FINALLY!

[Rostum]

OFFICIAL FFXI Windowed Mode Support Announced!
02 MAR 2007 - El Segundo, CA

At the Final Fantasy XI Premier Site Summit today, the Vice President of Community Relations of FFXI announced that they will soon be implementing and making available the option to run Final Fantasy XI in Windowed mode without the use of any illegal third party programs. However, no specific timeline or time-table for the implementation was available.

The additional features comes after vocal support and demand by the community (YOU) to allow a built-in window mode option, announcing to the Premier Community Sites that the FFXI Team hear your requests and opinions and have responded.

Further coverage information of the FFXI Premeir Site Summit will be available in another article soon.

Omfg, finally!

[Mirage]

Yay! I don't have to feel like a hacker anymore.

[No.78]

Awesome, I was just complaining earlier when someone pushed alt+tab by accident and got disconnected. I said "I wish SE would just put this in a window" and POW I saw this thread... My wish got granted ^^

[Yeargdribble]

Part of me is thinking, "Better late than never."

The other part of me is thinking, "A day late and a dollar short."

I'm glad they are listening to the community, but it's a bit late. Almost since the beginning of the PC release in Japan people have been begging for a windowed mode. Just now they finally hear our cries after adamantly stating many times that they would never make a windower (because it would make it so easy to cheat).

I think waiting so long to do this is gonna bite them. A lot of people have gotten used to the old windower and the less invasive plugins. I like TParty when duoing with my wife so that we don't have to constantly yell TP at each other across the room, or worse, in log spamming macros. Additionally, people have gotten used to using extended macros. For jobs like BRD, RDM, BLM and some other jobs to a small extent, this ability is almost mandatory to endgame proficiency. It sometimes has taken me up to 4 macros just for gear swaps for a single song. It's ridiculous to have to do that in a game where the gear is set apart only in tiny shades so that you must macro everything situationally to be the best you can be in tight endgame situations.


So, if people that are addicted to the old windower are having trouble making themselves swap that could be bad. I have the feeling SE is gonna crackdown on banning people for windower use in the very near future now. For those too stubborn to give up the windower that has become part of their normal routine, it could mean some mass bannings.

Some of you will say, "Good!!! Ban the cheating scum!!!" I think the problem is a little deeper than that though. Just as before the official windower, I think SE would be shooting themselves in the foot if they actually went after everyone that used windower.

They didn't nip the problems in the bud and now it's slowly killing their game. Only seeing FFXI slowly approaching its death throes have they decided to actually participate in the development of their game. However, so many people already got disgusted and left the game over various things. Bad economy run by RMT, BST nerf with {Leave} and things like SE screwing up Ulli. Trying to fix the problems the way they are now is only further destroying their game.

Now that they've finally started mass banning RMT, the economy is being destroyed as money constantly gets raped out of it. Crafting has become essentially unprofitable even at 100. The prices for Dynamis and Limbus are absolute insane now considering the weakness of gil.

There game is based around hard work, grinding, time sinks and community. If they :skull::skull::skull::skull: on the heads of their hardcore endgamers, they are gonna end up slowly destroying the game.

[Bahamut2000X]

Yeah the devs are slowly destroying the game sadly enough. :(

Though they are at least able to keep it alive longer then SWG ever did. (Two separate combat updates anyone?) And they have yet to get any riots in the game to lag down the servers.

[Miriel]

Also in recent FFXI news...


http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/1520/detail.html

Starting March 8, 2007, players will be able to create new characters on the World of their choice. Up until now, Worlds would be randomly assigned to characters upon their creation, while only players with World Passes could join their friends. However, with this new adjustment, all players, even ones without World Passes, will have the option to select their realm at the character selection screen.

Originally, the World Pass system was introduced to maintain a balance among all the Worlds and prevent overpopulation. However, with the continued stablization of each World's adventurer community and recent technical advances in server technology, it has been determined that allowing players to create new characters on Worlds of their choice would not greatly affect the current population balance.

