Classic Server

[PlumbGame]

On another note, I would like to know server costs if anyone happens to have this info on hand or know get hosting service. Let us try take some costs into account and what better way to start then by assuming a server like this is going to take up obvious costs of running it. Without getting into detail of what SEs supposed resources are or limitations, I would like to know what we may be looking at for a number of subs active on a server like this to alone just cover the costs of flipping a switch and just letting it run. Thanks ahead of time if someone can find some of this info, I know I could just google it and try and find something, but I seem to not be finding any concrete information. Can't believe I just failed at googling.

[madmartin]

how about instead of an outright classic server, they make like a hybrid server, which would include level 75 cap and no abyssea but all the expansions before that up to wotg and the 3 mini expansions. but it would still include increased rates of xp gain so people can still low man xp instead of 6 man group onry! fighting eps as a duo group would still net a fair bit of xp this way! no trusts, let people group again, no fov, as we dont really want those real fast 18 man alliences. maybe keep the home point warps and some other quality of life adjustments. maybe keep level sync, that happened way before abyssea anyway. id say put the cop level caps back otherwise everyone would just low man them at later levels, keep the challenge. i'd like them to reverse the mpk patch but thats just me!

[PlumbGame]

There is currently at this time of posting, more likes for a classic server than your bst got screwed thread. Which is also higher than 3. There is also fundamental issues with "classic" LS. First, and most importantly. It is 100% impossible to recreate the classic experience no matter how hard you try. Though the content exists, there has been changes to the game that cannot be removed or reverted, and if they could, I'm assuming it actually may solve a lot of the issues since people could come and go if they want, but they cant. There is also this human flaw to do what everyone else is doing / take the easier route. If the people around you aren't forced into doing the exact same thing, why would you, rather if there was an easier route, why not take it. In this case though, why would people then play on a "classic" server vs just playing on the normal server then. It's mostly the mentality that X person next to you in port jeuno didn't have an easier route, they had to go through the same crap you had to go through and experience, almost making the "grind" more worthwhile, rather then just hopping back onto the normal servers and just playing solo. That is how I view it at least when I view people trying to create the classic experience on a normal server.

[Bluestar2kx]

I can see a few problems with this.
First, what do we define as classic, and how do we go about doing so?
Pre abby? Pre Toau? Wotg? What about Adoulin content that's a part of the lore? Is cutting out large chunks of lore ok?
Is level sync classic? what about Fellow NPC's? And quality of life improvements such as those listed below, or uncapping promathia missions?
Is blue mage classic? What about geomancer and rune fencer? Scholar and dancer?
Would ranger be god again like it used to be? Or samurai the hot topic?

One you'd be setting the server back to before the december update of 2009. (Which was when fields of valor was added)
You'd be cutting out A LOT of content by doing that, Adoulin would have to be completely removed as there's no way Lv 75 players, even alliances couldn't roam through that zone in one piece. Either that or Adoulin would have to be scaled down, and mobs radically adjusted on this server to match that of either a scaling area like the original zones, or a 75 only region like Sea, because people will want to play a pack they paid 30-40$ for.

You'd also remove part of fellow NPC adjustments, quality of life improvements like movement speed, teleporting, WS adjustments, TP changes, gearsets, spells, job abilities and traits, hp and mp adjustments, avatars, mog wardrobe, mog case, RoE, and numerous other things, including half of the porter moogle. I'm not sure if campaign skillups would be in or out, I'd have to look through all the updates to find when they stopped it. And obviously relics would become scarce again, and mythics would be... mythical.

You'd also have to patch, update, and create content specifically for a 75 capped environment, this would double the workload for all future expansions as well, and you'd run into the same problems in the end: People don't want to do the same thing forever (Hell people in my old shell skipped sky 90% of the time, as well as dyna zones they didn't need), so you'd have to spend a lot of time creating new things for this server to keep the population, however big or small, happy.

And to even do this, you'd have to write a lengthy program to go through some tens of thousands of accounts of potential users, and possibly hundreds of thousands of characters for this server and prune all data relating to any gear, zone, or quest above 75 or related to any expansion data, then setup server transfers for those accounts, because a lot of people aren't going to want to lose their characters and start all over again, esp those who left because of abby. (I know a lot who did) But you'd have to be careful, people won't be happy if 75 or lower gear is stored in mog bags that will be removed and they lose it.

You'd then have to ensure server rollbacks didn't effect the client, because some video cards might stop working if rolled back to the old days (windows 8 platforms likely would). I know my geforce 600 series card has crashing issues with FFXI and high shadows when songs or spells go off. And players would have to run 2 seperate FFXI directories, one for mainstream (if they choose to play it too, not everyone will goto this server, so keeping in touch with friends would be essential) and one for the classic. This would be hard for some people who run FFXI on older PC's with limited space, or like me who just have limited HDD space (I run FFXI on my SSD), and could be impossible for PS2 users (Which is most of japan), though the 360 likely wouldn't be too hard once you programmed all of this into the viewer.

I don't believe FFXI has a skeleton crew, and it maybe the most profitable game in their history, but I don't know if Square is going to hire extra devs to make this server.
Would they charge extra to being on this server? What if only some characters per Id are there, and some on the main servers, do you pay full price for both? And would this interfere with the mainstream servers production and updates?

