SE stop doing the "norm"

[BruceyBruceyBangBang]

People bring up FFXI a lot because it's a successful MMORPG that the same people made and most likely the MMO that'll still outlast XIV no matter what they do to it. It's really, really not that hard of a concept to grasp about people telling SE to look back at what they did with XI, take what works and go on from there.

It's something that every MMO developer has been doing for years including Blizzard since you know people like to say they invented the MMO genre with WoW and all.

You missed the point entirely. It wasn't an argument of if it was successful. Also, it being successful is debatable. It did fine. Successful, but fine.

The point I was making had to do with being locked into the preception of what an MMO is and how it's really all just based on you personal experience and the lasting impression a game gives from your youth.

There are a lot of voices that don't participate on these forums. It's a FFXI generational thing to participate in forum discussions. Whether it be wiki, windower, bluegartr, or killing ifrit I'm sure this is how everyone got used to communicating. This isn't the case now with the majority of players.

And this is still irrelevant to the point I was making. The point is that your experience with FFXI is what clouds your judgement on the next MMO. This is just something people need to recognize and they aren't getting it. Those of you who think your nostalgic 10 year old butterfly feelings for XI has nothing to do with your judgement are kidding yourselves. And that is kind of sad, I think.

[Elexia]

Those of you who think your nostalgic 10 year old butterfly feelings for XI has nothing to do with your judgement are kidding yourselves. And that is kind of sad, I think.

The funny thing about making statements like this is a lot of people who played MMOs played more than just XI for an even longer time, myself included, however what sense would it make to say: "Hey SE you should look at UO see what worked" in the same light as "hey se you should take what XI did and make it better"? Is UO in the same series as XIV? Is it by the same company and an MMO they developed and ran for 10 years? It's a simple concept to understand. Just because someone brings up XI doesn't mean it's the only MMO they've played or the amount of time they've played it.

It's usually people who say things like you are seem to be clouded by the fact you more than likely dislike the game, which is your personal experience as you say. My MMO experience reaches back to the TinyM and Diku days before these games were known as MMOs. My fondest memories also lies within UO and Ragnarok as I played those longer consectively than I did XI, however I played XI off and on for it's entire run, yet I can realize the different between Final Fantasy XI created by Squaresoft(Enix) and Ultima Online created by Origin.

Also the whole listening to/developing for the "vocal minority"...I think by now we should realize that's all SE has been doing with XIV, especially because of:

there are a lot of voices that don't participate on these forums.

Doesn't that automatically mean they're listening to the vocal minority? Or is it because someone happens to have played SE's last FF MMO they're the vocal minority?

So:

The point I was making had to do with being locked into the preception of what an MMO is and how it's really all just based on you personal experience and the lasting impression a game gives from your youth.

A lot of people aren't locked into any perceptions, just those who want to believe as such because they believe they know someone's intentions without actually knowing. It's the whole "you people" thing, obviously if someone says that you'll have the group of people be like "what do you mean, you people?" whereas the person was referring more to the group of people who are talking about x subject matter.

Spin it around to when someone brings up FFXI, you'll have people automatically assume someone is talking out of nostalgia rather than talking about designs, which is what most are talking about most of the time. You even said yourself:

Also, it being successful is debatable

This alone proves you're looking at it from your own personal opinion, or as you say, perception, even though any MMO that makes a ton of money let alone runs for 10+ years you could honestly deem successful. Nothing that isn't successful lasts. In terms of MMOs, APB and Tabula Rasa were ended pretty quickly, those clearly weren't successful MMOs. "It was a different time" is the common argument, well most of the MMORPGs that came out between 91-2006 were all in an era when MMOs weren't exactly mainstream and the reason new MMOs don't always last is because a lot of players will think it's being designed to kill WoW and when it fails to do so, the MMO dies out and people go right back to WoW without even giving the MMO a chance on it's own merits.

I wonder, would you say people are talking out of Nostalgia of the DQ series if they like the DQ MMO and want SE to look at what they're doing it with for XIV? Especially because it's actually quite popular and seems to stick close to the actual series, which is something they should really learn from with their MMOs built into a long running series? While XIV is a fan service game, they can go about it in much more ways than slapping in locations and icons from previous games for the sake of it, something that XI did quite well (if you played FFIII or FFV you'd recognize the story pacing very well), but you'd say that would be nostalgia.

[Corleone]

Its funny reading all these posts about nostalgia and FFXI diehards wishing XIV was more like that (and maybe never being fully satisfied with another MMO so long as they yearn for a similar experience). Funny because FFXIV was basically the first MMO I ever played - my friends tried to get me into WoW for years but I never made it past a month of playing - every time I've taken a break from XIV to play other games like Rift during the tsunami shutdown, Tera, SWTOR & GW2 - I've always ended up wishing they were more like XIV and ultimately left them because none of them could give me the experience I got from XIV. So maybe the people that are saying you're never going to get that "first experience" back are right, because as busted up as XIV was at launch - here I am doing the same thing you FFXI'ers are except I'm wishing other games were more like XIV lol.

Being a MMO rookie I probably missed half the flaws that you vets had problems with but honestly I thought XIV 1.0 was a great game - not including the obvious things like the UI lag & having to hold your shield up just to get SP on Sentinel - but the game after the patches that fixed those 2 things and the game before the patch that enabled powerleveling was the best MMO I've played. The only thing it was missing was more dynamic/diverse leves to choose from and more open world content (why did we only get 3 big NMs?).

So anyway, I just wanted to post this because everything I'm reading reminds me so much of how I feel when I try other games out & wishing they could give me some of the same experiences that XIV did.