"Rapture" to replace FFXI as premiere SE MMO... =(

[Mayareira]

A "brand new" SE MMORPG will sell with or without old players' support.

[Lordwafik]

I wonder if they're gonna use playonline to distribute Rapture!

Who wants to click 11 times over 1.5 minutes to play their game?

[Nattack]

yarly wafik, i really hate that you have to launch playonline before anything else. i mean this makes people who like things like xfire or gamespy if they still do that... Mplayer, heat.net, zone.com. all those, i used to love those D:

[LordshadowRagnarok]

Square better hand out "Rapture free trials" to current subscribers to FFXI.

[Lordwafik]

I don't mind a pre-launcher so long as it's not tied to 1 company. Steam's done it right, POL has 1 freaking game (at least here in the western world), tetra master doesn't count.

[Corrderio]

I am kinda curious what jobs they'll add in Rapture. I doubt it but I do hope they keep the tradional FF jobs. Paladin FTW!!!!

[Yugl]

tetra master doesn't count.

Oh no you didn't...

[Moridam]

yarly wafik, i really hate that you have to launch playonline before anything else. i mean this makes people who like things like xfire or gamespy if they still do that... Mplayer, heat.net, zone.com. all those, i used to love those D:

heat.net, holy shit, i forgot all about that. i can vaguely remember attempting to play quake and sin over dialup on that service, i think maybe 1/10 attempts i could actually get into a game and get my ass stomped for a few minutes before i'd get booted, lol.

looking back, i remember for no apparent reason they mailed me a package with a whole bunch of merchandise (tshirt and a few other odds and ends), and i definitely never gave them a dime. it's no wonder they didn't last very long.

[Spira]

Rapture to replace FFXI as premiere SE MMO makes perfect business sense..
if we're using the bcg model to look at it..
FFXI is long past the stage of being a 'star' and is in fact the company's 'cash cow'...
little growth but high returns due to a sizeable market share... this is also true considering how much money it has been racking in for the company..
but as its profits are dwindling, they're looking to develop a new 'star', one that has stronger hopes for market (and game) expansion so that they can allow it to grow more and hopefully become another cash cow for it.

FFXI is still the company's MVP. They're not going to axe it anytime soon, if ever.
Honestly, and this is a personal opinion.. the next game might do well in the short run, but if it doesn't have 'Final Fantasy' in its title (and it likely won't), and considering the over-saturation of MMOs in the market now.. theres a high chance its popularity, and subscriber base will never reach the peak that FFXI once had.

edit: i remember reading in an interview that Rapture won't be using POL as its base platform (or w/e they call it) anymore

[Gwynplaine]

Honestly, and this is a personal opinion.. the next game might do well in the short run, but if it doesn't have 'Final Fantasy' in its title (and it likely won't), and considering the over-saturation of MMOs in the market now.. theres a high chance its popularity, and subscriber base will never reach the peak that FFXI once had.

Totally. If the game is bad no amount of reputation, cutting edge genre blending, or graphical glamour will make it good (e.g. Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan, etc.) It's well known that when Square strays from what it does best, things can go very wrong (hello Dirge of Cerberus, The Bouncer, Drakengard). It's kind of pointless to speculate until there's something of Square's to compare FFXI to.

[Gtype954]

It would be the PS3 that runs out of hard drive space first. As the 360 Is replaceable and there is a 240gig coming out shortly, so you can all ways get a bigger one. The PS3 on the other hand you can not.
lolsony

Talking out of your ass.... I put a 120 GB in my 60 GM PS3 which I bought from day 1.

Also, The original Xbox 360s did not even come with Hardrives and I don't even remeber if it came with a slot to even insert a harddrive in those xboxs.
Xbox would be first.. If a 1 TB harddrive exists out there... you can put it in the PS3.. you can put any size Harddrive in the PS3. The PS3 manual even shows how to replace your harddrive IF you want a bigger size harddrive because Sony knew people would want the option to do this.
Even before the 120GB was announced from sony, you could still use a 120GB from a PC to put in your ps3 and it worked fine.
So in other words, if sony never packages a 500 GB harddrive but you buy one from best buy.... you can shove it in your PS3 and it will most likely work.


FF11 needs to die... and they need to reveal the easy secrets all along to making most of the HNM battles turn from hard to easy. They need to reveal the hidden effects of all items in the game and all the food effects.
Just make a little guide, A monster guide, would be cool.

[Pikarya]

FF11 needs to die... and they need to reveal the easy secrets all along to making most of the HNM battles turn from hard to easy. They need to reveal the hidden effects of all items in the game and all the food effects.
Just make a little guide, A monster guide, would be cool.

PROTIP: Treasure Hunter was a farce the whole time.

[Gtype954]

PROTIP: Treasure Hunter was a farce the whole time.

