Final fantasy 14 broke a record for a japan mmo. Might effect ffxi. Player base?.

http://www.gamingunion.net/news/fina...mpaign=Feed%3A

They had 150k+ concurrent users on at once so far for there beta. Held buy PSO 2 beta of 107k in japan still impressive number for them.

For those that are wonderong there is a lot former ffxi on ff14 also.

They had to shutdown the NA/EU side do a 3102 bug fix that broke the game.

They have added like 5 more servers in 48hrs.

Game fun . Not sure how many true old school veterans from ffxi will actually leave ffxi though. I'm sure we will see a slight decline in next few months.

Here another article were can see some other games that are running normal. To see that is a impressive number. This little out date from may 2013.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/league-...layers-6405485

Shows a few steam games that were popular as concurrent users.

Any 'hot' MMO might affect FFXI playerbase, whether it has Final Fantasy in its title or not.

Here we go again... how many times will I have to put onmy tinfoil hat?FFXI is not going anywhere.. less people means they will structure the game around fewer players.. It might make a minor impact on the game if that.. but in the long run XI is still a profit machine...

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Originally Posted by Umichi

Here we go again... how many times will I have to put onmy tinfoil hat?FFXI is not going anywhere.. less people means they will structure the game around fewer players.. It might make a minor impact on the game if that.. but in the long run XI is still a profit machine...

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Indeed.
Though I think you'll see a bit more of an impact when it's fully golden. But that will be only a temporary thing.
I know I've seen quite a few friends on XI "jump ship" to XIV... but they have either come back to XI or are holding out for the real release. (So there will be a player dip, but it won't last and only a small percentage of those who "switch" will stay in XIV.)

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Originally Posted by Umichi

less people means they will structure the game around fewer players

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Tell this to SE. The amount of people playing this game has been decreasing for some time, even if not by a large amount, and yet they released SoA with an event that basically requires hundreds of people to fight it while simultaneously alienating a good part of players, many of which were on the higher end of gear. Also, these fights which take so very many people, can last many hours, on the same level of as Absolute Virtue or Pandemonium Warden, fights which took way to long and players were getting ill during them, not only that, but they took only 18 people to fight, not 100+. So I would not count on the fact that players quit that SE will take it into account while making content and structure the game around that fact, rather, I think they will ignore it, add more areas, the last 2 Wildskeepers, and so on, all while not lowering the difficulty, player requirements, or anything of the sort, but rather keeping it exactly how it is right now in terms of scale, and continuing onward.



So far as those people who think that even though this has Final Fantasy in its name and FFXIV has Final Fantasy in its name that it makes little difference, trust me, it makes a difference, I am sure a great deal of people who started this game, did so because it was Final Fantasy. While you are right, that any 'hot' MMO would drop the amount of subscriptions, I would bet money that a great deal of people who play this game are Final Fantasy fans, and are going to end up trying FFXIV at some point if they are able to if for no reason other than it being a Final Fantasy game, so depending on the quality of the time they have while trying the game, they may just actually leave this for it. Obviously not everyone will, some people will not like it, others will find good things about it but not enough to move or continue paying for it, but some people will like it enough to leave, that will have an effect on this game, if people can not accept the fact it will have an effect on this game I have no idea how to say it to you.

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Originally Posted by FaeQueenCory

Indeed.
Though I think you'll see a bit more of an impact when it's fully golden. But that will be only a temporary thing.
I know I've seen quite a few friends on XI "jump ship" to XIV... but they have either come back to XI or are holding out for the real release. (So there will be a player dip, but it won't last and only a small percentage of those who "switch" will stay in XIV.)

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Seeing as so far everything has been a beta, I doubt it will be as temporary as you seem to believe, some people will obviously come back, but to say only a small % of people who leave will stay gone, is funny, that's to say that a small % of people like it enough to leave this game. Betas are just that, betas, and while the amount of people online on FFXI has dropped many times during betas for FFXIV, I am sure that the real deal will be a real drop, rather than a temporary one, such as the betas are temporary access in a way. I think of it all as a test, its a test of FFXIV, and as well as a test of how this game will shrink.

