To the Dev team Please don't let this game die out! Is FFXI 2.0 Possible?

[Mnejing]

Abyssea and Adoulin didn't kill FFXI!!!!! It's obviously [INSERT THING I PERSONALLY DISLIKE] that did it!

The canned responses of No Plans?

[Zarchery]

The canned responses of No Plans?

I currently have no plans to confirm or deny that.

[Krystal]

Not really accurate, players on the servers were low before audolin and not really changed after it for better or worse (for some time at least).

Like I said in my post: Abyssea itself didn't directly damage the game upon its release, it was actually well recieved at the time of its release. The real problem lied in the implications it would have on content post abyssea, as well as the impact it had on leveling. It trivialized something that was a major source of community in the game (Most of us met eachother in EXP parties, especially in the early days) and also highly encouraged leeching and laziness. People leveled up all their jobs real fast and then lost their drive.

Your only mentioning the after effects. What happened during its "peak" as you call it was far worse. Sure it started out "great" but then the fallout came so fast it would make sonic the hedgehog gawk and go "That's too fast man!". By "fallout" I mean the fact that players quickly realized that all those levels they were gaining were awesome but there was a big problem... sure they had the levels but not the combat levels. Players quickly realized that even though they were level 99, they couldn't hit jack shit.

More over, the locations that that had monsters who would actually skill them were far and few in between. Eventually players figured out the locations but this lead to them spending nearly as much time skilling up their combat skills as they would have spent leveling the job the normal way. Then there were those who wanted the empy+2 gear the "best gear" in the game for your job at the time. Farming these items was tedious and not easy. Players who were used to things being handed to them thanks to the easy leveling abby provided quickly gave up on getting that gear and settled for the freebie gear provided for curor.

Another thing long time players like myself noticed is that the concept of "congratulations!" when you gained a level suddenly became meaningless as did all those levels we worked so hard to gain. Players who were jaded by this aspect and fact that abby brought quit the game in tidal waves.

The game's pop suddenly went from an average of 1500 players per server to at the most, 750 per server. Yes, that many players quit due to being jaded alone. i don't know if there were many threads on here about it but Reddit had several hundreds, one of which titled: "Post here if you quit FFXI because of abby" which was rather big in itself.

Those of us who attempted to go with the flow the game was going towards saw all of this transpire, many of which ignored it and pretended abby wasn't the cause when we all knew it was. Some simply embraced it with the lazy notion: "Get with the times! Old style leveling is out!" These players more often than not, hailed from WoW at some point or another. I personally confirmed 500+ through forums and Reddit alone who used to play WoW at some point.

By the time seekers was released, the majority of the player pop was full of players who wanted instant gratification and expected as such from this expansion and seekers brought anything but that. So what happened? Many left while some of the players who heard the challenge had returned to the game and decided to give FFXI a chance again.

[Alhanelem]

Your only mentioning the after effects.

I'm only mentioning the "after effects" because that's where the biggest problems lie. Your complaint about combat skills is inconsequential. I don't think the fact that people still needed to raise their combat skills had anything to do with the problem- And this is still an "after effect" since it was brought on by the leveling speed increase. I would disagree about the fun of abyssea wearing off as fast as you describe. It seemed to me like the community held pretty steady throughout its introduction (over the several months taken to release all three parts) and began to tumble as post-abyssea content began to come in- and not because of flaws in said content, but rather the high expectations brought on by Abyssea. Your mileage may vary by sever, I can only speak for mine.

I think long after later content came out, players still felt like Abyssea was the only thing to do, as well. That was the only place you could achieve the highest power, after all.

[Bluestar2kx]

Greetings all. It is my first post on this account since I lost my password to my other playonline 2 years ago. Do not be fooled by the progress on this character I'm a FFXI vet and started playing 2003 under Skizzle on the Ragnarok server.

Like MANY people here we grew up with this game under Tanaka and followed the progress with the years. This game has brought challenges laughter fun love to some including myself at one time companionship you name it.

If there is any way we as the consumers and players can make you guys continue doing this game as a 2.0 with better graphics etc? Kickstarter if possible? SE has been keeping two MMORPGs up at the same time for almost 2 years now so we know its possible.

With all due respect to Yoshi P and his team, FFXIV is not what we FFXI players where hoping for. I'm playing FFXIV at the moment with many of my FFXI friends from my old server but its just not the same. I think many players that play FFXIV that are from FFXI share these feelings. FFXIV was not what we signed up for and what we wanted to keep alive with our dubble subscriptions during its dark times. We never wanted a World of Warcraft Final Fantasy. Neither did we want a game where there is nothing to do now due to its lack of content and difficulty on regular stuff (Alexander savage doesnt count)

Don't let this wonderful game go to waste. Just touch it up a bit add better graphics and some new gameplay and i know people will come. I know I'm not alone with these thoughts. All good things don't have to come to an end. Instead they can flourish into something we all want.

Much love to the FFXI team and all the players here that are currently playing this game. Salute to you all!

It is possible their already making one, but aren't ready to announce it.
The question becomes if thats the case: What kind of FF title will it be? Like XI? Or like XIV? Or like XV or something different all together.

SE has the resources to run multiple MMO's if they wanted to and the titles brought in money.
We just don't know what will happen.

I would definitely support any efforts by SE to expand FFXI, i think if they updated the engine they could draw a fair sum of new players, and work to bring life into the game. But using XIV's engine code would be a daunting task still to bring everything over from this engine, but likely cheaper then an entirely new one, so who knows.

