Live Presentation Event: The Future of Final Fantasy XI (03/19/2015)

[dasva]

For anyone wondering, I did go on the FFXI JP site and confirmed that the time/date for the announcement are correct. The game has been running for over a decade and I still can't trust them to change timezones correctly.

After re-reading this, I do definitely get an ominous vibe from this announcement. It's very sudden, with no forewarning even in the JP weekly summary from 4 days ago. There are also none of the normal "please look forward to it" kind of jplish phrases (or comparable phrases in the JP announcement). Y'all can stay as positive as you want, but I doubt they're going to be announcing "FFXI Remastered: A new expansion edition (with updated graphics and less PS2)." I bet they're going to server merge and stop producing new content.

I feel it's probably something in between. Like maybe he we are dropping ps2... but don't think that means we are updating shit because of that lulz. But maybe new stuff will no longer consider those limits as much. And instead of a full stop on new content probably more like a gradual wind down. Like go from update every month to every 2 then 3 then maybe like 1-2 times a year at most

[Richybear]

Would be funny if it was just a big hype machine to announce the return of Tanaka, Nobuo does a little jig, everyone says "hai" 50 times, the Squenix logo flashes and the presentation is over.

[PSOfanatic]

I think Byrth is almost 100% right about what to expect. I kind of stopped playing when I realized the game could never really ever be "fixed". All you have to do is look how people are doing content. The same strategy works for almost everything because they've buffed players SO much.

[S N K]

Probably has to do with this

Beat me to it.. >_>

[Buffy]

As someone who hasn't touched FFXI since FFXIV came out, this announcement seems ominous, but hell games like DAoC and Everquest still exist.

[Zalrik21]

Guy in my LS sent me this email his friend got. http://s69.photobucket.com/user/stim...named.jpg.html

[Malithar]

inb4 friend of a friend etc

I dunno what language that is, but I totally see "free to play."

[Zalrik21]

My friend said that the account was Mexican, so Spanish?

[Spira]

I'd once heard a rumor that XI was to go free to play when XIV ARR took off but it didn't happen, likely because they didn't anticipate the costs involved in running it? Or maybe XI wasn't ready for that change.

XI is slowly dying and it would seem new expansions are not enough to draw people in. However if they game did go F2P that might change things entirely and I could see numbers picking up - old people who quit who thought it wasn't worth playing, people from it's 13 year history coming back for nostalgia, those who can't afford monthly, and kids. It would be the ultimate Welcome Home to Vana'diel.

Maybe they were planning this all along. They just needed to have the game ready for this, which was likely why they made all the QoL changes and introduced Trusts and warping etc.

But a pure F2P isn't profitable at all, so I'm thinking cash shop, or maybe you still have to purchase expansions. Going f2p would suggest little substantial new content tho

[geno3302]

Guy in my LS sent me this email his friend got. http://s69.photobucket.com/user/stim...named.jpg.html

All they're doing is guessing, same as what's happening in this thread

[Malithar]

Fuck ellipsis in an alphabet.

Square Enix has announced a press conference on the future of Final Fantasy XI for this Thursday, March 19th. We will have an event on plans for Final Fantasy XI abelante with online broadcast internet , you can read on the official note on the Youtube channel where you can follow. Evidently them yet it is not known what is communicated , but the two options most likely are adaptació a model " free to play" no fees or closing service for Final Fantasy XIV Online , the newest of the developer MMORPG.

So your friend got an email from some Spanish gaming site alerting him to the announcement, and they're speculating that the two mostly like outcomes of the event are a free to play model, or the closing down of FFXIV. Is there a Spanish 4chan?

