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Wow, they had 550,000 subscribers six months ago.

Not hurting, huh?

And, actually, the census didn't say they had 500,000 subscribers, they certainly implied it, but they never came out and said it. I'll bet they've lost users.

Plus, they're looking for new and old members alike. I'd say they're hurting.

The press release suggests that the XBox FFXI would have better graphics, so maybe they'll finally get around to fixing their PC client. Not that it matters, because all the real gamers left FFXI for WoW or GW ages ago.

Wow, they had 550,000 subscribers six months ago.

Not hurting, huh?

And, actually, the census didn't say they had 500,000 subscribers, they certainly implied it, but they never came out and said it. I'll bet they've lost users.

Plus, they're looking for new and old members alike. I'd say they're hurting.

The press release suggests that the XBox FFXI would have better graphics, so maybe they'll finally get around to fixing their PC client. Not that it matters, because all the real gamers left FFXI for WoW or GW ages ago.

Come on. Look at their list of server issues - it's like one a day.

Yeah. That looks like a great architecture.

Look at the comments to the entire story.

No one cares.

FFXI isn't a popular game, few people here play it (anymore), and those that did universely agree it sucked.

It's like saying some random website is getting DDOSed. Who cares? It happens. Most sysadmins figure out how to block the attackers and then move on. Apparently Square-Enix is incapable of doing that, which really isn't all that interesting.

It's not hard to have a game "without serious server issues" when no one plays it.

Or, more likely, they just broke some of their infrastructure yet again and are blaming it on a DDOS so more people won't just up and leave for WoW or EQ2, two far superior games.

Much more interesting is that they're making it easier to level up and running a campaign to bring back former players. Hmm... Square-Enix is apparently running scared.

Evidently an end game consisting of Even More Leveling!11!11 isn't holding the customers any longer.

The DDOS story did succeed in getting Slashdot to advertise that yes, FFXI still does exist, even though most players could care less by now. Personally, my paranoid conspiracy theory is that Square-Enix wanted to get their name in the news some how, and they did it by making up a DDOS story.

Which is just as plausible as the Chinese attacking a freaking video game for economic and political reasons.

Or, more likely, they just broke some of their infrastructure yet again and are blaming it on a DDOS so more people won't just up and leave for WoW or EQ2, two far superior games.

Much more interesting is that they're making it easier to level up and running a campaign to bring back former players. Hmm... Square-Enix is apparently running scared.

Evidently an end game consisting of Even More Leveling!11!11 isn't holding the customers any longer.

The DDOS story did succeed in getting Slashdot to advertise that yes, FFXI still does exist, even though most players could care less by now. Personally, my paranoid conspiracy theory is that Square-Enix wanted to get their name in the news some how, and they did it by making up a DDOS story.

Which is just as plausible as the Chinese attacking a freaking video game for economic and political reasons.

I know MMORPGs are never visual powerhouses, but quite frankly, the two-year-old FFXI looks better [than World of Warcraft].

Have you ever played FFXI, or just seen screenshots? FFXI most certainly does not look better than WoW. FFXI manages, somehow, to have the most washed-out environment that I've ever played in. Everything looks like it was done in pastels. There's no color, anywhere.

Even better, the environments are exceedingly bland. Each zone will basically be all solid one color. (Well, solid texture...)

I wish I could point out screenshots, but FFXI - doesn't offer any! (Well, that's not entirely true, there's a "screenshot gallery" link that opens a JavaScript popup, but that apparently is for user-submitted screenshots that are supposed to have some theme. And they actually all look worse than the game really does, due to the scaling and JPEG artifacts created by the game's screenshot JPEG compression routine.)

WoW has a nice screenshot gallery which won't really help explain what I'm talking about. I guess the best bet is to go here and watch it pan around a zone and note that the zone basically always looks the same.

The screenshot I linked to for WoW is an oasis in The Barrens. When you move away from that, you're in a large grassy plains surrounded by mountains. It's really quite beautiful.

The art is WoW is flat-out better. The interface is much easier on the eyes and easy to use. The graphics are, simply, better. The only thing I'll grant you is the player models. Honestly, I like the player models in FFXI better. But when it comes to the overall artwork - the scenery, the user interface icons, the monsters - WoW's art is better.

FFXI has an estimated 500,000 subscribers. WoW has a known 1.25 MILLION subscribers. FFXI's figures are estimated because - well, they haven't bothered releasing the damned figures in over six months!

