If I was given the money, the team, and had to gamble...

[Jackl3]

I would of done ... FFXI ( lv75 cap era ) - I would of re-mastered. Period.

It all worked. Camping NM's - eventually rewarding, unique rare items, fun extreme rare items ( Kraken Club ), fun items (Ridill, Joy-toy etc). Variety of decent equipment. Crafting Armour was also useful!!!

Accomplishments, raging from easy to extreme.
Crafting worked. It paid off.
Auction House. It worked.
Fun story line / fights.
Fishing: Was fun - Fishing Devil manta for angel skin, yum.
No stupid retard vanity transports.
Items were job relevant and fun, with stats that made you go ... I want that ( Getting that Black belt for a monk? wicked )
Experience parties (Might have lowered the requirement and speed of leveling easier).
Open world Notorious monsters - Server competition. Rewards.
Combat: Getting the Armour made a significant difference. Worked. Maybe adjust speed but damn I preferred it.
Punishment for being retarded : Sneak / Invis
That element of danger from other monsters. They could that level of danger or excitement to the game!.

The hidden secrets / strategies etc that went into the game that S.E. wanted us to find / figure out.

I'd of had to hardly change anything, expect a few systems here and there to align with current trends. Old is where it's at.

I'm just an old-school guy, wishing times didn't change I guess.

[SolviteSekai]

It would fail because people these days wont play a game with that kind of slow leveling, not to mention that boring combat.

I enjoyed FFXI back in the day, but its 2013 dude.

[Renytenz]

It would fail because people these days wont play a game with that kind of slow leveling, not to mention that boring combat.

I enjoyed FFXI back in the day, but its 2013 dude.

I believe there are enough people that don't mind extreme grind. Think about upcoming ArchAge, korean beta was tried out by many hardcore mmo gamers from around the world and is highly anticipated. Of course the playerbase probably will not be as high as more casual mmos, but it will find its market.

[randomrope]

It would fail because people these days wont play a game with that kind of slow leveling, not to mention that boring combat.

I enjoyed FFXI back in the day, but its 2013 dude.

Leveling is completely different in XI now. You can easily level up to 60ish+ in just a few days. 75 within a week or even higher. With book page exp and Abysea alliance grinds its a totally different leveling game. Leveling in XI is now faster than leveling in XIV

[BlaiseArath]

It would fail because people these days wont play a game with that kind of slow leveling, not to mention that boring combat.

I enjoyed FFXI back in the day, but its 2013 dude.

Agreed. What we need now is another Copy > Paste Next Gen MMO WoWclone with as little uniqueness as possible, and lets make sure items are as boring and uninteresting as humanly possible, and the Open world has 0 reason to be explored at all so its just a large, empty, useless filler space you run through on Auto-pilot from Exclamation point to Check point.

Cause we all know from experience trying to clone a game to win that games playerbase works perfectly every time.

Oh, those countless Call of Duty/iOS/etc clones that tried to profit off their respective Popular games Fanbases that failed miserably leading to dozens of gaming companies either failing or being bought out due to loss of revenue? Nah, ignore those, Lets keep trying to Clone a game and get that crowd of players on ours. No way this will backfire.

........ Seriously though, I wonder if people listen to themselves, companies included. Can take a page from Capcom and enjoy their large failures over and over. If people wanted a WoWclone, frankly they'd play WoW. Time has shown us that games that offer a new experience generally sell the best unless its an already established IP. Saints Row learned this when it moved on to 3/4. it was essentially a GTA clone in SR1/2 (and while i personally preferred Saints Row over the mess of GTA4, It was still a clone more or less).

When Saint's Row 3 came about, they took a different approach. Walked away from the more serious deeper town and moved into a full blown satirical comedy fest. Personally I liked the Mix of Serious/Comedy of 2 better but It broke from the GTAclone Mold into something unique, and it sells well. but even that game can't compete with the original, and GTA5 proves this.

On the flip side you can look at Resident Evil, a series that sold well up until about RE5 when Capcom decided it was going to try to make it a Third Person shooter and less Survival Horror. Then came Resident Evil 6, which almost every can agree just become a frigging Action-Shooter and it failed miserably. Capcom also brought us epic failures like DMC. Two games that started as one thing and sold well, then strayed form the path to encompass a broader range of playrs aaaannnddd...? FAILED. So the message comes off pretty nicely here, when you break from what makes the series good and try to copy others just so you can appeal to that crowd, You almost always lose. Also Dead Space 3...

What I'm getting at is, This MMO needs to be more unique, There's already an established MMO that has this model, its Wow, and no matter how hard SE Tries, it will never take WoWs fanbase... So While I absolutely would not bring back sh*t like ground kings... FFXIV is in painful need of something that seperates if from games like GW2, which offer more content and are FREE. Square Enix/Final Fantasy White Knights are only going to make up so much of a popuation, so if FFXIV wants to last at all, It needs to become worth the 15$ a month or so its costing us... and Copy>Pasting every popular MMO idea in the last 5 years (and leaving out some of the great ones from FFXI mind you...) Is only going to be appealing for a small time, even to people who enjoy those things... Because at the end of the day its all be done before, sometimes better.

We don't need a FFXI port, especially not one from a Nostalgia Goggle of 75 cap era bullsh*t. But say what you will about FFXI but it had a lot of good ideas but just couldn't implement them cause of the technology of the game or poor foresight. FFXIV should not have this problem.

My dream of FFXIV is really giving us more "Diablo II" feeling in gear, and less "Diablo 3"... While theres a lot of other things i think they should have borrowed from XI when they were shopping for stuff to Copy>Paste from MMOs... Gear is the biggest thing for me, and I feel like I.lv just doesn't do it for me. Even Materia feels pointlessly boring.

Edit: And with it all said it done. I don't dislike FFXIV... I just felt like I've played it before. in Guild Wars 2.. Except GW2 was free. I want FFXIV to be an amazing game, I just don't see it standing up to any test of time when all its best features are just borrowed ideas almost directly copy and pasted except a bit more poorly implemented... I know the games new so i'm not bashing it too hard. But I just hope it picks up and develops its own style in the upcoming year.

[Trematode]

Yea those times were fun back then, I remember *Cheers*.

I know the saying "This is FFXIV not FFXI" is getting quite boring and used more then a 125lbs geek saying "U mad brah" in MMO's

But I think they doing a pretty good thing with FFXIV (Think holistic) so I think they'll introduce some of the suggestions in the near future. (Hopefully NM camping lol)

[Codek]

I just got Deja Vu of the threads on SWTOR about rebuilding Star Wards Galaxy Pre-CU changes. The funny part is that they actually did that, and as expected, no one really cared.

[Parodine]

I get nostalgic for FFXI since it was my first MMO and it took up the better part of 7 years for me, but really, it was a massive grind-fest.

Also keep in mind that it took a terribly long time for FFXI to change many things and add enough content to get it to where it was/is. I'm willing to be patient with FFXIV for a while because of that. Hopefully they'll be able to apply the lessons learned in FFXI as time went on, but I do agree that nothing has captured the magic of finally conquering the airship battle in CoP, yet. Not even a Titan HM win.

[Remilia_Nightfall]

Uh...OP, I believe you can still play FFXI if you want :/

I think that in 2013 a game like that would not be very well accepted by the critics AND the majority of the players, to be honest.

Also, what do "I would of done", "I would of re-mastered" and "I'd of had" mean?

[Monkor]

Also, what does "I would of done", "I would of re-mastered" and "I'd of had" mean?

It's just an improper sounding out of the spoken "would've" which would be "would have."