Are server merges ever going to happen?

[Alhanelem]

Seems to me like the biggest mistake was designing the game to rely on the PS2's devkits rather than building it for PC and porting it over...

How else would you design a game to run on the PS2? Do it all on a workstation and take a shot in the dark as to whether or not it's going to work? Of course not. They originally set out to create an MMO on a console platform (which was a mistake), so it was developed primarily on ps2 hardware such that they could ensure that 1) it would work and 2) that it would meet but not exceed PS2 performance requirements (which, eventually it did exceed them, that's why ps2 version has blackout problems so often).

[Runespider]

everyone's tastes and preferences are different. Just because you don't want something, doesn't mean nobody else does. I would love to see the game's visuals upgraded (But without changing the overall art style. I'm only speaking of improving the texture resolutions, and other technical stuff to make it look more polished- Not fancier, just less... dated. Let me take advantage of my hardware.). Of course, in saying this, that doesn't mean that I think the game looks bad now. It doesn't- but it CAN be better. Your analogy of star wars is poor, since it isn't even part of the same industry, much less the same kind of thing. Remastering isn't adding CGI and fancy stuff, it's just updating the material to look more presentable on modern equipment. Even some really small things would help, like increasing the drawdistance or eliminating the back clipping plane entirely, because no one with a PC made in the last 10 years needs to have this to improve performance. And before you say anything, this is something they could easily do, because people already do it with Windower. Windower also can apply some simple lighting enhancements. The game also needs to support antialiasing, so we don't have to fake a high graphics resolution to make edges look smoother. These are all very basic things, and they don't change the graphics at all, they just improve visual clarity and eliminate detail-reducing things that we don't need to have to enhance performance.

The engine needs to be updated to actually use our graphics hardware. Currently, even the fastest, most powerful machines experience slowdown in FFXI with many characters on the screen. There's no good reason for this. FFXI only uses one CPU core and doesn't really use your graphics card at all, which means even the most modern PCs don't run the game as well as they should. These are technical problems that need to be addressed. Sorry you don't want a quality game experience, but many of us do.


I'm not in any way suggesting that they transform it's visuals into that of FFXIV (or any other game for that matter.)

At any rate, that was just one example of things older games do to stay relevant. Another one of those things is something some people here oddly enough complain about often- reducing the grind. Most games have realized their clientele mostly doesn't have the same time to devote that they used to, so the newer content they create either has less grind as a whole, or is designed in such a way that you don't have to spend many hours in one sitting.

The reason they put such a big effort into making FFXIV a success is because they feared its original failiure would irreperably damage the Final Fantasy brand (That is, the entire franchise, not just FFXI). They were afraid that after FFXIV 1.0, everyone would doubt their ability to produce quality games.

FFXI's biggest problem, more than anything else, has always been marketing. The game always has been and still is marketed poorly. They don't even try. Think of how many players might be in this game if they actually advertised it throughout the last 10 years. I still know lots of people who haven't even heard of the game other than my mentioning it to them. SE just doesn't know how to market things. Even FFXIV could be getting marketed better than it is.

The resentment in this forum definitely runs deep... in spite of the fact that FFXIV was being developed less than 2 years into FFXI's existence- largely because at the time they didn't expect the game would run for 10+ years. They figured they'd need to replace it in half that time. The fact that people are still here is a testament to how much better of a product they created than even they thought- but that doesn't mean they deserve to be hated on for making a new game.

You made it seem like the only way an old mmo could remain popular was to upgrade graphics, just because you like pretty hi-spec graphics it does not follow everyone else thinks the same. A fine oil painting doesn't look better if it's redone in CGI with photoshop and lens flares.

The point was that almost every "old" mmo has not done what you're talking about and all these old titles are still the mass of the mmo market, the new mmo titles like ffxiv, wildstar, gw2, tera etc are still the minority by comparison (and mainly made up of people that care more about graphics than a good game). I know XIV has pretty graphics, the problem for me is the art style. I personally don't like it at all, I like the original character designs of FFXI more. You probably find that incredibly hard to believe but it's true.

As for what you said about "the problem with FFXI was advertising"....well, you do know that FFXI and FFXIV have the same peak subscriber numbers right? If you're saying that the subscriber numbers for ffxi were bad due to poor advertising then you're also saying that the 600k subs ffxiv had is bad too because FFXIV has never gone above 600k subs, I would bet it's significantly lower now since they stopped releasing numbers a while back.

FFXI was as popular as FFXIV is right now at its peak so whatever they were doing was good enough, the reasons for the player loss from the peak 500k subscriber numbers I have already listed and had nothing to do with advertising.

[Alhanelem]

You made it seem like the only way an old mmo could remain popular was to upgrade graphics, just because you like pretty hi-spec graphics it does not follow everyone else thinks the same. A fine oil painting doesn't look better if it's redone in CGI with photoshop and lens flares.

