Classic server, what's the argument against it now?

[Alhanelem]

What strikes me as incredibly amusing in this whole argument is that there's actually no need to build any kind of legacy server.
All the ingredients to make an artificially capped enviroment are right here, with all of today's QoL improvements.

All you need is a group of reliable people that want to start a legacy group with you.

Well, we're you're missing something that, admittedly, I've seen people asing for- being able to level sync to whatever level you want. It seems like that might not be a terrible compromise. While I've never really seen it as necessary and expressed such in threads about it, it could actually be a good step for nostalgia seekers.

[Shirai]

This exists among all MMOs, yet people don't do it unless their has been a progression servers made. This has been discussed to death in the several threads that always come up for this,

Have you even tried?

[Seillan]

Have you even tried?

I definitely don't have a dog in this fight (as I mentioned before) but I've never found the "create the experience yourself" argument to be very realistic. If this was any kind of game other than an mmorpg, maybe I could see a self-enforced ruleset like that being viable, but in a game like this, you end up isolating yourself to the rest of the community when you try to create artificial barriers. It's just not the same as having a server dedicated to that ruleset, where you have an mmo-sized group of others playing it with you. Unless you can somehow convince 100s to 1000s of others to restrict themselves along with you (and to keep doing so, despite constantly being tempted to join the rest of the server), you're going to be playing a very lonely game, and I doubt many want that in an mmorpg.

[detlef]

P****** s****** exist with the 75 cap and have more players than some actual servers. This shows that more than enough demand exists for a 75 cap server to exist. I'm not sure why you keep trying to ignore this anhelalhem but its the truth. Get over yourself.

Is this really true? I thought even the most populated ones had less than 100 total players.

[Kagetachi]

The biggest problem with trying to force a server that doesn't have "new content" is that the game database is most likely a living database, it gets updated and they don't retain too many older versions. The same issue that Star Wars Galaxies faced. People wanted to play the version of the game before they broke everything but there was no way to restore it to that point. This is probably very likely true with FFXI as they continually changing the user local side dat file formats to try to prevent people from dat mining. I feel that there are aspects to FFXI at the level 75 cap that people enjoyed doing, and new MMOs have not take up yet.

At the point that Abyssea was released and the level caps increased, I think that FFXI was already at the point where it was starting to die off.

The level 75 cap was decided by Tanaka because of fear over convert being too powerful. If they had not placed that into effect a few months after NA release, I think the game would have developed more naturally over time with expansions. CoP lvl 80, ToAU lvl 85, WoTG 90. But we would have had a very different game experience as well.

What is the content you are after from "Classic FFXI"? Long grindy level parties? the end-game Group vs Group Raid Monster Hunts? Raiding Dynamis(large free roam raid instance)? Raiding Sky in an open world raid dungeon? I know that FFXI players never really called it Raiding but that is what it is.

Unfortunetly FFXIV has yet to implement these types of content. In Theory, they have GvG Raid Monster Hunts in the works. The other 2 I have no clue about.

[Alhanelem]

Is this really true? I thought even the most populated ones had less than 100 total players.

I've never heard of illicit servers having more players than the real ones have even now. And I'd bet money on a higher share of those players being multiboxed characters. Resorting to the underground is an involved process and it's not something just anyone will do, so there's a lot of barriers (even ignoring the legality barrier) to entry for a such server to even come close to matching the pop of real servers.

The level 75 cap was decided by Tanaka because of fear over convert being too powerful. If they had not placed that into effect a few months after NA release, I think the game would have developed more naturally over time with expansions. CoP lvl 80, ToAU lvl 85, WoTG 90. But we would have had a very different game experience as well.

I've pointed this out in the past- The main problem with the level cap rise is it came after several years and multiple expansions never changing the cap. If this happened more gradually and nautrally with each expansion, it probably could have gone over smoother. But I don't believe that the new levels themselves directly harmed the game, rather it was a myriad set of issues coming together. Abyssea being the biggest one, and not refreshing most existing content in the process of raising the cap (at least, not until it was far too late)

[PlumbGame]

Come on guys, we all know people don't box or have mules on the real servers.

[bungiefanNA]

Most of the unofficial servers I've seen pages for have rules against multiboxing.

[Alhanelem]

Most of the unofficial servers I've seen pages for have rules against multiboxing.

I find that hard to believe, considering it's perfectly legitimate and allowed on the real game.

[bungiefanNA]

Those unofficial servers are usually running on a single computer, while the real servers run one world on multiple servers, with zones split between servers, as well as the AH being on a separate server. Official FFXI can handle 4000+ people being online on a server, but only about 700 people in a zone, like in Beseiged, because that zone runs on a different server to handle the load. Unofficial servers are usually running on a home computer, or a single server-grade computer, so they don't have the RAM and CPU resources to handle a huge population.

The operators don't want one person monopolizing CPU and RAM, and also, they have some old HNM-style spawns they don't want one person to be able to monopolize with multiple characters.