In conjunction with this change, we have updated the character creation screen to include a new pull-down window from which players can select the World of their choice. Also, additional characters added to an account will no longer be automatically assigned to the same World as the first character. Players will be free to choose where they wish that new character to reside, be it the same World, or a completely different one.

Finally, the development team is continuing their work on World selection by making preparations for a new service that will allow players to move their characters to different Worlds. Please keep a close watch on the Topics page for further updates on this exciting feature.

ANYONE PLANNING ON SWITCHING SERVERS??

[Bahamut2000X]

Maybe we should all migrate to some other server and make ourselves a little EoFF server. >.>

Might re-ignite my interest in the game finally after doing the same level grinding for 4 years.

[Germ Hamee]

Well this is very exciting news for me, assuming of course the official windower works on my laptop. The unofficial windower crashed constantly for me with no fix. I'm completely unwilling to just sit around LFG when I have other things to do on my computer, so maybe I'll be able to get back into the game again.

[No.78]

We can switch servers? :O Sexinacan

[Yeargdribble]

Originally, the World Pass system was introduced to maintain a balance among all the Worlds and prevent overpopulation. However, with the continued stablization of each World's adventurer community and recent technical advances in server technology, it has been determined that allowing players to create new characters on Worlds of their choice would not greatly affect the current population balance.


Pardon the continued cynicism, but this is a more true paraphrase of what was said above:

"We have driven off so many players that the population of each server has dropped significantly. In addition, the influx of new players has slowed to the point that we no longer fear a surge in any particular server population. Due to these factors we believe it will be safe to allow players to choose their servers without the World Pass system."

Most of the amazing things SE is FINALLY doing for the game sound like nothing more than desperate near death throes to me.

[Mirage]

I say we should make an effort to get most of the EoFF players on the same server. I want to play with you all :p.

[Miriel]

Most of the amazing things SE is FINALLY doing for the game sound like nothing more than desperate near death throes to me.
There are plenty of people who are still playing the game. To say that FFXI is a dying game is waaaaay overstating things. The player base may have declined, but there are still thousands of people who are playing and will continue to play the game.

[No.78]

I say we should make an effort to get most of the EoFF players on the same server. I want to play with you all :p.

That'd be really cool! But, we've all made friends within our own servers... So, maybe we could arrange new characters on new server? Like build some wierd eoff static :P

[Yeargdribble]

I agree that there are still plenty of people playing and I don't expect the game to fall apart anytime soon (I'd still give it at least 5 years), but I think SE is responding in an almost panic state trying to salvage (no pun intended) the remainder of their playerbase.

The decline in population in the last year alone has been quite significant. I remember when getting on Fenrir I would often see 3500-4000 players on while doing a /sea all. In the last months I would get about 2000-2500. My server isn't a isolated case either. Those numbers are very significant when multiplied across all of the servers.

While the game may not being dying in a direct sense, it plateaued quite a while back. Now it is on a slow decline. I think the increased activity by SE in the last 6 months shows how aware of this fact they are. The fact that such a company, who has been incredibly lazy for 4 years, is finally acting out and doing so so strongly signifies a little desperation imo.

It's like a guy that takes his woman for granted for a long time and when she's on the brink of completely walking out on him he suddenly starts buying her flowers and doing more around the house as well as taking her to nice dinners and letting her control the remote 100% of the time, etc.

[Rostum]

Come to Midgardsormr everyone! We're the coolest!

[Del Murder]

If this happens and doesn't end up costing a lot of money to do, then we should definitely have an Eyeson meetup.

[Rostum]

In Midgard!

[Del Murder]

Sector 7 slums?

[Germ Hamee]

I say we should make an effort to get most of the EoFF players on the same server. I want to play with you all :p.

