I'm curious

[Arkant]

While the PS2 isn't the main thing holding FFXI back (SE's stubbornness in not updating FFXI gradually over time for example), it is the major thing holding FFXI back, in both hardware and more importantly, symbolism.

The PS2 is currently more of a symbol of what SE desires for this game. When SE desires for this game to have long term survival over focusing on a probably unsavable game like FFXIV, the PS2 will be the first thing to go, even if it is gradually with a well thought out depreciation plan.

Personally, I think SE should announce that FFXIV will be made into a single player game, and develop it. Players who paid for FFXIV will get the game's single player version, and a year subscription or something like that for FFXI. Then they should announce that FFXI will be updated, mainly in content over a long period. This would happen over the course of a few expansions, and the first one would not be available for the PS2, but the game would still support the PS2 for a while. After a year or two of transition, the next expansion would come out, and the PS2 would be out the door.

On the hardware side, the PS2 holds the game back in two major ways, and a third lesser way.

1. Hard Drive space.
2. RAM
3. Graphical Processing Power

If we had more hard drive space, we could definitely have a new expansion with a new continent. At the current time, doing this would take a lot of work, but with more hard drive space, this would be more possible. On the hard drive front, the Xbox 360 version and possibly the PC version also have risks in this regard, since some 360 users may be on a 20GB hard drive (and would either need to upgrade or lose the hard drive to FFXI only, and even then this would only be temporary), and some PC users may have limited space (easier to upgrade however).

On the RAM front, eliminating the PS2 would bring definite gains, but unless we plan on upgrading the graphics (which would require a bigger revamp of code and definitely more hard drive space) universally, it would mainly be a way to add more gear, items, have more NPCs and objects in zones, and have more auto translate phrases. On the graphics front however, SE could just release a high definition pack for PC users only if they really wanted to, but even this might require some major coding work.

On the graphical front, unless improved graphics were optional, this might alienate some lower end PCs and make the game harder to run so smoothly on older hardware. Personally, I think that graphics are the least important part of moving this game forward, but it is an option some people may want. Still, this would require the most coding work - I'm not looking for a new game, just new expansions, and maybe for PC users, a high resolution texture pack.

That is very detailed

...

I'm not overly fussed about a graphical upgrade to the game, i just want more content that isn't rehashed zones. I wanna keep playing FFXI, I have loved the game since i started in 2004 and i don't wanna give it up...

[Economizer]

I'm not overly fussed about a graphical upgrade to the game

Nor am I. Aside from the possibility of a high resolution texture pack for the PC, I'm not really thinking we'll see an "upgrade" to the game's graphics aside from some tweaks. The graphics in this game can look very good, or somewhat bad, depending on what you are looking at. This game could even be consider to have a "look" of sorts. Characters fit this look. The background occasionally does and occasionally does not.

Although, on the "graphics" front, the biggest impact we'd have by loosing the PS2 is the possibility of way more mob variations and gear variations since the RAM would be increased from whatever the PS2's is (I think that's like 32MB?) to the 512 that the Xbox 360 has, assuming that the Xbox's hard drive would be able to handle it (this would be the next limitation unless SE was also willing to straight up tell 360 users they couldn't use the 20GB hard drive).