Will FFXI last?Follow

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Question: Do people still play FFXI?

Answer: Absolutely.

According to the FFXI AH site Final Fantasy XI is home to around 800,000 active players (EDIT: This may include storage characters. We do not at present have accurate numbers on the exact amount of subscribers, but SE has not wavered from their 500,000 number).

While this number is quite a bit lower than superpowers like World of Warcraft- it is still one of the largest MMORPG's on the market four years after it's creation. If current trends continue as they do, FFXI will outlast Lineage and Lineage II which are on a rapid decline in membership (source). What this means is that if you pick up FFXI now (2007), you will most definitely have a large base of players and Final Fantasy fans to interact with.


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Question: Why was there been a decline in the FFXI membership?

Answer: Various.

The statistics do not lie. According to MMOGCHARTs records (now a bit older), Final Fantasy XI experienced a decline of around 100,000 members beginning second quarter 2005 through first quarter 2006. It's hard to say what caused this as Square Enix had not yet begun their massive Real Money Trade bannings. Some may fault the release of Chains of Promathia- an expansion that discouraged many players from continuing their adventures in Vana'diel due to it's steep level of difficulty. If this is the case- SE has certainly learned from it's mistakes by creating an expansion with more robust options and a smoother learning curve. Was the decline due to the original release players hitting level 75 and getting tired of limited end-game options? This too may be a valid assumption. Whatever the case, membership is at an alltime high today soaring above the peak level it experienced just a few years ago.


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Question: Will FFXI last?

Answer: Ultimately, yes.

Most MMO's experience a certain lifespan. They are born, grow and gain a following, peak, then fase back in membership until a small cult-following is left to populate a few servers. Many text-based MUDs (Multi User Dungeons) still exist today decades after being created, and Everquest (released in 1999) is still receiving updates almost 8 years later. If FFXI lasts even just as long as Everquest- it still has 3 years of life left in it (more than enough time to accomplish most of what the game has to offer).

Aside from the standard lifespan of MMOs we can also see that SE has done a lot to rejuvenate FFXI and placate it's fanbase. The release of Treasures of Aht Urhgan as well as the XBOX 360 version brought a lot of old players back and introduced a lot of new players to the game. Vana'diel's population surged during this time of growth. As SE continues adding new content and areas to explore, the new players are given new reasons to keep playing week by week and month by month. Add to that the already vast amount of content included with Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia- and new players should have themselves with enough to keep them busy for years to come. This second wave was just the thing FFXI needed to maintain it's longevity ensuring that it will still be around at least as long as it already has been (around 4 years).


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Question: Is Final Fantasy XI for me?

Answer: That depends on your playing style.

If you are a Final Fantasy fan at all- you owe it to yourself to pick up the game or go to a friend's house to try it out. I can give you a 98% guarantee that you will enjoy being immersed in a Final Fantasy universe with thousands of other fans. If you have a short attention span or prefer action games with bright colors, or have a desire for quick rewards- FFXI is probably not the game for you. You already know that FFXI will be around for you when you finally decide to give it a try. The next step will be picking up a copy and getting your feet wet.


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Question: I want to return to FFXI after being gone for a long time. What should I expect?

Answer: The following.

Before anything else, please visit this page to catch up on what you have missed via updates. This will give you an idea on how the gameplay and functionality has been altered by SE.

Other things to expect: The economy has undergone some enormous changes due to mass RMT bannings- meaning you will undoubtedly experience disorientation when you look up auction house prices. Bookmark http://www.ffxiah.com

Also keep in mind that you may have to buy additional expansions. Currently there are 3: Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, and Treasures of Aht Urhgan. You can pick up the Vana'diel Collection 2007 for PC or the standard XBOX 360 version which will contain all 3 expansions, or you can buy Treasures of Aht Urhgan as a stand alone expansion if you have the other two. SE's online store can be reached here.

Probably the most important thing to know is that you will not get a lot of specific information about FFXI if you create a post that says, "I'm coming back to FFXI- what should I expect?" These posts are clutter and really waste your time and ours. A better approach would be to start browsing through job and race forums as well as brushing up on quests and missions. Next you would want to actually start things up and begin leveling again. Finally, ask a question or raise a concern when it comes up so long as it is SPECIFIC and PERTINENT to the FFXI experience. Most of your questions have already been answered in this guide by Icinoki.



More questions will be asked/answered as they appear. Hope this has been informational to you- and I hope it will kill off or prevent any new threads of this type. Please post if any of my information is incorrect and I will edit. Please offer insight into the subject here rather than creating new threads. Thanks.



-whetstone (diabolos)
Bonus: GM Dave offers his thoughts on 'Is FFXI dying?'







EDIT: All WoW stuff taken out by request.

Edit: Here we go again!

Edited, Mar 22nd 2007 5:12pm by Pikko

Edited, May 21st 2007 11:19pm by Pikko

I thought it was well-balanced until the comparison to WoW, simply because (and there's an assumption here, I apologise) someone who was rooting for FFXI would slant it that way, whereas someone rooting for WoW could just as easily find some stats to prove it. I'm not saying your way sucks, or their way pwns. The majority of the post is good.

Some inaccurate things, I would say.

1. Assuming the population of Hades is an indicationt to the global population, I would say the the number of people it's about 20% lower than it was at the end of 2004. The last period, after the release of TOA has shown an increase in population and definitely a revigoration of the lower levels.