Maybe this means I can actually get something substantial done. >.> I've had the worst luck with linkshells and friends sticking around. I want to play the big boy missions! *looks for the nearest EoFFer to woo into helping with CoP in the future*

[Markus. D]

Better late than never ^-^

*looks forward to omecle pwning me*

[Mirage]

Seeing as the few people I knew outside of FFXI has either quit, almost never plays, or always does endgame stuff, I would have few problems moving to where a lot of EoFFers are playing.

[The Mog Ninja]

how bout we all migrate to Hades?

[Miriel]

Alright, everyone hop over to Pandemonium as soon as this migration option becomes available. Ok? OK!

[Mirage]

I think we need to make a poll to find out how many members we have on the different servers.

[The Mog Ninja]

no, go to Hades. yes hades, its awesome the player base is mostly english so u dont need to try and do stuff with people who dont understand u and its lowly populated with lots of stupid people (i bought a Moth Axe for 5k and sold it for 25k, making a total of 20k)

[Mirage]

Hades consists of all the outcasts from Fairy :p.

[Miriel]

I think we need to make a poll to find out how many members we have on the different servers.

I do believe that Midgar and Pandemonium are the most EoFF populated servers.

Pandemonium has:

Miriel
Del Murder
Misfit
Levian (on hiatus until summer)
Undeadhero (?)
TrowaBartonIV ^_^ (?)
RedXIII13
ThePheonix

Midgar has:

Ouch!
Lionx
Omecle
strawberryman
Ultimage
Taggerung
Nakor TheBlue Rider (?)
Roogle (?)

Question mark for people I'm not sure about.

The rest of the EoFF population is scattered about.

[Mirage]

Midgar also has Cbc and Roogle, if he's still playing.

[Miriel]

Midgar also has Cbc and Roogle, if he's still playing.

Well, Cbc is banned, so he's not really an EoFF member anymore. :o

[Mirage]

He's a regular in chat, so I'd say he counts :p.

[Rostum]

I believe Ouch! (Zaphier) does not play FFXI anymore due to it "sucking the life out of him". Also, I have just recently canceled my account due to no interest and the fact that end-game sucks.

Sometimes I wonder, why the hell I even bother to turn up to Dynamis, Sky, KS99, or whatever other events we usually do. Especially when my time zone makes it really difficult to spend 5 hours on 3 days a week, doing them!

Anyways, I will probably be back. XD

[The Mog Ninja]

lets go Pandemonium, midgar has all the losers :D

[Yeargdribble]

I believe Ouch! (Zaphier) does not play FFXI anymore due to it "sucking the life out of him". Also, I have just recently canceled my account due to no interest and the fact that end-game sucks.

Sometimes I wonder, why the hell I even bother to turn up to Dynamis, Sky, KS99, or whatever other events we usually do. Especially when my time zone makes it really difficult to spend 5 hours on 3 days a week, doing them!

Anyways, I will probably be back. XD

WTF? Was that a quote of something I said or did you actually just say that? :p

[The Mog Ninja]

OMG im happy, when i saw Yeargdribble was the next to post i thought "here comes a warning" but now theres no warning i am HAPPY!!

[Rostum]

I believe Ouch! (Zaphier) does not play FFXI anymore due to it "sucking the life out of him". Also, I have just recently canceled my account due to no interest and the fact that end-game sucks.

Sometimes I wonder, why the hell I even bother to turn up to Dynamis, Sky, KS99, or whatever other events we usually do. Especially when my time zone makes it really difficult to spend 5 hours on 3 days a week, doing them!

Anyways, I will probably be back. XD

WTF? Was that a quote of something I said or did you actually just say that? :p

Nah, I had been thinking about this for a few weeks. Especially after I had played the LotR Online closed beta -- not that I want to buy it though, as it's a WoW copy with a Middle Earth setting.

[eternalshiva]

<3 SE windower now I can stop fearing my account got the ban stick for wanting to code EoFF pages while LFG >_>;;;

Titan server has me and Jalbrean on it. I'm sure there's others but they don't post on the server thread.

