I think Rent-A-Hamster and Jen pretty much hit the nail as to why there is a very slim chance that they will merge servers anytime soon(earliest possible merger would probably be 6-12 months after the version 2.0 and PS3 release). Most likely the first reason they are not going to is what several folks have already said, wasted resources/time to then having re-implement them for the PS3 release. The 2nd most likely reason is what Rent and Jen said. I know some folks don't care or very little of what happens outside of anything related to Square Enix (when it comes to MMOs). However, with that said if you look at the past 10 or 15 years in MMO history, it is almost impossible to re-establish closed servers once merges start to happen. Out of the 500 or so MMOs out there very few have been able to achieve that. As far as P2P models (whether triple-A MMOs or not) only a couple, in the past 7 years or so have been able to increase servers or increase their population by a considerable amount, while maintaining a strictly P2P model as well as maintaining a current healthy population for 2011-2012(healthy what is considered for the company, not the player). I say this because there are tons of MMOs out there that only have 1k-5k-10k-20k or so active and long term players that will vow without a second thought that their game is the best or really good. Sure for a small time company those numbers may be fine, but for larger companies I'm almost certain they would want the numbers to be substantially higher. It does not mean it has to be 12 million or 6 million, but definitely they would want something a bit higher than 30k for example.

Once the server merge start, there is almost a 99% chance that it becomes a vicious cycle. They start off with close to 20 30 or even 40 servers only to have a couple years later dwindle down to 5 or less (in most cases). EVE Online was able to pull it off after a really rock start and one other game as well that had somewhat of a rocky start. I might be missing a 3rd one but there are very few to speak off. That is out of 500 or so current MMOs which in an extremely saturated market. To be fair it is more roughly around 50+ MMOs that have the P2P model. If they do server merges from 18 to 9 or less how would that give any sort of positive vibe about the game? Most people run away from MMOs that are slowly ebbing away, they would ask what is the point in joining that game (excluding diehard fans of course, they don't care if the population drops to 100). Sure some may say it is a lost cause or that people on really low NA/EU population will have a much harder time finding a party of being able to complete "older" or what some people consider obsolete content such as the level 45 dungeon. But if they do that, there is "almost" a point of no return, and this is something they are trying to avoid at all costs.




As far as content is concerned from now till October/November 2012 we have the following as far as content is concerned, i am sure I missed a couple):

2 instanced raids (Hopefully level 50 content and not the usual skippity hop type)
Garlean battle content (Hopefully this is set up in several stages/areas and not just one arena/room)
Moogle battle
Garuda battle
Odin battle
Content surrounding the Twelve

Let's say for the sake of this discussion, they somehow put all or most of the primal battles like the ones from FFXI (in addition to the ones just listed).

For those folks that genuinely enjoy the game AND want to see the population grow steadily and hopefully reach 100k-200k or more players where Square-Enix can solidify the P2P option and therefore help with the creation of expansions etc... do you think that this is enough content to reach those numbers as well as maintain long-term subscriptions? If this is not enough, what do you think is needed past version 2.0 that would give them a really good chance to obtain and maintain those numbers or higher?




The thing is MMOs "age" at much faster rate than they did, say from 1996-2004. Sure before you could get X Y Z gear and have it last for half a decade or close to it. MMOs now mostly have stuff outdated within 6 months to a year most of the time, if not less is some cases. And with the leveling curve, they become much easier as the months go by. Back in the day experience point charts wouldn't budge for years on end. So you knew you would be ahead of the curve. Now? It's like every couple of months the leveling curve is softened. And when the changes are made you can get to the max level as well as getting most of the gear within days or weeks compared to months that it took to level just 1 class to max. Thank companies for shifting the focus towards casuals (not the only reason but certainly a major one). And there is nothing wrong with catering to casuals, it is just the way practically almost every MMO company has handled it in the past 6 years that have really hurt them one way or another.

Without sugar coating, at the current time the only 2 "endgame" contents for level 50 really is either Batraal's room(dungeon does not count since you just skippity hop it) and Ifrit's arena of fire. So after almost 15 months that the game has been out... we pretty much have 2 rooms that are currently considered "endgame" The NM's that pop out are barely noting as endgame, such as Dodore... you just stand there and wail away. Same thing with the gold chests in the stronghold areas. For example the Kobold stronghold, just kill the main boss, wait for the right time when it uses its only 1 special move(as it is with most mobs in the game) in this case calling out the golems, shoot off sentinel and win. And considering that most if not all the gear got replaced with the use of materia, then the only "endgame" spot that most people go for these days is Ifrit. So after 15 months there is 1 popular room to fight an easy boss that takes less than 10 minutes to kill, and if you are good at it less than 5. Which still shocks me that the official forums still hail this as a challenging fight (considering I got down the patterns after my 3rd fight). Bad connection non-withstanding, I know quite a few people who have lag problems and have left the game frustrated over this. Outside of Ifrit there is very little if anything that poses a serious challenge of any sort. As far as higher level content from level 41-49 is concerned you have the 2 non repeatable main mission storyline, you have the 2 non repeatable quests that are rank 45(outside dungeon quests). Company quests you have 2 NPC's for each region which pretty much give you 2 types of quests, either stand there next to a helpless NPC and protect it for 15 minutes or kill as many mobs as you can within a certain amount of time. Everything else got replaced by materia socketed gear to make it even remotely worthwhile.

And practically if it hadn't been for the 1.19a update, chances are I would of given up on the game entirely. Before 1.19a I would play roughly an hour a week or two, and in some cases not log in at all for several weeks. Thanks to Mr. Yioshi I was able to cap out on all 7 jobs(I don't count sentinel as a class) in roughly less than 2.5 weeks and "experience" the endgame stuff that he wanted us to experience, or like he said to "get involved in the game quicker." Pretty much before Ifrit was implemented it felt like and I quote “For now in XIV, it seems that you're advancing toward... a higher level. There's no reason to advance in the game except for the sake of advancing. That's definitely one of the gaping holes in the game right now.”