No, that's not what I was saying. I mentioned it because it was easy to talk about and it is an example of something some MMOs have done to stay relevant. If you show someone who's never seent his game before some screenshots, they will probably prejudge it as ancient looking. You and I have been here a long time and can appreciate the work, care and attention that went into it a lot more because we're used to it. Even though I look back at XI's appearance fondly, I'd hardly describe it as a "fine oil painting" that can't be improved in any way. It looks great, but it's showing its age. The great masterpieces of paintings don't show their age because few to no artists of today can match the quality of their work, unlike computer graphics which can always get better because of advancing technology.

But again, that's just one example of things games have done to keep up. There are many other things, most of which tie in to adapting to the changing needs and wants of your clientele, something SE has been pretty slow to do in XI (Ten+ years to get a range indicator (9 I suppose if you count the color changing arrow thing) function? Come on.).

FFXI was as popular as FFXIV is right now at its peak

That's incorrect, as FFXI peaked at a little over 500k subs. For XIV, we only have total accounts data, where the last number given was 2.3 million accounts. Although that isn't subscriptions, in its last financial report SE said it had a total subscriber base of somewhere in the ballpark of 1 million total players. Given XI's state at the time, and Dragon Quest 10 only being available in Japan and the surrounding area, it is likely that XIV represents far more than half of that subscriber total. XIV has more players than XI ever had in any point in its history. And I can tell you, it has not a whole lot to do with the game itself. It's mostly about marketing - SE has done a far better job marketing the game than it did with XI- it could have been as successful, if not more, if XI invested more in marketing it outside Japan.

(Unfortunately, one of the few sites that tracked numbers for all MMOs has stopped updating the site because everyone has stopped giving out numbers. Not just XIV, not even WoW is giving out its numbers anymore. EVE, which was reported to still be growing in size last year, stopped giving its numbers as well. XIV isn't on the charts because 1.0 never gave out its data and ARR came out after this site stopped updating. But here's the link to the chart that includes XIs numbers: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png - peaked at around 550k subscribers. If you go to the site, there is even an excel file to download containing all their datapoints and their sources where available.)
Unfortunately there isn't any other sites that devoted themselves to tracking this data, and as was said, most companies don't give it out anymore.

[bungiefanNA]

There were PC games that were orted to PS2, like Deus Ex and Oni. It could have been done. However, SquareSoft was going for the world's first console-MMORPG, which they achieved. They were a console game company, not a PC game company back then. Sony claims EQOA was the first console MMORPG, but that was only in North America, because they delayed PS2 FFXI until after EQOA's release. FFXI ported amazingly well to PC considering how bad the FFVII and FFVIII ports were... Console gaming was also much simpler compared to PC gaming back in 2002, and you can understand how they didn't expect PC gaming to become so much more popular in some regions. Games were plug-in and play. PC games before XP required all sort of installation process, then getting drivers to work right, and possibly IRQ configuration. XP came out the same year FFXI launched. PC gaming dramatically improved under XP and Win7, versus Win2k/9x/etc. SE also had very little PC game-making experience back then, before ti was even SE.

[YosemiteYogorockBlondelle]

You should read the link that bungiefan provided under my thread with an guy describing the differences of culture or the audiences and comparisons for games and ffxi in japans years compared to america's types of play over many years in which this guy explains it lengthily detail. Be patient as this a is a rather long and separated into 2 section posts.

The Link was included under this forum:What's the Plans for FFXI's Future with Newer OS's\Operating Drivers/Software Coming?>

[bungiefanNA]

Or you know, you could have just linked it again rather than the game of promoting your own thread...

http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles...mmo-mans-land/

[Runespider]

No, that's not what I was saying. I mentioned it because it was easy to talk about and it is an example of something some MMOs have done to stay relevant. If you show someone who's never seent his game before some screenshots, they will probably prejudge it as ancient looking. You and I have been here a long time and can appreciate the work, care and attention that went into it a lot more because we're used to it. Even though I look back at XI's appearance fondly, I'd hardly describe it as a "fine oil painting" that can't be improved in any way. It looks great, but it's showing its age. The great masterpieces of paintings don't show their age because few to no artists of today can match the quality of their work, unlike computer graphics which can always get better because of advancing technology.

But again, that's just one example of things games have done to keep up. There are many other things, most of which tie in to adapting to the changing needs and wants of your clientele, something SE has been pretty slow to do in XI (Ten+ years to get a range indicator (9 I suppose if you count the color changing arrow thing) function? Come on.).

That's incorrect, as FFXI peaked at a little over 500k subs. For XIV, we only have total accounts data, where the last number given was 2.3 million accounts. Although that isn't subscriptions, in its last financial report SE said it had a total subscriber base of somewhere in the ballpark of 1 million total players. Given XI's state at the time, and Dragon Quest 10 only being available in Japan and the surrounding area, it is likely that XIV represents far more than half of that subscriber total. XIV has more players than XI ever had in any point in its history. And I can tell you, it has not a whole lot to do with the game itself. It's mostly about marketing - SE has done a far better job marketing the game than it did with XI- it could have been as successful, if not more, if XI invested more in marketing it outside Japan.

