The reason XI is still a profitable and popular mmorpg.

The reason XI is still running and is popular so long after creation, in spite of strong competition from other games with far bigger budgets is because it fulfills a niche that players want and that these bigger games cannot ever provide.

XI has long hard goals that appeal to progression junkies, difficult and somewhat unforgiving gameplay, region free servers, less spammy rotation based combat, a lack of UI community features that force players into community interaction, high rewards for progression that holds you above others, is faithful to the world / lore, hands off moderation over community interactions, impresses on players that this is a world and not a video game.

The reason the game is still running is because it tries hard to stay true to what its always been, and should always try to do that. Many of the things above would be considered gross negatives in modern mmorpgs, but a large niche of players do not see it that way (and when I say they don't see it that way, I mean they are here).

Even if many of us complain about the "grind" or the difficulty, the drop rates or other things in the moment, we still login tomorrow because even if we moan about it we kind of like it for some reason or another. The day I stop logging in, will be the day I have nothing left to work towards and little else.

To use an analogy, FFXI is like an extra hot spicy 9 alarm chicken wings seller on the side of the road next to a sea of big chain fried chicken sellers.

XI will always have a place as long as it remains true to what it is, and does not try to copy bigger games too much. If you try to copy the bigger games, you will fail because they already do that better than you ever can.

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XI will always have a place as long as it remains true to what it is, and does not try to copy bigger games too much. If you try to copy the bigger games, you will fail because they already do that better than you ever can.

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I don't know. I have met a kid in XIV who knew a lot of XI because of her mother. She once encouraged me to play with her on a private server. She only is paying for XIV because she thinks she can see the future.

The only reason it's profitable is they stopped enforcing the rules and make money from allowing bad actors to run rampant.

If the bots and the hexaboxers got banned for breaking the tos the game would be over.

The only reason it appears to be "popular" is said hexaboxers. The real population is at or under 10k. That's far from popular.

I totally agree with the OP.

I would add that FFXI allows for entirely Unique Augments.

I have Augments that no other person in the Universe has got.

I have a Gala Corsage with STR+4 Fire-Def +19. Good luck trying to get that same Augment in FOV-NM battles.

Less unique but still rare Augments, like Linos flute with Quad-Attack +3.

ROLE-PLAYING GAMES have always, since the pen-and-paper / dice / tabletop AD&D games of the early 1980s, strived to make each Player Character unique and festooned with Novelty. No RPG Player wants their character to be identical to other player characters.

Fake RPGs offer Linear Gaming, you must go from this to this to this etc. even putting big glowing !exclamation marks! over the next this-then-this location.

Not enjoying missions / quests anymore? In FFXI you can stop doing missions at any time you like, without it affecting your Player Character's growth or <sightseeing> or combat arcade thrills. No Linear voice is commanding you to complete stuff, you can quit missions and just go pwn mobs, hunt NMs, or go Augmenting uniquely novel personal-stylez <you can't have this> type of crazy augments.

FFXI offers FREEDOM, go your own way, be unique, use unorthodox kiting / pinning / DOT strategies, experiment with novel or even unique equipment or bizarre but successful party job setups.

FFXI is the only pure RPG on the market, because it is not Linear, it offers freedom and uniqueness and imaginative play. And imaginative free unique play styles were always the true heart of RPGs.
:cool:

Well, you have to ask why the bigger game is bigger. Copying it wholesale obviously isn't a good idea, but they had to have ticked more of the "what makes a successful game" boxes (Note that "popular IP" is definitely one of those boxes) to become bigger than something that's smaller, success rarely happens by accident.

You figure out what attributes of the successful game were the biggest contributors to it being successful. Then, if those things make sense for your game, do them. But not all of them will- Often times, changes made to draw new players can alienate existing ones, so if there isn't a net gain, there isn't any measure by which it was worth doing.

Implementation also matters. Take the FFXIV Novice Network and the FFXI assist channel. Both are meant to do the same thing. But sprouts can stay in the novice network as long as they want until they meet the game's definition of not being a novice anymore. While for FFXI, they decided to just put set time limits on it for some reason (concern about bots? I don't know- but that's easily solved by making it invite based). They did later increase the time limit, but it's still a time limit- Mission/story progress should also have been a fector.

