My continued support of FFXI, and SE as a company.

[Jordache]

. . .The best thing to do if you're not happy and not getting the enjoyment you feel you deserve for what you're spending, rather than spread gloom and doom on a discussion forum, is to just stop giving them money. Their response to declining player numbers seems to be to spend less accordingly, rather than make an effort to retain and recruit new players.

Err, respectively: no. The distinction between satisfaction over the long-term and the player's localized financial capacities are not actually correlated to actually accept the: speak with your money perspectives. Yes money speaks, but only at the point of purchase: the buy-in, because there is no buy-out. The buy-outs aren't tracked because people individual finances and life always take priority, otherwise no food scenario. People buy in or don't, and that's the real difficulty here: the costs are covered for creation at buy-in, but afterwards maintenance and up-keep of a franchise are not understood typically because they can run eternally, at like religious timescales here. FFXI is bought and paid for forever into the future, at like the Nikkei index trust fund management level. People base their pensions on FFXI's life-time intakes, to say FFXI's stock portfolio is self-funding is an understatement.

The response to declining player numbers is to figure out what the players are doing in real life and build accordingly so that they come back to teach, and learn, from SE as a whole conglomerate corporation though FFXI.

Over 20 years how many promotions did you get your company because of FFXI? SE wants to know so SE can invest! More real life value = more in game value!

[Immortal]

The deck is stacked in favor of MMOs as even a modestly successful one will earn more money over its lifetime than any non MMO will earn in sales. But at this point FFXIV has earned orders of magnitude more money than FFXI.

To be fair to the rest of the series, it would make more sense to look at sales. FFXI + all its expansions on all platforms (as each one is a sale) has probably outsold some of the earlier games but not more recent ones.

Source? Don't forget that the reason XIV outpaced XI was also due to the massive amount of money they poured into XIV. Of Course it would end up outpacing XI in sales and revenue when they poured all their resources into promoting and updating it. XI has never received even a fraction of that budget XIV has, even during its prime.

[Alhanelem]

Yes money speaks, but only at the point of purchase

Every real person laying this game gives them money every month. Our money speaks long after the point of initial purchase.

Between the two MMOs, over two decades I've given SE thousands of dollars. multiply that by all the players who potentially become regulars- it's not an insignificant amount.

While the bots are a lot of free money for SE (and seemingly a reason they aren't in a big hurry to action them), so are the players.

Source? Don't forget that the reason XIV outpaced XI was also due to the massive amount of money they poured into XIV.

No source, it's my guesstimation. Money invested is also not important for this argument. Consider: let's just say FFXI and FFXIV sold the exact same number of copies initially. As Dawntrail releases, assuming similar player retention (in reality there is a big difference here because FFXI has drastically slowed content release compared to FFXIV), at this point their sales are equal. Each future expansion FFXIV releases (we know there will be at least one more for sure since they've already planned that far ahead, even if they don't invest in FFXIV's staying power to the level that Blizzard has in WoW) puts its sales ahead.

Look, I know we all want to give FFXI every advantage because its our beloved game (Yes, mine too), but we need to be honest with ourselves.

Also: Investment isn't a guarantee of success. Online games as we know them today were in their relative infancy when FFXI debuted- there's no guarantee that simply giving FFXI the budget they gave FFXIV would have produced the same sales numbers. It could have done better, it could have done worse. There's really no way to tell. At the time FFXI has begun to lose its luster in the eyes of at least some of the playerbase, it was still getting regular new content and a new expansion was still yet on the way- but the decline was already happening and SoA didn't really stave it off that much. Audolin technically has an airship landing, marked on the map like any of the others but it was never utilized, and some of its features got downsized when it wasn't as successful as hoped. And it is probably for this reason they started winding things down the way they did.

[Dihlyte]

Pretty sure xi was their highest grossing game pretty sure i read that too but it was overtaken by xiv in 2014 or 16 cant recall

I see sentiments like this all the time, and honestly I'm curious where it is coming from.

I know a certain someone who responds often, and I would not even mind their input on this, as I'm genuinely curious where this information comes from.

>The idea that FFXIV is this massively success video game, and wildly popular.<

It simply isn't true. At least not to the degree people often seem to imply.

FFXIV, factually is barely outperforming FFXI.

FFXI was touted as the most profitable Final Fantasy, in 2012.
https://www.gamesradar.com/final-fan...-fantasy-ever/

FFXIV did not surpass FFXI until 2021. (Nearly not until 2022)
https://www.ign.com/articles/final-f...ost-profitable

FFXIV 1.0, that was so horribly bad, sold 600 thousand units.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_...AndriaSales-62

FFXIV 2.0 Only reportedly sold around 200k units on the PS3 in japan. (Not really comparable, but these are the only numbers provided.)
https://www.siliconera.com/ffxiv-a-r...ales-in-japan/

The supposedly "wildly successful" Endwalker only sold 900k units. That is only 300k more than the "oh so horrible failed" version 1.0
https://us.millenium.gg/news/25562.html

No sites anywhere report FFXIV having massive numbers. Almost everything points to XIV having 1 million, or fewer players:

-Lalachievements (Via chocobo mount count)
529,000 players
https://lalachievements.com/rarity/mount/global/

-FFXIV Collect (Via their website overview)
780,000 players
https://ffxivcollect.com/faq

-FFXIV Reddit (Not even close to counting active subscribers, as this is entirely unrelated.) Still only reports:
1 million users
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/

-Steam charts (Again not really useful, but just another source of many.)
95,000 users max all time
https://steamcharts.com/app/39210


Absolutely nothing anywhere says or indicates FFXIV having a wildly populous active subscriber playerbase.