Because a lot of people likely won't move, I'm not sure entirely, if I would use the classic or not, my time is a lot more limited then it was in 2003 when I could play all day after work, so being able to login and go do the things I need or want to with my partner and not seek group in jeuno for 4 weeks just to get from lv 45-46 (I was a taru monk at the time), or watching pickup group after group fail to be promathia, or dynamis wipes because people don't know wtf they're doing anymore, and new players in FFXI proper don't have the skill sets needed to run in the old days.

I know a lot of people miss the old days, but I think a lot of people also forget how hard those days were.
After all, the number one complaint from almost everyone was: It took so long to do/get anywhere in FFXI. We'd be removing everything that made that easier, both the grind, and the travel, and get right back to where we started, with people leaving because of that.

As great as the community was back then, and the socialization, some things are best left to the pages of history.
This could be one of them.

[Alhanelem]

I can see a few problems with this.
First, what do we define as classic, and how do we go about doing so?

That's one of the things that does bug me about the idea. Different people have different ideas about when the game was in its best state. The other question is where do you go from there? Do you freeze the game in that decided state? Do you re-introduce the patches overtime from there? Come up with original content just for that branch? (In order from least to most labor intensive). The game would get pretty stale after a while if it was frozen in some previous state with no updates.

Frankly I think the best part of the game was never any particular feature or patch but rather the community. I think a lot of people are just "done" after having played the same game for several years, i think that's really more of what it is than any particular thing in the game making people leave.

As I've mentioned before though, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to them trying this if it didn't compromise the current game for those enjoying it.

[noelv1995]

Bump since its 2018 and classic servers are more than a real thing now. Can't they just like dedicate a dead server to ToAU and previous content?

[Ketaru]

Bump since its 2018 and classic servers are more than a real thing now. Can't they just like dedicate a dead server to ToAU and previous content?

As the last reply from Alhanelem in 2014 says, who gets to decide what's "classic"? Why stop at ToAU, rather than WotG even though much of WotG was already released when the game was still 75 cap?

[noelv1995]

Agreed, but why is that stopping them from making a classic server? They can do what they want, ToAU, before ToAU, up to the point in WoTG where level cap changed. They don't even need to call it classic just name it 75 cap servers. I understand this game doesn't have much support from SE but I would think they can actually make money from it. Since tbh that is what decides yes or no

[Nyarlko]

Agreed, but why is that stopping them from making a classic server? They can do what they want, ToAU, before ToAU, up to the point in WoTG where level cap changed. They don't even need to call it classic just name it 75 cap servers. I understand this game doesn't have much support from SE but I would think they can actually make money from it. Since tbh that is what decides yes or no

From what the devs have said in this past year regarding things like this, (the answer was a resounding "No." btw,) it sounds to me like there may be some licensing issues involved. Sony was involved with original development of FFXI, so this may be simply an "impossible" task.

[Alhanelem]

From what the devs have said in this past year regarding things like this, (the answer was a resounding "No." btw,) it sounds to me like there may be some licensing issues involved. Sony was involved with original development of FFXI, so this may be simply an "impossible" task.

Also, it isn't anywhere near as simple as ppl might think, like going back through their archives for a particular build or whatever (and apparently they don't keep all of everything from past updates). But as I said in the past, there are problems with the idea:
1) What is classic? it depends on who you talk to. Who decides this?
2) Does it get updated? Unlock the later contents over time? How does this all work, because the game WILL get stale and the server will die if there is no updates, as tantalizing as a blast from the past may be.
3) Community fracturing. There is a considerable possibility that adding a special server with different content could fracture the community.
4) Rose tinted glasses. Nostalgia is great and all but you will quickly realize that without the community in the state that it was at your desired time period of the game, it's not going to be the same. Without packed servers, your experience with grinding for XP/merits/etc in particular isn't going to be terribly different from the way it is now, you'll either need alter egos or spend hours to form a party the old fashioned way. You're not going to be able to gather 20-30 people for classic dynamis, there's just a lot of things that simply won't work the way they did in the old days even if they did activate an old version of the game on a special server.
I think a much better idea than a special server with a special version of the game would be simply improving existing functions like level sync to make it easier to enjoy older contents in a way that is closer to what they were originally designed for. Currently it's a hassle to try to get things just right, and that hassle often turns away people who might otherwise be interested in fun self-imposed challenges.

Agreed, but why is that stopping them from making a classic server? They can do what they want, ToAU, before ToAU, up to the point in WoTG where level cap changed. They don't even need to call it classic just name it 75 cap servers. I understand this game doesn't have much support from SE but I would think they can actually make money from it. Since tbh that is what decides yes or no

While the money to be made isn't nonexistent, the potential income has to be weighed against the cost of implementation. The devs have weighed in on this issue in the past and shot it down, basically suggesting that the cost-benefit outlook isn't good. I had a continuous subscription for over a decade, and I don't have any friends that aren't still playing that would likely be swayed back on the promise of a classic server. The fact is MMOs today are very different from when FFXI came out, and we're all older and probably have jobs etc that we might not have had before, and FFXI's depth and complexity, as awesome as it truly is, is too much for today's gamers it seems.