A Year!

[Rostum]

So, it's been around a year or so since I left Vana'diel. I kind of miss it and my little Tarutaru, but I doubt I'll go back due to hearing about a lot of the changes. I'm not sure if I have the time to get up to snuff with it all again.

Anyone from EoFF still playing? What do you get up to in-game?

[Del Murder]

I stopped playing about 6 months ago. I don't regret it. I also don't regret the time I spent playing, either. It was an epic game and I'm proud of little Tmoney and all he accomplished. I mainly lost interest because I completed all the main storylines and so there was not much left for me to do. I really could care less about grinding it out for elite gearz when there's no missions left for me to need those gearz for.

I think I'll go back at some point for one last run. Try to get level 99 and all that. I did manage to get Blue Mage up to 90 so it shouldn't be that hard.

[Rostum]

Yeah, I believe I was about 3/4 of the way through WoTG with everything else completed but I don't think I could be bothered signing up back just to try and get through the rest of that again.

If they were to release a massive expansion like CoP, I might consider coming back...

[Del Murder]

I think it's just you and me, Ome. Not even Ouch! bothers with this forum any more.

Anything you miss about the game? I always loved it when I got new spells on BLU. Most people hated spell hunting but it was my favorite because it took you to lands people often overlooked.

[Rostum]

It's because Ouch! thinks he's too good for anyone these days. :(

I miss a lot of things, but Abyssea is not one of them. I miss running through Chains of Promethia story line missions with a group of friends, social mana burns, all the great social exp. parties, even just mucking around with linkshell friends or helping them out. Hell, even Salvage despite it eventually becoming tedious and repetitive.

The only thing I regret is not putting in the effort to level more jobs, and getting too worked up over end-game gear.

[Ouch!]

Is this the thanks I get for helping you out with Millionaire, Del Money? Is this what loyalty means to you?

Also a year here. I miss it, but I'm not going to go back. Between work, the gym, friends, my girlfriend, and alcohol, I'm far too busy for a MMORPG. That's okay with me.

[Del Murder]

I like how you list alcohol among the major things in your life right now.

[Mirage]

I still play.

[Ouch!]

Alcohol takes up a significant portion of my time and money.

[Rostum]

Beyond College/Uni that just becomes sad.

[Del Murder]

Leave it to Ome to say what we're all thinking.

[Tigmafuzz]

I think XI is pretty much dead now. There are people that still play on occasion, but I don't think it's going to last too much longer. I bet they wouldn't get too much heat if they took down the servers.

[Del Murder]

I'm tempted to sign in and do /sea all to try and prove you wrong.

[Rostum]

Actually I'm pretty sure it's still doing really well. It definitely won't go down any time soon, hell even the first Everquest just got a new expansion released!

In FFXI there's still 16 active servers (and one testing server) and from what I've been able to tell population levels are still fairly high for each. I can't find the source and I'll keep looking, but last I checked early this year the population number was hovering at around 500,000. Which is still really awesome for an MMO.

[Del Murder]

500k? Yeah the game isn't going anywhere.

[Mirage]

I think XI is pretty much dead now. There are people that still play on occasion, but I don't think it's going to last too much longer. I bet they wouldn't get too much heat if they took down the servers.

The game isn't dead. It doesn't draw in a lot of new players, but the existing player base is big enough to support the game for a long time.

Taking down the servers would be complete lunacy, seeing as the investment of developing the game has paid itself off years ago, and every single month generates a substantial profit for them. At this point, I don't see the game actually being shut down in the next 5 years. We might only have a single server left at that point, but even that would generate enough revenue to pay for server maintenance, while still leaving a small profit for the company.

As for the amount of subscribers, I think 500k is an overstatement. The actual amount of subscribers is probably somewhere around 200-300k. However, this amount would still generate a revenue of around 40 million dollars per year. Now I'm no MMO developer, but I doubt a game like FF11 costs 40 million dollars a year to maintain. The game is already paid for, the only thing they need to spend these 40 millions on is server maintenance/equipment, a few GMs and community representatives. Everything that's not used on that is pure profit.

There's probably just a handful of developers left for the game right now, with probably around another 10-15 people who work as GMs/community reps, and translators. The actual server hardware for FF11's servers is probably not extreme either. The server software is 10 years old, so it probably doesn't require a lot of resources relative to how powerful server hardware today can be. The game doesn't use a lot of bandwidth per client either. I cannot possibly see how this would cost more than 20 million dollars a year (and even that is probably way more than what it actually costs).

[chionos]

SE seems to think FFXI will be around for a good long while yet considering the plans they've announced over the last few months. The player base is still pretty much as active as ever, even if its a smaller community. A year ago I wouldn't have imagined SE ever putting out another true expansion(like cop, toau, etc) but I think now there's at least an offhand chance of it happening. I suspect there's quite a bit of semi-developed content that SE never finished but could easily complete if there was a good financial reason to do so, which isn't unlikely at all given the current ongoing interest.

