Development Team Downsizing and Justification Makes no Sense

[Alhanelem]

Pixela's link to the We Are Vanadiel interview clearly says that they decided not to use budget and manpower for improving FFXI, but for a new game (FFXIV) instead. 2011, the year of the server merges, was also years after FFXIV started development and 6 months after FFXIV released and bombed. I think your timeline of events needs some review.

Abyssea and voidwatch were before that, and this was when a lot of people started quitting the game. No one knew when FFXIV was coming out at the time. Yes, development was in progress but I find it a stretch that anyone would think "oh, SE is making a new MMO, better quit FFXI now." Especially without really knowing what it is or what it would be like. And, as I said before, the cancellation of FFXIV had little impact on FFXI, which indicates that there wasn't some huge mass of players that quit XI for FFXIV because a lot of those players would likely have switched back after discovering how crap it was.

That last bit is certainly just a hypothesis, however it's logical and supported by the pattern of events at the time.


As far as the WE ARE VANADIEL site, I'm not referring to the same thing Pixela was.

[Catmato]

Abyssea and voidwatch were before that, and this was when a lot of people started quitting the game. No one knew when FFXIV was coming out at the time. Yes, development was in progress but I find it a stretch that anyone would think "oh, SE is making a new MMO, better quit FFXI now." Especially without really knowing what it is or what it would be like. And, as I said before, the cancellation of FFXIV had little impact on FFXI, which indicates that there wasn't some huge mass of players that quit XI for FFXIV because a lot of those players would likely have switched back after discovering how crap it was.

That last bit is certainly just a hypothesis, however it's logical and supported by the pattern of events at the time.


As far as the WE ARE VANADIEL site, I'm not referring to the same thing Pixela was.

Right but your statement:

it's absolutely ridiculous to imply that FFXI had to suffer for FFXIV to succeed.

Is absolutely not true if you take this into account :

Rather than pouring manpower and budget into reconstructing a world that players had already thoroughly experienced, we felt that those resources would be better spent creating a new game with its own world and adventures. (source)

Resources that COULD have gone into FFXI instead went into FFXIV. Yes, population was declining before FFXIV released, but the resources were certainly allocated years prior to that.