Rise of the MMO

As many know Final Fantasy XI was the first in the series to be an online MMO. I played it for a little bit at my cousin's house and I liked it okay. Never played it long term because I'm cheap, don't like paying monthly subscriptions and generally not that interested in most MMOs to begin with.

What always got me though is why they made a MMO as part of the main series? Is it just to be different for the sake of it? Wouldn't it be easier to just call it 'Final Fantasy Online' and keep it separate from the main series and release expansion packs every couple of years or so like other MMOs? This switching back and forth just seems really unappealing.

Also, how many people played it here when it first came out? Because I heard that the visuals and stuff was very underwhelming at the start until they patched it up or upgraded or something. Any truth to that? Just curious.

Because they were savvy enough to realise that they could capitalise on people's desire to say they have played every one of the main series. Essentially, they were doing everything they could to ensure they got as many people buying the game as possible. You can't blame them as it worked, and now XI is the most lucrative game in Final Fantasy history for SE.

Yeah, being titled after one of main numerals brings in extra bucks, and I think it's as simple as that. It's a smart choice really, and I think it did garner more subs because of it.

I would have gotten around to playing it, but at the time I got sucked into Norrath's Everquest MMO, so breaking away was always something me and my friends talked about, but never did. I almost tried it during an MMO hiatus, but again, somehow I just returned to Norrath even rotating EQ and EQ2. Years went on and I figured FFXI had died off. I was very interest in FFXIV when it first came out a couple years ago, but the reception was so horrible I steered clear, buy now that those issues have been fixed I'm just not ready to delve into a new long journey...yet anyhow. I am interested in FFXIV even if it is more of the same, but it has not sparked enough interest to give it shot yet, because I know once I enter that MMO world I'll likely remain there for a number of years.

About the visuals being underwhelming...I did not hear any of those complaints when the game first came out. I mean, how could they have been bad? I recall seeing videos that looked stunning, so if I did hear anyone complain about visuals I probably ignored them and passed them off as shallow spoiled children that are too hard to please anyhow. I can live in a world of sprites and still enjoy EQ graphics, so visuals are highly unimportant to me, while the game play is all that matters.

FF11 hasn't had a change in graphics since it was released in 2001 or whatever. New PCs have just been able to increase the rendering resolution and draw distance past what the game's own config tool let you select. You could have used the same settings the first day of the PC release, but few PCs would get close to a playable framerate with them.