What are Square Enix's plans for preserving the game/story when servers shut down?

[NortherVairemont]

With rampant rumors of Sony looking to acquire Square Enix being spread like wildfire, it has me wondering "What happens to the game when the servers officially shut down?" I don't think this has ever been addressed before and I'd like to get some concrete answers, if possible.

Think about it, when the servers go down for good, will it ever be possible for us to experience the story again? The game was built in such a way that it is assumed that the servers will be online forever. Such is the way for games-as-a-service... which is what FFXIV is.

If Sony were to acquire SE, would they immediately shut down FFXIV? I don't think so. But SE also runs and operates FFXI, which I'm sure everyone knows at this point, is being maintained by a skeleton crew. If SE were not in charge of FFXI anymore, I think FFXI would be in jeopardy of being shut down. If that were the case, we would never be able to play that game again. At least, not officially. What if we wanted to play through that story again? We couldn't.

Regardless, even if Sony does not acquire SE, the services like FFXI, FFXIV, and DQX will not be live forever. Unless SE has some type of contingency plans for their games-as-a-service, we may never be able to experience those games ever again once they finally go offline. And that seriously has me worried.

FFXIV's biggest strength, by far, is its story, its characters, its world. Are there any official plans to preserve the story so it can be experienced whenever servers inevitably go offline? Whether it be an offline game mode, released as a "series" like an anime or a TV show, or preserved through some other type of media?

[EaraGrace]

With rampant rumors of Sony looking to acquire Square Enix being spread like wildfire, it has me wondering "What happens to the game when the servers officially shut down?" I don't think this has ever been addressed before and I'd like to get some concrete answers, if possible.

Think about it, when the servers go down for good, will it ever be possible for us to experience the story again? The game was built in such a way that it is assumed that the servers will be online forever. Such is the way for games-as-a-service... which is what FFXIV is.

If Sony were to acquire SE, would they immediately shut down FFXIV? I don't think so. But SE also runs and operates FFXI, which I'm sure everyone knows at this point, is being maintained by a skeleton crew. If SE were not in charge of FFXI anymore, I think FFXI would be in jeopardy of being shut down. If that were the case, we would never be able to play that game again. At least, not officially. What if we wanted to play through that story again? We couldn't.

Regardless, even if Sony does not acquire SE, the services like FFXI, FFXIV, and DQX will not be live forever. Unless SE has some type of contingency plans for their games-as-a-service, we may never be able to experience those games ever again once they finally go offline. And that seriously has me worried.

FFXIV's biggest strength, by far, is its story, its characters, its world. Are there any official plans to preserve the story so it can be experienced whenever servers inevitably go offline? Whether it be an offline game mode, released as a "series" like an anime or a TV show, or preserved through some other type of media?

I believe in an interview Yoshi P discussed making a single player version, but whether that’s actual feasible or desired by Square is uncertain. Ult8mately, it likely falls to fans to preserve as much as I hate to say it.

[MistakeNot]

Lots of different online games (including many MMOs) have been shut down over the years. To the best of my knowledge, none of the owners of those games did anything at all to preserve them after the shut down.
So assume that once the game shuts down, then that's it. You won't be able to experience it afterwards.

Reason for this simple - either they shut down the game because they lost one or more licenses needed for it, or the game was no longer profitable to keep running. If they lost a license, they won't be allowed to do anything more with it.
In case the game was shut down due to not being profitable, then the owners certainly are not going to spend any more money on it.

[Lyth]

Sorry, I thought that I just stepped off into the outer darkness of the General Discussion subforum for a moment. Strong Ultima Thule vibes and all. Although to answer your question, we've discussed this fairly recently.

Azem journeys to the Fourth, the final unexplored shard, which has up until recently been completely sealed off from the source. There's a brief shot of a familiar blue planet as they step out of the portal. Running under streetlamps through a sprawling metropolis and attracting occasional stares from passer-bys, Azem arrives in front of a house. Out of breath, they knock on a familiar door. As it opens and light spills out on to the doorstep, Azem grins and hands out a controller to the screen: 'Take it, we fight as one.' As the camera shifts out, further and further away, a linkpearl softly chirps off in the distance, as Thancred tells Azem to pray return to the Waking Sands. Fade to black, credits.

The real treasures were the giant rabbit mounts we collected along the way.

[WhiteArchmage]

This is, indeed, not the right subforum for this, BUT. I do know the answer, or at least I know enough to make an educated guess:

The trust ("battle support") system was designed to give a more solo-friendly experience for new players, or players who want to play the story but not group up with other people. Now, FFXI also added its Trust system (in fact, before XIV did, that's where XIV got the name from), but efforts to port/remake it into mobile failed, perhaps it's laying the same groundwork as XIV is.
Now, Yoshida's previous game before XIV, and the game that made him popular enough for SE to put him in charge of saving XIV, was Dragon Quest X, the MMO entry in the series that proved so popular that now it's getting a single-player remake.

