Final Fantasy XI 2.0

[Leonlionheart]

I think anyone arguing that revamping this game, which was never hugely successful in the first place, is just biased because they've sunk so much money/time into this thing.

Revamping FFXIV, which still has a chance and is not limited by a rather ... complete trash game engine is the better business choice.

Don't expect miracles, but expect more than you ever could with the limited abilities of FFXI's core

[Neisan_Quetz]

FFXI wasn't successful...?

[Alhanelem]

That's the right idea (@ Lionheart). The problem with investing the kind of money they've already invested in FFXIV is simply that they can't do a whole lot. The game's engine is proprietary, built for the ps2 (And the PC client to this day has some technical issues brought by incompatibilities with ps2 systems) and further butcherdly ported to the xbox version which has its own problems and some of the same limitations as the PS2.

To really do anything more than minor content updates to FFXI, they would have to drop support BOTH consoles. The game has a lot of players on consoles (mostly xbox now) and thus they would lose a lot of customers and probably not gain many new ones.

FFXI wasn't successful...?

Who says it wasn't successful? Doesn't mean that an engine overhaul and drop of console versions would make it more successful. It's an old game and it has been tried by many- many more than FFXIV and many more than a lot of MMOs. The potential new audience it could reach is not that large in my eyes.

[svengalis]

Sorry, you were wrong at the game's launch and you're much more wrong now. Even when it came out, there were worse MMOs out there, FFXIV only got the attention and hate that it did because it was Final Fantasy, not some unknown name/concept.

The game has vastly improved in the year since its launch, and I actually find it fun to play now, even though they're far from done with their reinvention work.

Of course, it's no suprise that you'll find nothing but haters on the subject of FFXIV on the FFXI forum.

(This does not mean I'm upset or unhappy about FFXI, as i'm not, I'm still subscribed, still playing, and still enjoying. however, after all these years, I'm at the point where I have to consider looking in another direction as the limitations on FFXI are preventing it from changing and growing much more.)

Money isn't being used on FFXI because there isn't much that money can do to enhance it other than produce the next patch faster. They can't make sweeping changes to the game without upsetting a huge chunk of their users (the players playing on consoles, both PS2 and xbox 360- it would have to drop BOTH of them to really free the game from its shackles).

I saw this on the first page in the FF XIV forums. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...3-Pay-for-what

They could do what they are doing for XIV and do it to XI instead, yeah they might have to drop PS2 support but that is it. If FF XIV can run on PS3 then a revamped XI could run on Xbox 360.

[Leonlionheart]

FFXI wasn't successful...?

L2Read

"not hugely successful" =/= not successful

it also had a rather bad release

[svengalis]

SWG can't be considered that big of a faliure when it lasted as long as it did. DDO was meh when it came out (not a critical faliure but not particularly good either). and DDO Unlimited was a significant success and step up.

No, reworking an 8 year old game would not have gained them lots of new players. Spending a lot of time and money to update a really old product with no likelyhood of return on the investment is not a good idea.

Revamping a successful game vs revamping a failed one hmmm which would I choose?

[Leonlionheart]

Revamping a successful game vs revamping a failed one hmmm which would I choose?

more along the lines of

revamping a xmillion dollar investment that hasn't had any pay back whatsoever, but has potential

vs

revamping an old investment that has payed for itself and has been dying at a steady rate for years and has a "technological cap" that won't allow furthering it greatly without a complete rewrite of the game engine

[svengalis]

I think anyone arguing that revamping this game, which was never hugely successful in the first place, is just biased because they've sunk so much money/time into this thing.

Revamping FFXIV, which still has a chance and is not limited by a rather ... complete trash game engine is the better business choice.

Don't expect miracles, but expect more than you ever could with the limited abilities of FFXI's core

Are you serious? FF XI at one time had 500k subscribers. XIV I think has 30k according to someone else. The game is like a ghost town when I log on. The game got industry wide bad reviews. Most people are not going to think twice when looking at this game because of how it was first launched.

[Leonlionheart]

Are you serious? FF XI at one time had 500k subscribers. XIV I think has 30k according to someone else. The game is like a ghost town when I log on. The game got industry wide bad reviews. Most people are not going to think twice when looking at this game because of how it was first launched.

Rift's launch month had 1million subscribers.

FFXI also got very poor reviews

[Neisan_Quetz]

So your giant list of MMOs that were a huge success over FFXI is...