[Stuzey]

Some interesting points, but I think you need to look back to Wings of the Goddess for when things started to change, the expansion offered very little end game content compared to Aht Urghan, SE had experimented with the three scenario add ons, but the game needed something new just before Abyssea. What Abyssea did is bring the playerbase to the same level, most old content became obsolete.

At first Abyssea was great fun, you could organise LS events around it, needing alliances to take down the bosses, but the introduction of atmas, led to it being much more efficient to farm in smaller groups. It was too easy to get the empy armour, before we had a large selection of events, with long term goals (remember the days of dynamis only dropping a couple of pieces of relic armour a run), now you had no waiting times and could farm items with less than a party.

The problem continued with content not being able to keep up with demand, NNI was another example, all it took was good teamwork and you could max out 15/15 armour in no time, as quickly as new events were released they were beaten and people started losing interest and left for the shiny new XIV.

I personally quit early in 2013 for XIV, but I found something missing with the game, even though it has so many old friends playing, I resubbed at the end of last year and I've been really enjoying my time back, playing much more casually I find myself with lots to do. FFXI isn't what it was, but I agree it still could have plenty to offer, It's a shame they didn't revamp years ago, then the need for the PS2 dev kits wouldn't of been an issue....

[Stompa]

Aby had a lot of really good quests, which were engaging and interesting. Some of the quest rewards were nice gear and furnishings, and Seals for upgrading AF3, and KIs that allowed you to stay in Aby longer, obtain more entry-stones per day etc. I liked the way the quests in Aby had a lot of useful rewards, and were often fun to do.

The Aby NM proc system was well-designed and fun, imo. Aby was a huge and exciting challenge for solo players, lowman, and even alliance in the early days. The bosses were great, and often required a good strategy and teamwork. I liked Shinryu too. I liked the fact that Aby had some wandering NMs, and not just popped NMs. I think they got this mix just right in Aby.

The lights/box system was ingenious, challenging players to do interesting quests and battle NMs to obtain KIs that increased the different types of boxes, and to customise their box-farming. In gold boxes could get -DT 1~6 rings, refresh hairpins, regen helmets etc. This allowed solo players to obtain useful and fun items on their own timeframe. Questing the random augment PDT earring and DEX rings was fun too. Also the Battle Trophies random augments were fun. AF3 and Empy weapons are cool. I also really loved a lot of the Merit WS which arrived during Aby.

Abyssea should have allowed entry for level 75+ characters only, this was my only complaint about Aby.

[peculiar]

Was reading on redit earlier that according to Square, final fantasy xiv is not doing as well as they had hoped in some of the major regions it runs in. So hopefully that will wake them up to not killing off the other mmo title they run.

FFXI can still be profitable Square, learn from your failings and keep the one sure thing you have!

[Elexia]

Actually.

SE has been doing what they're doing with XV for awhile now. Kingdom Hearts an FFXII were "open world" games in a sense. The main switch to the current style is because western gamers are to the point they want "more and more" and less of what made a series popular because it's "outdated."

FFXIII-2 was essentially a FF version of Chrono Trigger, another SE IP - something that did "choices" and "routes" long before it became a trope. XIII-2 didn't need a fleshed out story as it was playing off of the previous story, being a direct sequel. XIII-2 also did better and was more well received than FFXIII and LR.

If we're going with the "rip off" route, FFXI was a rip off of EverQuest and pretty much any game that wasn't created by nintendo is a rip off of their IP - platformers? Yeah, rip off of Mario as Mario was the most popular platformer ever. Shooters? rip off of Doom and Quake..so on and so forth. "Originality" is very hard to come by when the industry has existed for over 35 years in some fashion.

In terms of what "killed XI" it certainly wasn't Adoulin. Abyssea was hit/miss - The content was fun and well executed, however the level cap raise from 75-99 was too quick in terms of a progression sense, which means they had to do something drastic to accommodate it, that is what killed XI because it suddenly went from what we were used to doing and all of the content we had in rotation, to "nothing." Adoulin introduced a lot of new systems, the same amount if not more than previous expansions did - that wouldn't kill the game.

To be honest, the only time SE has ever "ripped" something off was indeed for FFXIV ARR - Yoshida was extremely clear in making a FF version of WoW similar to how FFXI was their answer to EverQuest. XIV's main shotcomings is, Chinese wise, the pay to play aspect didn't mesh well with the style of game. You can't do much paying hourly because in XIV you're doing a lot of nothing until you hit level cap. Korea has far better MMOs to play. It's only America and Europe that's in an MMO slump because WoW "changed the game" and very few eastern MMOs want to even set foot out west because they know it's bound to fail quickly if it isn't a WoW clone.

SE took advantage of that with XIV.

[BurnNotice]

Honestly, we can go in circles on how this game is dead or got killed or whatever. Truth of the matter is that the game still has room for development and I strongly believe its far from dead/over/kill/ect. I am no programmer, but I know programmers and they educated me on how long it would take to recreate a game to be played on other platforms. Needless to say, it will require a tremendous amount time, money, people and patients to redo this game and have it released in a timely manner. If this game was given a year to be redone for PC and today's platform consoles, it will come at the price of the subscriber. Would you be willing pay $25/mo for a revamped game with new content and updates twice a year? I am sure most people would.