[verum]

Idk if its just my imagination but i see several topics on several forums t new or returning players and it makes me wonder if FFXI is at the begining of a popularity spike back to its glory days or is it not enough people to make a difference? Whats your opinion i cant be the only one whos noticed this

[Corrderio]

No, posts are just an illusion to you. XI itself is an illusion. This post is also an illusion...

Seirous answer: Probably due to the hype about XIV.

[Zak]

Def don't think we're in any danger of a resurgence.....

[Velhart]

I wouldn't go as far to say that it is popular again, but we do have quite a bit of returning players who want to cap their character to 99 and actually try the newer level content.

[MattelotLeviathan]

Basically what Velhart said. I quit FFXI to get serious into WoW and now that there is really nothing left for me to do in WoW since i've done just about everything, i'm bored. I want something to hold me over until FFXIV comes out. I'm doing a few things in FFXI like 6-maning Dynamis, etc but i'm not going to get super serious.

[Hakutaky]

OP: Its most likely because of the upcoming updates. People who loved FFXI and quit cause they had nothing else to do other than end game related things now can go back online and level up to 99, get new things, fight new monsters.

[Majae]

MattelotLeviathan, on 15 April 2010 - 08:33 AM, said:

Basically what Velhart said. I quit FFXI to get serious into WoW and now that there is really nothing left for me to do in WoW since i've done just about everything, i'm bored. I want something to hold me over until FFXIV comes out. I'm doing a few things in FFXI like 6-maning Dynamis, etc but i'm not going to get super serious.

Minus the 6-man Dynamis, this is basically why i re-activated my account. Something to do till XIV and try out the new level caps when it starts going into effect.

[Balbanes]

Few reasons why people are coming back:

• WoW is at the end of it's latest expansion and quite honestly not worth fighting the same boss over and over again 20+ times each week.
  
• FFXI March update with new summons (I know that's what made me come back, I'm a big fan of summons)
  
• Upcoming updates with new features and new level cap
  
• Better community. Sure WoW have their guilds and a lot more players but even in guilds, a lot of people just don't give a shit about you. They all want the same thing, gear or achievements. I find in FFXI since it's a lot more group based, you have to keep a good reputation. If you're nice to people, you can easily find help for events or gear you're trying to farm.
  
• The challenges!! FFXI is 10x the challenge that WoW will ever be. Even Blizzard stated that they only created hard modes for those hard core players that spend x amount of time in front of their PC until the boss is dead. Hard modes were never made for the regular players to beat until they get better gear which at that point made the fight stupidly easy. FFXI doesn't have that problem. Their battles are usually tuned for the correct difficulty which requires players to find the appropriate group composition to take down the boss/event.
  
• Fan base. Whoever is a fan of Final Fantasy will always have a desire to try everything new from the FF series over other games.

I may have set myself to be subject to a flame war but these are my opinions having played both games for more than 3 years each.

This post has been edited by Balbanes: 15 April 2010 - 11:22 AM

[MattelotLeviathan]

Balbanes, on 15 April 2010 - 11:19 AM, said:

Few reasons why people are coming back:

• WoW is at the end of it's latest expansion and quite honestly not worth fighting the same boss over and over again 20+ times each week.
  
• FFXI March update with new summons (I know that's what made me come back, I'm a big fan of summons)
  
• Upcoming updates with new features and new level cap
  
• Better community. Sure WoW have their guilds and a lot more players but even in guilds, a lot of people just don't give a shit about you. They all want the same thing, gear or achievements. I find in FFXI since it's a lot more group based, you have to keep a good reputation. If you're nice to people, you can easily find help for events or gear you're trying to farm.
  
• The challenges!! FFXI is 10x the challenge that WoW will ever be. Even Blizzard stated that they only created hard modes for those hard core players that spend x amount of time in front of their PC until the boss is dead. Hard modes were never made for the regular players to beat until they get better gear which at that point made the fight stupidly easy. FFXI doesn't have that problem. Their battles are usually tuned for the correct difficulty which requires players to find the appropriate group composition to take down the boss/event.
  
• Fan base. Whoever is a fan of Final Fantasy will always have a desire to try everything new from the FF series over other games.

I may have set myself to be subject to a flame war but these are my opinions having played both games for more than 3 years each.

Only the retarded moral degenerates flame people for having simple opinions.

I agree that FFXI is more challenging than WoW was.

As far as guilds, it all depends. I've been in a couple and one, we all cared about one another. We weren't as accomplished as some of the other guilds, but we helped one another and had a sense of both accomplishment and the feeling that you helped someone. The other guild was somewhat like my first HNMLS on here, you ask for assistance on almost anything and you hear crickets.

[Doodlebug]

Hakutaky, on 15 April 2010 - 10:58 AM, said:

OP: Its most likely because of the upcoming updates.

^
That's exactly why you're seeing more "I'm returning" topics. You know what I think? I think it's time I put this back in my sig...

[Aleera]

It's true. If you have to ask yourself or others if it's worth coming back, just come back and see if you like it or not, then decide for yourself. KI doesn't need to be spammed with threads on a regular basis because people are undecided about returning to a game or not. It just gets ridiculous after a certain point.

[MattelotLeviathan]

Unfortunately, noone will listen when you tell them to stop spamming threads.

