FFXI deserves and needs an Expansion Pack announcement similar to Seekers of Adoulin

[Pixela]

Over 200k people tuned in for the live stream because we thought we were going to get something new, an expansion pack announcement or similar. We watched a 5 hour stream that almost all of us could not understand hoping for something new, a glimpse of something to look forward to and get excited about.

FFXI is a 20 year old game and unlike pretty much every other mmorpg on the market we are all paying subscribers allowing this to be a profitable title still, there are no free players to bloat numbers. Every FFXI player is paying money to play this game, that is how much we care about it. We expected that 20 years would be rewarded with another expansion pack, it seems we were wrong.

We would like an expansion pack similar to Seekers, it does not need to have new jobs but it does need a lot of new areas, new monsters, new things to do and expanding the world in a major way. An expansion pack is not only an extra source of revenue for you, a way to bring a lot of players back for a while and a way to extend the life of the game but also a way to excite all the players that login every day that something big and new is coming in the following years. It would re-invigorate everyone and make us happy to be spending money, instead of thinking it's being wasted.

We need this, we need to be excited again, we need something to look forward to that is "big". We all appreciate VR, but we need an expansion pack. Seekers of Adoulin was 2013, we have waited long enough. Seekers brought so many new and exciting things into the game, we need something big like that again.

There is no valid reason we cannot have an expansion pack, the game has more than enough people playing right now and a lot that would come back willing to pay $40 for it. Given the waste of money on such things as Babyons Fall, there is no valid excuse not to spend money on something that is guaranteed to turn a profit and lead to an increase in subs after it launches too. Almost all the work can be outsourced, as happened with Seekers of Adoulin. There really is no valid excuse we cannot have one other than you don't want to do it for some reason.

Maybe you are worried multi-box players won't buy multiple copies of the expansion pack? I can assure you we all will, because we care more about getting a lot of new content than the cost of getting it. If we cared about money so badly we would be playing a f2p game and not a sub only one.

Please consider giving us a new full expansion pack for FFXI, FFXI and your players need this.

[Lortheron]

At this point, anything. SE has been masterful at expending into projects that give no return lately, but can't expend no where near into FFXI it seems...

[Alhanelem]

Really hard to justify another full expansion with the size of this playerbase.
"no valid excuse no valid excuse"
There are plenty of valid excuses, Just because SE is making dumb financial decisions doesn't mean that XI is doing as well as you think it is. I love XI and I want more, but I know and you know this isn't going to be a thing.

Years ago the XI team had to defend FFXI's right to exist, I really don't see anything large scale like that happening again. Nothing's impossible, but be realistic.

[Haldarn]

Please consider giving us a new full expansion pack for FFXI, FFXI and your players need this.

Agree. All other MMOs of a similar age that are still going get regular expansion packs. Arguably XIV has even had the same number of expansions as XI now.

I wonder if their reluctance to do much more with the game stems from not wanting to up the power escalator any further. They may be of the mindset that a new expansion requires a new level cap increase (or at least gear cap) and might not want to imbalance/invalidate i119+ content. Is it that they really think that new content must have new gear else no-one will play it and hence it'd be a waste of development time? Or is it that the man making the decisions doesn't want to see his baby's playerbase be distracted by a much deeper Final Fantasy.

And yes, millions wasted on failed projects and yet they're happy to let this numbered Final Fantasy rot.

[BST]

They seem unaware of the scope of this games community, people have reverse-engineered this game, there is Private servers of this game, Emulated versions and even a conversion to a certain 1stparty engine, all of which is made by people with limited knowledge. Not to mention the person who has made High-Definition textures.

This game needs the FF14 1.0 treatment.

What is weird is that they had a partnership for a mobile version of this game, but choose an incompetent 3rdparty company with an extremely bad reputation to make it for them.

And to top it off, all of the talk about the 20th anniversary, way over hyped. I think, its even damaged the game even more, I'm a long time player since the launch, and honestly, once you pulled the plug on the PS2, I really haven't missed out on anything content wise, what is the point of continuing now? I could return, for free, every time like I have been doing, to catch up on the drip-feed TVR story.

This is a really sad state Square has entered into, without FF14's success which they now take advantage of and can easily go bad the way you make really, really decisions, just look at the housing bug because of the lack of testing. I actually question myself now, do I want to continue my FF14 sub, when this will be its fate as well one day.
Do I want to keep supporting Square-Enix at all, why should I, when the company doesn't give a damn about its own products.

