What's makes an MMORPG fun? - 4Gamer chats with the Producers of FFXI, FFXIV, and DQX

[EmiliM]

http://www.4gamer.net/games/139/G013991/20140307079/

Not directly related to FFXIV contents, but sheds some light on backgrounds of Naoki Yoshida (Director/Producer of FFXIV), Yousuke Saito (Producer of DQX), and Akihiko Matsui (Producer of FFXI); as well as what life's like in each of their shoes as a producer of an MMO.

Fun little thing I translated during my downtime at work over the past few days. Hopefully it'll help people understand a bit more about what Yoshida's (and his colleague's) background is like and the challenges of running a game like FFXIV.

PS. It may be of interest to note that Matsui was previously the Director of FFXI, then he was brought on as the lead battle system designer for FFXIV:ARR. After this, he returned to FFXI as the Producer. So Matsui is directly responsible for much of the battle system we see in the game today.
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No set boundaries between Dragon Quest X and Final Fantasy XIV

4Gamer:
Today, we invited those of you who are responsible for the creation of the biggest domestic MMORPGs to chat about the topic of MMORPG. First off, please give us a status update on the game each of you are responsible for.

Yoshida:
To start with me (FFXIV), we're currently sitting at just over 1.8 million players (accounts). Total in-game character count is 6.75 million, and we've just reached over 400 million hours played by our players.

4Gamer:
1.8 million already? Now, about how many daily active users are we looking at?

Yoshida:
Well, the number for daily active user count can be misleading.... The peak time for Japan and oversea countries are different, for example. But if we simply look at the number of people logging in every day, I'd say we have about 500,000 people world wide. There are people who log in once every couple of days or so, so if we include those people then the number would be higher. As for a breakdown by countries... (*looks at the PR person also in attendence*) I'm sorry, but I can't say anything about that. And besides, a producer in charge of managing a global MMORPG would usually wait until their service starts in China before mentioning any statistics (wry laugh).

Saito:
It'd literally add a digit to the end of everything (laugh).

4Gamer:
And what about the Dragon Quest X?

Saito:
Since we currently only operate in Japan, we only have numbers for the Japanese player base, which is around 300,000 active customers a day. We just released version 2 at the end of last year, and thanks to that we've been seeing more active users. We were actually kind of worried at first if we would lose customers when version 2 came out.

4Gamer:
You mean like people treating it as a good cutoff point to stop playing.

Saito:
Yes, but luckily there was no sign of that so it's a relief. It is unexpected though that there are still many people who bought version 2 but never visited the new continent.

4Gamer:
Really? What's everyone's doing then?

Saito:
They're all in the casinos... I guess. Everyone seems to be playing at their own pace.

4Gamer:
How about FFXI?

Matsui:
Well, it's a bit hard for me to compare ourselves with the other two titles. We've seen a fair bit of players return after we released Seekers of Adoulin last year, but at the end of the day we've still had a lot of people move on to FFXIV.

Yoshida:
But if you say that to other companies running MMOs around here they'd probably get upset at you. I know what the actual numbers look like and I can say there's still quite a lot of players in this game. Considering how it's had to compete with big titles like DQX and FFXIV, I think it's impressive that it still manages to pull in as many players as it does.

Matsui:
That's true.

4Gamer:
This is something we wanted to ask straight up, but has Square Enix ever held any formal internal discussions about making sure games like DQX and FFXIV should each cater to their own niche (in terms of target audience)?

Saito:
Not at all.

Yoshida:
That was blunt (wry laugh).

Saito:
'Cause, if you worry about that then you won't be able to make the games fun. And besides, I think people play each game to do different things, and expect different things as well.

Yoshida:
So even though we don't really discuss about it, in the end the games still end up with their own niche market.

4Gamer:
Do you guys ever feel like you're competing with each other?

Yoshida:
Not really. Why do you ask?

4Gamer:
Well, I remember Saito-san said "we won't lose to FFXIV!" at some point in the past.

Saito:
That wasn't me, that was (version 1 director) Fujisawa (laugh).

4Gamer:
It just left a really strong impression on us.

Yoshida:
I'm actually planning to go drinking with Fujisawa after this. I'll remember to tell him to keep his mouth shut in the future (laugh).