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How much life is left in XI
I started playing XI when it came out on the xbox 360 and fell in love with it, Played it for a good long while and then picked up XIV: ARR and cannot go back to XI as it just feels so dated to me now, Sure graphics and the like don't matter to me but I cant pick it up again.
A lot of my friends from XI have also migrated to XIV and have said the same and cant go back to XI, After seeing this happen more and more how long does the community think XI has left ?
Comments
How much life? I couldn't tell you for certain. All I know is ever since FFXIV's successful re launch FFXI has permanently lost a significant number of players. This doesn't mean the game will die out but it is a huge blow for the game's longevity. If someone were to ask me if they should start or return to FFXI at this moment I would have to tell them no. I myself lost 6/7 friends from FFXI to FFXIV. After about 2 months I eventually quit myself and gave in. Now I am playing FFXIV and feel really stupid for not having left FFXI sooner. FFXIV is so much more fun and casual player friendly than FFXI. If you have a full time job and a family - like many FFXI players who started back in 2003-2004 when they were in high school now do - you will find that you can get a lot more done with a lot less time in FFXIV than you ever could in FFXI. Additionally, because the game is more modern things like finding parties to do missions and dungeons is done automatically for you with a group finder.
Anyway back to your main question. How long do I personally think FFXI has left? Although many will disagree with me I would only give this game three years from today (Jan/2014). A server merger is bound to happen sometime this year or next year and I wouldn't count on another extremely large expansion to be released ala seekers again. The game will probably see a lot of micro expansions like Abyssea and stuff for a few more years. There will be content to keep people busy but most everyone has already abandoned the sinking ship and is sailing on FFXIV.
It basically has about as much life left as Squeenix wants it to. I'd say at least a couple more years (2016). They game is on it's last legs, though, and only the die hard fans / LS still play it.
Ever since Promethia the game has been going downhill and going more and more towards a super solo-friendly game with heavy grind.
As cool a game as it was when it first came out, it's just too different now. Even some of the features I loved (like Skill Chains) aren't really used anymore, and haven't been for some time.
It depend on what SE really want to do with XI. Recently they changed game direction, it's now A LOT more solo friendly and casual friendly than it used to be. You can summon up to 3 NPCs fighting with you so you can solo on none solo friendly jobs, much like merc in EQ. You can also obtain majority of the top gear by doing Record of Eminence, and most of the endgame content now have easy mode so you can complete them with 1 friend/dual box or even solo. It also doesn't take more than 1~2 weeks of grind to finish a top tier gear.
That being said, they also killed what made FFXI fun by changing the direction to please casual/solo players. I think after a few more months most players would get everything they want from the game and get sick of easy mode FFXI and quit. While the game is a lot more enjoyable to play now, it also lost half of it's charm due to the lack of satisfaction after you get something done.
I still have fun in XI, and personally I find XI still more fun than XIV. But I highly doubt it's going to last long with the new direction. Accomplishment no longer mean something in this game, without the sense of accomplishment this game is no longer as fun. IMO, XI is currently heading toward wrong direction. Making it casual friendly and solo friendly, it'd compete with XIV and unable to beat it. They should have keep it hardcore as it was, so at least the game would be something different with it's own market.
If XI continue to go toward casual friendly direction and allow accomplish everything in 1~2 weeks of playing, it'll probably die faster. If they can manage to bring back the sense of accomplishment in pre 2009 era while making the game as enjoyable as it is now, it can last longer.
I too am missing FF11. FF 14 is a lot of fun just i ran out of stuff to do and talking to all the ff11 players in 14 I really want to go back and play my PUP or NIN or any other class that I wish was in FF14.
I am also a long time 1.0 ff14 player and now that the game is out with very little new content for 1.0 players. I find my self wanting more. But I have to go back to FF11 to get a lot more content and to play the classes that I can only wish for in FF14.
I can only hope that square starts to bring a lot more classes to FF14 and more content now that they have the game running now.
FF11 was awesome until Abyssea came out. It broke all the basic rules of the games and made leveling and gearing a joke for the most part. I miss the old days a little bit even thou the game is very punishment driven. The people I met in there are great and I lived trough joy and sadness in this game together with some crazy people.
Nowadays the game looks more and more empty to me. There are still players here and there but depending on your time zone and the activities you would like to do it can get difficult.
Same.
Pre-Abyssea, I couldn't wait to log in and go join an xp group somewhere, or go help someone with a story mission they needed, or any of a number of other tasks people needed help with.
