I think it was a mistake to ever believe he was serious in the first place...
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Perhaps a more important question... one that I have not seen asked... the answer to which can be both awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time....
Why? Why was it felt that we should be able to have 8 characters per world? Why did SE feel this would be a 'benefit' to us? Why 8?
Scarry and un-founded speculation:
Will it be possible to do things only on one character, that you need 8 to experience the content?
Limited class/job advancement per character? (Only one level 99 job per character, so you need 7 to experience them all)?
Limit of one Crafting 'Job' per character?
Is there an 8th job line comming?
Will there be 8 grand companies, and if you wish to experience them all you need 8 characters?
Will some worlds be PVP *ENTIRELY* ?
Will PVP be open-world but only for participating characters (that are then 100% of the time PVP)?
Or was it just a /random roll and they said 8 sounds lucky?
Not meaning to cast wild panicy speculation... just something says that there is more to this '8' then just a lucky number.
8 characters per world is typically the standard for almost every MMO. That is where the 8 probably comes from. Yoshi-P seems intent on bringing XIV to at least the standards of a modern MMO as he continues to build on the game.
Also, there is a chunk of "Altoholics" who love creating multiple characters.
edit: There will also be releases of new races as seen by the player poll. So it would be great to able to slowly work on a new race without spending more money per month to do so(or deleting your current character).
8 is the number of the Lazy developer
i love slots....
Oh my god, no Rokien, bad, BAD.
Dont dictate why someone may or may not need 8, yes you can switch classes, but can you switch nation? can you switch grand company?
What about the role players, they like to make different characters, some are very serious about it, even so far as they may create scenerios where one of their character "dies" off, like in a story and they reroll, but they dont delete they just make a new one in a new slot incase they grow out of their RPing days or if their character has some spontanous recovery. Like someone casting raise on it =D
In the end, the reason for the player is not important, what is important is the judgement and perception, it is NORMAL to have multiple slots per account, people are USED to this model, weather Yoshi will admit it or not, that is a bit issue, so many people are turned away when they hear about the $3/char because they dont understand some mechanics, it is a pointless fee that did nothing, was greed, so just get rid of it, and scoop in a player who will be paying $13/month rather than turn one away playing 0/month.
Regardless, when the game was free, we had 8characters FOR FREE and did anyone go roll on all 8 making them into mains time to time and not dedicating to one? No! Everyone had a main...
So you need not worry.
I think the difference with FFXI and FFXIV is the time you had to put in. In FFXI deleting your character and starting over wasn't even a choice for most people. The amount of time and work needed to put into 1 character was already a full time job. That's the reason I think people grew on their characters so much, even when you got tired of looking at him for 4+ years straight.
In FFXIV I find myself enjoying my LS members more than my own character. The hardest part about starting over for me would be falling so far behind them. Besides the crappy drop rates, there isn't much work needed to advance. Character creation doesn't help and we all look the same in the end anyway(gear), depending on your job of choice. FFXI had the same problem but the time consumption was much greater. My name is the only thing important to me with this character. I have worked to maintain a respectable image. The character I created I couldn't care less about.
However, it's the players decision in the end. Almost forcing someone to play only 1 character wouldn't make him/her more attached anyway.
I do think you should keep your 2 retainers per world(across all characters on it) since the subscription plan changed. You shouldn't be allowed 16 retainers.