And that's really strange, too, since they've released an expansion pack AND released in Europe since they last announced their figures. Why the hell haven't they announced that they're up past the 500,000 figure? Why not say "600,000" with the European release?

Because, most likely, they AREN'T. It's actually quite likely that with the release of EverQuest 2 and World of Warcraft that they LOST a lot of subscribers, maybe as much as a quarter of all subscribers, even when counting the increase of subscribers from the European release.

WoW hit DOUBLE their MAXIMUM subscription figures in THREE MONTHS. FFXI did that in TWO YEARS. I'd say WoW annihilated FFXI in popularity.

But seriously, who cares? FFXI was only the "largest non-Korean MMORPG around" because of Japan. PC MMORPGs just aren't that popular in Japan, and so with FFXI being basically the only console MMORPG in town, it's not surprising that the Japanese inflated it's subscription figures. If you ignore that effect, you're down to like 200,000 subscribers - much less popular than EverQuest.

Simply put, FFXI is like Lineage. It may be popular "someplace else" but it never was popular in America or Europe. It simply isn't effectively competeing in the market World of Warcraft is.

By the way, it's been well known that Square intends to heavily enter the MMORPG market. Their PlayOnline service is basically an MMORPG subscription service, designed to give them a backend to run multiple MMORPGs at once. Hell, even FFXI contained a tech-demo of the service, Tetra Master (which, I'm please to say, I had to look up). They already have two more games planned on that service: Front Mission Online and Fantasy Earth. And, possibly, the Japanese release of EverQuest 2.

Or, maybe, World of Warcraft is thousands upon thousands of times better than Final Fantasy XI. It would be hard to be worse than FFXI, though.

Let's start with Square-Penix:

* Kills your account after three months if you stop playing, requiring you to buy a new copy.

* FFXI costs more than World of Warcraft. What's that you say? FFXI is $12.95/month, WoW is $14.99/month? Well, FFXI dings you a $1 per character past the first. I have 8 chars in WoW right now (playing with various classes), that would cost me $19.95/month in FFXI. Almost everyone has a "mule" in FFXI, so that means that most people pay $13.95/month for FFXI. I'm paying on the six month plan for WoW, so I actually pay LESS monthly than your average FFXI player.

* "F" rating from the BBB due to outsanding complaints against them.

* Poor communication. Remember when the servers went out for a week to the Eastern US? Too bad Square-Penix never bothered telling anyone what they were doing about it. Afterwards they blamed it on some telco. Apparently the real reason was that they were using port 21 (the email port) as a data port, which was blocked from listening to prevent spam.

* Evidently as of this February this year, they FINALLY banned some small percentage of users for violating the terms of service. On a related note, FFXI is nearly 3 years old.

Now the game itself:

* Bad graphics. But don't take my word for it, try the benchmark! My computer scores as "Very Tough" which means it should run the game with no problem. It was running at 12FPS (I actually clocked it with FRAPS, since it doesn't bother listing the FPS) when I got that score. Apparently that's "running excellently".

* Bad music. Most players will agree.

* Bad graphics variety. Apparently no one at Square-Penix has discovered the magic of skinning and scaling. Which isn't even true, they do skin/scale certain monsters, which makes the fact that every crab you'll ever meet looks identical, from the level 1 crab in the newb zones to the level 70 crabs you level off of at level 65, unforgivable. They could have fixed this. They didn't.

* Bad monster variety. Partially covered above, but every monster has the same abilities, too. The level 1 crab is identical to the level 70 crab, just with fewer HP.

* Forced grouping. Bigger rewards by grouping is OK. Forcing people to group isn't. This means most of the game is spent sitting around, looking for a group. It's basically impossible to do anything and search for a group at the same time.

* Bad quests. Quests are poorly described, and rewards are either totally worthless or totally essential.

* Dumb guild system. Belonging to a guild ("linkshell") takes up an inventory slot, and you can switch between them at will. This means most guild members randomly jump between multiple guilds, so there's no loyalty. Plus they have an annoying tendency to break up since the guild leader can't pass ownership.

* Dumb crafting system. Crafting requires ingredients, which can be lost on a fail, and a "crystal catalyst", which is ALWAYS lost. A very good system if you want to force people to waste time, though. Ultimately you'll always run out of the ability to attempt crafting because you'll run out of the catalyst, regardless of success/fail.