Lol at those ppl praising ff14. Its like the same movie after its 100th exibition. See you ff14 fans back in some months with topics like "returning to ffxi, what has changed?"

I think FF11 will survive for some time, after all the time making there profit. EQ has lasted, but this can be bad in long run for ff11. Lasting for another year either way. Change is hard thing for people to do after years doing the same thing.

You have to need ff14 making a lot of money. With a small profit on ff11. They blew the adoulin stuff at first, To finance ff14 and even sold the tablets right to microsoft for money on ff14. To run ff11 and ff14.

Have a major server merges again. For ff11.

The 3102 error killed a lot sales on ff14 for everyone outside of japan so that is a good thing(there afraid have a global game now. ). That will help ff11. There making sure ff14 will not be a mainstream or global game. Good thing for ff11.

At this point all ff11 fans that are leaving just are finally down with game with ff14 ,or with out. Since got so many other mmo that are 10 times better now, but even coming back for the month for old time feel, after some time most will never come back again. That feeling gone for a lot people and they just are trying sell there account for what every they can get.

I feel square, last ditch effort and some the stuff they been doing is setting up a free to play model. Before the servers shutdown, sometimes stuff just shutdown and like wtf happen and move on or like were did it go in denial.

For me i would like to be on till servers shut down. Even if wrong in 10 years.

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Originally Posted by Spectreman

Lol at those ppl praising ff14. Its like the same movie after its 100th exibition. See you ff14 fans back in some months with topics like "returning to ffxi, what has changed?"

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Don't count on it, you avoid the game like it's the plague, that's cool, but don't trash it because you don't like it. People will like it, you can't control that by constantly bringing it down. I used to be just like you, I hated abyssea, I hated XIV, but now look at my stance on Abyssea: I love it now. Anything short of the same reason for FFXIV is bogus, because in XIV your character is more than just a character than what it is in XI. You can legitimately create your character to your liking instead of "Ok pick face...4 and...hair A" now you're picking their skin tone, eye colors (Yes I said colors, meaning heterochromia), height, hair color, etc. Not only that but the environment that XIV is in put me in a much more 'healthy' environment than the pseudo-cold war that XI is in, and people were just much more friendlier.

People flock to a game with a friendly community, can you legitimately say XI's community is friendly? No, it is not sadly, I truly wish it was but every server that I've seen people are only interested in helping -if- they get something out of it in return, otherwise people won't even look at you. I met a great friend who's helped me through my limit breaks (Despite having to solo the first one) but every time I ask for help with things that are trivial to a single lvl 99 player, no one will ever volunteer to help. XIV I didn't have that problem, so you mean to tell me that "People are just gonna come back, cya in xyz amount of time"? Are you serious? Why would I wanna come back to a game that's nothing but a giant headache to me both with the content and the community, when XIV is offering brand new stuff that is new player friendly and I have the community to play with and enjoy this content instead of hunting solo for toy weapons in CoP, RotZ, and ToAU? I can tell you I'd rather go play with friends, and when my desktop gets fixed you won't be seeing me anywhere around here anymore :D

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

Seeing as so far everything has been a beta, I doubt it will be as temporary as you seem to believe, some people will obviously come back, but to say only a small % of people who leave will stay gone, is funny, that's to say that a small % of people like it enough to leave this game. Betas are just that, betas, and while the amount of people online on FFXI has dropped many times during betas for FFXIV, I am sure that the real deal will be a real drop, rather than a temporary one, such as the betas are temporary access in a way. I think of it all as a test, its a test of FFXIV, and as well as a test of how this game will shrink.