[Citizen Bleys]

I just came back to FFXI today. It's good to be home.

I know, a lot of you will think "but will you stay once the nostalgia rush wears off?" Well, I played for 4 years, and it's been 3 since I quit (not counting one brief fling in early '09 that didn't last long; Then I didn't really miss Vana'diel all that much, and had never deactivated my account, so came back as soon as the mood took me; now I've been missing the game for several weeks and didn't act on it 'cause I didn't want to spend money)

A lot has changed; Alexander is gone, I had to rename my character, and I know absolutely nobody...but I find myself comfortable in Vana'diel still, and I have an urge to hop on a 75 job and just wander throughout the land, remembering. It's not like when I quit WoW for a while and when I got back I didn't know my way around towns.

[Rostum]

I kind of feel like coming back too, but... I don't know.

[Del Murder]

If it wasn't for that damn $35 charge I'd say let's all come back to the same server and run amok for a month.

[chionos]

$35 charge? Oh for world-transfer? Is that how much it is now? It used to be $20. 35 is straight crazy.

[Del Murder]

Is it $20? I don't really remember. Ome knows.

[chionos]

$20 is still just a silly amount to have to pay.

Just realized you're on my server now Bleys. Welcome to Shiva ^_^
If you need any help re-acclimating send me a /tell.

[Mirage]

I thought it was 25.

[Del Murder]

30? Do I hear 30?

[chionos]

lol

oh and mirage was right
FINAL FANTASY XI Official Web Site (http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/intro/optional/wd_transfer01.html)

[Del Murder]

$25 is still too much for such a feature. I'd pay 5 bucks max.

[chionos]

$25 is still too much for such a feature. I'd pay 5 bucks max.

And this is why FFXI will never end. Someone somewhere is willing to pay $25. People just throw money at SE, so I don't know who's more at fault, SE or the people who perpetuate their somewhat overindulgent business practices.

[Mirage]

Oh please, it is roughly the same fee as many other MMOs use.

The fee is high to stop people from constantly swapping worlds in order to buy items cheap on one world, and selling them for more on a different world.

[Del Murder]

A 'cooldown' period where you can't switch servers for some amount of time would take care of that. I doubt people would swap worlds so that they can buy something cheap and then sell it on their world a year later. :tongue:

[chionos]

Exactly. And what Del mentioned is just one of a number of methods they could use to avoid a system that can be abused. I wasn't saying that SE is the lone greedy company on the mmo scene, but the other companies' greed doesn't make SE's greed any less annoying or, well, greedy. People just throw money at Blizzard, etc. Actually, the point I was making was that it's not so much the companies setting the price as the consumers being willing to pay the price that makes the situation sustainable (and more annoying for those not willing to pay so much). Some newer MMORPGs, like Rift, don't charge anything for world transfers. Their economy is not any worse (or any better) for having free transfers.

[Del Murder]

Yeah, it's not SE's fault that enough people are willing to pay that price so that it is sustainable.

I think I'd still pay the $25 to get together with you guys as part of some grand reunion if enough of you joined in (including Ouch! and Ome, that's a deal breaker).

[Mirage]

Del's suggestion isn't perfect either, really. All you need is multiple characters, and/or multiple accounts. Currently, there is already a 90 day cooldown on server transfers, that doesn't stop an RMTer from Server A to send one of his mules to Server B instantly, sell an item, profit, and sell this profit for real money to a player on Server B. Well, except that real money trade isn't as huge now anymore. It was not too long ago.

The fee is not terribly high, and server transfers aren't exactly something you should need to do often, but I am sure there are some server-hoppers who are very glad that they didn't have to wait a whole year to swap servers again.

I'm not a rich person at all, and I've server transfered twice over the course of three years. Would it be cool if it was free? Sure, but I think the current situation is reasonable, considering what it is designed to prevent.

Also, you should all come to Sylph!

[Ouch!]

I will consider rejoining on the condition that Square Enix release another full expansion on par with Chains of Promathia or Treasures of Aht Urhgan.

[Del Murder]

So never.

[Ouch!]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Rostum]

I got a service rep to transfer my PlayOnline ID from my old to my new Square Enix Account. Boy was that a headache! They said it'd take 2 weeks to do, which sounds to me like 95% of that time will be Facebook'ing. I can't imagine it'd really take them that long to do something so easy like that.

Still up in the air whether I will load 'er up again. Maybe for a month and see how it goes. I have been kind of interested in getting a few jobs to level 99 and doing more content.

Apparently they remastered the openining pre-rendered movie for the game. So that's opened up major speculation about them possibly sprucing up the graphics engine to coincide with the Vita release.

[Ouch!]

They gave me the same timeframe on restoring my character after I'd deleted it in a misguided effort to prevent me from rejoining the game.

It took them the whole two weeks.