Letter from the Producer, XXXII (07/23/2012)

[Hyrist]

Hyrist chances are it's not SE that wants to bar Chinese players from the servers but more of China wanting to bar it's citizens from the other servers.

Either way, it was wise to tap the player base. China may want to have their own separate servers, but doing so might also open up the possibility of having optional Region Locked servers for everyone, which was a request for some. Though I'll stay on a Region free server due to having friends in other regions, more options are always nice for those who want it.

Either way, this is a gigantic player-base boon for SE. They'll likely take a hit on the profits having to give licence for a Chinese company to tap that base, but in the end it still will be a huge help in getting this game healthy financially.

[NefarioCall]

Well... bringing in a couple million subs from China would certainly help the outlook of this game.

[Elexia]

Well, all fears about FFXIV being a success enough to maintain just went out the window..

XIV still has the potential to completely flop on a game design level.

and by doing what even FFXI feared to touch.

Yeah, because a company jumps at the chance to work on a version for a group of gamers who continually DDoS'd and hacked people for quite a few years, right? >.>

I'm guessing you forgot SE had to place blocks on Korean and Chinese IP ranges for awhile to stop the DDoSing.

[Rau]

Japanese seem really considerate about not spaming chat with Japanese, although I have blisted a few who were "wwwww"ing it up all the time.

Jp players on Durandal have been using/abusing /shout a lot more in the recent months. Never really understood why.

[SuzakuCMX]

I want separate Chinese servers. And if not that, then seperate NA servers.

No offense but Japanese players have more then enough xenophobia for me. Wont play, talk or do anything with US players for the most part. A lot worse than in FF11.

I haven't found any xenophobic JP players yet. Most of the "xenophobia" has been on my part, since I don't really want to party with those who don't speak the same language as me for the most part.

Not only that, but a lot of people don't party outside of their LSs anyways.

[Ricky]

I haven't found any xenophobic JP players yet.

Have you ever been to Ul'dah?
JAPANESE PLAYER ONLY

What's amusing is they type their entire /shout in Japanese, including all details about what they are doing, what jobs they need etc, so we can't even read it.. then end it with "JAPANESE PLAYER ONLY"

[Hyrist]

XIV still has the potential to completely flop on a game design level.

But the difference here is that a tight niche audience of only a few fans is about 60k, there, it's closer to about 300k for a niche audience. 5 million of WoW's long bragged 11 million subscribers was from China alone. The rest was all other regions combined.

Yeah, because a company jumps at the chance to work on a version for a group of gamers who continually DDoS'd and hacked people for quite a few years, right? >.>

I'm guessing you forgot SE had to place blocks on Korean and Chinese IP ranges for awhile to stop the DDoSing.

No, I remember it quite clearly as I was one of the more active pursuers of bots and reporting. (Hell I remember pushing for a similar idea of the STFU). But China hitting Japanese servers with DDos and RMT attacks is irrelevant to the fact that FFXI could have easily doubled its subscription numbers by swallowing its pride allowing the game to be licensed to an outside Chineese company.

A few BS RMT companies do not equal China as a whole, please stuff your Xenophobia in someone else's face.

[Elexia]

A few BS RMT companies do not equal China as a whole, please stuff your Xenophobia in someone else's face.

I'm Xenophobic? The Fuck? Last I checked:

Even though RMT is actually US based which merely use chinese as the farmers...they should keep the US away from everyone else too. Given regulations on chinese game development, they will most likely have a separate server setup as well as version because for example you can't display undead or certain types of death in China.

I'm pretty sure I know that RMT isn't everyone in China, especially considering I play Chinese MMOs and know quite a lot of Chinese players who wanted to play XI but never could because of the bad seeds.

So yeah, take your ignorant Xenophobic accusations elsewhere.

[SuzakuCMX]

Have you ever been to Ul'dah?
JAPANESE PLAYER ONLY

What's amusing is they type their entire /shout in Japanese, including all details about what they are doing, what jobs they need etc, so we can't even read it.. then end it with "JAPANESE PLAYER ONLY"

Yes, I've been to Ul'dah, and no, I have not seen anyone say that.

[Hyrist]

So yeah, take your ignorant Xenophobic accusations elsewhere.

Kay. I'll own that.

So what's your effing beef about me calling out FFXI's mistake in not tapping China's base then?

You seem to be blindly championing the game left and right when, honestly, it could have benefited from the deal. Heck, Chinese servers might have taken some of the heat off of the main servers, in terms of RMT assaults, we'll never know.