So, SOMETIMES, copying what the successful game does can work. But only if it makes sense in the context of your game, and if it's implemented correctly.

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Originally Posted by Uriah

The only reason it's profitable is they stopped enforcing the rules and make money from allowing bad actors to run rampant.

If the bots and the hexaboxers got banned for breaking the tos the game would be over.

The only reason it appears to be "popular" is said hexaboxers. The real population is at or under 10k. That's far from popular.

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You don't have access to their financials to make this statement.

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Originally Posted by Sp1cyryan

You don't have access to their financials to make this statement.

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While it's probably not totally out of left field, I'm really tired of people making up numbers and assertions without any actual data to back it up (Not to mention people who don't cite sources when asked to)

Well, he isn't wrong about FFXI's far from popular. Only "popular" towards the JP community. Either EN community may not like the way this game is or SE is not doing enough to keep up with the numbers.

This thread is clearly a propaganda.

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Originally Posted by Zehira

Well, he isn't wrong about FFXI's far from popular. Only "popular" towards the JP community. Either EN community may not like the way this game is or SE is not doing enough to keep up with the numbers.

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I don't really disagree with that, but you still don't fabricate numbers to make your case. You get data to support your assertions or you don't make them until you have data for them.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I don't really disagree with that, but you still don't fabricate numbers to make your case. You get data to support your assertions or you don't make them until you have data for them.

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While SE don't share their secret data to public, you can get data from this forum easily. It has been proven from time to time not enough people visit here. EN community of the other game has been more louder than anyone else.

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While SE don't share their secret data to public, you can get data from this forum easily. It has been proven from time to time not enough people visit here. EN community of the other game has been more louder than anyone else.

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??? There's no way to measure what you're talking about. Even doing things like /sea all on your server isn't accurate because that isn't all players on your server. Different people are active at different times, and some times are more favored than others and thus the best you can do is approximate it, but even then it's a very vague pice of data.

The number of people on the forum isn't a very good indicator of game popularity. Not every game even has a forum. Talking about games doesn't make people participants either.

This forum was kind of more active when there's a free login campaign so yes it can give them a permit to post here during that time. Asura got a lot more as well so there a feedback from players who played for free.

It seems more and more people are going to play FFXI for free when there's another login campaign (which is a better choice).

The problem with your argument is there are still plenty of people who play when there's not a free campaign. They just don't come here.

You didn't pay attention when there plenty of threads complaining about the Sortie issues and you made fun of Asura. That's where during the free login campaign. That's not even the first time that happened.

Once the free login campaign ended and people who don't pay forgot to logout this forum get their avatars hidden. That's a machine that is kicking people out.

This forum is not used much because back in the day the mods were highly ban happy (like you have no idea how bad they used to be), and many people thought being banned on the forum was linked to your ingame account due to how they worded it and forced linking.

In reality a forum ban does not have any impact on your game account at all, and also the moderators don't ban here much anymore.

The original reason they were so ban happy I think, was because they were mad they were asked to moderate a forum ontop of all their other work they had to do in the game moderation. They changed how they operate years back.

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You didn't pay attention when there plenty of threads complaining about the Sortie issues and you made fun of Asura.

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I'm not (usually) making fun of Asura I'm merely stating facts about it. i.e. it's overcrowded (fact) and other servers would benefit from them transferring to them (also fact) and that being ovecrowded means more lag, longer wait times, more bots, etc (also facts). The asura topic has been going on for some time, it doesn't have anything to do with free campaign users.

Nobody gets their avatar hidden. Neither your posts, avatar or anything else about you is hidden when you aren't logged in on the forum. Where are you getting these ideas? This isn't specific to free players, subscribed users who cancel also can't log in once they get logged out just the same as those free users.

I'm not sure what your point is, this topic isn't about any of this stuff. Why are you bringing other topcis into here?

