Quote Originally Posted by Eekiki View Post
I count 26 pages in this thread, many of them refuting this claim.

In point of fact, the main force that sent many of those 500k subscribers away after FFXI's peak was World of Warcraft, a game that catered much more highly to the casual player, and a game that has yet to be bested in terms of financial success or player population ever since it knocked FFXI out of the #1 spot.

I can even remember hearing the stories as people left. "It's so much better than FFXI. I can log in for only a couple hours a day and actually make progress!" "Soo much nicer not having to sit around camping NMs for hours in order to get drops."

I could go on, but you get the gist.
You could go on but you would still be wrong. Until abyssea came FF11 only ever lost a very small portion of the population, the fact that more people like wow is because there are more gimps in the world just like there are more dumb people than smart people, WoW is actually designed to require less thought hense the giant arrows telling you where to go. The fact that FF11 "only" had 500k subs is because gaming until WoW was designed for people who actually like gaming, WoW is treated as a social network similar to facebook rather than a game.