[Darius]

I dont know... to me, personally, I still think this game has alot of life left. I did my first Dynamis about 3 weeks ago and we literally had about 75-80 people in there. It was crazy. We'd start fighting and the monsters hp bar would disappear within 2 seconds. When time ran out none of us could believe why we didnt finish it. :confused:

Ah well, we did get wiped by the NM though. That was fun. :cool:
When we all raised up we had 2 minutes left to kill it and (rough guess) about 80% of us were still weakened.

[eternalshiva]

can only have 64 people in the zone!! /punts

EDIT: at least I think anyways, never seen a 64 and over dynamis in 4 years of playing >_> I know CoP is 36 max. I assume RoZ Dynamis is 64.

[Yeargdribble]

I dont know... to me, personally, I still think this game has alot of life left. I did my first Dynamis about 3 weeks ago and we literally had about 75-80 people in there. It was crazy. We'd start fighting and the monsters hp bar would disappear within 2 seconds. When time ran out none of us could believe why we didnt finish it. :confused:

Ah well, we did get wiped by the NM though. That was fun. :cool:
When we all raised up we had 2 minutes left to kill it and (rough guess) about 80% of us were still weakened.

Actually non-CoP Dynamis zones cap at 64 people (normal CoP 32, Tavnazia 18) A mob's HP going down in moments isn't really anything special. My D shell is probably the 2nd best on Fenrir and we generally run with 30-40 people and tend do full clears of All but Windy out of the cities. Full clear meaning fight through the boss and then fighting a nearly full repop of the zone. It's almost appalling in Bastok sometime as we finish the boss and the repops and end up dropping out glasses because we still have 10 minutes left on the glass with nothing left to kill.

I've actually found in the past that bigger dynamis shells sucked more. The more people that are there the more people that are likely to do something stupid and cause problems. It's all zerg and lack of strategy, but you can't expect much more from beginning D shells.

Just because there are a large number of people participating in your Dynamis isn't an indication that the populations are high. It's more like the fact that most people are 75 these days. However, there are less people in the 40-60 range it seems and it's undeniable that the overall population of the servers has dropped. Comparing /sea all number now to /sea all numbers 2 years ago it's a substantial difference.

While I think the game still has some years in it, it is not doing as well as it has in the past.



My latest theory is that perhaps SE is trying to make people trust them now as their new MMORPG comes up. Much of the endgame community of FFXI has stated they will not play another SE game because of how shabbily this one was managed. However, perhaps SE is trying to win some confidence by stepping up to the plate in the last years of FFXI so the FFXI fans will consider trying their new MMO.

[eternalshiva]

Y wants us to quit FFXI and join WoW ;o he's on a rampage.

[Yeargdribble]

Nah. The differences between the 2 games are vast. Many of the things I prefer about WoW are subjective things. Those could go either way for most people depending entirely on personal taste.

However, I do think the players should be open to understanding the less subjective issues about how poorly SE runs their game. The FFXI community is similar to a battered wife. No matter how badly she is treated she says, "But I know he really loves me." Sometimes they refuse to look at the situations and think, "Wow, her husband doesn't beat her... maybe it's not so normal."

SEs apathy seems contagious and the players catch it and end up making excuses for SE (I know because I've done it for the last 2 years). They often defend the indefensible. Hopefully SE will realize what's necessary to really run an MMORPG correctly. If, after sometime, I feel that the changes are a little more sincere and SE stays on the path they are currently on, I will considering playing their next MMO. This is something I had written off a while back because I was afraid they would make the same mistakes (and stick stubbornly by them) that they'd made in FFXI. But considering they are mending their ways, perhaps they will be able to produce a decent game after all.

[Yuriev's ghost]

If the game wasn't filled with ridiculous flaws that fanboys constantly make excuses for, it wouldn't be a real FF game.

