Is FFXI still alive and well?

[Flying Mullet]

I was curious how FFXI has been holding up since WoW has been out for a while now. Is the active population still the same? Was there a dip in the active population when WoW came out and now it's coming back up? Or perhaps it's been in a steady decline or it dipped and then stayed consistent.

[Miriel]

I think it's pretty much been a steady decline. That's just what I think though. There's still plenty of people playing the game though. Thousands of players per server and many many servers.

I do think WoW affected the player population as I know people DID leave FFXI for WoW. But I think the biggest thing is just the fact that this is an old game. It's constantly being updated, but I can see way people would just want to call it quits once they'd been playing for multiple years and completed a lot of what they'd set out to do.

[Mirage]

The decline isn't rapid in either case. I'm expecting the game to be profitable for S-E for many years to come.

[Rostum]

I think the main thing that affects people these days is S-E's extremely poor customer service.

With that said, there are still plenty of people playing. I believe FFXI is ranked the 4th top MMO and has a combined population of Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings Online -- I think it was around 700k-1M. Although there are some servers that don't have as many players, and the population used to be a lot larger.

In any case, the game ain't dying.

[Bahamut2000X]

I'll predict it dying soon after SE's new MMO is released. It's apparent that SE isn't focusing on FFXI as much as they used to. It took them like 4-5 months (as opposed to use getting update like every 2 months) to get us a real update since the expansion came out, and half of it was bugged, and the other half was like 3 new zones and a bit of new game features. But over all nothing big.

I think they only had maybe 1 or 2 updates since then. But then again I haven't been on or keeping up as much since my computer that could run it died a while ago. =/

[Citizen Bleys]

It's alive and well. I play every time I have a day off and there are always lots of people on.

[Del Murder]

Updates with tons of new things to do are still being produced regularly.

[oddler]

I think I'll end up coming back pretty soon. I'll be letting go of something else to make time, though.

Everytime I've ever played, it's always been hopping. In general, yeah, I think it's become a little less populated but as far as I can tell, there's no shortage of people playing and still new players starting (or old players restarting).

[chionos]

From what I've noticed in recently returning to the game, FFXI cycles its population. There were many long-time well known players that stopped playing last fall/winter. Many of them are now returning to the game, and the game's hopping(Shiva in particular). I don't see the game dying out any time soon. Even if populations start to dwindle a bit they'll just close a server and move those people to other worlds to even things back out. When I left last October Shiva's population was about 1200 up to about 2400 at peak hours. Now the population's about 1700 to 3500 at peak hours, and this with Shiva's RMT population having been crippled. The game seems emptier than it really is sometimes b/c it is so spread out now with all of the different areas.

[Lionx]

Think the last Census said they were in a steady 500,000 players. So has not changed at all lol

[Carl the Llama]

I saw over 3k players on Unicorn today

[Kes]

Well, I left WoW for FFXI, and I don't think I'm a complete rarity in that sense. As a WoW player (well, sort of, I guess, my subscription is still valid for six more days) seeing numbers like 500,000 is kind of mind-blowingly small when I think about how Blizzard was all "Hey guys, we have 10 millions as of this holiday season!" back in January.

That being said, I think that any MMO can pretty much last forever. Note EQ.

[Yeargdribble]

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....

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.

[Rostum]

Well, it just so happens that during the last year or so SE has started to listen to a lot of FFXI community websites and have been improving their cusomter service a lot from what it was, and have added in a great deal of content and fixes from what the player base has wanted.

They are definitely improving, not quite there but they are improving. Also, there's no decline in players. It still has a strong user base (I believe it hasn't even budged in the last year, maybe even raised a bit more).

Also, there's HEAPS to do apart from sky. Hell, no one I know in end-game even does sky anymore.

It's still kicking very well. Though I can not wait for their next MMO, and I hope they've learnt A LOT and try to compete with all the new western MMO's that have/are being released, and improve their customer service. We can only hope.

[Lionx]

SE has admittingly fixed some of the problems like auto sort, and now reducing prices of dynamis, increasing drop rates of AF2s up there, and etc. While a bit late, it does show progress.

The thing about Sky is that, unlike WoW where when new gear comes along and then quickly overshadows older gear making those items obsolete(at least to my knowledge about that game), SE tries to make it so that every content, there are still things available or useful to still keep on doing. Some items will still be very strong, while others become a choice of, should i get Item A or should i do Item B? Many things will affect that choice either fitting those items into Macro Pieces(like staves), or due to certain playstyles.

For example, Byakko's Haidate is still a very powerful item, and therefore an incentive to do sky still, so those who get the item wont just throw it away or there wont be as much wasted content. However things like Koenig, will then be compared to Valor gear, and also Gallant +1...and then in the end you will have to figure out which piece better fits your playstyle, or find out when to maximize your potential with gear swaps.

Thats just how i see it, i dont find it particularly that bad, at least some people who havent experienced sky yet(and some havent) can still do so. Remember if you dont want to play sky, theres always sea, limbus, dynamis, HNM, Salvage, Einhienjar(sp), Assaults, ENM/ISNM/etc, Campaign, and now the new ZNMs. Personally just having Dynamis and Assaults is enough to keep me occupied...

New WSs are being introduced, and they are being made availible for all, as well as an easier time getting the new relics in the next version update. So my thoughts are in general to the game is, its improving slowly, better late than never.