what makes an MMO fell dead

[VentVanitas]

I've been playing on private XI servers recently, and it just does a lot right that XIV doesn't. I'm not saying it's a better game, but I do think that the dev team does need to reflect on why FFXI has such a dedicated and passionate playerbase that supports it to this day despite how antiquated and old it is. There are things that they can learn from it, is what I'm saying.

XIV is a smoother experience when it comes to pure action among other things, but misses a lot of the MMORPG appeal that makes people return to games like XI.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I've been playing on private XI servers recently, and it just does a lot right that XIV doesn't. I'm not saying it's a better game, but I do think that the dev team does need to reflect on why FFXI has such a dedicated and passionate playerbase that supports it to this day despite how antiquated and old it is. There are things that they can learn from it, is what I'm saying.

XIV is a smoother experience when it comes to pure action among other things, but misses a lot of the MMORPG appeal that makes people return to games like XI.

Simply if you compare the 2. FFXI is an MMORPG targeted at RPG players. FFXIV is an MMO using the FF franchise to target non RPG players. At least that seems to be the direction FFXIV has been going. However part of me thinks FFXI would probably be competing with this game in terms of active players if it wasn't a PS2 era game and had the same quality of visuals. There's so many great older games out there that ppl don't even try simply because it isn't as "pretty" as the new stuff. I still feel like FFXVII needs to be a new MMORPG that puts RPG back into the label following FFXI's design philosophy. At the same time I feel like it should follow up with FFXVIII going back to the fantasy roots of the franchise with cartoonish visuals like we got from FFIX. Then give it the darkest story in SE history and death sequences reminiscent of happy tree friends... >.>;

[Renathras]

I've been playing on private XI servers recently, and it just does a lot right that XIV doesn't. I'm not saying it's a better game, but I do think that the dev team does need to reflect on why FFXI has such a dedicated and passionate playerbase that supports it to this day despite how antiquated and old it is. There are things that they can learn from it, is what I'm saying.

XIV is a smoother experience when it comes to pure action among other things, but misses a lot of the MMORPG appeal that makes people return to games like XI.

Agreed with this, I think.

I just wish retail FFXI was like the private server FFXI community.

The best games over the years have one thing in common, immersion. Skyrim probably being the best game of the last 15 years. That game is still played by many nearly 12 years later. It still has a strong community that are still discovering secrets.

Though I don't disagree with the premise, I think there's some individual taste here. I've never liked Skyrim. I liked Oblivion okay, but the story felt too paper thin, and it was annoying that if you leveled up doing other stuff (that was actually fun) then tried to do the story, that level 1 imp you could easily defeat had you done it right away is now a pair of Daedric demi-lords with a million HP or something stupid. That...was kinda dumb. But Skyrim I could never get into. It was too dumbed down vs Oblivion to me. And all the landscape felt samey - which is saying something vs Oblivion. Where Oblivion was the same patch of woodland for 50 square miles with a little bit of snowy mountains in the north and some swampland in the south, Skyrim was just all mountains and snow, the two types of terrain I hate most in games. Ugh. I will never understand why so many people loved that game...

I do agree that FFXIV's problem is too much instancing. FFXI - modern retail FFXI - problem is that Trusts exist and so people won't party with new players to group and level. They have no reason or benefit from doing so...so no one does it. Or no one did when I tried to get into it a year or so ago.

Having seen what FFXI was like in its prime, I can understand why players would have liked it, but it sadly ISN'T that now.

I don't know who says that, I play on Asura and there's alot of people, I don't play on the private servers, retail has too many QoL for me

I tried to play it last year and everyone said "Get some Trusts and level. Once you're high level, then talk to us and we'll play with you once you're geared up and ready to do real content".

I left the game fairly quickly because it defeats the point of an old school MMO to me to do everything solo. And that seemed to be true on all three of the active servers that I tried, Asura being one of those. I also tried it on that private one that came out recently and people were a lot more active and doing stuff, so that seemed nice, but I'm not sure how much investment I want to put into private servers that could go down at any time...

The lack of worthwhile endgame activities.

The game needs to have something to feel like you are actively progressing your character or it just stagnates into afking in limsa.

Also this. Outside of raiding, there's very little to do. Major patches tend to focus on raiding. Notice how we don't get the Relic "grind" or Deep Dungeon until X.Y5 patches, not in the major X.Y patches? Because it MIGHT inconvenience the raiders or something. So the only thing to do at end-game is really raid, and that's beginning to be a problem.

This used not to be the case. As recently as ShB we had Bozja, even if it was cut down from the original intent, and in SB, we had both Eureka and a Deep Dungeon with HoH.

I know a lot of us groan at getting Crystal Tower raids all the time in roulette, but the fact that I see multiple first-timers on the regular in there is an extremely positive sign regarding the health of the game. Same in leveling roulette, there's often a first-timer there too.

I decided to plow through a whole ton of Guildhests on an alt job for the completion bonus earlier today, and I did every single one with only a few minutes queue time each, or less. This was on a DPS job. This tells me the game is not just very alive, but strongly thriving.

Beyond that, any city I go to I see lots of people. The reddit is incredibly active. Even the parody "shitpost" reddit is active. FFXIV is doing well, folks.

Also this.

And I think this is something endgame-exclusive players are missing. A LOT of leveling content and leveling zones are active, just with sprouts. There's not endgame stuff to do there, so omni-90s (or near enough for their tastes) aren't going to those zones or doing those things...but that doesn't mean no one else is.