Final Fantasy XI's rocky start?

I've seen it mentioned a few times on forums that FFXI had a rough start as well. I started playing FFXI shortly before CoP was released, so I wasn't there from the get-go. I'm wondering if some of you FFXI old-timers might be able to elaborate about how bad it was when it first opened.

FFXI was a very successful game and I'm wondering how the parallels to FFXIV run.

What sort of problems did FFXI have on launch day, and exactly how much did they change along the way to making it the game we all know and love/love-hate?

NA wasn't there from the start, because it was JP onry until RoZ was released. It was a bit rocky, however in all honesty there was more to do... even without expansions. City rank missions, for one. Plenty of unlockable jobs, and more defined leveling areas, there was jueno as well. And progression for people was a lot slower back then, now everyone wants to race to the top as fast as they can, which totally sucks because I enjoy taking my time. Also bear in mind that ffxiv is being completely redesigned in absolute record time for creating a whole new game, while being completely redesigned for the legacy environment as well. Both difficult tasks.

I never played XI so I wasn't aware that it was JP only at the start, I agree that XIV and XI are two differentgames I wish people would stop looking back at XI and want XIV to be like it, the dev team is capable of doing both a game that's different than XI and as good as or even better than XI. The main reasons people want to rush to the top so quickly is that 1. Its easy and 2. All the content thats interesting is at the top...

The games released in almost identical conditions. XI did not have adv jobs or anything at release was added after launch.

The major difference between the 2, is Tanaka did not change anything with the release of XI and just added more and more to it every patch.

With XIV currently, the games foundation is being completely rewritten so we are getting actual content at a much much slower rate then it was added to XI.

It is a negative of the revamp. If Tanaka was left in charge there would of most likly been alot more content at this point similar to how XI was done... The timelines of XI and XIV under tanaka where running in parallel almost.

It's not exactly that I want FFXIV and FFXI to be similar (which to be honest, we all do in a general sense... which is why they are releasing the job system anyway), but more that I really want to put into perspective the game-developing process/timeline.

The fact that FFXI and FFXIV are both MMORGPs, are both FF titles, are both released by the same company, both share the same fanbase/userbase... all of this really does mean that we can compare the two games in a useful way.

Xatsh's comment really makes me wonder what the game would be like if it had kept on the original path. Of course, it is only a mental exercise at this point, but an interesting notion nonetheless.

I'm actually quite happy with the direction FFXIV is heading.

There is a site that lists all the patch changes somewhere, i forgot where tho, i think on jp button?

Even though people like to try compare it to XIV, they seem to forget that it was in a different time, a different age of mmos where the f2p wasnt big and barely exist, a age where mmo's was new and high speed broadband was just coming into play, a time where things were still experimental and a time where world wide releases were uncommon.

The standards back then were very lacked and forgiveable than they are now.

I used to have a list of all the changes that were made to XI from day one lol. It may have been from elmothepointy. I can't remember where but yeah they didn't have any advanced job, level cap was 50 and there was hardly anything to do haha.

People look back at FFXI because of 3 reasons:

1. It's another Final Fantasy MMORPG.
2. Squaresoft/Enix created it and mainted it as well.
3. It had all of the basics and then some that XIV should have had at launch and they went on from there.

Basically, take what worked and made it better, not throw it all out and make it worse (XIV's original design direction.)

XI did have a rocky start but they pulled it together about a half year after launch then Zilart fixed a lot of vanilla game issues ontop of adding a ton of content, then it released to the west. XI was a bit better off than XIV at launch outside of server stability because the features you expected to work..worked except for auto-grouping. They didn't work WELL but they actually worked lol.

XIV's systems were handled serverside when the client should handle it, that was the problem with the majority of the systems.

when NA's came in they JUST released AF armor. I think the level cap was at 70 (from 75) and they didn't fully release ROZ missions of i remember correctly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

Basically, take what worked and made it better, not throw it all out and make it worse (XIV's original design direction.)

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They were right with throwing out all the bad things XI did, but they should have kept the few things XI did right too, while being its own game.