DO You Expect A FFXI Expansion For 90+?

that has passed, you don't see that anymore (or rarely if at all)

on the Lakshmi server all JP's call whitegate home and all the rest call port jeuno home. I have seen a disparity

Hey, leave 360 outta this. It looks damn good, just can't do Besieged without getting D/C'ed.

and that is good because........



how are the limitations of xbox ..or are there any, i always here about ps2 .. is xbox 360 even in the equation other than what you had said?

yeah sorry about that Rayik. I didn't mean to lump that in with the martian. lol. I have heard 360 runs it well actually and had some imporoved visuals over the ps2, but that besieged made you d/c in there.

Many 360's were having the exact same issue on the one update that sparked "ps2 limitations" so its largely believed that 360 is part of the problem

I myself am a ps2 user, and I don't have a problem with them dropping ps2 support as long as they release a PS3 version first

I own a ps3, and would have no problem dropping my ps2 to play on that, except, its a slim, and the ps2 version of FFXI can only be installed on the fat, backwards compatible ones

So IF SE decides to drop ps2 support, they need to release a full ps3 version first

Hell, I'd play on PS3 over PC.

Guys.

PS2 limitations is a fancy excuse for not wanting to say the obvious truth: the game is beyond the point where major renovations of the type people want ($30, brand new areas, etc) are not within the scope of what they can do with a small and diminishing player base. It's just not going to happen. Again, and I repeat, count your lucky stars it seems we're eventually getting 1 new area (possibly region) some time next year.

I don't remember where I read it (probably something Jaerik wrote) but the Cataclysm expansion for WoW cost more in development than the original game. Blizzard can afford to do this -- not only can they afford to but they'd be stupid not to with a player base of 9-12 million people. FFXI isn't remotely as lucrative, and that caliber of development, the kind people want, just isn't economically feasible. They would not see a return on their investment; it would be a net loss.

How do I know? Because we haven't had a new expansion in 4 years. The number crunchers at SE have for the past 4 years determined a full fledged expansion will net them a loss, otherwise we'd have a new expansion already. Companies are in business for money, after all, not for giving you what you want. I'm half tempted to say WOTG wouldn't have even paid for itself if it wasn't just a collection of reskins and thus probably pretty cheap to produce, which is most likely why WOTG was reskins... not because of "PS2 limitations".

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but really... guys. This should be obvious to any objective observer. There isn't going to be another expansion.

Wow maybe more lucrative than SE/FFXI, but.... FFXI is still a lucrative game. it still pulls a profit for them, and if they put out an expansion, even if it is a smaller

Garuda > Lakshmi

Sif. For SE to kill off a server named after a major "known" Avatar, to move them to a lesser known Esper... something had to have gone really wrong on Garuda.

But yeah who cares these days. You're on Lakshmi, #2 Besieged server.

People still do besieged? lol.

No i dont expect any more expansions, its a 9 year old game and eventually SE might get XIV running half decently. Maybe.

turn FFXIV into FFXIv2 and port all our FFXI character info/data over and give us epic challenging content, newer gear and options to alter the looks of our character when we please. and allow us to fly our own airships as a mode of transportation and have airship battles

It definitely is a question of manpower and money. The fact that they've been running with the same three-man graphic artist team since 2005 should say at least something.

...They may not even be on the team anymore, as the article was dated 2008. They probably have to phone in the same lone character artist/model rigger every time FFXI needs another recolored mob.

Sadly, I suspect this isn't just a problem with their MMO department either. SE in general juggles about a dozen different projects with smaller and smaller teams every time. While this is something they've been doing since Squaresoft's inception so many years ago (you guys seem to forget just how many recycled spinoffs they had), there's a few factors in today's current state of game development that makes this much harder to manage.

I want my own goddamn airship.

Spinoffs are actually a departure they took since the Enix merger. For any FF game to have a sequel (or "spinoff") was unheard-of until FFX-2 which released around the time of the merger, followed quickly by the plethora of FFVII related garbage fan service.

Management at SE has definitely faltered since they merged... what were once quality products from some of the most renowned names in the industry have become whatever is most cost efficient to streamline in the cheapest studio they can outsource to (FFXIV being a beautiful example of this effect in action)

I have a feeling they might possibly have something in the works, maybe not a full blown expansion... (simply because we dont need any more damn jobs, and subsequent story lines) but new areas new content.. new abilities, still qualifies for an expansion... they could simply do it via updates major ones and minor ones.. or pile something into a disc and sell it... either way theres alot of stuff on the plate, and coming our way... i really really hope they allow us to be able to change race eventually... i know theres alot of people who got into one character and then a few years down the line, might have wanted to change it... start a new character, and being way to much work ... didnt

Exactely, they only save development time, it doesn't really help much with space issues.

