Just remaster XI with XIVs Engine please

[Canadane]

Counter-suggestion: Remake XIV with XI's engine.

[ElysiumDragon]

Hasn't SE said that their long-term plan is to switch to cloud servers for XI, so it can remain online perpetually at minimal cost?

[Ephremjlm]

The scene has moved on and I don't think new OR old players today in enough numbers could stomach grinding for months to level up and at least for me, that experience was proportionally the most amount of time spent playing the game instead of MSQ or anything else.

I think I generally agree with most of what you're saying but this one piece I HARD disagree with. If anything, the lack of demand goes back to SE never really marketing FF11 that well in the west. That said, FFXI was the number 1 MMO before WOW and the notion that old school MMO do not have demand is completely false. The difference is that they are "MMO" markets and not "general" markets, the exception being WOW where we have a clear example of a private server (Nostalrius) had over 800,000 accounts with NO marketing and then WOW Classic has in the millions. Lets go further, look at OSRS, it's literally the preferred version and arguably the most popular MMO out there, and its nothing but grind and garbage graphics. Diablo II still has a crazy scene. Project 1999 is a classic Everquest server that refuses to die. Hell even Toon Town has decent servers, and the list can go on and on.

Also, Eureka isn't a good example because the leveling and combat is worse than FFXI for that style of gameplay. The two systems are Oil and Water. I personally thought Bozja was a step in the right direction but its still just a fate grind fest.

So to be clear, there IS a market for these kinds of things, but it would need to be marketed well, and the expectations would need to be lowered. And funny enough, if SE was smart they would partner with one of the other options out there because there are some servers that have fixed most of the bugs, and have made custom launchers and so many QOL things that actually DON'T interfere with the core gameplay. This would allow SE to have their foot in all ends of the market, not have to invest too heavily, and collect revenue where maybe before they weren't. I mean FFS like him or not Ninja said years ago now that he offered to pay SE a million dollars to get a private server started. I know people who did it for free with a couple of their friends and the only cost was their time and basic server costs. They could do some basic influencer marketing and I know there are plenty who would accept.

Lastly to make sure it's not misunderstood, I wouldn't be on board with them making a brand new game or even a remaster unless they could really figure out a way to keep development costs low. Again they never pushed FFXI that hard in the west so I don't think it would have the same nostalgic pull vs maybe Japan, so getting it out and getting it to look good enough while marketing properly would probably be the best move.

[Ephremjlm]

I mean, first it had to overcome almost bankrupting square. So it’s not like it was wow or asmon that really did that. It just took that long to overcome the deficit.

I mean it would have happened eventually, but it's no secret this happened A LOT sooner because of the massive inflation of players joining due to the timing of both the WOW exodus and Asmon basically giving them a shit ton of free influencer marketing to an audience of MMO players who likely hadn't ever tried FFXIV. On top of that, new content creators were created, other big creators started playing and reviewing content, and the backlash of those in the community whining probably just helped spread the word tbh. It was basically a perfect storm.

And also I think Yoshi P said they were profitable by Heavensward, so idk if the initial deficit really matters THAT much especially compared to the cost of making games these days.

[Volgia]

I mean it would have happened eventually, but it's no secret this happened A LOT sooner because of the massive inflation of players joining due to the timing of both the WOW exodus and Asmon basically giving them a shit ton of free influencer marketing to an audience of MMO players who likely hadn't ever tried FFXIV. On top of that, new content creators were created, other big creators started playing and reviewing content, and the backlash of those in the community whining probably just helped spread the word tbh. It was basically a perfect storm.

And also I think Yoshi P said they were profitable by Heavensward, so idk if the initial deficit really matters THAT much especially compared to the cost of making games these days.

Giving Asmongold WAY too much credit here.

[Ephremjlm]

Giving Asmongold WAY too much credit here.

Lol i'm really not. But you'd have to read what I wrote to get that.

[Alchemii]

Giving Asmongold WAY too much credit here.

I think you aren't giving him enough credit in this regard. With the WoW Exodus at the time, Asmon pulled the eyes of the WoW Content Creators that were not happen with the state WoW was in. The Content Creators then pulled the WoW Players to FFXIV, not to mention the massive Audience he already had. It all added up to create a perfect storm at the time, with Asmon acting as a primary anchor for it.

[Miguel85NYC]

FFXIV engine is horrible.. why would you want that?

[Alchemii]

FFXIV engine is horrible.. why would you want that?

It's only bad because of all the FFXIV spaghetti code. If you were looking to move FFXI to that engine, with experience of FFXIV, you can do it without the spaghetti code.

[KernCadfan]

Considering that a decent majority of the player base right now are losing their minds for any number of reasons (graphics update, MSQ, Characters like Wuk, data center kerfuffles, ect) I would not entrust SE to try to re-make FFXI with FFXIV's play style. In fact, I think that is one of the worst ideas we could possibly hope for.

I say this as someone who actually likes Dawntrail (plotline and Wuk included), and 14 in general. However, I love FFXI and FFXIV for very different reasons, and the mindsets of the FFXI community and the FFXIV community are vastly different mindsets and play styles. The two do not mesh well for a fully focused MMORPG.

Least we forget, if they begin in the max level 50's days, there were no trusts, no home point warp... none of the QoL we come to expect in what retail eventually became or what FFXIV has always had from the start. (Anyone else recall the 10+ min wait for the selbina-Mahura boat, or am I the only one?) When we say "remake 11" we really need to define what that is.... is that Japan's OG max level 50 days of 11? Is it Rize of Zilart 75, which was USA? Is it CoP, when EU saw the release? Are we talking later iterations such as ToAU era? Or are we talking the 99 era?

Remaking 11 would be a huge undertaking, because what we know as the "golden days" really does amount to what country you lived in at the time, and your exposure to the systems provided of the time. If we think Dawntrail angered people, let's shove people into an FFXI game that doesn't reflect their personal "golden years" and see how far that gets us... personally, I fear the dumpster fire that would result... the "expectation" of threshold would be far too high.