The FINAL FANTASY XI Team Answers Your Questions! (02/04/2011)

[Priran]

Your argument about how the expansions and abyssea made people quit FFXI is baseless and supported by nothing but arbitrary numbers based on FFXIAH.

Your theory sucks. First off, those numbers aren't arbitrary, they're based on the wholly reasonable metric of AH activity. Second, if people left for FFXIV, there'd be an increase in active accounts as people who left that wreck came back to FFXI. It's still going down.

[Hyan]

Second, if people left for FFXIV, there'd be an increase in active accounts as people who left that wreck came back to FFXI.

Not necessarily. If people left for XIV, hated it and never came back to XI, the numbers won't go up. And even if some did come back, the amount of people who left entirely can be much larger than the amount of people who came back shortly after.

[Priran]

Not necessarily. If people left for XIV, hated it and never came back to XI, the numbers won't go up.

Thanks for the truism bro, I now know you know what it means for a number to increase.

If someone left XI, not because they had anything against it but because they wanted to play XIV, why wouldn't they come back to XI when XIV failed? This idea that Abyssea can do no wrong and the population decrease is solely the fault of FFXIV is ridiculous. At most, FFXIV just made it easier for people who hated Abyssea to quit.

[Kaslo]

People who play XI still use the Auction House? I thought Abyssea eliminated the need for it...

[Divinius]

I knew a bunch of people who quit FFXI. They all left right around the time SE announced the level cap increase and FFXIV was due soon. This was before the actual implementation of the level cap increase and the release of the Abyssea expansions. From everything I can tell this is around the time when the largest exodus of people left the game.

Since then, FFXIV was released and flopped hard. It is true that many of the people that I knew that quit never came back (or at least, haven't yet). The reasons why are various, but are mostly relating to being glad they broke an addiction, and have no interest in returning, even though Abyssea is generally considered a great thing by most of the people that play.

However, after the level cap increase was implemented and Abyssea was released, I don't personally know a single person that quit. Those that stuck it out, and didn't rage-quit over the level cap increase or due to FFXIV, stayed once Abyssea was out. Also, a good number (about half) of the people I knew that quit beforehand, have come back, mainly due to those of us still in game singing the praises of Abyssea and the new content. Of those that came back, all are still playing.

From what I understand, this seems to be the case with a lot of people. And if that's true, then Abyssea is not the cause of most of the quitting, it has only served to bring back some (though obviously not all) of the people that quit prior to its release.

I totally agree that FFXIV is not the sole cause of people quitting. But what it did do was give people that already weren't happy a reason to quit, and even though it flopped, many of those people aren't going to come back after finally finding an excuse to leave. This doesn't translate to "Abyssea isn't any good", it just means its not awesome enough to being back everyone that was destined to quit soon anyway.

[Priran]

People who play XI still use the Auction House? I thought Abyssea eliminated the need for it...

People still use it for food, other consumables, quest items, and pop items.

[Priran]

I knew a bunch of people who quit FFXI. They all left right around the time SE announced the level cap increase and FFXIV was due soon. This was before the actual implementation of the level cap increase and the release of the Abyssea expansions. From everything I can tell this is around the time when the largest exodus of people left the game.

That's magical, since FFXIV launched like 2 weeks after Scars came out.

[Esvedium]

That's magical, since FFXIV launched like 2 weeks after Scars came out.

Reading is hard. He said "They all left right around the time SE announced the level cap increase and FFXIV was due soon.", not ffxiv launch.

[Priran]

Reading is hard. He said "They all left right around the time SE announced the level cap increase and FFXIV was due soon.", not ffxiv launch.

My point was that Scars was the second Abyssea expansion. He's saying they left FFXI for FFXIV at least 3 months before FFXIV launched, which is a bit of a stretch to call "due soon". And I'm being generous; if they really left "right around the time SE announced the level cap increase" then they left in fucking February, almost 7 whole months before FFXIV launched.

[Byrthnoth]

It could also be that AH activity has deceased due to a decrease in the number of things people want to buy and are (therefore) worth selling. Consumables and quest items are the main things that sell off AH these days. Before Abyssea and the death of 30-75 xping, there was an incentive to sell and buy armor in that window. Now it's just a dead zone due to the lack of consistent demand and the profitability of just going out and killing stuff in Abyssea.

There are plenty of soloable monsters in Abyssea that drop 100-300k items about half the time in <10 minute fights. How is crafting supposed to compete with that? Shihei is 100k per stack now, because if it was any less the crafters could make better gil farming Abyssea. Because of this (and synergy), incentive to level crafts has decreased dramatically, so you lose all the worthless ingredient trading too.

[Priran]

you'd have a point if FFXIAH's definition of "active accounts" wasn't so lenient it still includes players from the deactivated servers

[Divinius]

My point was that Scars was the second Abyssea expansion. He's saying they left FFXI for FFXIV at least 3 months before FFXIV launched, which is a bit of a stretch to call "due soon". And I'm being generous; if they really left "right around the time SE announced the level cap increase" then they left in fucking February, almost 7 whole months before FFXIV launched.

Yup, that was indeed about when most of them quit. They said, "Fuck this, I don't like the turn this game is taking, and I'll just see you guys in FFXIV." They quit before they had a chance to see what would actually happen. Those that stuck it out were glad they did, because Abyssea turned out to be good, and FFXIV turned out to be.... not. And if you think about it, it was several weeks after Visions was released before people actually figured out how awesome it was, and how everything worked. There was a lot of "this is stupid and too complex" going on, especially from the non-BG level of the community.

The biggest loss of people that I know happened between the announcement of the cap increase, and like the first week or two of the first Abyssea expansion. After that, people started to stick around because Abyssea turned out to do exactly what the devs hoped it would: Keep people's interest. Again, that's just my observation.