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I am only speaking from experience.
Let me number-ify it for easy comparison.
Say I have 10 friends who left for the betas. Of those 10, 7 returned and 3 stopped XI in favor of XIV.
That is what I am talking about.
From my experience, the majority of those who will leave for XIV will return to XI.
XIV will not kill XI.

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Originally Posted by FaeQueenCory

I am only speaking from experience.
Let me number-ify it for easy comparison.
Say I have 10 friends who left for the betas. Of those 10, 7 returned and 3 stopped XI in favor of XIV.
That is what I am talking about.
From my experience, the majority of those who will leave for XIV will return to XI.
XIV will not kill XI.

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How many of the 7 who returned have no plans at all to go play XIV? That's the real question.

If I play a good beta it doesn't mean I am going to quit my current game, I will wait for the new game to come out, make sure its still good, then quit it.

didn this happen back then? when 14 was coming out everyone was like "ya it gonna own etc!" but failed, now they remake it again for round2!. if it good to you then go for it. getting sick of people trying to get everyone to quit to join 14.
like dude said Any 'hot' MMO might affect FFXI playerbase or older MMOs. but so far XI, WoW, i think EQ still going, and few others been doing fine. newer games does not always = killing older games.

I've seen people say the same crap with Guild Wars2, FF14, Rift, DCUO, Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons (both of them), SWTOR, LOTRO, Warhammer... they all became F2P to collect pennies before shutting down because their subscription method failed.

The new thing is FF14 and Elder Scrolls Online... lololol just waiting on fresh tears of frustration.


The only MMORPG that still survived the Wow factor were FFXI and EVE Online because they are the most deep games in the genre. FF14 is just the 200th wow clone and like its brothers it will die to F2P in months.

Its not that all those games were bad, neither FF14 is but they are just more of the same shallow gaming experience that doesn't keep a MMORPG through subscriptions. I think FF14 might even succeed as F2P model selling virtual pets, chocobos, dresses, haircuts and potions of increased exp.

10 is an absurdly small number to base things off of, but sure, let's go with that.

10 friends left for XIV, and 7 came back. Your friend-pool took a 30% hit. A 30% hit to subscriptions would further cripple this game.

Dear God. It was just an arbitrary numerical representation with small numbers to indicate a rough estimate of what I have seen. (a fractal of 10 is a lot easier to talk about than the stratification between 4/17 and 13/17. Because we think in base-10.)

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Originally Posted by Demon6324236

How many of the 7 who returned have no plans at all to go play XIV? That's the real question.

If I play a good beta it doesn't mean I am going to quit my current game, I will wait for the new game to come out, make sure its still good, then quit it.

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For the sake of argument, using my arbitrary 10 as the base for the max, of the 7 returning, 3 plan to play both, 2 didn't care for it, and 2 prefer XI to it but consider it to have been very fun and a good game.

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Originally Posted by OmnysValefor

10 is an absurdly small number to base things off of, but sure, let's go with that.

10 friends left for XIV, and 7 came back. Your friend-pool took a 30% hit. A 30% hit to subscriptions would further cripple this game.

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OMG. >< Does no one convert hard numbers to a simpler base???? Is that only a scientist thing?
Maybe. We scientists are notoriously lazy....

I chose to reduce my experience to a base-10-scale because the actual number is ugly to work with.
I am not saying that these 10 ppl I know are a good example.
I am saying that of all the people I know who did this... roughly 30% stopped playing XI. Which I am glad to see you at least picked up on that.
Even if you missed the whole "let's say" and other words that are used to indicate a reduction in numerical specifics.

From what I have experienced, 30% will be lost. And then of the 70% that remains, 21% of that will hold subscriptions to both. (that 21% is the 30% of the returning ppl, as illustrated by the 3-2-2 example of the base-10 simplification previously mentioned.)

The reason we scientists simplify numbers that are ugly to work with into simple things like this... is so that we can quickly discuss and illustrate the effects simply.

