Commitment issues

[Eekiki]

To the ones bashing the OP over XI

you're wrong

XI's development cycle != XIV's development cycle. Expansion packs were more prevalent back in the early aughts because internet speeds were slower, so offering big content updates via patches was less viable.

[Magistrella]

XI's development cycle != XIV's development cycle. Expansion packs were more prevalent back in the early aughts because internet speeds were slower, so offering big content updates via patches was less viable.

Every huge maintenance following the first RoZ and CoP release had you download several hundred MB depending how many Areas where added. You really should look at a zone/content release time-line of XI. Original Release Size for FFXI: 1CD POL and Tetra Master 3CDs XI 1CD RoZ 2CDs CoP, with a maximum of 700MB of compressed data per Disc. The Game with RoZ and CoP installed and patched was about 8 GB (now the game is at 11-12GB +POL Data depending if you have both or only one client language installed). I dont know how good the compression was back then but i remember downloading for around 2-3 hours the first installation, thats around 2-3.5GB with my connection.

And on the point of Internet Speed:
In 2004 (CoP Release) 72% of JP households had an ADSL Connection
I Personally have still the same connection as back then - i live in a very rural area with 3MB/s too, the first wide spread released DSL connections released in 2001 in Germany. And we were, and still are, far behind Japan.