Doodle, if you think that's bad, back on Levi forums, a guy named Lightningdragon used to post a thread once every week saying "I QUIT, FIND OUT WHY!" and 2 days later, he'd make another thread titled "I'M BACK, FIND OUT WHY!"

[Doodlebug]

Oh good lord -.-

[Varizen]

That wasn't even the most annoying thing. The Annoying thing was his monthly "Check out my new sig with all of my jobs in it that looks way to chaotic and messy to be in any way aesthetically pleasing and is really more of an eye sore" thread. I mean... We would have noticed it just by way of a post... Not an entire thread.

[pathwriter]

Balbanes, on 15 April 2010 - 11:19 AM, said:

[*]Better community. Sure WoW have their guilds and a lot more players but even in guilds, a lot of people just don't give a shit about you. They all want the same thing, gear or achievements. I find in FFXI since it's a lot more group based, you have to keep a good reputation. If you're nice to people, you can easily find help for events or gear you're trying to farm.

I'd argue that this is a matter of perception rather than reality. Trust me, I know why people think this, but the community in FFXI has become more insular, obnoxious, and anti-social over the past couple years. WoW has managed to shoot their own community-building problem right into a full-on crisis with the new cross-server dungeon finder ("Why should I care about you or talk to you if I'll never see you ever again?" -- it's a valid question), but I can count on one hand the number of worthwhile conversations I had in FFXI over the last several months of playing that weren't extensions of a conversation that started in AIM as, "What're you doing tonight? Wanna go kill my Detonator NM?"

Balbanes, on 15 April 2010 - 11:19 AM, said:

[*]The challenges!! FFXI is 10x the challenge that WoW will ever be. Even Blizzard stated that they only created hard modes for those hard core players that spend x amount of time in front of their PC until the boss is dead. Hard modes were never made for the regular players to beat until they get better gear which at that point made the fight stupidly easy. FFXI doesn't have that problem. Their battles are usually tuned for the correct difficulty which requires players to find the appropriate group composition to take down the boss/event.

This one I have to emphatically disagree with. The major challenge in most FFXI battles is staying awake. Speed a battle up 2-3x and it'll look a lot like a WoW battle, only there's next to zero movement in FFXI unless you get hit with something like Tourbouillon or Mortal Revolution. Neither game is particularly challenging. Hard modes in WoW aren't really hard in the slightest, they just rely on players knowing the fight and they actually demand that all or most players know the fight. Gear is often pretty ancillary after the baseline for the encounter (e.g., iLevel 251 for ICC10 hard modes) and gimmick fights exist in both games (kiting oozes on Rotface isn't really any more complex than sleep-kiting adds in Splitting Heirs).

The group composition point is completely off, though. Unless you do something stupid like bring 3 Rogues and 7 Warriors, practically any balanced group regardless of class and spec combination can progress through WoW. Try to do Salvage without a specifically stacked group and chances of success become increasingly slim. It's true that FFXI has become more friendly methods and jobs that were scoffed at years ago (e.g., using melees to kill Kirin instead of relying exclusively on Rangers and Black Magi), but chances are good you can't name the last time you invited a Summoner to a merit group, took a Beastmaster to Jailer of Love, or relied on Thieves at King Behemoth. And then there's the problem of tanks, where only 3-5 jobs are regularly relied on to tank, though only two or three of those really dominate the scene (Paladin is way ahead, Samurai and Monk carve out niche appeal, Ninja and Red Mage are practically dead... Blue Mage and Dark Knight are marginal at best).



Anyhow, I think that the hype surrounding the level cap increase and the merging of servers has just created more forum activity than previously existed. At present, not much has changed except for a new set of godawful timesink quests for so-so weaponry, but merged server populations has increased discussion activity and boosted server activity artificially. The real test of whether this game is going to manage to pull itself out of the grave is the level cap increase and how it is implemented. I think most people are going to be disappointed and frustrated by it, but I'm a cynic.

[MattelotLeviathan]

Varizen, on 16 April 2010 - 02:56 PM, said:

That wasn't even the most annoying thing. The Annoying thing was his monthly "Check out my new sig with all of my jobs in it that looks way to chaotic and messy to be in any way aesthetically pleasing and is really more of an eye sore" thread. I mean... We would have noticed it just by way of a post... Not an entire thread.

Back when Scotty used to play, he posted a response to him saying "congrats on decking your characters in your sig out with a bunch of gear you don't actually own." I was LOLing for real.

[Varizen]

Considering he used AF2 in everyone of them, and one of the members of my Dynamis shell, Bluplanet, has the goal of owning every piece of AF ever, and to this DAY has only completed 3 sets, and is 4/5 on 4, and has 3 or fewer on the rest, most of which is 0/5, it would impossible for him to achieve that goal for the most part, yeah. Too many people think a cool sig is one jammed up with uber gear. A good sig is pretty simple and says something about your character.

[MattelotLeviathan]

I own all the gear in my sig. It's not as impressive now-a-days but when the sig was made, Osode was THE body to have.

I miss Dragonix

[Varizen]

I haven't talked to him in some time... I've got his info...

[Zaft]

Varizen, on 17 April 2010 - 08:18 PM, said:

I haven't talked to him in some time... I've got his info...

Lich King 25 down. I'm back to FFXI to screw around and have fun.

Plus, WOTG is really fun so far. Granted, I won't play hardcore or anything, but it's still cool to see the new stuff and such.