The only thing that even comes close, is SE reports having over 25, 28, 30 million "players" except this number to me, only represents how many people have tried, and quit FFXIV, which is not a number I would like to tout.

The only way this is relevant to FFXI, is I can only imagine if they spent half the money on XI, as they did XIV, how much more successful this game would be.

[Alhanelem]

I know a certain someone who responds often, and I would not even mind their input on this, as I'm genuinely curious where this information comes from.

I don't have data handy but the statement you referred to has always been screaming to me "wishful thinking."

First you can't really compare an MMO to a non MMO here, because MMOs make money continuously as long as they exist. So we can certainly compare FFXI to FFXIV here. I do not have any numbers to back it up, full honesty, but loosely based on the estimates I've seen I think FFXIV has had enough more players over its lifespan to have overtaken FFXI by now (i.e. in half the time or better).

FFXIV is still expanding as well, there are new servers coming with Dawntrail. Again, I do not have numbers, but FFXI was only modestly successful among other MMOs of the time (i.e. everquest and WoW). I just do not see any evidence to support these "highest grossing" claims, unless you only compare to the single player games which is unfair comparison because the income from those stops after a period of time.

The only thing that even comes close, is SE reports having over 25, 28, 30 million "players" except this number to me, only represents how many people have tried, and quit FFXIV, which is not a number I would like to tout.

you're correct here, they talk about the number of accounts, not just active users. For any MMO, not just FFXIV, active users (we'll say people who have played within a 30 day period) i'd estimate is somewhere between 10-20%, or between 3 and 6 mil of those 30+ million "players" on average. which seems reasonable given server capacities. if there were actually 30 million active users they'd need a lot more servers than they have now lol.

[Dihlyte]

if there were actually 30 million active users they'd need a lot more servers than they have now lol.

That is true, but to touch on your other statement, I was comparing XI to XIV.

The only statement that would be MMO to -notMMO- would be me quoting SE when they said FFXI was the most profitable Final Fantasy.

The only reason I stated that, was to show, it took from that time (2012) until 2021, nearly 2022, for XIV to surpass it.

Meaning, in my eyes, XIV is not crushing XI, let alone WoW as many like to believe.

It’s funny because even “Yoshida” said XIV will never come close to WoW.

The point here being, I just am curious where this idea comes from.

Sure “wishful thinking” but none of the numbers anywhere even come close.

I guess it’s just the lack of understanding, when SE reports those “total accounts registered” number and people just wanting to believe XIV is that popular.

I just struggle with the logic when all the facts say otherwise.

I guess it really doesn’t matter. I just find it personally, extremely odd behavior.

Although I suppose I can come off as odd, with my desire to create that mission guide.

[Jordache]

Every real person laying this game gives them money every month. Our money speaks long after the point of initial purchase.
Between the two MMOs, over two decades I've given SE thousands of dollars. multiply that by all the players who potentially become regulars- it's not an insignificant amount.
While the bots are a lot of free money for SE (and seemingly a reason they aren't in a big hurry to action them), so are the players.

It doesn't matter how much you give them over time: it matters in the upfront investment stages because that is the most vulnerable money because: when they set out to make the game they have to make sure that the company is able to get all of the licenses for patent technology that they want to make, otherwise they don't get to make the game they want to make, duh.

They money you give them after the point of purchase, the subscription just goes into the big pile they created from making and selling the game in the first place, the SeeD-round of investments.

[BobbinT]

No sites anywhere report FFXIV having massive numbers. Almost everything points to XIV having 1 million, or fewer players:

-Lalachievements (Via chocobo mount count)
529,000 players
https://lalachievements.com/rarity/mount/global/

-FFXIV Collect (Via their website overview)
780,000 players
https://ffxivcollect.com/faq

Don't think data from these sites are reliable, since in order to have the character recorded on those site, someone did have to put player names in search & initiate syncing with lodestone website. iirc somewhere in their respective discords already stated this.

example: here's a character from lodestone


& here's the result when trying to search back on lalachievement:


Again on XIVCollect, this character needs to be added, which represents by the "Add" button circled here:


And here's another already registered, shown by the "View" button instead:

[Immortal]

They cannibalized their own playerbase by flooding all their resources and budget into XIV and it being another final fantasy online game. Once it failed, they did it even more to revive it with ARR. If XI saw even a fraction of that budget, it would have been a lot better off that's for sure.

[Jordache]

I agree about the stocks. We shall see.

To clarify my post, my gripe is not with FFXI now.

I feel FFXI has done so many great things in the past 5 years. All the right things I would even say.
(Except the reduction of staff, and using FFXI's revenue for other titles. Along with the things I listed in my original post.)

In fact, this is why I would consider stopping my subscription from XI. Due how much of FFXI's profits are going to things that are not RPG's.

I do not wish to support a company that is pouring decades of revenue into titles that alienate their lifelong fanbase.

I get what you're saying: but they have to grow to do something else, even for the mental sanity of their employees. Plus, that's where new intellectual properties come from!

But yeah seriously, professionally, and personally: enough with the FF7 already, finish the trilogy, then forget the franchise exists. Stop giving people the option, the world will thank you for it.