I know you were giving an example, I was only prefacing it with some text before someone said "3 out of 10 means nothing". I was only saying that while 3 out of 10 means nothing, even if those numbers are representative, and XI loses 30%~, that's a pretty harsh blow.

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Originally Posted by OmnysValefor

I know you were giving an example, I was only prefacing it with some text before someone said "3 out of 10 means nothing". I was only saying that while 3 out of 10 means nothing, even if those numbers are representative, and XI loses 30%~, that's a pretty harsh blow.

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It's no more so a "harsh blow" than 70% retention is a "critical success".
It is what it is.
There will be loss... but it's not going to be "game killing" or "end of the world making".

We all know, across all servers, a significant portion of those online are somebody's mules. It skews the numbers in a bad way, especially for low-pop servers.

70% retention is awful when what the game needs is more healthy active population, not less.

Putting it into a bigger number 1,000 people leave, only 700 come back. 300 people stay at XIV, that's a big bit to both players and entrepreneur, as that is large drop in profit from XI, and eventually when more outside people come in, that 70% gets smaller...and smaller...and smaller until you got only 20~30% left of your entire population left because of 'omg no one is here' merging servers won't do any good, that's only a stop-gap measure to make it look like the servers are active.

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Originally Posted by Spectreman

I've seen people say the same crap with Guild Wars2, FF14, Rift, DCUO, Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons (both of them), SWTOR, LOTRO, Warhammer... they all became F2P to collect pennies before shutting down because their subscription method failed.

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add Starwars the just had to add few servers because this game was running crazy and droped fast down!
Aion had a long breath but had to die too if i'm not wrong just wanted to fill your list

If your saying 3 out of every 10 people are quitting on average for people you know, which is how I took it to begin with, then I would say that's a fairly large hit. Factor in the money loss from that 30% and SE will probably spend even less money on maintaining this game, after all, we already seem to have a small team working on it, less income from the game only serves to cut the team down some more, most likely to pull them to FFXIV even. Also, if 30% of the people out of the player base were to play both, I can only assume it will at some point end, and a single game will be chosen by them, I know very few people who play 2 different MMOs, almost everyone I know plays a single MMO, that's it, if they want to play another they might do 2 for a short time to give it a sort of trial run, but then they pick one and move on.

I understand you are talking about people you know, not necessarily the general population of the game, but the fact remains the same. If enough people quit, less money will be put here so long as FFXIV is a success, if that happens, updates will slow down, people will get annoyed and mad, and more people will quit, the cycle will repeat. This cycle is in a way already in effect, but at a much slower rate, and depending on if FFXIV is a success or failure will depend on how much money this game continues to get I think. In the end, large effect on this game, no matter how you look at it, not end of the world type effect, but enough of an effect I think the game will be hurt by it no matter how it goes, FFXIV loses SE money, company cant afford as much, FFXIV gets SE money, they divert more power to FFXIV in order to keep it up with its players and draw more people in. This game does not have a growing player base, never really will anymore, so putting more money in here will not turn a profit, same people will play, at this point, its just a matter of keeping us here or moving us to FFXIV, either one gives them the same money.



Oh, and by the way, Ill say it again, you can list off all these other MMOs which were supposed to hurt FFXI, but again, does not have Final Fantasy in its title, that does make a large impact for many people believe it or not. As I said, I am sure many people started this game because of it being Final Fantasy, I am sure many people got the original FFXIV because of it being Final Fantasy, and I doubt FFXIV:ARR will be any different in that respect. The only exception it has is a bad history, and something the others did not, but at the same time, its as much a curse as it is a bonus, if a company revamps an entire MMO to make a brand new version of the game, they are either extremely stupid and going to going to crash, or they are going to put all they can into the revamp and make the game work. Either way, the Final Fantasy title alone will buy it a second chance in the hearts of many FF fans I think, which is something no other game can say except this one when it comes to MMOs.

You guys shouldn't let the success of XIV affect your XI experience. Just enjoy the game for what it is right now.