Since Abyssea, all xp'ing is basically power-leveling, whether through Aby parties, or GoV groups. It's "fast xp" sure, but it's also extremely boring and not at all engaging. You're just throwing a bunch of bodies at the mobs. Bleh.
Since Abyssea, what used to be helping others to go get stuff done is now, "Nah, I'll just PL to level cap and then solo all that..."
It absolutely killed the game for me and, if the accounts are to be believed, for many others as well.
What made XI brilliant - truly a "lightning in a bottle" achievement for SE - was that SE took Final Fantasy (concepts, style, etc), and built their own idea of a MMO around it.. borrowing concepts from current MMOs (EQ1, etc), but applying them in their own unique way. As a result, it was often said that there was no other MMO out there like XI... and there really wasn't. Playing FFXI felt nothing like playing any other MMO out there. Its lateral progression meant that it wasn't all about racing to level cap. Its lack of hand-holding and "spelling things out" meant that players had more to figure out on their own, or to work out together, theory crafting, etc. Its focus on group play led to the development of a true community, where people would come to know your name and your reputation mattered.
It was a game that valued the experiences a group of players could have over the solitary experience of a lone wolf; "we" instead of "me". Even with its myriad flaws (and it had plenty, no question), SE absolutely nailed it with XI in so many ways. Why they decided to just throw that all under the bus in favor of "more mainstream accessibility", when the game was still going strong on its current path is beyond me. I don't know who made that decision, but - for that game - it was the wrong one. SE would even come out and admit that they went too far with Abyssea. They tried to reverse some of the damage they did, but it was too late. The cat was out of the bag, and there was no putting it back in.
This isn't a "rose colored glasses" or "your first is always your best" thing. XI wasn't my first MMO any way. There has been no MMO I've played that has come even close to capturing the kind of experience XI provided in its pre-Abyssea days.
I tried FFXIV: ARR. I really, really tried to dive in and engross myself in that game as I did XI. But you can't. There's nothing to dive into. The water is too shallow, and you hit bottom too quickly. The depth and soul just isn't there as it was in XI.
Yoshi-P and his team took the standard MMO formula, wrapped it in a FF skin and applied a heavy coat of fan service, all while playing it extremely safe, and coloring well within the lines of "a standard modern MMO". The result is an experience that looks like a FF game, but feels like pretty much every post-WoW MMO to date. It doesn't stand out. It's not a unique offering. It's just another modern, mainstream, standard casual-friendly MMO with end-game raiding as its "ultimate goal". Strip away all the "FF-ness" of it, and you're left with a game that does almost nothing to stand out amongst all the other me-too "standard themeparks" out there.
Sadly, I can't even "go back to XI", because the XI I want to go back to doesn't exist anymore, either... as I explained above.
At least I got to experience XI at its peak and have all the awesome memories to think back on and share, not to mention friends I made and still speak to, even a decade+ later.
Of course, while there is factual information supporting it, pretty much all of this post is my opinion.
FFXI has long outlasted its' glory days. Back in 2003-2005 It was quite possibly the best MMO in the world. Right now they cling to their dwindling server populations and sparsely update the game with new content to tide you over with unfinished content and time/money sinks. It's a huge time sink(do not kid yourself), that is how it was designed to be. Getting to max level is nowhere near as difficult as it was ten years ago but for a new player starting out you have many thousands of hours of quests and equipment gathering to do before your character becomes remotely good. Sure you can get item level equipment really easily but in endgame people take equipment very seriously.
IF you play Paladin you need an aegis and an ochain, not one or the other, you need both. You need the PDT cap as well
Bards can skirt by with a 3 song harp and +3 instruments but that is only because groups get fed up with looking for a GHorn/Daurdabla bard when most of them aren't interested in grouping with you. Good bards also have precast and midcast equipment. They also have Carnwenhan which can take a good 6-8 months to get.
If you play White Mage you are not required to have a mythic but you are required to be good. Good means you have 50% cure potency and -70~80% cure cast time. Good also means you know how to remove status debuffs and keep people alive. You also need an idle set that has tons of refresh.
Scholars.. Good grief I don't want to spend 3 paragraphs describing what makes a good scholar but they are few and they have a lot of equipment they need.
Ranger is the only other really popular class right now. There are dozens of relic rangers that have perfect gear sets and will get groups before you do. Geared Rangers are great for low man content.
