FFXI will never be remade, just like WoW, CoH, EQ... none of them will ever have a true clone done because the original is still there and still available for comparison. But FFXI, the game itself, is not perfect. It's full of flaws and issues. The only reason it felt different was the fact that we had to overcome them as a group, not as individuals. Other games, the challenge starts when you hit cap. FFXI forced difficulty on you from the outset. Just gaining levels was a struggle, and required others to help.
The problem is that the market for that kind of game, with punishing difficulty, is now not the norm for MMOs. Those games exist, like Demon's Souls/Dark Souls, but they are targeted for one-time buyers, not a subscription model, because FFXI failed in the way that it did. The game launched before WoW, and on two platforms, with a very highly recognizable brand that was still very huge at the time. Yet, WoW stomped on it, hard. WoW broke all the ideas surrounding the market at that time, and opened the flood gates to the casual crowd to join in the MMO craze.
Now the issue is, everyone wants to repeat WoW. And WoW is the least hardcore, brutal difficulty curve game out there. It focuses primarily on soloing ability except for the dungeons and raids, both of which you can fairly well skip if you have no interest in them. Even a lot of hardcore players are starting to burn out and just want to play games, not live in them.
FFXI is the last of its breed, and I'm not really sorry to see it happening that way.
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Olorinus the Ludicrous wrote:
The idea of old school is way more interesting than the reality