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Originally Posted by Umichi

Here we go again... how many times will I have to put onmy tinfoil hat?FFXI is not going anywhere.. less people means they will structure the game around fewer players.. It might make a minor impact on the game if that.. but in the long run XI is still a profit machine...

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Ffxi will continue under the Classic Games / Nostalgia Gaming bracket even when your great-grandkids are running around but it will be monoserver / game-club type of thing. But it will never die, classics live forever in all genres, and I can't think of a more classic game than Ffxi.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

Ffxi will continue under the Classic Games / Nostalgia Gaming bracket even when your great-grandkids are running around but it will be monoserver / game-club type of thing. But it will never die, classics live forever in all genres, and I can't think of a more classic game than Ffxi.

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Nah, one day SE will randomly announce that they are no longer accepting anything but gold nuggets as payment and that you have pay in person at a truck stop in okinawa. People will desperately try to pay them, but SE only has 2 customer service reps. SE will keep the servers up indefinitely, but no one will be able to access them accept those guys from that "Glory hole" reality show.

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

Nah, one day SE will randomly announce that they are no longer accepting anything but gold nuggets as payment and that you have pay in person at a truck stop in okinawa. People will desperately try to pay them, but SE only has 2 customer service reps. SE will keep the servers up indefinitely, but no one will be able to access them accept those guys from that "Glory hole" reality show.

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I think you underestimate the power of Nostalgia Gaming in Japan, and the huge "Retro Culture" in Japan which applies to music and movies too. A lot of my JP friends don't play any games except FFxi, its like a Cult, and the older it gets, the more Retro Classic it becomes, it is a an unstoppable snowball effect of Classicdom.
But yes the days of mass-servers and large playerbase are over, no question. But what you have to remember is that Vanadiel is huge already, it is a fully-formed world, it doesn't need constant expansions to keep it running as a niche-game for fans. If SE have another mainstream mega-success game in the future, a tiny fraction of that money would be enough to keep FFxi running on skeleton-mode. I don't see it dying in my lifetime at least, I just see it becoming a single-server niche game eventually. But of course nobody knows the future, I'm just speculating.

Not gonna lie, After playing 14, I'm excited to play it. But the thing that makes me sad is that while I played it, I realized how much I miss playing with my Playstation Controller

With the way things are now, How could anyone return to ffXI in 3 months? New adoulin gear will be added, and stuff will likely mean that returning players will be far behind in gear, and will be unable to get into events.

Also, the only games that ffXIV should be compared to are WoW and FFXI. Blizzard and Square Enix are the only developers that can create MMOs on their own budgets. Every other developer has to depend on investors, and when their investors can't get their money back, they switch to F2P. Switching to F2P will remove the monthly subscription fees, but will also introduce a pay-to-win system, which makes large amounts of money extremely fast. Square Enix will not have this kind of pressure because there are no investors to pay off. FFXIV will continue to receive quality updates that will keep the game alive for a very long time.

That being said, I think any population decreases in ffXI won't really matter. They can always perform server merges if people have too much trouble finding events.

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Originally Posted by Earwig

That being said, I think any population decreases in ffXI won't really matter. They can always perform server merges if people have too much trouble finding events.

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While its true that the size of the server population will not matter much because of merges, the profit made from the game will go down if people quit, that will effect SE's investment of money into the game I'm sure, which effects the size of the development team, which effects our updates. Less updates will make people leave as well, which creates the spiral of death for the game.
Step A: Players quit.
Step B: FFXI makes less money.
Step C: The money spent to improve FFXI goes down.
Step D: The updates get smaller and it takes more time for things to get done.
Step E: Repeat.

This cycle always exists, its just becoming accelerated right now because SoA already drove a lot of people away with its content and now FFXIV is coming up. I expect server merges will become more frequent because of it, so it might not seem like the population is dropping as much and events will still be possible, but it still effects us all.

