Quote Originally Posted by Malefactor View Post
Okay this is what im madly curious about, and its kinda nagging at me. I assume they believe the profits coming in from the playerbase isnt sufficient to justify any further development and content costs, which is why they are doing it. However i took a look at EQ and DAOC, both games that are equally if not older.

I googled and saw EQ has had 1-2 major content patches/expansions each year, and its still going, even with a supposedly smaller playerbase than ffxi.

DAOC has an expansion coming out this year, with no apparent news on shutting down, again with a smaller playerbase.

From a very bare and uneducated assumption, this seems like its possible to keep the game going on a very small budget and have it under SE's portfolio as a cash cow.

What is different with ffxi? If someone could offer some explanation, the only thing i can think of is they wish to move their finances elsewhere into some other project.
I guess the main diff is the company has 2 other major and far newer MMOs and the board saw the subs for this one continue to dwindle and that the last expansion only lowered the # of subs. They probly want 11 dev team working on the other MMOs. We're getting to the point that they had to decide between raising the iLvl or wrapping it up...and they chose the latter

Other diffs is the issues with sony/microsoft over adding new content with limited resources. Cut off ps2/xbox as they're doing and you might see closer to EQ numbers. In addition, they may hope that some # of 11 players will move on to 14 long term.