[Symbios]

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But just as old players move on, new players sign up

They sign up, and most of them don't stay. That's the problem.

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Downsizing and Dieing are two different things buddy.

I like how you're saying that as if these two things are somehow isolated from each other. Believe it or not, the majority of the revenue generated by an MMO of this sort comes through- *gasp* monthly fees, which vary depending on the amount of players that are sticking around. Imagine that. Even for FTP MMOs they rely on having a strong playerbase because you obviously need a playerbase in order to sucker any of them into spending money on a cash shop system.

There's no healthy in-flow of players to FFXI but there's certainly plenty of people leaving. People that return to the game after quitting isn't enough, because you're getting back a fraction of the players that you already lost. You see, as it has been pointed out numerous times, FFXI simply doesn't appeal enough to "casuals" (I'm using that term loosely because playing even for 2 hours a day is already a lot when you stop and think about it- "casual gamers" are people that play Popcap games and Cooking Mama and the like). Their plan doesn't seem to entail the fixing of the way leveling is done, nor do I doubt they even care because their plan is to capture the casual using FFXIV. The curve was never the issue, mind you, because the actual amount of time spent leveling to 75 these days really isn't much longer than it takes to get to level 80 in WoW or max level in any other MMO- in fact, it's most likely shorter than most MMOs.

This post has been edited by Symbios: 02 March 2010 - 03:26 AM

[Velhart]

Symbios, on 02 March 2010 - 03:23 AM, said:

The curve was never the issue, mind you, because the actual amount of time spent leveling to 75 these days really isn't much longer than it takes to get to level 80 in WoW or max level in any other MMO- in fact, it's most likely shorter than most MMOs.

I second this, you ever get a character to lv.50 in Aion? That is a true test of patience, which I did not have.

[RUebyy]

No i'm not saying the two aren't unrelated at all. Simply that one is different than the other.

The downsizing of a game( combining servers) doesn't necessarily mean that the game is lacking in population or player base to a point where it is needed. Servers are constantly being tweaked and updated as new hardware and better software is made/programmed after 8 years perhaps its no longer necessary to have to run so many servers to support the games population, and it's more cost efficient to run the game on fewer, better made servers? while i'm not naive enough to believe this is the case with ffxi it's not impossible, and no where do i recall the devs saying "we're reducing the number of servers we utilize due to the games lack of subscribers.

A dieng game would be one nearing the end of it's run, having reached a point where further updating, and contiuation of support will do little to stimulate the populus, or keep the current players playing. A game nearing it's shutdown stages. A game with the population rapidly declining. And FFXI seems to be none of these at the moment. Hell the Dev teams has strived to make more improvements over the last year and a half than they ever did when the game was in it's prime. And just because a game is no longer in it's prime doesn't make it dead. FFXI is stable, the population wont sky rocket, nor will it nose dive in the foreseeable future.

And it would be foolish of one to say that any p2p mmo is designed to appeal to the "Casual" gamer because of the traits inherent to all games in this genre. The biggest of which is them being focused on time invested returns. I don't think any person going in the gamestop to buy cooking mama is going to be thinking " Hmm i wonder where i'll with this game 3 or 4 years down the line"

[Marqx_]

My first impression of this upon hearing the news was that SE are basically wanting to turn FFXI into a massive farewell party by experimenting with extremes that people have discussed for years. Not that this is a bad thing per say, but I cans see why a lot of people aren't too enthusiastic about this.

If I were to come back to the game for any of this, it would be to see what spells they give BLM and what kind of job combos become awesome now that your sub can exceed level 37. I'll probably just keep tabs on it throughout the year and see how everything unfolds. It has me interested at least.

[Mortimaer]

lol glad i quit already.. wtf?