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

[detlef]

Make that 7 likes.

I just returned to the free trial of FFXI. I have been playing for around 6 years and quit shortly after all of the abyssea non-sense. I'm returning to see what changes were made to the game. I wanted to see if they fixed the mess they had done. I am saddened to see that this was not the case. After my trial is over I will mostly probably join a private server with level 75s then deal with the game in the mess it is in now. Most of my friends have that I have made have done the same. My better half says I should stay here because it is piracy to go to a private server.

Let me tell you, what SE did to FFXI is piracy in a monetary sense. All these years they took my money, only to trash the game now with silver spoon giveaways to any challenge the game had. I miss my old Vanadiel. Since SE gives me no other option to stay with a classic server, I will be leaving after the trial end. Most of my friends came during the trial too to play. They didn't like it now as well and said they would be leaving too. I have seen this thread and have been speaking with my LS mates. They all want to go to the private server until things get better as well. As strange as it might be to you, we all share the same mindset.

I loved FFXI but this game is not the same game it was to me now. It has changed too much and in the wrong ways.

Hey, valid opinion. Sorry the game isn't what you wanted it to be. I hope you and your friends find what you are looking for and have a solid play experience wherever you end up.

[PlumbGame]

This is just another case of people drawing false conclusions / interpreting data incorrectly. 6 likes on a forum, therefore everyone must like it. Less people online now, therefore the game was higher quality back then. if 3 other studios can do a classic server (at least one of which was not actually made by the studio), then it will work for SE too. Too much conclusion drawing with not enough data.

We have provided so much data. Thanks for providing yours.

[PlumbGame]

I tend to think that Likes are a bit biased in that people will only bother to click it if it’s something they feel very strongly about or it’s a very well-written post. Since there’s no Dislike button, you can’t really draw any conclusion other than 6 people agreed enough to click Like.

There are myriad reasons why people who played then are not playing now. Maybe more time is required to focus on work or studies. Maybe they started a relationship or a family. Maybe the cost of the game became an issue. Maybe they found a pastime they enjoyed even more than FFXI. Maybe they identified the game as an addition and quit. And maybe, as you have indicated, they quite because the game wasn’t proceeding in the direction they wanted. The game is very different now.

But then, so are the people playing the game. The player base was very much comprised of 18-25 year old players 10 years ago. Too many people are looking at just the game then and now and not looking at the players who played the game then and now. That’s why I say that if you brought back 2005-2008 FFXI to 2015, there is a good chance that it would just fall flat on its face.

Well let’s just say that some people think that the process would be very easy to do. I think we both understand that it wouldn’t be a trivial thing for SE to do.

I can see what you are saying, but then use other games as an example. Not only have I ran into teenagers still play everquest, but what about all the 30+ 40+ year olds making up an at least 5k+ (this is being generous) population that just capped out their server on the TLP that launched?

You are trying to present "this is 2015, no one has time for this" type comment, but it is completely false, even more so with studies being shown all the time with the increasing popularity of gaming and stuff like LoL hitting 3/4 (iirc) the size of the superbowl in terms of people watching. People have all the time in the world to sit around and play, and hence if you need to look at the examples already given.

I won't say it isn't trivial, but it isn't as hard as you guys state, given the professionalism that you would assume a company like SE would have, they mostly would have to make older clients compatible with newer operating systems, and considering that they already have the system in place for current FFXI, they could use much of that in the appropriate areas. Obviously they don't just think it and it be done, but I think its more trivial than some of you think. A lot of you act like its requesting SE to send 3k people on a rocket to mars.

If you are talking about them rebuilding the game from the ground up, thats another story, but look how fast they churned out FFXIV 2.0, but apparently the capabilities aren't there for them to give a classic server? Come on, lets get real, and to assume they don't have old versions of the game? You can almost see every patch from the beginning on playonline (maybe the beginning, idk). I've never known people to just throw out stuff of importance, especially in this field.

This has been brought up several times in this thread and the multiple threads that all you guys arguing in have also responded. I know because I've given the same responses to all of you in almost every single one. You guys still haven't given any new data, and all that we have given is even more progression server success stories. Oh, and the population still dropping, and SE announcing they are done with major patches in Novembers, yet idea is still bad idea I guess.

[bungiefanNA]

The statistics saying more people played during the time when level 75 was the cap don't take into account causation. You have to determine the causation. Also, the environment has changed, so the incentives for people to make the choices they did has changed. The average age of the playerbase has changed, as well as the number of competing games and the types of games. Even if you released the same version of the software now as they had running back then, the change in incentives and options available means it likely wouldn't return the same statistics. We can't accurately predict what would happen if they released legacy servers. We just know that it is a big financial and temporal resource drain to attempt it. They would also have to advertise that they have done this, and they seem to be bad at advertising their MMOs.

[PlumbGame]

The statistics saying more people played during the time when level 75 was the cap don't take into account causation. You have to determine the causation. Also, the environment has changed, so the incentives for people to make the choices they did has changed. The average age of the playerbase has changed, as well as the number of competing games and the types of games. Even if you released the same version of the software now as they had running back then, the change in incentives and options available means it likely wouldn't return the same statistics. We can't accurately predict what would happen if they released legacy servers. We just know that it is a big financial and temporal resource drain to attempt it. They would also have to advertise that they have done this, and they seem to be bad at advertising their MMOs.

Aha, but you can accurately predict, based off the success of other games.

I think there may be some mistake here though. I feel you guys think we are saying that a "legacy server" or whatever you want to call it would bring 100s of thousands of players back to the game. No, it probably wont, BUT, it will probably bring more players to the game than the highest populated server has, definitely more than the majority of servers.

