Enough is enough

[Yinnyth]

Good thing you are a college student because its time for a history lesson. Once upon a time you could only enter dynamis once every 3 days, with 35 other players. This was called a dynamis shell. See back in the day there were whole shells of people dedicated to some kind of event(s). Now unlike today, where dynamis is a one time fee of 50K, back then it was a fee of 1 mil, every time. Eventually, they reduced it to 500k. Now if someone sponsored the run, they got all the currency and you got whatever scraps of relic dropped that the people who have 239284759286572956 "points" didn't want. This went on for 3 hours because that is the max amount of time you could spend in the zone.

You, sir, should brush up on your history. First of all, "Once upon a time..." is how fairy tales start, not history lessons. Second, before CoP runs, the entry limit was far higher than 36 people. It was equal to the number of people allowed signed into a linkshell at any given time (56, I believe? I could be wrong on that...) Third of all, the max amount of time you could spend in a zone was 3.5 hours for the original runs and 2 hours for CoP runs.

Fourth, seriously, how did you only get 2 coins in 3 hours? You must either spend most of your playtime afk or have the worst drop luck in the universe. Oh wait, exaggeration. Your statement is less factual and more hyperbole illustrating the point that you want access to all the things that full-time players of the game have while investing only 3 hours per week into the game. Tell me, how is your major-league football career coming along? Oh, they still haven't drafted you despite the fact that you have thrown a football a least once a year? That's unfair and everyone should stop watching football so they go out of business.

In all seriousness(no more sarcasm from me in this post), I don't have the same playtime I used to have. My gear is not 100% up-to-date, so I'm not uber-endgame anymore. That being said, I don't mind that there are people who are better equipped than me. I don't mind that I've never beaten legion. I hardly even do voidwatch because I don't really like the way that event works.

It's ok that there are aspects of the game that aren't for me. When's the last time you've done moblin maze mongers? The mechanics of it are actually fairly fun, it's just the rewards suck by today's standards. I did a couple dualboxed solo runs the other day just to pass the time and see what the crafting ones were like. What's my point? There's craploads of stuff you can do in this game.

You may fool other people, but you're just another elitist who lacks the time and commitment to become elite, so you seek an alternate route: threatening the devs so if they don't bring you up to the same status as anyone who wastes every hour of their life on this game that you will stop paying them. Your threats will fall upon deaf ears, and you know it. Save us all the trouble and make your choice in silence: stay and enjoy the progress you CAN make, or leave and lament the shinies you will never posess.

Edit: For those of you who are not from the United States, I apologize in advance for my ignorant use of the word "football". Your futbol is a rich and entertaining past-time, but one should not throw a futbol once per year, unless they are a goalie.

[Chocobits]

Not quoting above cuz it's long, but generally I'm in agreement, although hours after the super bowl is too soon for football analogies - some of us are butthurt! Not me, but others I'm sure.

What I love about FFXI is that, I took a 14 month break to focus on my career, my relationship with my married GF, and my life in general. I missed the game and came back after the announcement of a pending expansion pack, as I'm sure many did.

When I left, my BLU was near-perfect on gear (only 85 on my Almace though), my BLM was in good shape (minus magian staves, still using 8/8 HQ), and my WAR, while not perfectly geared still had 4/5 Emp +2, full merits and some choice pieces. I come back and BLU is lol again outside of Abyssea, and everyone has consumed all the 2 1/2 content pieces outside of Abyssea, and with nothing better to do or spend their money on, they farmed up relics and even mythics and then raised them all to max. And my LS had broken due to everyone wanting to join one of the 3 top shells and some humorous love triangle drama. So I come back and I get lol'd all the way back to Windurst Waters to turn in my Adventurer's Coupon all over again.

As easy as relics are to obtain, I just don't have it in me to make one. I have multiple jobs leveled but the only job I have leveled worth making a weapon for would be WAR.. except that I would rather work on my BLU, despite it not being utilized in Legion/PW at all. I don't want to relic/emp a secondary job just to have access to content to gear my preferred jobs.

The moral of this story: Don't leave the game to pursue love, happiness and success. Quitters never win. If I hadn't quit I probably woulda broken down and just maxed out WAR so that I could enjoy all the endgame stuffs.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Don't leave the game to pursue love, happiness and success.

And people wonder why there aren't any new players...

[Yrusama]

Jaall you have a good point, however, they cannot just let FFXI fall to the wayside before FFXIV is cemented in as a viable MMO to spend time playing. The way FFXIV tanked when first released will certainly affect how it is received when ARR comes out, though i honestly hope that it succeeds. If it were to fail again, i imagine SE would be in quite a bit of financial trouble.

FINALLY some honest and overall positive words about XIV from the XI community. I don't see this often, and it depresses me as a player of both. Damn the rest of the world for trying to tear me in two.

