FFXIV has lost it's magic

[Aegis]

FF11 was stable at the time but it's numbers were still dwindling. I was there and they weren't gaining anyone new. In the long term this was a problem which is why they tried something different. To claim that they didn't look at data and just made a decision "just because." is foolish.

Of course, but it has to be expected that at 9 years (or however old it was at that point) you would expect numbers to dwindle, because, like it or not, people would have been put off by the ancient graphics and PS2-limited capabilities. Anyone picking up the free trial would not know about windower. Remember playing in 640x480 resolution? That, I think, was the max res without windower.

FF11 was doing very well in the face of WoW and I do not deny this fact. I also believe it was a mistake releasing abyssea but not for the reasons you think. Note I called what SWG did "Alienating it's fans." it's better to let your subs dwindle down slowly on their own while offering incentives for your existing subscribers to come back than it is to make it a completely different game. Why?

/snip

I agree with this in principle, however, I can think of one example of a game that's been gutted, risking alienating its fans and has so far proved a success (you're playing it).

It's type of mmo model has been proven to work while releasing an old school mmo model in the modern age didn't go so well (though there's only really one to reference.)

This type of model has been proven to work. It's also been proven to fail. The question is how well you make the game, regardless of model. If a game is competently made, well presented with frequent updates and sufficient things to do/time sinks then you're going to have a certain degree of success at any rate. Add a big Intellectual Property like FF (or WoW, or Star Wars) and it multiplies the audience.

It's annoying we never got a competently made, well presented, frequently updated old-school-style MMO. A lot of us believe it could have been a bigger success than this, but there's no chance SE will take another such risk in the next 10 years. We got a badly made, broken, empty, beautiful game and this can be forever held over our heads as 'why old school MMOs can't make it in this market'.

(I'm gonna stop derailing this thread, it was never about making this game into XI-2, it was about incorporating an element from XI's generation of MMOs)