Treasure hunter: Only increased the amount of synthesis materials that dropped from that mob and/or the amount of crystals he dropped based on if you had signet/sanction on. No, it did not effect that ridill drop morons... muahahahahaha, and to think we had you in Dragons Aery this whole time, we fooled you muahahahahha (insert SE sinister smile here).

[barber2006]

I'll be glad to see Rapture here. There is still only a small chance I would play, but I (unlike most here) think FFXI has gotten better.

Limbus was a major breakthrough for fun loot acquisition.

Einherjar is way better than kings in every way. No botting and at least competency is required.

Nyzul is a great event and although its not the hardest thing ever, people in my linkshells have WAY more floor 80 timeouts than wipes in dragon's aery. There is at least a hint of challenge.

Salvage blows dynamis away because a) it isn't 90 hours long and b) you don't have to worry about someone stealing your zone.

The point system structure of assault rewards was a very nice idea and there is no reason to think this won't be used in the next MMO from the outset since it wouldn't be destroying the rarity of someone's "legit" defending ring.

ZNM is also a great system other than the major roadblock at the end. Gather up triggers SOLO. Then solo/low man T1/2. Then everyone brings their T3/4 triggers out for a fun night without killing despot placeholders for 9 hours.

I still think the best system is that of Bv2. Do ENM for exp and chance of a reward. Use that trigger for another BC for more rewards. Use that trigger for the megaboss battle with great rewards. Rewards and fun at every step.

The jobs are more balanced than they were. Yeah, they aren't perfect, but the difference between FFXI and other MMO's is that you get a 'job change' button in FFXI. Can't get in a good Einherjar shell as a Bst? In any other MMO you would be S.O.L. But in FFXI you can simply job change to blm and solo for a month and gear your bst that way. For that reason having jobs completely balanced is not as crucial as in other MMO's where you would need to reroll entirely.


They are getting a lot better at adding what is fun. The only problem is they refuse to go back and fix what isn't right. They won't fix king botting (or do away with them). They won't instance dynamis. They won't (or at least haven't) upped SSR drop rates. Once its broke, they simply don't fix it. But I really think that if they use the models of ZNM/salvage/nyzul/Bv2/etc then they won't be behind the eight ball and won't need to change as much as they currently do.

[Lordender]

I won't play rapture, SE hasent convinced me that they can open the lines of communication with the players and take feed back often enough to improve their game.

They have improved some what but its not nearly good enough. I like how WoW gives blue posts every few days that talk about whats going on rather than having to wait months for someone to interview them at some game show/fan fest.

[Naash]

Wait! You mean online game companies eventually make new MMORPGs when their current ones can't attract as many new subscribers as they used to, and when newer systems/PCs are released? SHOCKING!

It's unreasonable to panic at alarmist articles like this, we already knew SE was working on new online games (if you read the actual budget report, it never says anywhere "one title will 'replace' FFXI" or implies that FFXI will stop when a new title is released, but rather they're developing other large-scale online game(s) to relay it) and we already knew MMORPGs don't last forever. Still, they take an awful long time to die (look at Ragnarok Online or Everquest) and FFXI is not doing bad at not losing players too fast - if the figures we heard are correct.

This whole thing is just jumping to conclusions and over-interpreting a report that has no concrete info we didn't already know... (What? SE will develop other titles than FFXI and expand their online business? Well, duh!).

[ringthree]

I wonder if they're gonna use playonline to distribute Rapture!

Who wants to click 11 times over 1.5 minutes to play their game?

They have already said they regret POL and it was a failed attempt to get SoE to join up with it.

You won't see it again. Doesn't mean you wont have another system to uselessly tick through for 5 minutes, but it won't be POL.

[Silenka]

I wouldn't worry about FFXI in regards to Rapture, at least not at this point in time.

I wouldn't worry about it at all (and I'm not).

[Khajit]

I wonder where they think most of thier customers are going to come from.
Most of the people that have quit this game is as a result of the rampart sadism by SE imo.The rest is probably is either addicted or invested too much time or simply like thier ingame friends too much to quit. Who in thier right mind is going to enter any game made by the creators of dynamis, HNM, and 1~3 year waits on specific drops for your character if its in first place(dkp wise)?
Let's face it. Rapture has a pretty good chance of getting a lower than expected profit margin.
In light of this news, I'm theorizing that SE acting like they give a damn about the players recently is a PR stunt more than anything. They aren't caring about keeping their current customers so much as making sure that the media doesn't take a 5 second look at ffxi subscribers and cause anyone thinking of going to rapture to realize what they're getting into.

[Naash]

I wonder where they think most of thier customers are going to come from.

Japan? ｗ


But seriously, I wonder too if they're going to go closer to the American style or the Korean style.