Announcement of the "Ending Chapter of FFXI"

[Bluevann]

Pasting some information I have been given by a friend who speaks and understands Japanese and was able to see the press conference that had place in Japan yesterday to discuss the "future of FFXI".

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The press conference held last night announced three final add-ons to be released for FFXI. These will be the chapters where "everything comes together", and will see the return of the major NPCs from all expansions.

PS2/XBox support ends March 2016. They've promised to keep the Windows version continuing after that. November sees our last major content update though, but they say they will continue to adjust it and balance it. How long will they keep it up and just maintain it? Hmm… I dunno. I'd say at least until 2017. Or maybe they will keep it up and alive for awhile as some sort of archived title. I'm unsure they'd ever really kill it so long as there were a couple servers of players continuing.

Along with this, two new mobile features for FFXI were announced.

This is "Final Fantasy Grandmasters." An entirely new mobile game for iOS/Android set in the FFXI world.

The final announcement was super bizarre. It's a mobile port of FFXI. Supposedly it'll be like, the entirety of FFXI but locked in some mobile package. I don't know if it is synced to the live servers or not–I don't believe it is possible that they could. The app project sounds weird, and I don't entirely understand what that will be.
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As a current player (and roleplayer) of FFXI, this announcement causes some bittersweet emotions. I really hope XI will continue to live on even to a minor degree in the future (maybe turned into a single-player experience? Trusts make that possible now). But I am glad I will be there to see the game come to its grand finale.

I've wanted to make a thread here because, no matter what people say, XIV is the child of this MMO, and without the road paved from FFXI before it, it probably wouldn't have been here now. I don't think SE would have bothered giving 1.0 a second chance after its first failure if they didn't have the inspiration from XI's success and long-lived fanbase.

A big thanks to SE for the hard work and a hug to all the FFXI fans of recent and old days!

[MageBlack]

I think you are in the wrong forum. The FFXI forums are This way!

[Bluevann]

I think you are in the wrong forum. The FFXI forums are This way!

If you would have read my post, you'd see why I posted it here. There are old FFXI players in these forums that deserve to know.

[WellFooled]

I think you are in the wrong forum. The FFXI forums are This way!

You don't think the FFXIV player base would at all be interested in the final voyage of their game's older sibling?

[Obysuca]

The only thing that's bugging me is the way SE worded it. Sure, it says the last major update with content ends in November, but then they go on to say after dropping ps2/360 service that they're "going to focus on the PC experience", which could also imply maybe no content updates, while they do a graphics overhaul? Who knows? Since we all know how clear SE is on everything lol

Kind of let down on the mobile XI, considering if you think about the size of XI, even if they reduced it to mobile size, theres still only a very tiny portion of phones that have the space. I'd never be able to play it without dropping 700.00 on a phone, considering my phone is only 1-2 years old and the internal memory is only enough for a single game. Even though I have a huge sd card in it, it doesn't seem to want you to put apps or games on it, or if it let's you, it keeps all the downloaded files on the phone, making it impossible to add more apps/games.

[Brightshadow]

I think you are in the wrong forum. The FFXI forums are This way!

Don't need to be rude many of us hold this game very dear to our hearts.

[SirTaint]

Yeah I was sad to hear the news. I left FFXI ~18 months ago because that game took up too much time to stay competitive. I played 10 years and had an extremely nice account.

I started playing 14 because it was 1000x more casual and fit better with my schedule and having 2 kids.

[kyuven]

The only thing that's bugging me is the way SE worded it. Sure, it says the last major update with content ends in November, but then they go on to say after dropping ps2/360 service that they're "going to focus on the PC experience", which could also imply maybe no content updates, while they do a graphics overhaul? Who knows? Since we all know how clear SE is on everything lol

PS2 and Xbox support costs them money. It really sounds like they're trying to demote FFXI to "cash cow" status and thus trim any costs from it.
Since the number of people playing it on an Xbox or PS2 is probably not worth the cost anymore (VERY few Japanese people have an Xbox 360, and the PS2's are steadily breaking down and aren't really worth supporting anymore since they limit content) they're not going to support it anymore.