Dizmo wrote:
Isn't the most important thing for them to do to first aim to recapture the 300k~ player deficit between FFXI's peak and current population? ie. winning back the people who used to play FFXI but now don't for whatever reason. I think for this reason they shouldn't stray too far from XI.
The Japanese MMO market hasn't progressed that dramatically, WoW doesn't even exist here. An revamped FFXI would sell just fine if it were developed competently. There's plenty of potential players to attract without cannibalizing XI (as proved by the fact that XI's population used to be 500k). There's no need to invent the wheel.
The Japanese MMO market hasn't progressed that dramatically, WoW doesn't even exist here. An revamped FFXI would sell just fine if it were developed competently. There's plenty of potential players to attract without cannibalizing XI (as proved by the fact that XI's population used to be 500k). There's no need to invent the wheel.
Current FFXI players will tend to stick with FFXI, even if FFXIV copied heavily from FFXI (and I dare say especially if it did). Fact is, there's so much working against convincing a current FFXI player to switch to FFXIV for good. They'd have to start over in a game that most of their friends aren't playing (they're playing FFXI), and even if they stick with FFXIV awhile, the content will run out (it's a new game) and they'll find themselves drifting back to FFXI and unsubscribing from FFXIV (at the very least to save money) sooner or later.
Former FFXI players is a potential source of players, but many of them left because FFXI was too demanding. So if you copy heavily from FFXI and make it too demanding, former FFXI players will soon quit FFXIV for the same reasons they left FFXI in the first place.
Current non-FFXI playing Final Fantasy fans could also always have joined FFXI, but they didn't because it was too demanding. If FFXIV heavily clones FFXI, there's still no convincing this substantially large group to change their mind and play Final Fantasy Online.
And that leaves the young'n's, who've had nine years of WoW being the standard from which all MMOs are built. You may as well hand a kid a cassette-tape Walkman for their music needs as to convince them to play an MMO like FFXI.
So, I'm convinced that FFXIV has to do its own thing. A new experience that "feels like Final Fantasy" and is as friendly to use as WoW would cast a wide net and bring in players from all backgrounds. It's the only chance this game has for a future.