As far as banning poeple, they are just as "ban happy" as they've always been, they just aren't checking this forum as routinely as they have their hands full with the XIV forum, where blinking the wrong way can get you banned. But the primary reason they're so strict in any case is that the forums are public-facing. You don't have to be a player, active or otherwise, to view them, and on top of that, they don't mind banning people because it doesn't affect their ability to play the game they're paying money for. So it's in their best interest to keep the forums as clean as possible.

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I'm not sure what your point is, this topic isn't about any of this stuff. Why are you bringing other topcis into here?

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People are free to say what they want after all this topic is insignificant. You likely forever keep derailing almost every thread into a flame war like you are bored and have nothing else better to do with your time.

If in-game rules don't matter, forum rules don't matter.

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Originally Posted by Zehira

People are free to say what they want after all this topic is insignificant. You likely forever keep derailing almost every thread into a flame war like you are bored and have nothing else better to do with your time.

If in-game rules don't matter, forum rules don't matter.

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Children children, don’t make me get the water bottle

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People are free to say what they want after all this topic is insignificant.

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You continue to imply things that aren't true. No one said you couldn't say what you want. I'm just pointing out the fact that your comments aren't relevant to the topic, with the expectation that you would hopefully counter with why I should see them as relevant.

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You likely forever keep derailing almost every thread into a flame war

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If anyone derailed this thread it's you, but don't let me stop you from making a fool of yourself. After all, you can say what you want!

None of your posts in this thread have really made much sense, but I'm totally all for your right to post things that don't make sense.

https://i.imgur.com/fEejuzz.png

What a great depression. I wrote a code to keep him off my screen. As many of you felt the same way, I was tired of arguments since I speak multiple languages... Personal attacks, criticisms and propaganda are never okay. Arguments will never win and only cause people to lose interest in playing the game. THOUGH I don't have many days left here and probably will only play the game for free from now until SE start investing money in something big which I highly doubt they will.

I'd prefer truth over facts. I do encourage people to stop coming back to the game if they are not happy and have never been.

As for XI being a profitable mmorpg, the entire communities are completely divided. Yes, I made a fool of myself for advertising this game to FFXI vets who quit years back. Only few came back and played for a month. Now I am stuck with them in the XIV world. This is from my experience and nothing more.

Zehira is Zehira. I usually don't bother posting on many threads like that guy does. For solid discussions, I'd recommend going to FFXIAH. Plenty of information there.

It's sad to know any private server's communities can pretty much more healthier than retail itself.

spaghetti poster posts spaghetti

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Originally Posted by Pixela

spaghetti poster posts spaghetti

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You mean I am a straight girl that will hook up with lesbians just because we want laid? You know what? XIV is perfectly suited for that. I don't think SE would see anything wrong with that.

Just saying.

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What a great depression. I wrote a code to keep him off my screen. As many of you felt the same way, I was tired of arguments since I speak multiple languages... Personal attacks, criticisms and propaganda are never okay. Arguments will never win and only cause people to lose interest in playing the game. THOUGH I don't have many days left here and probably will only play the game for free from now until SE start investing money in something big which I highly doubt they will.

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I have to admit it's really funny that someone would go to all that trouble when the forum has an ignore feature.
So you won't ever see this but I've never made any personal attacks against you. Criticism however is part of life and is entirely okay when it's constructive and with tact.

Arguments are one of the things forums are for. What you and others may not understand is an argument is not the same thing as a fight. An argument is a logical process by which people try to convince someone of their position by use of rational thought and logic. It is part of civilized discussion. A fight is just a group of people being angry at each other, which is what I think you're really talking about.

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I usually don't bother posting on many threads like that guy does.

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"That guy" enjoys chatting and discussion and likes reading what other people have to say about things. There's nothing wrong with that?

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I'd prefer truth over facts.

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A distinction without a difference. Truth and fact are synonyms.

I'm sorry that you got so upset by my being here that you actually wrote code to edit me out of your view of the forum. But I really haven't done anything wrong, so I don't know what you're so upset about. I am all about understanding others and I'd really like to understand what the issue is here.

(Someone should really quote me here. :p )

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

(Someone should really quote me here. :p )

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I also wrote a code for that but right now the block is disabled. :cool:

>blocking people on a forum

https://i.imgur.com/qrBac15.jpg

Well yes, people have found that feature more useful for the forums in general. That's how the internet is, however, this community is too small to block people.