[eternalshiva]

I just like being a pirate >_>

[Darius]

I dont know... to me, personally, I still think this game has alot of life left. I did my first Dynamis about 3 weeks ago and we literally had about 75-80 people in there. It was crazy. We'd start fighting and the monsters hp bar would disappear within 2 seconds. When time ran out none of us could believe why we didnt finish it. :confused:

Ah well, we did get wiped by the NM though. That was fun. :cool:
When we all raised up we had 2 minutes left to kill it and (rough guess) about 80% of us were still weakened.

Actually non-CoP Dynamis zones cap at 64 people (normal CoP 32, Tavnazia 18) A mob's HP going down in moments isn't really anything special. My D shell is probably the 2nd best on Fenrir and we generally run with 30-40 people and tend do full clears of All but Windy out of the cities. Full clear meaning fight through the boss and then fighting a nearly full repop of the zone. It's almost appalling in Bastok sometime as we finish the boss and the repops and end up dropping out glasses because we still have 10 minutes left on the glass with nothing left to kill.

I've actually found in the past that bigger dynamis shells sucked more. The more people that are there the more people that are likely to do something stupid and cause problems. It's all zerg and lack of strategy, but you can't expect much more from beginning D shells.


I stand corrected on that. I kinda thought up a semi accurate number but I didnt know Dyn had a limit. All I knew is that there were too many people in it. It was also a new LS like you mentioned and he was recruiting people for it (Dynamis-Sandy). I equipped it and saw pages and pages of people (again, figure of speech). All in all, less people would have been better. It was kinda laggy and the items were getting lotted by 30-40 people at a time. Things were getting lotted by people that werent even showing up on my screen cause there were so many people in the area at once.

The monsters themselves werent all that tough and Id like to go back with less people, say about 18-24 or so. Id at least get to see whos doing what. The LS leader was saying, follow "so-and-so" but I couldnt even see "so-and-so" to follow him.

Anyways, I dont think FFXI is dying, I just think alot of people started playing it and quit due to the difficulty of beginning. Most stay but alot quit. No problem though. It will last for another few years, I imagine.

[Rostum]

Dynamis is boring after the 15th run or so, defenately for Xarcabard. There are a hell of a lot of people in end-game that quite all the time, simply because it sucks -- everything's botted, doing something over and over again for at least a year and not getting much (if anything) in return, just doesn't feel right either...

Anyways, I might not play a MMO until something like Aion or Age of Conan, or even perhaps SE's new one comes out. Aion is really taking my eye though! LotR just didn't do it for me, played out too much like WoW does (though I only played closed beta). =P

[Del Murder]

Siegfried (Liera) is also on Pandy.

[eternalshiva]

I can't get enough of dynamis lol. I hate northland Dynamis -.- the drop rates is soooo suckysucky =( but city dynamis is like the morale boost after doing northalnd 2-3 weeks in a row, all that af /drool

[oddler]

This is excellent. EoFF LS please. When you guys decide what server, I'll be there.

Any idea on how long this will take to actually surface?

[dodhungry]

how bout we all start a char on a server that nobody from here is on that way its fair to everyone :confused:

[Miriel]

Alright, it's settled. Pandemonium it is! ^_^

[Mirage]

{May} {Bee}

[oddler]

Here is a list of all servers that no one from EoFF is listed under:

Atomos
Bahamut
Bismarck
Caitsith
Diabolos
Gilgamesh
Lakshmi
Odin
Siren
Valefor

Pick one. :)

[Mirage]

I disagree with starting over on a separate server, I know I wouldn't want to bother starting over again. The reason I'm bringing it up is that we now could get a chance to play together without having to start new characters.

[oddler]

I agree but there's no date set for being able to switch your current characters to other servers. I figured we could all use what they've given us so far just to have some fun. :p

Edit: Also, we wouldn't have to start over once they get this set up. Picking your own world as the host would be natural but, to bypass possible arguing, I say we pick one that is new for everyone. Just a thought, though.

[Bahamut2000X]

I say Cait Sith, since no one at ALL is from there. :shifty: