have you throw bare minimum resources to keeping us mildly entertained in the end. I know its an old game, But SE has the resources to devote, They're just focusing it on FFXIV.

And, I think this needs to be said, to Analhelm... When the man compared FFXI and FFXIV "Release", He was saying that "They had a SE MMO, FFXI, Then they released FFXIV Online, Which made no sense... FFXIV players now have to live with the fact some time down the line, FFXV, FFXVI, Etc, Could potentially be another MMO thats going to give "FFXIV" the "FFXI Effect"... Less Staff, Dying playerbase, People selling off accounts/gil due to anticipation of said game killing FFXIV....

Do you understand that now? He wasn't saying that the next FF game will be another MMO, He's saying that since FFXIV, Each new FF title holds that chance they may pull another "FFXIV" on FFXIV, and release yet another MMO to replace FFXIV the way they hoped FFXIV would replace FFXI.

So... I don't know where i stand on this, But i think I'm closer to "Cut the Monthly Fee down a notch". A pay drop would be nice, But from a company standpoint, they have no reason to do it, it won't solve any problem, or ease any complaints, and will only eat into their money. - And i apologize if i sound jaded, I'm just tired of this company throwing sh*t in the customers face, and people still continuing to defend the endlessly like everyone else is just acting self-entitled.

Its a tough topic to handle, and i agree with points on both sides of the argument. But both sides are being overly critical of one another. IN the end, The Company is giving us less than half the commitment we used to have. Our Dev team is a shadow of its former self that has to work overtime to release content 2 months behind schedule. Continuing to pay the same price for a product that has undergone such drastic changes in dedication and development resources is outrageous at best.

But again... SE gains nothing from cutting the price, and will likely ultimately just lead to LESS resources devoted to FFXI. So its a catch 22. Sorry :). And if you're like me, You can see I kinda jump to both sides of the argument. Pointing out Complainers just complain, and pointing out anyone defending SE at this point is just a fanboy. Yah, I don't know where i stand....

The next game they are about to unveil is another MMO, for Dragon Quest series. The recent release is testing the water with "cosmetic add ons" - FFXIII-2 where you get nickel and dimed for "extra contents". The amount of "Extras" are already way over $20 with no substantial amount of gameplay added. I would not be surprised if FF14 is adopting this changes on version 2. DC Universe Online become very profitable after going free to play. Times have changed - SE should too - but knowing that it is a japanese company, changes are coming very very very slow until they are at death's door.