Even Free to Play games, such as Sega's Phantasy Star Online 2, get more attention and care. Which kind of makes me a bit angry because I started playing PSO on the Dreamcast originally which lead to my interest in FF11, If only I stuck with PSO instead, it would have saved me thousands of Dollars in subs to FF11 and 14 over the years.

Just about everyone I know has left FF11, and whats funny is, its the same case in FF14 now, I am so tired of making some new friends to play with and they quit and go to PSO2 and Lost Ark.

You walk a very thin line Square-Enix.

[Beastorizer]

Pretty much gave up on that idea, along with paid race, gender changes etc. So I went ahead and started making REMA on my alt, the character I like.

If they do implement it later after like 20 years after every other mmo I played implemented it from the start, I am gonna be pissed......

Edit: Mostly because I recently went ahead and started making commitments to my alt.

[Alhanelem]

They seem unaware of the scope of this games community, people have reverse-engineered this game, there is Private servers of this game, Emulated versions and even a conversion to a certain 1stparty engine, all of which is made by people with limited knowledge. Not to mention the person who has made High-Definition textures.

These aren't good things, from SE's perspective. People who are using these are (by-and-large) not paying customers, not to mention they're violating SE's rights. Even if the people who did these things were trying to show their love for the game, the real way to do that would be to pay and play the official version. If those people were playing this entire time, an at least slightly different picture would be painted ofo the FFXI community, their caring, and their passion, which might have the power to drive more new content.

[Haldarn]

What is weird is that they had a partnership for a mobile version of this game, but choose an incompetent 3rdparty company with an extremely bad reputation to make it for them.

And yet, if you look at Nexon's V4, which was in development there at the same time as FFXI Mobile, you get quite a good example of how an 'idle' game would be a good fit, as the player focuses on maximizing their gearsets and abilities, reviewing quests and missions and socialising whilst simultaneously grinding progression in the background. I thought it showed amazing promise and from some of the elements of the game itself it did feel that's where unused FFXI Mobile talent and resources went after it was canned.

[Tarmarkvar]

There is no valid reason we cannot have an expansion pack, the game has more than enough people playing right now and a lot that would come back willing to pay $40 for it. Given the waste of money on such things as Babyons Fall, there is no valid excuse not to spend money on something that is guaranteed to turn a profit and lead to an increase in subs after it launches too. Almost all the work can be outsourced, as happened with Seekers of Adoulin. There really is no valid excuse we cannot have one other than you don't want to do it for some reason.

I mean, they were pretty firm back in 2016 that the November update of that year, which concluded Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, would be the last major update. There is a pretty valid reason to not make more -- they don't have enough development staff to do something that major. And they are likely reluctant to hire more because the demand is not there. You seem pretty confident that there is a big enough playerbase to justify the cost, but you seem to be going off intuition and casual observation. They make their decisions based on reports from the accountants over there.

Don't get me wrong, I'd kill for an expansion or two. I dream about exploring Rhazowa (northern continent and orc homeland), or Olzhirya (Mithran homeland in the south) or the Far East. It bothers me so much that this game is now and always will be incomplete. But it's just not gonna happen, and it's weird that you seem to think it's something we're entitled to.

[Obysuca]

I mean, they were pretty firm back in 2016 that the November update of that year, which concluded Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, would be the last major update.

Didn't they also say something along those lines just before RoV too? I remember a lot of people I know quitting due to the announcement, but also before RoV cause they thought it was the end.
This (and iirc, they did something similar before TVR too) is one of the things that makes me think there's a chance we could get some sort of expansion / "expansion" (RoV style), just because SE has done this multiple times already.

Which is honestly a terrible way to do it tbh, since the time they did it for RoV, it just decimated my friends list and linkshells, then once again wiped out the remaining people I played with, just a bit before TVR. So it honestly wouldn't surprise me if 6-12 months after TVR ends (and probably another "last update" announcement), SE suddenly announces some new expansion or even just more new story with one or two new content.

While I do appreciate it when a company does announce an end date well in advance, so people don't feel ripped off if they just dumped a ton of money into it a month before it ends, it's also equally as bad to announce the end and then after losing a ton of customers, they change their mind and then it doesn't bring those people back because they thought it ended and didn't keep up with it anymore or saw any new announcements elsewhere.