[machini]

I loved FFXI but this game is not the same game it was to me now. It has changed too much and in the wrong ways.

That is your opinion. And it is SE's opinion that the amount of money they would make off of a classic server would not be enough to warrant doing it. The sheer amount of work involved is daunting to someone who actually understands what it would entail.

First, you would need to determine what all has been changed from whatever specific point of time you choose as "classic". Then you need to revert all those changes back to that "classic" functionality. This will involve massive rewrites of huge sections of the server software. It will also require changes to the client, as you are removing functionality from the game that the client will expect, and the specific level of trust the client has in the client-server relationship for FFXI would mandate major client alterations.

Secondly, you need to do the same thing you did for the server software for all relevant databases. You need to rebuild mob spawn tables and loot tables for the game as they were at that specific point you chose. Which means that unless someone specifically documented all changes (and not a change log, but an actual "we tweaked variable x in calculation y by z%, and changed the number of placeholders for A mob to C from B") you're going to have to have someone scour change logs, and then player-created wikis, to try to create an approximation of those.

How much do you think it would cost to pay someone to do all that? How many man-hours do you think that would take? Because you need a person or people who are not only familiar with the specific client-server architecture that FFXI uses, but they also need to be familiar with the game mechanics themselves. And then they need to do massive changes to the client, the server, and the server's databases. How many thousands of hours do you think that would take? Just to go back, and check, one by one, each item in the game that existed at the time, check to see if its stats are correct based on what you think they were, and then remove anything that doesn't match?

The simple fact of the matter is that the amount of money SE would have to expend on creating your classic server would not approach the amount of money they would make from it. If the current number of subscribers is not enough to have them continue development for the current game, what makes you think you will get enough people to return to make a classic server break even, let alone be profitable?

I see too many people in this thread talking about things they have no understanding of, and assuming it must be easy, and cheap, because they have no inkling of the kind of effort or time it would take to do them, nor how much you would have to pay people to do the work. You are talking about thousands of man hours of reworking server source, database source, client source, client assets, POL backend, Squeenix Account Management to deal with that. How many subscribers do you think it would take to make that a break even proposition? Over what period of time? And then, not only do you have to pay to recreate that "classic" experience, you need people to maintain the servers, if for nothing else than to restart the machine when it crashes or the power goes out.

Now, not only have to incurred a huge expense in recreating that classic experience, but you run the risk of so fragmenting the existing playerbase that neither the live servers nor the classic server would be profitable. It's hard enough as it is on some servers to get a group together to do anything due to low population. If a classic server is such a demanded thing, as you and others seem to think it is, what do you think would happen if half of each existing server joined the classic server?

What would happen is that there would either need to be server mergers, or Live FFXI would have to shut down. There are not enough subscribers as it is to make squeenix want to continue FFXI development. What do you think would happen to FFXI if you not only incurred a huge cost in recreating a classic experience, but then drained so much of the player population away from the live game that the live game became even less profitable than it is now? So now you're out a huge amount of money from setting up the classic server, have fragmented your existing playerbase so much that live is not profitable, and what have you gained? You're going to need massive amounts of resubs for your classic server to offset the cost of having fragmented the existing playerbase, not even talking about making it profitable in the short term.

Because it needs to be profitable in the short term. They're not going to sink a hundred thousand USD or more into setting up a classic experience if it would take them 2 or 3 years to recoup that investment.

You and others really, really, really want a "classic" server. But you're considering this entirely from your feelings and desires, and not actually doing any thinking in regards to what effort is actually involved in doing it. It is not "simple" to do such a thing. It is not "easy" to do such a thing. It would not be "fast" to do such a thing. Game Developers generally do not hold on to 10 year old database information and source code for MMOs. I am under the impression that Square itself is notorious for dev teams destroying assets after a game is finalized so that other teams cannot use them.

Furthermore, all development done on this game requires PlayStation 2 Development Kits. There are not a lot of those left. I actually think Squeenix currently owns all the ones in existence that still function. Last time I checked, all development of the game client is done on the PS2 Dev Kits, and then is "ported" to PC. So now you are faced with the prospect of dwindling numbers of PS2 dev kits limiting possible development time. What is your solution to that? Recreate the tools on PC? That's a huge undertaking and extremely costly. So now you're out even more money on a classic server.

This is not going to happen. I'm sorry that hurts people's feelings, but that's the reality of the situation from someone with experience programming multiplayer online games.

[machini]

You see that? That is what goes through the minds of developers' heads, and the heads of accounting, and any other department that would be involved in approving the decision. Upon sober reflection of the type above, Squeenix has decided that it is not worth it to make a classic server. They've decided it isn't even worth it to continue work on current FFXI.

Please let this thread die with some dignity.

[nekroturkey]

from someone with experience programming multiplayer online games

You know who else has experience programming online games?

http://i.imgur.com/BFBSxzT.png

[PlumbGame]

You know who else has experience programming online games?

http://i.imgur.com/BFBSxzT.png

Stop with the logic, this nobody developer just stated the truth. The success that is currently right this minute as we speak happening with EQs TLP is fake, or the examples given in the OP.

All this person did was come into a thread, give their opinion that is completely opposite of the facts, stamp it with I'm a developer, then said to let this thread die.

[machini]

Stop with the logic, this nobody developer just stated the truth. The success that is currently right this minute as we speak happening with EQs TLP is fake.

Do you care to actually refute any of the points I make, or are you merely calling me out on my credentials? Because as far as I'm seeing this, you're all wrong, you cannot actually dispute anything I say, so you're latching on that one assertion and completely ignoring the merit of all the other arguments because you can't actually come up with with anything to counter them because I am right and you are wrong.

I understand you really, really want a classic server, but you need to accept reality.