Is FFXI getting a cash shop?

[Deirdre]

Well it's very simple--the argument of "no one forces you to buy anything" is immaterial. If you SEE someone running around looking like Cloud, you are affected by it. You want it in a 'modern MMO' like XIV, fine. XI is an old style MMO and in general, that's how the playerbase seems to like it. Cause let's be honest, if you are looking for a SE MMO that offers all the modern stuff, ARR is very easy to like. It's much prettier, if nothing else.

[Jeanna]

Wow does it pretty well, all they sell are mounts and pets, and a few plushies, none of which really effect actual game play at all. They also have paid race/gender/faction changes. It's also made them a toooooooooooon of money. Their first store bought mount made them millions in the first couple hours.

Espeically if some of the money goes back into stuff like improving the game, future x-pacs, possibly customer support, something similar would be nice for ffxi.

[Deirdre]

Wow does it pretty well, all they sell are mounts and pets, and a few plushies, none of which really effect actual game play at all. They also have paid race/gender/faction changes. It's also made them a toooooooooooon of money. Their first store bought mount made them millions in the first couple hours.

Espeically if some of the money goes back into stuff like improving the game, future x-pacs, possibly customer support, something similar would be nice for ffxi.

Well, as FFXIV forums are convinced that cash shop money will go to fund other SE projects, that works out wonderfully, because their money can then go to funding XI, just as XI's money went to funding the original 1.0 ...we know that won't happen; and odds are excellent, excess cash shop money from XI would go to FF15 or FF16 or random phone game. XI has a higher sub fee than just about any MMO out there, and it's a game that doesn't require an enormous amount of support. What does that translate to? Not getting a lot of money funneled that way if it turns a higher profit than normal for a given month.

[Pixela]

Wow does it pretty well, all they sell are mounts and pets, and a few plushies, none of which really effect actual game play at all. They also have paid race/gender/faction changes. It's also made them a toooooooooooon of money. Their first store bought mount made them millions in the first couple hours.

Espeically if some of the money goes back into stuff like improving the game, future x-pacs, possibly customer support, something similar would be nice for ffxi.

I've played a lot of mmos, I've never seen one mmo that added more content after adding a cash shop (Wow, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC etc). They make more money but it does not go back into the development of the game, if anything it gets less money going back into the game. The game turns into a reason to keep people around to buy cash shop items (like a shopping mall adding plants and seats etc) instead of keeping people around to play and enjoy the game.

A) they put more effort into making cash shop items over all else
B) they seem to lose respect for the players and see them as nothing but sheep after a cash shop is added
C) they start pushing the boundries with the cash shop to see how far they can push it, and this is a long way because there are always a lot of people that want xp boosts and content lockout removals
C) actual game development becomes a factor in cash shop sales, shall they add this new mount that looks cool and detracts from the cash shop mounts? hmm no put that new mount in the cash shop and make a lesser looking one for content reward.

There is no world where a cash shop is a good thing for an mmo unless it's near death and it's the only way to save it from closing, even then it damages it to the point an avid fan may not like what it devolves into.

As was said, when FFXI was at it's most profitable they took most of the money it was making and fed it into FFXIV. They also took away ffxi devs to work on it, these 2 things along with releasing an mmo directly competing with it led to this games major decline. So if you really think anything they do will improve the game you should think again. It's never that simple.

[Jeanna]

Wow also has a paid character boost (60 bucks gives you a level 90 - current max level is 90 with the new x-pac coming out bumping it 95) which is something I'm a bit on the fence about. There's a bit of an argument there that it's an advantage. It's not like it's hard to level in either game though, ffxi especially as most people just leech in abyssea or other places and aren't really learning anything as they level up. I'd personally probably pay for some max level jobs on some of my chars if they ever offered it in 11.

[Comeatmebro]

putting down others for being enthusiastic about their hobbies just reveals your own lack of self confidence

go back to high school if you want to bully people, your antics won't upset any adults

[Blazeoffury]

I agree it really is time for the game to be given an end date. It has gotten old stale, boring. Watching the playerbase wank themselves silly over redoing af/relic armor to 119 it's time for this old dog to be taken out back and given the old yellow treatment.

[Pixela]

I agree it really is time for the game to be given an end date. It has gotten old stale, boring. Watching the playerbase wank themselves silly over redoing af/relic armor to 119 it's time for this old dog to be taken out back and given the old yellow treatment.

These games rarely ever shut down until they become totally unprofitable, given that ffxi still has a large playerbase that's not going to happen for a long time.

They don't just wake up one day and decide to close them, there won't be an end date simply because you think it's stale. If you don't like what the game is then why are you here? There are still more than enough people around to keep ffxi running for a long time (especially in Japan), it may even outlive XIV...at least as a p2p title.

[Stompa]

I agree it really is time for the game to be given an end date. It has gotten old stale, boring. Watching the playerbase wank themselves silly over redoing af/relic armor to 119 it's time for this old dog to be taken out back and given the old yellow treatment.

In my office here are ZX Spectrums, ZX80s, C64s, Amstrads and Amigas, all built/bought by me in the 1980s. Also are around 500 cassette/disk games that are from the 1980s. Some of those games are still Cult Games, with fanclubs and active players - after 30 years. FFXI being online and actively updated for 12 years is an achievement, for sure. But 12 years is nothing if you are talking about players wanting to play the game.

If people like me are still playing 2D platformers and fractal games from 1983, and there are fanclubs full of players still enjoying these extremely simple and linear and depthless games after more than 30 years, what makes you think that game fans will not want to play a far more interesting and massive-depth game like FFXI, after only 12 years? FFXI has far more content and is a lot more fun to play than those 30 year old games, so what makes you think it won't have fans in ten years from now?

[Blazeoffury]

Well with the state of the na servers right now i wonder how long it is until it becomes unprofitable to sustain na gms, na translation teams etc sure you maybe right about the game living for a long while yet in Japan at least they still have solid numbers online the na/eu not so much and sooner or later they will pull the plug on it.