* Dumb death penalty. If you die, you lose XP. If you get resurrected, you get some of it back, AND you get res sickness. Wha? Choose one, please. Or you can homepoint, which wastes time and XP. One penalty at a time.

* Crappy combat system. Without extremely rare items past level 30, your character will never be able to hit mobs you XP on with groups. Hope you like camping.

There's more, but suffice it to say FFXI is definitively worse than EQ2 and WoW and probably any other MMORPG on the list.

In FFXI, Square recently did take action against a bunch of botters. Granted, it may be a bit "too little, too late" for many but at least they did something.

No real point to this post, but:

Square-Enix finally got off their ass and executed the St. Valentine's Day Gilseller Massacre, finally banning 800 accounts for TOS violations.

Which, to me, and probably to you too, is too little, too late. Yay. So they actually can enforce their terms of service. If they did this, say, a YEAR ago, I might still be playing.

Evidently Square-Enix doesn't actually care about the gaming experience until other MMORPGs start threatening their bottom line. They basically did a complete 180 when it came to announcing updates and actions against botters and "gilsellers" with the release of WoW. Curious...

Actually, Square-Enix has taken the lesson. In fact, they did it a month ago. We've seen a lot of it of FFXI, and they did take action. Within a week of that change, we saw a dramatic drop in characters who were farming gil (game money) for real cash (a.k.a. gillsellers). I've heard that some of the sites have been shut down but I didn't really know where they were to begin with so I can't confirm it. They've made some more minor revisions as a follow-up, but I think their first move was the most effective. There were areas that I would sometimes have trouble walking through because it was so crowded with gilsellers and bots, and now when I go there it's usually almost (if not completely) empty. There are still hymns of praise being sung by players about this decision. It sounds a little silly to people who don't play, but the gilsellers have made far-reaching impacts on the gameplay and despite being banned still manage to do so. FFXI (as well as any other MMORPG, i'm sure) has an interesting player-driven economy. Gilsellers upset the balance of that economy by monopolizing access to certain items and railing the price so they have more gil to sell. They upset the gameplay by sweeping through areas and killing everything on their runs, making it pointless for anyone who is there after a monster or trying to gain experience points. Kudos to both companies for their decision and any future ones that follow suit.

As much as many people would love to see the same of D2, I don't think that's ever going to be a reality. It would be nice, but at this point it really isn't fesible. This stuff is a huge business, which is kinda funny when you consider that the vast majority of players want nothing to do with people who do this. I've seen char's kicked out of parties and occasionally run out of a zone because they were a gilseller. But some of them don't have a choice but to be there. There are companies out there whose sole income is getting items and selling them for money. They just have a bank of computers, a few employees that get paid peanuts to work shifts on the characters to keep the flow of items and money constant. It's kinda frightening. Square-Enix (and Blizzard, at least in the case of WoW) took the initiative to curb this practice but in the case of D2 the damage has already been done and is far too extensive. Even if Blizzard filed a lawsuit on every site that sells the items and/or gold and got them shut down immediately, the market has already been irrevocably changed by their activity. They've been there for so long now, and become so entrenched that even in their absence I doubt prices would retern to normal.

Oh, and for those who are interested: my name is Judaas and I'm on Shiva.

Oooo, you know what? You could always just buy a fucking PC and shut up about the damned PS2 hard drive!

The PS2 has had what, 70 million sales worldwide? FFXI has what, 550,000 subscribers total? That means that out of all PS2 owners, a total of 0.78% - less than 1% - actually wanted the hard drive to play Final Fantasy XI.

Except, of course, that there's the PC port, so some number of the 0.25 million figure don't care about the PS2. So the actual figure is even less.

The hard drive was never a success. Yes, it sucks if you play Final Fantasy XI, but Sony shouldn't be expected to bend over backwards for a game made by Square-Enix. The move makes sense for Sony. Sorry, Square-Enix, but that's the price you pay for being the only one using an accessory.

Please bug Square to release actual subscription statistics. No facts to use, I have to use informal polls instead, which suggest that FFXI is losing NA players but making up with them with EU players. As for the screwed up update thing, I'll just point you to any FFXI forum. Here, I'll even give you some starters.

All 65+ Bard united against SE, NOW!!! - Bard complains about SEVERE nerf to his job
The Food Nerf and what to do about it. - Food, one of the only ways around the insane equipment requirements, has been badly nerfed.
Nerfed Logging and minning - two ways many players used to earn money and gain items for crafting has been made basically useless.
SE DIDNT FIX ANYTHING - crash bug "fixed" (but not too well)
Rampant Inflation!? - response to SE's attempt to reduce inflation...