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Originally Posted by Zehira

Well yes, people have found that feature more useful for the forums in general. That's how the internet is, however, this community is too small to block people.

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How about addressing me?

I really don't have anything against you, and I'm sorry if you feel that I do. What we have here is a misunderstanding. And it usually is a good idea to try to work out such misunderstandings rather than shut people down outright. I certainly haven't done that for you, and sometimes I appriciate your posts. You just made a few here in this thread that didn't make sense to me.

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I also wrote a code for that but right now

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The only way this would work is if names were included in the quote= brackets, which is very easy to not do. Otherwise, your script would affect other people's replies that you may still want to read, as well as other people who could coincidentally use some of the same words.

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Originally Posted by Zehira

https://i.imgur.com/fEejuzz.png

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How do you get dark mode?

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Originally Posted by Catmato

How do you get dark mode?

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I use Dark Reader extension for Chrome. However, there's one problem. Every official post like Matsui's has the light green image on its background making white text more difficult to read. You may want to use another extension called uBlock Origin (works on many different web browsers) to remove the image. The same one I used to remove Alhanelem. Whoops.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

How about addressing me?

I really don't have anything against you, and I'm sorry if you feel that I do. What we have here is a misunderstanding. And it usually is a good idea to try to work out such misunderstandings rather than shut people down outright. I certainly haven't done that for you, and sometimes I appriciate your posts. You just made a few here in this thread that didn't make sense to me.

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It's kinda not misunderstanding to be honest. People like me should not expect something what SE will do and will not do like a new expansion, remastering, porting to console, etc even if FFXI is considered a profitable mmorpg. FFXI is no way a popular game. Just don't give people any wrong idea though. I know we all want something new like a big surprise but I have came to realize this is the game you are totally fine with and I feel like this is just not for me anymore (waiting for the STF).

I feel like the new prime weapons probably gonna devour your soul and I don't have time for that. I prefer new games.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

The only way this would work is if names were included in the quote= brackets, which is very easy to not do. Otherwise, your script would affect other people's replies that you may still want to read, as well as other people who could coincidentally use some of the same words.

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It's just content filtering. Same idea as ad blocking if you can able to understand the source of this webpage.

The OP makes good points; even with the addition of trust, XI still feels like XI. The grind is still there; almost as if it were "Modernized."

I really don't know what XIV is, or what it wants to be...Nor do I believe the teams knows. The job design of XIV is freaking horrid. I went from liking nearly every class in their previous MMO, to virtually none in their latest one.

A crime what they did to BLU. Not being able to complete the story on a class in a Final Fantasy game is criminal. I digress...Actually I don't, they need to change that but I doubt they will, after becoming the new WoW.....

I agree with OP, as someone who has been playing FFXI for three years coming from XIV , FFXI is a much better game with a better sense of community and freedom, a better battle system too as well


FFXIV for me is a solo game with mutiplayer stuff like dungeons, which you can totally not even interact with one another, do your spammy boring rotation and leave the dungeon, never having to see your party members again

FFXIV is so boring for me and after 7 years, I retired my lalafell I'm the sea of clouds, FFXI is my home now

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People like me should not expect something what SE will do and will not do like a new expansion, remastering, porting to console, etc even if FFXI is considered a profitable mmorpg. FFXI is no way a popular game.

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I mean, I never said these things.... While It would certainly be nice if they did, it's certainly not in any realm of my expectations that they will do so. I know quite well that "popular" is really not the best word to describe things here.

I'm in agreement with you here, on pretty much everything you said.- So again, I'm not really sure why you've felt compelled to edit me out of the forum.

I still enjoy this game casually. It's unlikely I'm going to bother with these new weapon series and I don't know if I'll ever get a job to ML50. but I still enjoy the game on a here-and-there basis.

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FFXIV for me is a solo game

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I mean, they're both solo games really at this point. That said, FFXIV is huge on community, just not in the same places as you would expect. in FFXI, the sense of community came from the grinding and content we all did together. in FFXIV, most of the community interaction takes place outside of the content- Musical performances, "brothels," just hanging out in your friends' or guilds' estate halls, etc.

