Please remove iLevel

[Diraco]

Item level flat out destroyed FFXI, removing any reason to do years of old content. The game's a ghost town now. I hope it's handled better here -- can't really tell at this point, since they haven't released a new tier of equipment yet.

[Reiterpallasch]

Item level flat out destroyed FFXI, removing any reason to do years of old content. The game's a ghost town now. I hope it's handled better here -- can't really tell at this point, since they haven't released a new tier of equipment yet.

Having an extra set of numbers on a piece of gear didn't destroy the game. They started to push more towards a vertical gear progression, sure. And that would have worked out great for what they wanted, if they had done it a few years back. But the game is old, and the playerbase has shrunk significantly over the years. This would have happened regardless of what they chose to do or when they chose to do it.

[Jeronlmo]

Having an extra set of numbers on a piece of gear didn't destroy the game. They started to push more towards a vertical gear progression, sure. And that would have worked out great for what they wanted, if they had done it a few years back. But the game is old, and the playerbase has shrunk significantly over the years. This would have happened regardless of what they chose to do or when they chose to do it.

FF11 at its peak had 680k players, when abyssea released it was still around 490k, on average only lost 3% a year. After abyssea the game started losing 20% a year, the people who played 11 knew what they liked, if they wanted WoW, they would have been playing it.

[Armond]

FF11 at its peak had 680k players, when abyssea released it was still around 490k, on average only lost 3% a year. After abyssea the game started losing 20% a year, the people who played 11 knew what they liked, if they wanted WoW, they would have been playing it.

Source? Sorry when you start using specific numbers I start wanting to see specific evidence.

[Xatsh]

Source? Sorry when you start using specific numbers I start wanting to see specific evidence.

/sea all and many of the database sites tracked log-ins numbers throughout the day.

the game lost very little of its population each year, abysea drastically changed the game. That combined with XIV caused multiple mass exoduses.

Even if there is no 100% definite proof, only SE knows the exact impact. The game went through 2 server merges in about 16months after abysea, that alone is enough to say how many people left. The game went from 2-3k players online at the peaks to only breaking 1k on weekends.

The majority of the XI's population was extremely against the changes the devs did with abysea and the level increases, and they paid for it with a huge chunk of subs that never returned even after XIV 1.0 more or less tanked.

XI was an oldschool game. The people who wanted WoW were on WoW. The majority of the players on XI did not want what WoW had. Most of them hated what WoW was doing to the genre. Making XI more mainstream when 99% of its subs were not mainstream at least to me seems like a bad business decision.