Oh, and then there's Further Details on Current Known Issues (Dec. 12) detailing how the update would require you to completely reinstall the PS2 version of the game.

Those facts suffice?

You mean it wasn't already? But nah, it's even worse than that.

My brother (who already jumped ship to World of Warcraft) made all his money in FFXI by mining. Guess what got nerfed (and severely, too)?

Apparently in an attempt to prevent bots from monopolizing mining and logging points, they're making them give poor results if you've been in the area too long. So now people monopolizing the spots will have to swap characters in and out. Yes, that solves the problem.

They've already nerfed fishing, and they're doing it again. Unless you fish in a city, you're basically guarenteed to fish up monsters now. They also severely cut the prices NPCs will pay for fish. There's no point to fishing anymore, except to get ingredients for other crafting skills.

Basically, to try and combat people selling items for money (which as you mentioned isn't the real problem) Square-Enix decided to totally screw up their own economy. It's gone from being really tough to make money in that game to nigh impossible.

The real problem was the requirement of uber gear to play the game at all. For people who don't play, you basically require extremely rare gear if you ever hope to actually hit things. Otherwise FFXI turns into a mis-fest as 80% of everything misses. (Magic included.) Some extremely rare equipment allows you to bring the miss rate down to like 10%.

There are people monopolizing various rare equipment drops preventing normal players from getting them. They would then sell these items for cash. Instead of solving the equipment problem they're going to try and solve the selling problem. Somehow this is supposed to fix things.

(They also - apparently - released a bunch of the rare items at lower prices, to try and reduce inflation. So basically, to try and fix a screwed up economy, Square-Enix decided to totally destroy the existing economy.)

Other changes involve increasing the fee for selling items to other players using the auction house. (Basically it was a way to allow you to sell stuff without having to be logged on somewhere.) The fee is now 2% of your asking cost + 100 gil instead of a flat fee.

Yeah, that's going to work. Say I want to make 500,000 gil (in-game currency) off something. Before it would be, say, a 500 gil flat fee. So 500,000 + 500 = 500,500, my new asking price.

Now, the fee is 2% of the price + 100 gil. To make my 500,000 gil, I would simply have to solve for x:
x - (0.02x + 100) = 500,000
0.98x - 100 = 500,000
x = 500,100 / 0.98
x = 510,307 (rounded up)

Yes, this will really help with inflation.

Anyway, FFXI really did do an update that was occuring when this story posted, so it did seem kind of appropriate.

And in other news, Final Fantasy XI announced an expansion in their service. Apparently, in the coming months, they intend to actually enforce their user agreement instead of just ignoring people selling items and in-game currency for money.

This comes as a surprise, considering the game is over a year old in the United States and is coming up on the third anniversary of its original Japanese launch in a few months.

Evidently, in Japan, only companies losing customers listen to complaints.

One of the complaints I heard frequently on various forums was people claiming that they'd "never play World of Warcraft because Blizzard games always get hacked and Blizzard never does anything about it." Hopefully this will convince them that Blizzard is indeed being proactive about preventing cheaters.

Unfortunately, I expect that instead they'll just take it as evidence that World of Warcraft is easily hacked and use that as a reason why they refuse to play.

But I'm glad Blizzard is announcing this, rather than the approach a certain other MMORPG took of saying "oh, there's nothing wrong, there are no bots anymore, we took care of them all" despite groups of players who seem not to mind doing the same thing repeatedly 24/7 and never respond when you try and talk with them...

They need to first create a coherent Internet strategy spearheaded by a Pokemon, Zelda, or Mario based MMORPG at least on par with Final Fantasy and Second Life. Only then shall I permit this fragmentation of attention! This..this... childish insolence!

Well, if you click on any of the purchase links they offer for the expansion, you'll get taken to a preorder page. None of these sites actually indicate any reason for the delay. EBGames actually silently updated the shipping date without notifying any of the people who preordered.

I can completely understand that a hurricane can disrupt shipping, and accept that. I really, really wish that Square-Enix and the various stores that are offering pre-orders would actually tell us about this instead of requiring people to call up store managers to find out what's up.

I'm sure lots of things are still delayed from the aftermath of the hurricane. It's completely understandable. But it's really infuriating when companies won't just tell you what's going on and instead act as if things are proceeding exactly as planned.