2. The decline in population was also due to WOW and the excitement it caused. However, in the long run, the influence of WOW on FFXI it's lower than some may think, IMHO.

3. Also concerning WOW, its population has a big part of people new to the MMORPG area. Adding the decrease in population of Lineage 1, 2, FFXI, EQ etc. doesn't account for the number of people that play WOW. Indeed, WOW it's a trend which caught not only players of other MMOs, but also A LOT of new players. I know in RL about 40 people who play WOW and from these only 5-6 played another MMO in the past. The rest are new to the MMO area and were sucked in by WOW, coming from playing things like Warcraft 3, Diablo etc. In fact, this is a big merit of WOW, the fact that it opened the eyes of a lot of casual players to the MMO world.

4. Finally, my opinion on FFXI it's that it will be around for a long time. There's really no problem to pick the game now and start playing. It's in fact a better moment that it was 6-8 months ago.

-Zbang!

I think the WoW section is slanted in favor of FFXI. Not wrong per se, just seems slanted.

Maybe you can get to level cap quickly in WoW, but so can a determined FFXI player, proven to some extent by the rapid leveling of BLU, PUP & COR when those jobs were introduced.

What isn’t properly reflected is that FFXI players level many jobs (are required to level at least a second for subjob) but it only compares the leveling of one job (which is one character in WoW).

I don’t know if WoW players level as many, but from reading about the game and talking to people that play, many players experiment and level one horde and one alliance character (I think those are the terms).

But with the fan base dedication to FFXI, I feel it will be around for many years to come.

You also gotta remember that ffxiah.com doesn't take mules into account. I personally account for 3 of the players on the site. So 800,000 may be be closer to the actual number of characters, but 500,000 could be closer to the actual number of subscribers.



While this is true in a sense, there's some things to take into consideration. First off, I've never played WoW. But from what I've read time and again, you can solo to 60 (70 now I guess) in a month or two, on your first character.

The people that got BLU, PUP, and COR to 75 in 2 weeks did so with static parties. They already had the resources to get all the gear and other equipment they needed. They knew where to camp, they knew how the game worked and how to get the best exp possible. You just can't compare someone with multiple 75 jobs and a static to someone that just started the game and has made few friends.

Edited, Jan 18th 2007 9:08am by Foustian

Doesn't ffxiah.com only account for the transaction in Jeuno/ToAu? If thats so then it may count mules that are in Jeuno, but it doesn't count the people in other cities that haven't made it to Jeuno yet.

I have edited the post to account for mules in the 800,000 figure. Thanks much for the input so far guys!

As a gut feeling, a lot of change of population in the server after ToAU is really related to banning, otherwise I think the population of legit player is steady. For the last 4 month on my server... Population in NA and JP peak hour is around 1900-2100 and 3300-3600 respectively. When ever there is a ban, population will dip for 100-200 then it will come back up same level in a couple of weeks. This implies ... that suspended people had returned and banned people (including those notorious level 1 fish botters and then repeated quest cheaters) come back with new accounts. Today morning Cerberus JP peak hour had about 3400 people on, with about my estimate is ~150 were "illegit" players.

When eventually SE get to ban those level 1 characters in Selbina and Battalia Downs, the effect on the population is very noticeable. Literally 70-80 characters out of 2000-3500 gone is not a negligible %. GSs and other banned botters (like those in certain HNMLS) are more likely to be online longer (to farm more gil or to participate in game events) than a more typical player (who may only log on a few times a week), so when they are removed , they are more visible decline in population.

I see people quit, and I also see people come back or join the game. Population of FFXI may have passed all time high, but we are still not too far from it.

I can see forsee that it may worth SE time to make a new expansion, and population... will be back up again.

Edited, Jan 18th 2007 11:02am by scchan

I have been to Japan a few times, and Japan's leading game magazine Famitsu used to (don't know now but at least they had in the middle of 2006) have weekly FFXI columns. And Enterbrain (the company that publishes Famitsu) also make occasional FFXI special magazines and books. In some ways, FFXI are comparably visible to rival online games in Japan.

I think I had seen a poster in Game Stop when they released the Vana'Diel collections, but I have to say... FFXI is far less visible in US than in Japan.

While I agree with much of what was listed in the OP, I would have to suggest that pikko not sticky this or any thread about the "Current state of the game" or however it was put.

The game changes.

Its a shock, I know. But xpacks come out, AH prices fluctuate (sp?), RMT get banned and then come back in new ways. For a sticky of that nature to be relevant it would have to be kept up to date, and I don't see a poster doing that for a major sticky like he's asking for. If Pikko or another admin were to right it and maintain it themselves that would be a slightly different matter.

Good idea, harder to implement than it seems.

Yeah cuz...um...the edit button is hard to find??? They requested it- I wrote it. It's not gonna be a big deal to update.

I think that if you removed the WoW section--really, it's irrelevant when talking about the health of FFXI--and mentioned that newer players may have difficulties finding parties due to the fact that the existing player population is very skewed towards the high end of the level range, it would be a much better post; leveling subjobs isn't necessarily a valid counter to the latter, either, since by now most endgame players likely have all of their desired subjobs leveled. As it is now, this comes across in places as less of an informational post and more of an advertisement. Perhaps you could also wait for the new MMOGChart numbers to be released, since if I remember correctly, they are usually updated in June and January.