Whether you loved the crab grinding here or you love the.... after hours entertainment over there, I'm not one to judge. :p

XI is still XI because it is made of the PS2 game. We use Windower to get rid of some PS2 limitations. Well, that's not enough. Players have dreams of upgrading their game by replacing textures with high res packs and enabling a XIV-style crossbar plugin to make it feel like XIV 1.0.

XI's community is great... Well, not as good as WingsXI. 0 bots, 0 rmts, no spammy /yell. Multi-boxing not allowed. The economy is low because of no rmts. Can hold more than 7 items in the auction house at a time. Exp parties there are great too like old times.

As much as the old grinding parties were the heart of our community, I don't really miss them- (well, they're still here but not quite in the same way.) Why, you might ask? Because honestly the game itself wasn't the fun part, it was the community interaction. Which is all well and good, but we became a community because we were sharing a relatively boring experience. These days there's a lot more to do

As far as the private servers, well the reason there's no bots or RMT is because it's a niche community, and also because every user of those servers is circumventing the subscription fees. The RMT probably dont even know these private servers exist.

Very true about circumventing the subscription fees. Sad truth is back I was advertising the game to someone and she decided to run to that said private server and encouraged me to join with her. As much as I liked to try it for myself, it wasn't bad. Too many bugs.

Believe me, it won't last forever because it has no further development.

When you compare an mmorpg to the rest of the market you do not compare it to the market leaders, you compare it to the rest of the genre.

Star Trek Online, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, Rift, Eve Online, Black Desert, Guild Wars 2 etc

XI is popular because it has comparable numbers to the games mentioned above, however unlike the games mentioned above there are no free to play users on XI. Everyone playing this is paying to play it and so is a valued player, instead of a free user costing the company money.

Also to point out, that the costs of running XI are much lower than the games above due to being merged with XIV operations.

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When you compare an mmorpg to the rest of the market you do not compare it to the market leaders,

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When it comes to discussing popularity, that's.. exactly what you do. "More popular than this other game that isn't popular" isn't a good definition of popular.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

I mean, they're both solo games really at this point. That said, FFXIV is huge on community, just not in the same places as you would expect. in FFXI, the sense of community came from the grinding and content we all did together. in FFXIV, most of the community interaction takes place outside of the content- Musical performances, "brothels," just hanging out in your friends' or guilds' estate halls, etc.

Whether you loved the crab grinding here or you love the.... after hours entertainment over there, I'm not one to judge. :p

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yeah the community is huge but I have never felt so lonely in an MMO like FFXIV, I have gotten all my crafters and gathers to Level Cap so I didn't have to depend on anyone, I usually don't ask ppl for help with things so I was able to do everything myself.

I did S and A rank huntings and it was just going from point A to Point B and no one was rarely interacting with each other, Same as dungeons runs.

"Hello!, GG, thanks for the run" was the only interactions in dungeons I mostly get

my Free company wasn't much better,they did their raids and and savage runs and I did dungeons, I rarely interact with them and me, I left the FC soon afterwards and I have never Stuck to an FC in all my seven years playing

on FFXI, I asked for help and questions about what subjob to use. boss fights, omen, ect ect. FFXI forces you to interact with people to get stuff done or ask for Senergy crafting,

Im in a LS in FFXI and it feels more of community feeling than any of my time in ffxiv


in this game and age , FFXI forces you to interact with people, XIV you can play the game without every talking to someone

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

When it comes to discussing popularity, that's.. exactly what you do. "More popular than this other game that isn't popular" isn't a good definition of popular.

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If I say I'm making a good amount of money with my job and someone compares me to Jeff Beizos or Elon Musk and says I'm not that's not a sensible argument. Neither is it a fair comparison to say such and such game is dead because Fortnite.

You compare it to the majority of the market in that genre, not the top ones like wow, lost ark of 14.

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in this game and age , FFXI forces you to interact with people,

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Even then, this is only true to a certain extent today. You can still do most things by yourself, but there's a significant difference in efficiency when you work with other players instead.