Alliance based content

[Afania]

You really have a narrow POV toward "success". That's like saying only Steve Jobs is successful, everyone else isn't, which I don't entirely agree.

Yes other games have had shorter lifespans, they've also had larger amounts of money to keep things running or to create new content I'm sure,

Before you made such claim, where's the number and data?

I would say a successful MMO is one that has a successful release without needing to rebuild the game, is well advertised to draw in more players, and can keep up at least a moderate amount of players playing the game whilst at the same time adding new content on a regular basis.

-FFXI from what I know did the first of these things but only due to the FF name as many people have told me the original version was terrible, and I have to assume by that the FF namesake is what kept this game from crashing, but I could be wrong as I never played and have no personal experience.

-So far as the second thing, advertisements, goes that is a complete and utter failure on this game's part as I have still to this day never seen a single ad on TV nor have I see any online besides on FFXI related sites, the only one I have seen even on them that comes to mind is one for SoA, which I saw, once... This game's real advertisements are the players playing it, we're the ads, if we don't draw in new people this game dies because hardly anyone is ever going to find this game without us.

-The third is to keep up a moderate amount of players while releasing new content, the first half is a failure as the population of this game declines even more to the lowest point I have ever seen(@719 people on Phoenix, yay...) and SE still does nothing effective to change that such as ads, enticements for old players to return, or anything of the sort. You would think with their want for FFXIV to be a different kind of game that they would advertise one another in their games so people who don't like one can try the other, it would be a great marketing strategy but nope, not happening.

-So far as pushing out content though they are getting that right finally, if the content were better done in some cases they could really make it great but for now I give this part a success.

So out of basically 4 criteria they failed 3 so far as I know, but if I abstain from even answering the first due to lack of personal experience you still get a 1/3, with a failure to advertise and maintain a playerbase. Their only success in my opinion is something fairly new and that's a consistent stream of content flowing into the game for us to do, before it was an update once every 3 months or so and I wouldn't actually call that much a success when a large amount of players were standing around with their thumbs misplaced and nothing to do. Now we finally have moderate content updates monthly, which is a success, but the failed in other ways that make the game itself fail. So, 12 years of being alive, a ton of mistakes, a few successes, but the game overall is not one I could actually consider a true success, it's alive, but not a success.

1. That does not determine whether a game is a success or not.

2. That does not determine whether a game is a success or not, no MMORPG can keep players forever. WoW used to have 12M sub, dropped to 8M and less at one point of time. By your logic WoW isn't a success.

3. That doesn't determine whether a game is a success or not either.

More like you set your own definition of "success", and called the game unsuccessful because it doesn't fit your own definition.

My definition of "success" for any game:

1.It makes money. If the game invest 20M to develop, but it makes 50M profit, then it's a success. A 20M cost game doesn't need to make 200M profit to be successful.

OR

2. It has certain industry changing design goal, and it successfully delivered it. Even if the game isn't commercially successful, it's still a success because it's goal of this game may not be making money to begin with.

Basically, if a game set a goal, and it meets the goal, then it's a success.

From what I've seen, FFXI fits No.1 criteria, therefore it's a success.

If I'm going to use your logic "I don't like X, so it's not a success" to call a game being unsuccessful, Warhammer online, SWG, Anarchy online, RO2, EQ2, Age of Conan, Asheron's call2, Blade and Soul, Tera, Mortal Online, Hello Kitty Online, King of Fighters online, Dragon's Prophet, Dragon Ball online, Dynasty Warriors Online, Earth and Beyond, FF14 1.0, Shadowbane, Wizardry Online.....all those games aren't successful, and the list goes on.

Yeah I haven't even start naming all the B grade and C grade MMO that you probably never heard of. I can find probably one or more criteria you listed above and call them unsuccessful.

I called you a FFXI hater because your claim makes no logic, just "I don't like it, bahhh I don't like it therefore it's not successful" opinion.

The point is, compare with 95% of MMORPG ever exist on the market, FFXI is certainly "up there". Just because you never heard of or play those titles, and only ever look at WoW, doesn't make FFXI unsuccessful. It may be possible that FFXI sells because it's FF, but that doesn't matter.