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Originally Posted by Anjou

Don't count on it, you avoid the game like it's the plague, that's cool, but don't trash it because you don't like it. People will like it, you can't control that by constantly bringing it down. I used to be just like you, I hated abyssea, I hated XIV, but now look at my stance on Abyssea: I love it now. Anything short of the same reason for FFXIV is bogus, because in XIV your character is more than just a character than what it is in XI. You can legitimately create your character to your liking instead of "Ok pick face...4 and...hair A" now you're picking their skin tone, eye colors (Yes I said colors, meaning heterochromia), height, hair color, etc. Not only that but the environment that XIV is in put me in a much more 'healthy' environment than the pseudo-cold war that XI is in, and people were just much more friendlier.

People flock to a game with a friendly community, can you legitimately say XI's community is friendly? No, it is not sadly, I truly wish it was but every server that I've seen people are only interested in helping -if- they get something out of it in return, otherwise people won't even look at you. I met a great friend who's helped me through my limit breaks (Despite having to solo the first one) but every time I ask for help with things that are trivial to a single lvl 99 player, no one will ever volunteer to help. XIV I didn't have that problem, so you mean to tell me that "People are just gonna come back, cya in xyz amount of time"? Are you serious? Why would I wanna come back to a game that's nothing but a giant headache to me both with the content and the community, when XIV is offering brand new stuff that is new player friendly and I have the community to play with and enjoy this content instead of hunting solo for toy weapons in CoP, RotZ, and ToAU? I can tell you I'd rather go play with friends, and when my desktop gets fixed you won't be seeing me anywhere around here anymore :D

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Exactly! And it shows even more on the forums when people trash others. The way the game mechanics forcing people to depend on others to get things done is the problem because either everyone else has things they need to do, or plain lazy after getting things done and don't feel like going back to old content to help others.

Although I think its good to help people, I mean sooner of later they are going to catch up and start joining parties with you, if they don't quit first..

Those numbers are meaningless, especially if lolPSO2 held the record previously. Give me a break.

people overreacting again for nothing, FFXI isnt gonna die for another few years.

I don't understand why anyone will bash FFXIV. I get people love FFXI but in reality it's the same family. Just 14 is the next new version.

And every Final Fantasy game I've played always had improvements, which I'm sure 14 has everything we complained about.

After watching many videos, it seems like they did an impressive job. Although I remember day 1, no coordination, people were lost and just about everything around you was able to wipe everyone.

And they only had barely a few jobs. I cried because I bought the collectors addition, got mugged by 2 guys on my way home. Went back to buy another one. Over $200 spent on disappointment.

So yeah I remember how bad it was, and will never forget that moment but from speaking to others, I hear the improvements are insane.

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Originally Posted by Daemon

I cried because I bought the collectors addition, got mugged by 2 guys on my way home. Went back to buy another one. Over $200 spent on disappointment.

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Seriously?!?! You got mugged for a game disc? WTF is the world coming to?

My buddy dropped $2k on a top end computer just to play it and he said he felt like he was robbed, but man... you actually got mugged?

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Originally Posted by FrankReynolds

Seriously?!?! You got mugged for a game disc? WTF is the world coming to?

My buddy dropped $2k on a top end computer just to play it and he said he felt like he was robbed, but man... you actually got mugged?

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Yeah now I learned now not to walk out of a game store sporting a "Game stop" bag the size big enough to say "Jump me on the corner and steal my computer game you won't play or sell easily because you are an idiot thinking it was a Game Console instead."

That's how New York City is, especially when a mall decides to occupy a space near the ghetto projects where people will kill you for $5 to buy crack.

For a lot of people, the issue is that they moved away from what made XI great and more towards what made WoW great. FFXI is among a dying breed because it never boasted ELEVENTY MILLION PLAYERS.

From my perspective, an example of that is the party grinder. That's what so many of us loved about XI cuz you made friends while partying. You also learned things about your job which is something you don't learn while solo questing.