Well, if you click on any of the purchase links they offer for the expansion, you'll get taken to a preorder page. None of these sites actually indicate any reason for the delay. EBGames actually silently updated the shipping date without notifying any of the people who preordered.

I can completely understand that a hurricane can disrupt shipping, and accept that. I really, really wish that Square-Enix and the various stores that are offering pre-orders would actually tell us about this instead of requiring people to call up store managers to find out what's up.

I'm sure lots of things are still delayed from the aftermath of the hurricane. It's completely understandable. But it's really infuriating when companies won't just tell you what's going on and instead act as if things are proceeding exactly as planned.

The census is awesome information, but it seems that the live feed at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/multimedia/wind/ is a little bit...broken?

FFXI (Final Fantasy 11): It's missing. Why? All of the million-plus players can't be in Japan. I know more people in my area that play FFXI than play the rest of these games combined, and no, they're not even on my server.

is I pay for this and spend more time on it then I EVER have any television program.

and it's a lot like a cartoon! only with interaction. Why waste time with TV when you can be doing something that stimulates?

FFXI PVP system was announced the other day. It's a team game you have to sign up in order to join. Thank god. PK games are completely stupid (unless they are specifically set up for that purpose).

To this day, there is no MMORPG for the console market.

Eh?

And Phantasy Star Online (which you mentioned) originated on the Dreamcast. I can't remember whether or not that would really count as an MMORPG, though.

Rob

In FFXI they decorated all of the trees in the home cities in christmas fasion, and there is 1 moogle standing (flying? hovering?) in a main area in each of the 3 major cities handing out fireworks. There is speculation about some holiday themed quest, but as far as I know nothing has been uncovered.

If you want to check out the decorations, check out the Vana'diel Live Cam at the game's site, and you should see some in the background.

FFXI (http://www.playonline.com/ff11us) has implemented a number of features for in game socialization, some optional and some indirectly enforced by the game rules.

While fighting monsters is the only way of getting experience, the game is designed so that at mid-to-high levels, the only battles that a player can gain significant Exp. from are dangerous for any single player to fight alone. A player who does not want to 'party up' can still play, but will spend a lot more time gaining the same amount of Experience. Also, various skills (from weapon skills to magic to basic skills, like, say "Evasion") will only rise marginally unless you are fighting a challenging battle. The different jobs each have a role to play in a party, and are given skills and tools to excel in that role. If those players choose not(or don't know how) to use those skills, the party will not do well, so mentoring happens quite often.

In addition, the "Conquest" system encourages people to prevent other players from dying to monsters, and social organization between players and groups of players to further the goals of their nation.

Finally, the global chat system(individual players can purchase a 'linkshell' that gives them their 'own' global chatroom, and allow players to join it by giving them an equippable 'linkpearl'), in-game Friend list, and server-wide in-game postal system (for items and money), in addition to the Auction Houses in the various cities, rewards(in terms of paying less for the same items) socializing as far as the economy goes.

FFXI has a lot of other features that make the game enjoyable while also easy to play, but offering great rewards to master.

Ok, that last part sounds like an ad for the game, but that's really how I feel.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Square-Enix, any of their associates, affiliates, or anywhere in the gaming industry, or any industry supporting the gaming industry. I just really like the game.

Well, it looks pretty nice and all, but from the screenshots shown, the atmosphere really doesn't grab me at all. The look of it reminds me of the plethora of crappy RPGs released in the 90s. When I'm playing an MMORPG, I want it to be immersive. With all the alternative MMORPGs available today (some with an incredible atmosphere), the only thing that M59 seems to have going for it is the "small town" type feel of the servers, and I still can't decide if that's fully a good thing. I remember playing on smaller MUDs that had the same feel (where you knew everyone) and that got to be a bad thing - if you screwed something up or pissed somebody off (usually something relatively minor that people got mad about for no reason (dude, this is MY zone!)), you couldn't just blend in with the crowd and ignore them.

I'm sure it's a great game and all, but this is like playing Warcraft when you could be playing Warcraft 3 - why?

(Disclaimer: No, I'm not a graphics whore, but if I'm going to be immersed in a world for hours and hours at a time, I want to sit back and enjoy the atmosphere)

-- Dr. Eldarion --

What I wanna know in regards to FFXI, is what the hell is it doing with all them ports? Look at this page. They want access to ports 25, 80 and 110 among others. Huh? Webpage and email servers? What gives?