Letter from the Producer for FFXI.

[Elexia]

What you and the others who say you don't this to happen are missing is that group-or-die mob-kill-grindfests like FFXI are destined to fail hugely these days.

Pretty sure AION, Tera, SWTOR (Insert 200 other Korean MMO here that closed this year) are a farcry from how XI is setup and pretty much failed.

Throw in GW2 tapering off and I can only ask you one question:

Where is your god logic now?

Like it or not

All new MMOs are failing at alarming rates despite their design. Sorry kiddo, as much as you want to say XI and "XI style games failed" you proved pretty much that you've never touched another MMORPG in your life.

So if Matsui does adapt this type of letter, hopefully it's more about the game *(given it's state being 10 years old)* than future plans.

[Silverware]

I think the "Letter from the Producer" format is good assuming that the producer has interesting or valuable information to talk about on a regular basis.

I happened to stumble back into the 11 forums and reading stuff in here is so depressing.

I've played 11 for a couple years but all the people I play with have either left the game or fell apart from drama. Most have left though. So occasionally I log in now to check out a new patch here and there, or run around and reminisce.

I played 14 for a couple months on and off which was enough to get 2 jobs to 50 and leveled a few other things. It also allowed me to see the changes Yoshi-P had made to the game while I eagerly awaited 2.0. I didn't immediately think 14 1.0 was atrocious in the beginning, but looking back now after Yoshi-P's changes I guess it was pretty rough.

And now due to recent events, I can say with some certainty that I will very very much enjoy 2.0. The task that Yoshi-P and the rest of the Dev team were dealt probably felt overwhelming at the start. But they are dealing with it in flying colors.

To turn this back onto 11, I have tried to get my friends into this game. It just doesn't happen for anything longer then a week or two. Its just not accessible to people who do other things with their time. Maybe in the end, once your character is built to a certain point, you can log in and play the game for a day and accomplish something and then move on.

Just because these other recent MMOs don't have a high level of player retention, does not mean that FF11 is a clear example of what is the right way to do things. Logging into this game after playing anything else, it just feels archaic in terms of structure, pacing, features, interface, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love 11 and if I had friends to play with I would keep playing it every day. I am very much looking forward to Adoulin. But I understand that I am looking at the game a different way then anyone who has not played this game would.

Sadly I think if they wanted to make this game appeal to a modern audience, the whole thing would have to be revamped. FFXI-2 would be amazing. To take everything the game currently has, maybe rebuild the game on the new FF14 graphics engine while retaining its own style, taking all the current content and having a whole team completely restructure the game and spread the stuff around (i.e. content at lvl 25, 50, 75, and 99 brackets), all new modern interface (which hopefully is still coming), etc.. This game would be spectacular.

Or heck, even if they just opened up 1 or 2 new servers where people could start from scratch again like the Diablo 2 ladder resets.