(Unfortunately, one of the few sites that tracked numbers for all MMOs has stopped updating the site because everyone has stopped giving out numbers. Not just XIV, not even WoW is giving out its numbers anymore. EVE, which was reported to still be growing in size last year, stopped giving its numbers as well. XIV isn't on the charts because 1.0 never gave out its data and ARR came out after this site stopped updating. But here's the link to the chart that includes XIs numbers: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png - peaked at around 550k subscribers. If you go to the site, there is even an excel file to download containing all their datapoints and their sources where available.)
Unfortunately there isn't any other sites that devoted themselves to tracking this data, and as was said, most companies don't give it out anymore.

Why would you even bring up accounts when the number is irrelevant? any mmo with a free trial during its prime will have millions of accounts... subscriber numbers are what matter on a p2p title as well you know. Square have only given 2 subscriber numbers for final fantasy xiv and the most recent was 500k exactly, and to be completely honest if final fantasy xi had a universal release date and not staggered it would of beat the subscriber numbers final fantasy xiv peaked at by a large margin too.

So in real terms Final fantasy XI is and always will be more successful than Final fantasy Xiv, guess pretty graphics aren't everything huh? This is not my opinion, it's just how it is. A game that cost 15 million to make that had 500k subscribers is more successful than a game that cost hundreds of millions to make twice, which has the same numbers.

So no I'm not incorrect, they had almost the exact same peak subscriber numbers. They are both as successful or failing as each other, you can't bash final fantasy xi for having low numbers without bashing the numbers of final fantasy xiv by comparison.

[Isal]

Seems to me like the biggest mistake was designing the game to rely on the PS2's devkits rather than building it for PC and porting it over... [...]

How else would you design a game to run on the PS2? [...] They originally set out to create an MMO on a console platform (which was a mistake), [...]

I'm a bit confused by your response, but in the end, it seems like we both agree it was a mistake.

Edit: I'll add in, in all fairness, hindsight being 20/20 and such when it comes to the mistake.

[Alhanelem]

I'm a bit confused by your response, but in the end, it seems like we both agree it was a mistake.

Edit: I'll add in, in all fairness, hindsight being 20/20 and such when it comes to the mistake.

I would agree that in fairness, they probably didn't forsee the limitations they would run into in the future by placing this kind of game on a console. They ended up making it a lot bigger than they originally had sought out to. However, I think it's fair to say that even at its launch, FFXI pushed the limits of the PS2.

Why would you even bring up accounts when the number is irrelevant?

1) you saying it's irrelevant doesn't make it irrelevant. It's the number of people who played the game for any amount of time, so it has meaning. If the game is not free to play, it also represents the number of copies sold. There are also games like Guild Wars 2 where it's the only statistic because the game is buy to play and has no subscription- so you have no way of knowing how many active users there are.
2) It's the only data available, so it's the only thing we could make any kind of judgement on.

However, even that data is quickly becoming hard to find because all MMOs are keeping those numbers close to their chests, because people will throw those numbers around to unfairly judge a game. Even a small decline in numbers made public can cause a trend of "oh god, game is dying, everyone leave now!, so you can't really blame companies for keeping the numbers secret. By keeping them secret even when they are favorable, they can shield themselves from conspiracy theories (e.g. they're hiding the numbers, so they must be bad!). Now we have no idea if the numbers are good or bad because they aren't being shared regardless.

[Runespider]

I would agree that in fairness, they probably didn't forsee the limitations they would run into in the future by placing this kind of game on a console. They ended up making it a lot bigger than they originally had sought out to. However, I think it's fair to say that even at its launch, FFXI pushed the limits of the PS2.

1) you saying it's irrelevant doesn't make it irrelevant. It's the number of people who played the game for any amount of time, so it has meaning. If the game is not free to play, it also represents the number of copies sold. There are also games like Guild Wars 2 where it's the only statistic because the game is buy to play and has no subscription- so you have no way of knowing how many active users there are.
2) It's the only data available, so it's the only thing we could make any kind of judgement on.

However, even that data is quickly becoming hard to find because all MMOs are keeping those numbers close to their chests, because people will throw those numbers around to unfairly judge a game. Even a small decline in numbers made public can cause a trend of "oh god, game is dying, everyone leave now!, so you can't really blame companies for keeping the numbers secret. By keeping them secret even when they are favorable, they can shield themselves from conspiracy theories (e.g. they're hiding the numbers, so they must be bad!). Now we have no idea if the numbers are good or bad because they aren't being shared regardless.

No it's irrelevant because it is. A lot of those accounts tried the game in free trials (you know, the f2p thing) or from v1 and didn't play it past the first hour.

It's a pointless boast number that has no real meaning because it doesn't even mean copies sold. As I said, accounts covers such a wide range of things that it means almost nothing. when people use such numbers it's because the real numbers aren't very good.

No matter what pointless numbers you want to boast about, at the end of the day peak ffxi sub numbers = peak ffxiv sub numbers. They basically made a game that cost 10-20 times as much that has the same amount of subscribers. The really funny part is given that, many of them even pay LESS subscription.

Maybe they need to upgrade the graphics engine on FFXIV so it can get more subscribers or bring back the many that quit.