Quote Originally Posted by Kranel_San View Post
I always kept hearing of FFXI but didn't play it before.
So yesterday, I tried to install it and I'm going to be honest. The game (probably) does not suffer from outdated gameplay mechanics or graphics. It suffers from the outdated nonsense the installation is which pushes any new player away from playing the game.
I could bet if they integrated the game with XIV launcher (Similar to Battlenet launcher for example) where the installation requires one or two-button to press and just a singular login just like modern launchers then I can say it might get a lot of new players who're excited to play the predecessor of XIV.
Please devs, if your game isn't attracting new players then maybe the issue isn't in the game but maybe... MAYBE... the issue is in the installation process.
Yeah the installation and signing up for POL was (and still is) a bit of a nightmare compared to other MMO's. If I recall it's because the launcher was supposed to be this whole separate social/community experience - you had mail, chat, etc. FFXI (and a FF card game that I can never recall the name of) was launched from it and I think they were possibly going to use it for some other games going forward (but never did). It's one of the let-downs of the game but once you've sorted it, the game itself is an amazing experience. Then there's the downloading - usually 1-2 hours regardless if you have 50mbps or 1gbps - it's due to the underlying technology based on 56K connections, single-transaction file-transfers, etc. I think it's sped up a bit since the original launch though - used to take a day to get the download done if I recall.