Well I've been gone for well over a year (playing WoW now) and do remember the slow decline setting in as I left though people were less ready to admit to it then. I don't think FFXI will die ever really. Almost no MMO that hits any degree of success ever seems to really die. I do think FFXI peaked a long time ago.

My wife and I are often tempted to go back. FFXI has a flavor that no other MMO has. There are so many unique and awesome things, but this is the problem....

Quote Originally Posted by Omecle View Post
I think the main thing that affects people these days is S-E's extremely poor customer service.
SE sucked at customer service. They don't listen to the playerbase at all it seemed (or at least not to the NAs). Things were made too difficult, content was not improved when it should have been. They basically said "eff it... it's old and we don't care to fix it... just cope." But that's a crappy way to approach a game that is still living off of 4 year-old content almost exclusively.

Everything is a side-grade and there's no progression. My wife was talking to an old friend from FFXI. You know what he was talking about doing primarily? Sky. SKY!?!? I'm sorry, but if content from Zilart is still the only content worth doing I'm glad that I'm playing something else.

However, I'm really anxious to try out a new SE MMO. I have the feeling it might have the flavor I want and perhaps they will have fixed some of their bigger problems from the past. Their philosophy seems to be not to fix old content but rather to just make new content and ignore past horrors. Some new life could be good. SE really didn't know what the hell they were doing when they jumped into the MMO market and I just really hope that changes in the future.

While my wife and I are pretty content with WoW (casual, non-life-consuming fun ftw), we have kept our eye on Aion because it seems to have some of that flavor we like. At the same time, WoWs upcoming expansion just amazes me in terms of things that are getting added, improved and changed. Blizzard actually pays attention to problems and tries to fix them either retroactively or proactively. I think when it comes to MMOs it's often the way the company runs them just as much as it is the content.