FFXIV, like WoW, you can dungeon grind all the way up or quest grind all the way up but party-grinding is the least effective method (because they designed it that way).

Is it any sillier to kill 40 rats because you want exp than it is to kill 40 rats because the NPC tells you to?

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Originally Posted by OmnysValefor

For a lot of people, the issue is that they moved away from what made XI great and more towards what made WoW great. FFXI is among a dying breed because it never boasted ELEVENTY MILLION PLAYERS.

From my perspective, an example of that is the party grinder. That's what so many of us loved about XI cuz you made friends while partying. You also learned things about your job which is something you don't learn while solo questing.

FFXIV, like WoW, you can dungeon grind all the way up or quest grind all the way up but party-grinding is the least effective method (because they designed it that way).

Is it any sillier to kill 40 rats because you want exp than it is to kill 40 rats because the NPC tells you to?

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Yeah I wonder how long will it take for people to start knowing the game, gear, statistics and then change into "I only party with you if you have this, this and that."

Which is why FFXI is failing. People too busy worried about getting the next big item. Even if they have to step on you, leave you behind.

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Originally Posted by OmnysValefor

For a lot of people, the issue is that they moved away from what made XI great and more towards what made WoW great.

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XIV already has what made XI great: the words Final Fantasy in the title.

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That's what so many of us loved about XI cuz you made friends while partying. You also learned things about your job which is something you don't learn while solo questing.

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I am tempted to go into how false both of these claims are, but suffice to say the "questing won't help you learn your job" mentality has been debunked several times over. Not to mention a person can party-grind to cap and still not know how to play.

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Is it any sillier to kill 40 rats because you want exp than it is to kill 40 rats because the NPC tells you to?

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To answer your question, yes. At least when the NPC tells you about their rat problem they're giving you context, making the whole thing driven by an in-world purpose. I felt more as part of the game world when given context on my journey to level cap over putting up with false standards during the leveling process; there's plenty of that in endgame already.

Sorry, what exactly do you learn about healing and managing hate when you solo to cap?

How do you know if you have a proper tanking style if you're solo?

Mage solo play is go all-out guns-blazin before your target kills you, while mage party play is to maximize damage while not pulling off the tank.

Yeah, no, having played old XI, and then WoW following that, I can tell you it was a lot more common to find level capped people who didn't understand the playstyle of their class in WoW than it was in pre-aby XI.

Actually you both are making a conflicting argument in a sense that not every player learns the same. What you learn in a party may not directly teach you the same values one can learn solo.

Then again not everyone has the same mind or the capacity to learn.

In a party situation I learned to conserve mp, control enmity, work as a team.

In a solo situation I learned to test different gear sets, mobs abilities, spells and how to reduce/resist damage. How to survive and know when a mob is too much to handle.

Then again I also learned more about other jobs and the abilities/gear they use for those jobs and how they improve their gameplay through conversation and observing.

But as solo I was able to learn about different atmas, buffs, food, self independence.

Party situation taught me to be patient, some people afk a lot, purposely DC or fall asleep in secret.
That some people Duel box at events and you would never known if you didn't pay attention.

Solo taught me to do it myself without depending on others.

So yeah both can teach you different things.

Seriously? a lot of people don't have any idea of what's going on @ ffxi? the game is on a huge decline and dying slowly. Most servers are ghost towns/ barely reaching 1k players online and half of that number are mules/afk non-active player (not counting weekends) Ffxi is dead, please check your facts before posting on these forums, ffxi servers are designed to hold 5-6k players

ffxi was so dead when so many players moved to ff14 back on version 1.0/1.22 , It will get worse when ARR release @ august 27 for ps3/pc.

Anyone that saids ffxi won't die is on a huge denial. Because it's already dead. theres only 17/33 servers atm, i expect another server merge soon , because there is no enough players atm to do new content now , unless you pay big amount of gil for it.