your thoughts on the future of ffxi

[DarkStoneDragon]

I have some questions about your thoughts on XI,

1. in your opinion does it still have long life ahead? (as in how much life you think is left?)

2. would you like to see a remastered/hd ver of XI like they did with kingdom hearts and X/X-2?

The reason I'm asking is my Wife and I love this game, we'd love to see it last for years to come, we'd like to see a remastered/hd ver of XI (not that we have a problem with it currently), maybe with Dx11 and on PS4 and maybe XBox one (provided MS would allow cross platform servers) and before anyone says "play FFXIV" done played it didn't care for it that much, we like how in XI we can party and help each other out with story missions or quests (withe the exception of a few) we also like the battle system more, in XIV there's no sense of danger "get aggro run 5 seconds lose aggro" but there's more than just that I'm using that as 1 of the many things we didn't like, we're not bashing XIV it's just not for us, all-in-all we love how 11 is, the story, the combat and even the trust system and we'll probably love the stuff we haven't got to try out yet, what are your thought on the questions I posted?

[Karbuncle]

1) Yup

2) Not going to happen regardless.

[Edyth]

1. Absolute minimum, worst doomsday prediction would be 3 more years, but I think it can go on a lot longer depending on SE's decisions on things like server merges (as in, DO THEM). I'm hoping for at least 5 more years, hopefully even longer, and I think it's entirely likely.

2. I would like it, but it's not going to happen, and it wouldn't bring in the # of new subscriptions needed to justify the cost of the project.

[Selindrile]

1.) I think/hope we have plenty of time left, worst case scenario, if subscriptions stop paying the bills, they can always try a F2P revitalization, but I hope even that's a long time off.

2.) Yes, I wish they'd drop PS2 support, at least partially, and revamp effing everything. But I can't imagine that actually happening.

[Lordkyron]

IMHO square will not cancel this game, until they are sure ARR will remain a stable income to them.
Once ARR achieves that , they will most probably kill FFXI.

Today FFXI still gives square a steady profit so they don't want to risk it.

imo the game was more fun in the old day, but what mmorpg isn't more fun in their prime.

[Shirai]

IMHO square will not cancel this game, until they are sure ARR will remain a stable income to them.
Once ARR achieves that , they will most probably kill FFXI.

Today FFXI still gives square a steady profit so they don't want to risk it.

They won't kill FFXI as long as it still generates profit, FFXIV isn't and will never be a deciding factor in that.
Marketing wise shutting down XI because ARR generates a greater revenue is a very bad move.

As long as enough people keep playing FFXI to keep it profitable the game will keep going even if ARR generates it in tenfold.

2. Not going to happen.

[Vold]

As long as players like us play then I don't see it ending anytime soon. Money doesn't grow on trees for SE yet despite who they are. As long as that stays the case I imagine what little resources FFXI gets will remain.

And as far as an graphical update goes, it is obviously heavy opinion that it won't happen, but I will caution people to remember how many times they have said "not going to happen" and it happened anyway.

It has always been a fact that devs bother with facelifts for one reason: money. There are two ways of going about this goal. One is remastered games, extending the lifespan of a product beyond it's years to milk the cow. Devs are happy, gamers are happy to play an updated version of their favorite games because we all know the difference between reality and what our brains recall. The other is facelifts to their MMOs to prolong interest from gamers. In either case it's about making or maintaining income.

In 2005 you could get away with shouting the words 'never gonna happen'. Fortunately for everyone involved that is no longer the case. Unlikely, sure. It's SE involved. Improbable? Okay. But not impossible. The best thing they might ever do for FFXI is to give it a facelift for PC so that most people are enticed to upgrade from the PS2 so we can do away with certain limitations. But it will always be a PS2 game developed by SE, and that means that code is so ancient the game will forever be the same ole FFXI. But that's okay, that's okay for everyone still involved for the long term so long as there's a facelift where facelifts can happen.

OR......they can just let it drift til it's done. 5, maybe 10 years from now. No one really wants to support a game that the devs have abandoned for newer projects, for the most part. The game's future is more in their hands than it is ours. We've done our part by being here in year 12 of it's existence, paying the same monthly fees for far less the support than we once had. It's their turn. And they've been slowly pecking away at that obligation in the form of window OS updates to the game. Slowly, but surely.

The cost of giving a facelift to FFXI is paying their guys their yearly salaries to sit at their desks to work on it. There's no $100 million dollar investment to be made. It's not a new game. Not a new game engine. It's a facelift, people. Graphics set to HIGH RES. It's not a major investment. I do not understand why some of you have this belief that it'll be some major job for them to invest in. The only thing stopping them thus far is they have chosen to put that man power into new games that aren't necessarily guaranteed to sell for squat. No one at least in their line of work can blame them.

I have seen far smaller companies with game worlds just as big as FFXI give a high res graphic facelift to their MMOs. SE damn well can do it, too. Especially when many of the monster models already exist in a game called FFXIV, models that were ripped from FFXI to begin with.

[Mizuno]

1.) I hope another 11 years

2.) I wish it would, but alas it won't....I would however like something to lower the brightness in Valkurm, IT HURTS MY EYES!!

[Xerius]

I think that they have something in the works because they've been putting a rather unnatural amount of attention on helping newer players which is strange for an MMO as old as this one where you're getting probably under 10 subs a month and only 1 or 2 of those are actually new players. So, their either wasting their time or planning for a large resurgence of new players.

[Rubicant82]

I see FFXI as one of the MMOs that go on and on ....
DAoC & the original Everquest are still going! why? Because people still play them. It was mentioned a few time that as long as there are people who keep playing and that SE is making a profit most likely they will keep at least 1 sever going until the point that they start losing money, and even then depending on how much they lose they might keep it going for a little while longer. But with as many people that still play I do not see FFXI going anywhere anytime soon. Even then once it goes I hope they release the source code so those people who want can continue their adventures on privet servers (once it no longer impacts SE's profits I don't see why they would care).

As for the graphics I WOULD LOVE TO SEE AN HD FFXI :3 I adore this game to a fault... no matter what I do I always seem to come back to it, and though the graphics are getting better, they are still low, I wish they would re-render this in FFXIVs rendering engine and making it all smooth and pretty... I mean just imagine how awesome it would be. :-3
I would ride the clipper every day!! Go to all my favorite zones just for the scenery again :3 HD graphic options yes please!