Square Enix Working On Yet Another MMO

in b4 ffxi-2

I spent nearly that for a XI machine. Now that I don't play I spent 1500 to surf the web ><

A bit late to the party aren't we?

should just recreate FFXI with new graphics but allow us to keep our accounts/characters/gear/gil. add new original content, remarket the game and kill off support for ps2

Terrible idea. Nobody is gonna wanna start a new game with 50 million people already at the highest level with all the gil...

FFXI never got much beyond 500,000 users.

That was fine for the development cost of an MMO circa 2003. Graphics are the most expensive part of MMO development, so if you want a remake of FFXI with current-gen graphics, you need to somehow get many times as many users as you did originally.

Which would involve such a massive redesign, nobody who liked the first FFXI would play anyway.

Even if they just remade the game like they'r doing/did with Halo 1?
Same engine/code, just upgraded the graphics?

Halo sold 40 million copies.

What capped their users then? You always edit like 50 times lol.

I honestly am glad they kept to their smaller playerbase. I hope they never create a game like WoW just to appease the masses. I mean, it would be better for them in a business sense but I hate the idea of FF turning into something that caters to the FPS meathead type of people (the ones that play WoW mainly.)

Well yes, but halo never had monthly payouts from the people that bought it:P
What I ment was, would it really be _that_ expensive if they just upgraded the visuals on what they allready have?

I think the biggest problem now is that it's an over saturated market to be making a new MMO. It's difficult enough to appeal to a target audience that for the most part is already partaking in something else. Even more difficult to appeal to those who never have played or even considered an MMO to begin with.

Frankly, it was a fluke that I played FFXI. It was the next FF installment in the series, and it caught my attention that it was online, so I went from there and kept playing. So the only grace SE has right now is that it has FF attached to the name. Which hasn't been going so great for them with their most recent installments.

I'm going to assume FF fans who were all ZOMG A FF MMO!!!! So basically the game appealed mostly/only to former FF fans.



It's nice, but at the same time the game really sucks compared to WoW. Now, don't get me wrong there's things I like about XI, and there's a reason I'm playing it over WoW, but Blizzard knows what people want and they deliver. I wish XI did the same, even if their delivery appealed to our crowd and not the general one...

Though as far as I could tell from my friends that do play WoW, Blizzard's delivery simply involves catering to those who QQ the loudest. Then again SE seems to be doing the same thanks to their official forums.
Then again that's mainly when it comes to class balance and other small stuff rather than new expanding content.

It wasn't really like that back when I played, but I'm sure much changed.


So many idiots on that forum...


Yeah, at least WoW is still making new-ish content. AND ADDING RACES... XI gets like... HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE new content like Abyssea and Voidwatch(and no Manthra). :|

FFXI was a hardcore game that required many hours per day to achieve anything of substance, even as much as getting a group. Its primary leveling system required you to park yourself in one place and kill the same mob over and over again for many days. Endgame was unforgiving and brutal, requiring even more time investment and patience.

Its users (including me) enjoyed this, as it provided a challenge and sense of accomplishment, but WoW has demonstrated that the type of user who enjoys that kind of game is a vanishingly small percentage of the overall MMO market. It is a saturated market share and will never grow much beyond ~500k active users, which is where every hardcore MMO has been capped since circa 1998.

In other words, if you want $50M worth of graphics, you need $50M worth of users, which means you gotta design your game cater more to the WoW type players or you'll go out of business.

I think perhaps the greatest damper on our fun is that a huge chunk of the development team that helped put together FFXI (and made new interesting and unique content possible) have gone on to other things after the game's release. And from a business perspective, knowing FFXI wasn't going to measure up to all the newer MMOs that had wider audience appeal and more subscribers, they panned it out as long as they could making it a steady flow of cash more so than a flagship symbol that has the limelight and money to justify more manpower and therefore more content for us.

So we got the short end of the stick on that one.
Then again, by the grace of what makes FFXI better, I'd be content up to a point where the game stands on it's own like a single player RPG does. I'd just have to stop playing eventually.

To the FFXI-2/revamp of FFXI comments:
They said they want to manage 3 at a time. They won't revamp FFXI.
Also, it won't be a Final Fantasy game, because they already released XIV.

That's where XIV messed up huh?
Aside from lack of content and a slow/buggy UI, among other things.

have been a very long time that they don't release new jobs, since 2008 WoTg

We have twenty.
WoW has like... 9 I think?
The difference being is that the classes are greatly developed in WoW, while each one in FFXI only extends so far in it's capacities and purposes aside from magian trials, so I don't think the answer would be more jobs to level.

Not that this was a wow vs ffxi comparison, but adding more underdeveloped jobs to create a non-existing time sink (thanks abyssea) for more money doesn't seem ideal

I kinda want more races =/

A good start would be allowing racial/face/height/name changes as an additional service.

New jobs, time mage and geomancer.

this is a job system based game, not race, it costs 1 dollar per ID and you can change jobs (classes) on the same character unlike wow

The "new jobs" topic was covered in soooooo many threads... Time Mage already has all its abilities covered by other jobs, and Geomancer would be too limited in JA/spells

Sephiroth >.> but yea, i agree, 7 was horrible, and i do love playing any Final Fantasy games, never played 14 so i dunno bout that one

New races:
Cardian (based from Windurst)
Android (aka robot of some sort--based from Bastok due to metalworks)
can't think of one for sandy lol

True, but look at it this way. Rather than having everyone get excited about a new class, immediately bandwagon it, abyssea burn it to 90 and figure out all the mechanics and how to play it ideally within a few weeks; wouldn't it be more interesting to add more abilities, traits, spells and depth to existing classes making each class a little more unique, useful, tactful, and therefore adding something to essentially "master".

Sure there will be elitists that have to be best at everything, but it gave great satisfaction in playing your particularly favorite class and being damn good at it. With the current amount of depth the classes have, it just isn't quite reaching that same level of satisfaction despite there being 19 other jobs.

I don't agree with name changes, but some type of "plastic surgeon" implication wouldn't be bad. Cannot change race/name though. People would be able to get away with anything by doing something like ninja-lotting then running off and changing their name/body. You would never know who did it. At least with just a body change, people will still know your name.