The absent players

[Neptune]

It's been worse, besides SE said themselves that the UI is an ongoing progress.

Or...maybe.. you should consider getting a new system. (Cuz i dont know what you are running)
But from since game release...it's hell of alot faster now.
There's been a few lag-spikes here & there, memory leaks possibly but, i'd keep a lil more faith in SE if i were you.

My system is incredible. Pull out a stopwatch the next few times you load up UI actions. Then fire up another MMO and open some UI commands. Compare. I have faith that SE will fix it, but to follow up with you, I think if people see this game now they will think it is below par because of that and more.

[Youngblood]

I'm posting this thread because I'd like to point out an issue. This is going to seem like a flame but please don't get alarmed when I bring up schools of thought.

We have all seen that there is a division between posters on this forum. Have you ever stopped to think about why? Why are we here? Some of us are Final Fantasy fans, some are MMO fans, some are FFXI fans, we all are gamers.

I'm sure it is pretty obvious that there is a group here that is very passionate about FFXI. In the discussion of FFXIV I see FFXI brought up a lot. According to the first players' poll about 20% of FFXIV players played FFXI. Some portion of them spent so much time with FFXI that they don't like where FFXIV is heading. Even though there's only a few hundred of you here boosting topics up like "About jumping" I want to pose some serious questions to your school of thought.

I couldn't find any numbers on the market size for players in the MMO genre but I did find a financial figure.

http://www.mobitrends.com/2010/12/06...o-market-size/

The MMO market is a 6 billion dollar a year market. According to Activision Blizzard's financial statement, World of Warcraft is an approximately 1.2 Billion dollar a year game.

http://investor.activision.com/reports.cfm

At FFXI's peak of 500,000 subscribers it was approximately an 80 million dollar game. And now it's probably 1/5th of that or less.

FFXIV sold 600,000 copies at its release. This would have made it more successful than FFXI, but FFXIV never charged subscription fees. On top of that, the game population dropped 97% to under 30,000 players in November. Those are the loyal fans who would stick it out to the bitter end. At this point some of those 30,000 are the players that spent a lot of time with FFXI, who are posting in threads to influence FFXIV's course.

Now the question I want to ask is, how valuable is your opinion to influencing how big of a game FFXIV can be? If you make suggestions based on what you are comfortable with and like, are you going to be playing an 80 million dollar a year game?

What about the absent players? There are 4.8 billion dollars a year worth of absent players.. what kind of game would they play? I see it as my duty to use my loyalty to influence FFXIV to be the best game it can be. So that even more people can enjoy its beauty and adventure.

Sadly unless WoW dies I don't ever see the game ousting it in popularity and sales. They have a way lot of work to do before that will happen. As it has been stated they'll have to appeal to a broader base of MMO players and not just FFXI/FF fans. They gotta work hard to even appeal to current loyal fans and now with this quake business i'm sure SE is gonna be set behind both timewise and financially.

[Rowyne]

Most of the people, (that I knew, at least), were previous players of FFXI. In my LS alone, about 80%+ of the players came from FFXI, looking for new places to adventure.

I've had a very different experience. Many people I know did play FFXI once upon a time, but came to FFXIV looking for something different. My husband, in fact, despised FFXI and only agreed to play FFXIV with me because it promised to be different (and he has actually enjoyed playing FFXIV). But there are also plenty of people in my LS who never played FFXI.

In fact, I've only met ONE person in my travels in FFXIV who specifically said they 'were expecting FFXI with newer graphics'. This was a random newbie I met at the aetheryte outside of Limsa Lominsa the first month of launch who needed some help figuring things out.

To me, Final Fantasy means engaging story, beautiful graphics, and amazing music. Not the outdated concepts of FFXI.

I think that FFXIV can look ahead to the future without losing the integrity that is Final Fantasy. And I think that is the key to getting the attention of the absent players.

[Neptune]

I've had a very different experience. Many people I know did play FFXI once upon a time, but came to FFXIV looking for something different. My husband, in fact, despised FFXI and only agreed to play FFXIV with me because it promised to be different (and he has actually enjoyed playing FFXIV). But there are also plenty of people in my LS who never played FFXI.

In fact, I've only met ONE person in my travels in FFXIV who specifically said they 'were expecting FFXI with newer graphics'. This was a random newbie I met at the aetheryte outside of Limsa Lominsa the first month of launch who needed some help figuring things out.

To me, Final Fantasy means engaging story, beautiful graphics, and amazing music. Not the outdated concepts of FFXI.

I think that FFXIV can look ahead to the future without losing the integrity that is Final Fantasy. And I think that is the key to getting the attention of the absent players.

Very well said.

And youngblood, it's unlikely that wow will ever die but I think FFXIV will be popular, if a certain school of thought doesn't choke it like a weed.