So, signs point to: "CBU3 is laying the groundwork to eventually remake XIV as a single-player game when it's no longer popular/profitable, without removing a main numbered FF from gaming history." When will that be? ...XI is still getting updates and it's going on 20 damn years...

[Denishia]

Remember, one of the reasons that 2.0 even got the go-ahead -in fact the reason why any effort was made to avoid 1.0 shutting down- is that the Final Fantasy brand was deemed too important to have one of its mainline numbered entries missing. XI is still running in part I believe because of this desire (and why there was an exploration of making a port/remake that might have been single-player). Eleven years from now when XIV is in its slide to maintenance mode I'd expect a single-player remake - probably a mobile version recapping everything like how the Compilation of FFVII is getting Ever Crisis that will sum up all the FFVII games including the one that was never released outside Japan and a playable chapter version of Advent Children.

[Selvokaz]

I don't want SE to be bought by Sony because Sony is a part of the woke cultural problem. When a game or service reaches a certain size, especially globally, it should be preserved in both its creative integrity and its overall style. The Devs of the game should be hired on continuously and uninterruptedly to preserve the game until the player base completely dries up. If sony bought SE you just know that the same uncreative root that has plagued western media would creep into every IP SE has, and while SE has made questionable business decisions under its current management, the creative minds who have stuck to traditional ideas with morally correct stances are the ones that have kept it afloat with innovative storytelling from minds that blow western creatives out of the damn water, and im looking at Marvel and DC comics specifically rather than western Game devs specifically as the most creative minds usually are found outside of the gaming sphere but it is those minds that usually inspire game devs in their own endeavors. I don't need to hear about who's sleeping with what in Eorzea, the people who are going to play this game on its own merits are already playing it, people who only find value in what's between their legs and who diddles it need not apply I'm sure some smut MMO out there exist to occupy your time. I know this probably sounds like a stretch connection but it's a connection nonetheless that has been shown to crop up in our recent history regardless. Pushing politics, pushing racial divides under the mask of equality or representation, and sexual orientation under the mask of inclusion or discrimination. Misdirection has ever been one of the many known arts of war.

Hottake over, mic drop in process.������

[Cleretic]

This is something much more actively thought about for FFXI rather than XIV, because... well, FFXI still hasn't been shut down, of course XIV's got plenty of years still in it.

The modern idea for XI seems to be to try to make a different 'Final Fantasy XI' so that you can still play that game at some point in the future when the servers for the original game shut down, becomes unsustainable, or just becomes too old for someone to stomach playing. At some point that seemed to take the form of a Nexon-developed mobile version, but apparently that's been canned. Hopefully whatever idea they come up with isn't NFT-based, but generally speaking, that's the plan for XI; to make a version of XI that isn't anchored to PS2-era architecture and pre-WoW MMO game design.

As for XIV, we do know that the current game plan to prepare XIV for the next ten years isn't to retire or convert XIV--again, that would be stupid, the thing's a cash cow--but to make the existing game more solo-friendly, as well as to fancy up the graphics. We've seen both of these starting in 6.1; the graphical touch-up of the 2.0 dungeons, as well as the introduction of the Duty Support system for the same. This is also something FFXI went through years back; to solve the inevitable issues of declining playerbases, or even just a playerbase that has gone beyond content that newer players would still want to do, to make the game completely plausible to play without that playerbase. This is actually what EaraGrace is remembering; they're not 'making a single-player version of FFXIV', they're making FFXIV as it exists a game you can more easily play single-player.

FFXIV is not the first ship to chart these waters. If you ever have a concern about how FFXIV will handle existential questions, just look at what its older brother did.

[MistakeNot]

One thing to keep in mind is that once you stop creating updates for an MMO, it is not all that expensive to just keep it running.

[Cleretic]

One thing to keep in mind is that once you stop creating updates for an MMO, it is not all that expensive to just keep it running.

This is true, and if it was a game with an actual following it's rare that it becomes unprofitable, more often just slowly becoming more of a margin item. Put a million in it a year, get 1.2 million back, it's never putting you in the red.

Some companies would see that as resources that could be put towards other ventures--that's what happened when NCSoft shuttered City of Heroes--but most are just happy to let the line item quietly pay some salaries. In part because there's an incalculable factor of consumer goodwill; if you shut down that old classic without some way to still play it, people who fondly remember that game won't like it, and it sends the message that all your games could meet that fate.

...and if you shut the game down to put resources towards a game that then flops--like when NCSoft put CoH's servers to work on Wildstar--then you just look stupid on top of it.