Most other classes just don't get to go to endgame content besides maybe Corsairs and Red Mages(And black mages for skirmish). There is no balancing. If you want to enjoy this game you have to have at least one of the aforementioned classes well equipped. For me it's not worth it anymore.
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Note: My response is a mix of replies to you, Rajai, but also remarks on the general attitude I see toward this game by others. That said...
Your post makes some interesting points and, I think, highlights the other side of the problem.
People point out all the problems the game has, and the poor choices SE made in changing it up with Abyssea, etc.
But SE only bears part of the blame.
The other part is on the players. The bit in orange that I highlighted speaks a lot to the problem. The basis for your remarks revolves around "how long it takes to get to level cap and to "get good". And that's the problem. Because, as soon as you put all the emphasis on those things, particularly in terms of "getting to the end", then you render everything else as mere "obstacles", something only slowing you down, and to get past as quickly as possible.
I suggest that is completely the wrong attitude to convey to anyone about a MMO. It's especially wrong for a new player in any MMO, but especially a player of FFXI. Yet, that is the exact attitude conveyed. People look to start the game, and the advice they're immediately given - before even creating a character - is, "just power-level to cap and then you can solo everything. All that content is out-dated and obsolete anyway". Again, this is all argued in the context of "getting end to end game" being "all that matters".
In many/most newer MMOs, I could concede that yeah, there's a lot of content you can do, but it's designed to be so mind-numbingly simple and repetitive, that you're not missing much if you race past it. With FFXI, though? No way. All the story, the awesome characters, epic situations and such are still there. And to someone who hasn't been through them before, they are anything but obsolete. Of course, when people say "obsolete", they typically refer to the gear, as in "the gear rewards are obsolete because there's better stuff and that's what you should be trying to get instead". But that just comes from the perspective of a population of players obsessed with gear/rewards, and having to get "the best stuff possible, as fast as possible". That's a whole other mess and I won't even get into that here, beyond saying that those people are their own problem.
The original storyline, Zilart, CoP and all that... all of that is still there. They're still awesome stories, with some great missions that are anything but "repetitive and mind-numbing". Fights can still be a challenge - if you take them on at or near their intended level range, rather than just PL'ing and soloing them at 99. How shallow or deep, engaging or "ho-hum" a player's FFXI experience is, depends 100% on how they approach it. You get out what you put in.
Treat it like a shallow level-grind to end-game... that's exactly what it's going to feel like.
Treat it like an epic adventure, through some awesome stories, with great characters... that's what it's going to feel like.
I would personally try to encourage players to experience more of the content XI offers on the way up, not less. Stop rushing. It's not a race. There's nothing magical awaiting you at end-game, and there's at least 5 large storylines awaiting you (not including Abyssea or Adoulin). CoP alone is worth the price of admission. So, you may as well make the most of it along the way. Downplaying it, as I see so many do, in favor of "just racing to end-game ASAP", is doing the game, and those players, a disservice. It's cheating them out of what is still a great game... even beneath all the "casual friendly" changes that SE implemented.
When it comes to FFXI, the last people a new player should be taking advice from is someone who raced through, or past it all, never actually experienced the game for what it actually is, and then want to tell others how "obsolete" all the other content is. They're either repeating what someone else told them, or they're just plain arguing from ignorance.
FFXI is what you make it. It can be a deep and epic journey, or a shallow and boring grind-fest. It's up to how you choose to approach it. Personally, I suggest diving in, and experiencing the deep and epic journey of it. End-game will be there, as will all the grind and drama that goes with it. So, what's the hurry?
I agree completely with your post, and once I get the time to play an online rpg again, I plan to play FFXI just like that -- doing everything I possibly can in the game. I'm one of those people who actually talks to every NPC in a new city just to see what quests and story dialogue they offer (rather than using the wiki.) I did that recently with Windurst, in fact; back when I was messing around with the game again. Despite that, I've seen one argument for leveling quickly that I can "kind of" understand. Many people don't want to play an mmo totally solo for a potentially long time, and unless they finally made it to where you can group up with trust NPCs, that's pretty much your only option if you want to do all the lowbie content (either that, or finding a social LS that caters to grouping up for that kind of thing.)
As someone who enjoys soloing, this isn't too much of a problem for me, but I can understand the complaints of others that don't. It wouldn't solve the problem completely of course, but if SE just offered a bit more incentive, or at least accessibility, for grouping up in the low levels -- even just allowing a duo or trio to fill in the gaps with trust npcs -- I think more people would be willing to do the old content. Just my thoughts on it.