[dasva]

Looks like Spanish to me. Google translate is

"SE has announced a press conference on the future of Final Fantasy 11 for Thursday March 19

We will have an event on plans for Final Fantasy 11 onwards with online retransmission of internet, you can read on the official note on youtube channel where you may continue

evidently still is not known to be communicated, but the two most likely options are the adaptation of a model free to play with no fees or closing the service for final fantasy 14 online, the newest MMORPG from developer

Final Fantasy 11 was the first leap into online role SE, which debuted successfully in PC and PS2, and later on Xbox 360. For more than a decade has been active and under the subscription model to share"

Tbh this doesn't sound or look like an SE official email to me

[Draylo]

Y'all are also doing the math like going into no-more-updates mode would instantly lose 100% of the subscribers. We've essentially been playing the same game for the last year and haven't lost everyone. Think how many Draylos there probably are on each server, or people that don't mind paying $13.95/mo for a chat service with their old friends. Keep in mind that the JP community isn't hurting as badly as the NA community.

The most recent number they've given (which was a ballpark) was 100k subs for FFXI. That's >6k subs per server, which is almost certainly just not true. I'd give them 4k subs per server at ~$15 each average (~1mil/mo revenue). If they announce no more updates, I'd bet that maybe 20% of the people would instantly unsub, which would lose them ~200k/mo. Why only 20%? Because at 4k subs per server, the vast majority of people aren't playing daily anyway. Without some strong prompt (like having their credit card rejected), they'd probably not deactivate. Eventually this would tail off and probably asymptote out at 20% subs remaining (800k/mo loss). Assume it takes 2 years to reach the new steady state and the decline between the points is linear, this would be a 12 million dollar loss. Could they make >$12mil using the FFXI dev team in some other way between now and then? Maybe?

We also know there are substantial infrastructure updates / changes needed for FFXI if they want to keep producing content in the future. The instancing system is barely holding itself together. The number of BCNMs is insufficient for the JP population even with our empty servers. Enmity is broken. Damage dealt is broken. Damage taken is broken. Job balance is broken. MP management is broken. Stun is broken. People hate iLevel. Their server software is held together with bubblegum, and the guy that chewed the gum left the company 5 years ago. FFXI's graphics have aged well due to the style they picked, but they don't compare to any current game. If they actually want to stop FFXI's decay, they would have to fix at least some of these problems. Fixing them would take a lot of time (probably more time than releasing new events containing the problems) and is unlikely to be profitable.

So much emo in one post, what the hell happened to the FFXI community. All of this is baseless speculation, there's no reason to believe they will just suddenly discontinue doing updates, at that point they would just announce they aren't continuing the game. Not sure why you name drop me as you don't know anything about me, but you seem to care more about this than me.

[wipers]

"Yes it's worth it"

[PSOfanatic]

Draylo would be happy if FFXI went F2P. GO DRAYLO GO!

[wipers]

One question: If you die in FFXI you die in real life ?

[LucyGoose]

I think they are just going to lower price.... not f2p - just a lower price. Maybe free mules or some sh1t. I also agree with what Byrth's observations.. there was no 'excitement' on the post about the announcement..

[Xantavia]

Did SE ever officially support Spanish? That notice would make sense, especially since they only do Japanese and English now.

[D44kpunk]

Did RotZ and CoP take your virginity after a candle-lit dinner or something? Its a goddamn game. Methinks you're putting a little rose into those rosey memories you have there.

Shit, its like SE paid you to play it instead of the other way around. Well.. if the RMT stuff is true, they did kinda pay you.

On topic: If they're holding nearly a million subs, I can't see the gravy train pulling into its last station just yet. Easy money is easy money. Announcing that they're no longer adding new content or patches is one thing, but I don't see them turning off the servers for as long as people are pissing away money for a game this old each month.

lol.. also people are saying "a million in subs" meaning possible monthly income, FFXI probably doesn't have anything over 100k subs. i would strongly think that if you took mules away they would have sub 50k.

if half of you knew how bug, exploit, and glitch ridden this game is and has been since aldouin you'd agree with me

[ronin sparthos]

Hopefully if they shut things down we get a final major event to wrap things up. XI was SE online and the game getting an unceremonious end would be unfitting the game that made ARR possible.

But then again this is SE. Hearing "lul 3 months, servers will be going down, in time for Heavensward!!, please look forward to it." wouldn't surprise me one bit. I'm hoping for a F2P conversion then a final decision some time in the future.