IS THIS the current state of mmo's too?Follow

In 2006, between 200,000 and 300,000 active players logged in per day, and the game was the dominant MMORPG in Japan. In 2008 Square Enix noted that Final Fantasy XI had a strong user base of around 500,000 subscribers, and in April 2009, announced that the total number of active characters exceeded 2 million for the first time. Square Enix president Yoichi Wada announced in June 2012 that Final Fantasy XI had become the most profitable title in the Final Fantasy series.

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/0904/topics_all.html




So at its peak it had more users than FFXIV has now..

Edited, Dec 13th 2013 2:54pm by Nashred

Edited, Dec 13th 2013 2:55pm by Nashred

No, just... no.

Characters != accounts. When you can have up to 16 characters on an account (and most people have at least 1 or 2 mule characters) that's a meaningless announcement. It was a fairly truthful, but majorly misleading, announcement to try to make it seem like a huge milestone. That announcement was during the release of the ACP/AMK/ASA tri-packs, Mog Bonanza had just returned, and they had re-opened the free trial (and count those). This was end WotG era when numbers of the subscribers were declining due to SE dragging out the expansion's storyline.

You know what they hadn't also done yet? The massive gardening ban of '09! Then there's the 'adjustment' to gardening for new people that only allowed them to harvest up to 1 item for 90 days, and that prevented more mules. Previous to the ban, gardening was fairly popular and it was a 'widespread' secret for RMT and blinker types to have an account (or more) full of 16 gardeners that would sell crops that generated more gil than it cost to plant with short gestation periods --- this is why the ban happened.

That number is absolutely meaningless.



It has not, nor will it ever, break past FFXIV's cap. FFXI never broke beyond 600K subscribers.

Edited, Dec 13th 2013 7:29pm by Viertel

Maybe Coil, CT, and capping your tomes could be done in one day but the percentage of the player base willing and/or able to do so is so small I don't think that is any type of reflection of the average player's weekly experience. I mean, you could buy a game that's said to have 40 hours of gameplay and sit down and beat it in two days if you wanted to, but complaining about how few days it took you to do so would seem pretty silly.

I have a lot of good memories of FFXI too, but that doesn't change the fact that 90%+ of the playing time was work. That was fine back then when I was in college and wasn't working full time, but now that I've got a real job where I work long hours when I log in to play a game I want to have fun and that's the big advantage XIV has over XI. I can log on any night of the week and find something to do that will entertain me. With XI, in order to have fun back when I played you had to a) have farmed your butt off for hours to have all the best gear that others insisted you have, b) hope you actually get a party invite and can fill in the rest of the slots so you have any chance of XPing, c) hope that your party is competent enough that your XP goes up and not down, d) hope that the 15-20 minute trek to camp isn't taking you to some place that's already full, etc. Nothing like investing 2 hours into joining a party and starting to XP only to break even on XP in the end. That's wasn't fun, that was a waste of time.

As for CoP being this brilliant expansion... no. Maybe the story was great, I don't know. I wasn't hardcore enough to see 75% of the content I bought and paid for so what do I know. It always seemed pretty pointless to me to give us the new area to explore that would never be used for anything because most players couldn't get there. You hear the horror stories of what people had to go through to beat the expansion... you can call it hardcore, I'm just going to call it bad game design.

Like you, though, I do still get nostalgic from time to time. I don't sit around wishing they'd make FFXIV more like XI, though, because there's no need to. If I *really* wanted to take a walk down memory lane and relive some of those experiences, I still can - FFXI is still out there.

It felt more rewarding because it took more time and that reason only. ARR is par difficulty wise with XI, harder at endgame in my opinion. I can't be certain about why you prefer party grind over dungeon spam. But I can guess and my guess is you don't have to move around as much in party grinds. This allows you to multi-task or talk alot more in between pulls. For the record, I miss leveling parties. Not because I like killing the same mob all day, or faster XP. I just like socializing. I don't care if it's grinding or quest chaining. ARR doesn't offer me both avenues in viable form. I can do that stuff on my terms but suffer an xp hit for it.

As for not knowing the world as much as Vanadiel, that is an easy one. Fast Travel.
ARR: If you lived in Texas and only had to walk to New York once by foot, then could instantly teleport between the two after that. Over time you would forget alot of the things you experienced during one walk.

XI: Versus having to walk or ride a mount most of the way every time you visited. You would remember little nuances because you see all of it everyday.

Which you prefer is up to each individual and I am not saying one is better. But looking at that analogy. The game is not like real life and travel doesn't scale the same way in distance in time. Would you travel to New York by foot every time if time wasn't an issue?
The option is still there for everyone who plays ARR I think. Do you see many people choosing the long way most of the time?

The contrast is the more you indulge and have no limits placed on how often you can do something. The less of a high you get over time. If there was time gates prevalent in ARR as there was in XI, you would only get little hits, here and there.

I love Cherry Cream cheese cake. I only eat it occasionally and indulge in every single bite. Even though there is no limit besides money on how often I can eat it. If I ate it everyday in big quantities. I would start to lose the love for it, gain weight, and various other things.

XI made you it's *****. And told you when you could do this or that.
Up until the recent week lockouts, ARR let's you do what you want.

Forced moderation and self moderation. Which is better? That all depends on the player.