FFXI is considered the most profitable Final Fantasy, even over FFVII. They aren't likely to drop the subscription fee, nor do I expect them to shut down anytime soon. I recently read that FFXI was running out of space for new maps until they did something that allowed Adoulin. I don't know how much more they can do after Adoulin, but I really think it's way too soon to start talking about SE pulling the plug (though I admit their release of the PlayOnline music kinda got to me). We haven't even seen the new content in action yet! I just hope all of Adoulin won't require top-geared players to complete, though SE has always been pretty good about keeping the main story beatable.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

FINALLY some honest and overall positive words about XIV from the XI community. I don't see this often, and it depresses me as a player of both. Damn the rest of the world for trying to tear me in two.

That's not "the world," that's S-E.

Consider: other than a brief discount period, if someone is going to subscribe to two different MMO's, there's no reason or incentive for both of them to be Final Fantasy titles. Seeing a linkshell mate leave XI to go play XIV is no different from them leaving to play WoW or EVE or any number of other titles that have zero connection to XI. The XI and XIV communities are segregated and partitioned because S-E built them that way.

On top of that, the animosity of XI players can be easily justified by the way the XI playerbase was used as the source of funds to prop up XIV for over two years. XI players got little to show for this sacrifice while XIV players got a lifetime discount on their MMO of choice, an MMO that again has absolutely zero ties or connections to XI.

In the end, XIV is not just a competitor (rather than a complement) to XI, but one that has bled XI dry moreso than any other.

[Tanama]

I honestly think Final Fantasy XI and A Realm Reborn will go the way of Everquest and Everquest II. They both exist together and have an active player base. Everquest I continues to churn out expansions every year. I'm not sure about EQII's expansions but EQI is about thirteen or fourteen years old now with no signs of it dying.

Here's to another ten years for FFXI and a successful launch for ARR.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

SE has always been pretty good about keeping the main story beatable.

I can attest that A Crystalline Prophecy still sucks at 99, starting with "Those Who Lurk in Shadows (III)." That stuff is harder that much of old-school CoP, and CoP was capped.

[Zagen]

I can attest that A Crystalline Prophecy still sucks at 99, starting with "Those Who Lurk in Shadows (III)." That stuff is harder that much of old-school CoP, and CoP was capped.

That depends on the jobs you have available. BST and BLU can get through ACP. Only the final fight takes good skill/gear to do.

[Rezeak]

I am the grammar hammer, so it pains me to reply to you without correcting your spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. However, I am capable of understanding your underlying message, so tell us: which endgame linkshells did you see quit the game, and what was their reason?

Thanks for the corrections.

I was in kizunas and while it wasn't the entire ls, from it's 8 yearish run of over 100+ members coming and going, the 30-40 odd that stuck around longer than a few months, there is maybe 2-5 that still play.

As for there reasons, as you said part of it was being older and unable to keep reupdating their gear every 3-6 months as SE made it obsolete because the timesinks were too large. One of the other sides of it was the boredom we made 50+ emeryans and I'm telling you now a part of my soul has died farming Glavoids and Chloris over and over.

Either way, moving on as it came to the end of the linkshell we were still doing VW,Abys,Limbus,Legion. The problem was this for me and the last 4-6 that left at the same time, was that we all had jobs that were near perfect with just nothing to do except the same stuff over and over and honestly every day it was just grind for gil or abyssea items. We did LimbusV2 and Legion and well Limbus was good but the recast was forever and with Legion, once we cleared it a few times the gear wasn't worth the effort of organizing the runs.So we were all hungry for new content and neo-salvage was miles away and burrows was only 10 mins a day so we basically just all quit for a while to play steam games together and such until there was new content and well we enjoyed more than FFXI which we still haven't come back.

I know it's a bit long winded and I don't think my point is too clear, but alot of my linkshell left FFXI because of the repetitive nature of timesinks placed in the game and the lack of anything else to do. As for other linkshells all i need to do is look at my inactive friendlist to see all those people that left and never came back some for the same reason as me and some for others.

[Cruentus]

I agree with you that SE don't do enough but this games really old now and they're bringing out FFXIV. It's as if they're just waiting for it to die and are squeezing as much money as they can out of it before it inevitably dies. I think I speak for most people when I say we've been expecting the end for the past year or so, it's just a matter of when, and how it will end. I think SE have come to terms with that and are just casually keeping the majority of the player base happy (which happens to be JP) to keep the money coming in until that time. It's like, say a new console is released in a specific brand - Sony make a Playstation 4 for example - they wouldn't keep working on updates for the PS3 because you would just move on. The times come for FFXIV and it looks promising so now they aren't caring so much about FFXI. It's just life, happens with everything.

But how old is World of Warcraft? How old is RuneScape? The age of an MMORPG shouldn't be a factor when deciding whether to keep it updated or not.

And besides, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV work in very different ways. We should not be forced to "move on" to a completely different game under any circumstances, especially when so many of us don't have the money for a new computer/console on which to play the new game, because our current systems cannot run the new game.

Personally, I prefer Final Fantasy XI to Final Fantasy XIV. I'm sure many other players do, too. We don't want this game to die just because newer games exist. We want this game to be fixed up and made fun again. The only way that can happen is if the development team reads every last post on this forum and others like it. Sure, good discussions may be like needles in a haystack, but they're worth searching for.