I don't understand who said that "dropping PS2 support would mean a bigger loss of money than keeping it", not really sure.
Altough I agree if you mean the not-so-obvious consequence of dropping PS2 support for the purpose of developing new marvelous and expensive things for X360/PC.
That wouldn't happen because they just don't want to spend that many resources on FFXI, period.

Dropping PS2 (I think Sundi or someone else mentioned only a very small % of people still use it) would mean that development would get a bit easier for them for certain thingies, but they'd also had to invent new excuses since the "Sorry, PS2 limitations" wouldn't be working anymore :P

In all honesty I don't see PS2 support being dropped, altough it might happen if for some reason they decide to make FFXI last longer than they originally planned (and this is more likely than I would have thought, say, 1 year ago)

one of the things that could happen though with the dropping of ps2 support would be increasing the gaming engine, which they cannot do because of.. that would mean they could increase grafix quality, and be able to do more things with new zones that they cannot do atm because of limitations...

Since PS3 uses PS2 information, in order to drop PS2, they would have to drop PS3 or make a PS3 specific disc/download, no? I think they are slowly phasing out the PS2 since the last few aesthetic updates have been for Windows/360 only.

I think that has more to do with the fact that FFXI was using PS2 fonts on the versions that had higher resolution graphic displays than anything about phasing PS2 out.

ftfy

It's not that they don't want to, it's that they can't. I'm sure they'd love it if their user base allowed for them to make a fully fledged expansion. It all means more money for them, after all. However, due to lack of any really new content over the last 4 years, I can only conclude it would mean less money for them, which is why they haven't and aren't going to do it. A $10-15 million expansion, which is what people want, would take them years of subscription fees to recoup, where as right now that money is basically pure profit. So on top of a profit loss, they're not even getting a speedy return on their investment.

As for the PS2, you have to remember that this is a PS2 game. Your PC and 360 versions are mere ports. All development takes place on the PS2 game, and changes are ported over. To drop the PS2 would be to drop the game, at which point they would be better off just converting the entire game to the FFXIV engine than continue to work on code that exists soley for ports to be made. The fact they haven't already done this, to me, indicates that overhauling the graphics alone is estimated to cost more than their return on it would be, which is a sad, sad state indeed.

Nah... that's one of the things that they COULD do, but that would require waaaaaay more resources than they want to spend.

Other things that would be realistic to happen though are new elements in the UI, new menus, new wider auto-translate, more stacking items, more bonuses/stats on items, new HD elements and so on. It would also be much easier to release really new models instead of reskins (altough this last part wouldn't be very likely because of development costs etc)
All cheap things that they can do with little effort, if they wish so.
I would apreciate for sure :P

I don't really think they're that much concerned with the PS3 support.
It worked only in the US and only for the very first models, most of which are broken by now :P
It's not even PS3 support per se, it's just a consequence of PS3 being retro-compatible with PS2.

Really, that wouldn't be an issue at all.

I think they clearly stated some time ago that what you said is how things USED to be and that it's been a while since they started using PC as their main development? They just have to keep PS2 "limitations" in mind. I think this was said during a JP fanfest some years ago, if I recall.

We'll probably get our new content when they release the one-player version of FFXI, where NPCs are your party members.

Really, though, has anybody thought about that? They totally have to do that like 20 years from now.

I wonder if porting to that new Hand held system would bring in an expansion. I'm sure a lot of people who play FFXI would buy it along with a copy of FFXI(myself included) to play on the go.

I agree with you, and what you say makes sense, but just for reference, there are other MMO's that are even older, with a smaller player base, who are still getting new expansions. Ultima Online is the grand-daddy of MMO's, and they're still getting new races(gargoyles), new areas, etc. Granted, that game is considerably less system-intensive, but I'm just saying, as long as there are paying customers, we should expect at least new, updated content. We're getting that now, but a full-on new expansion would be nice, and not impossible(maybe direct download, no physical disc). Just highly unlikely.

Hard to believe it's really been 4 years since WotG though...

You have to think though, over the last 4-5yrs since and during Wotg.. they were working on and releasing FFXIV, and switching over teams from FFXI to that game... now that its kinda back fired on them, they are starting to work on FFXI as much if not more than FFXIV now. they have a new guy in charge, they have a good development team in place, and they are revamping the way we play the game. Its not absolutely out of the question that they wont do a sell-able expansion, most likely they will release an expansion in parts through updates, but they might do something in the future to get some money out of it, a sell-able expansion instead of an update driven expansion just means more money in their pockets.

they have already said they have loads of content that they are going to be giving us... i dont think its totally out of the question.

If they solve the PS2 space issues, I agree.
But they need to address that first, because that will become a problem even just for the normal updates, can't imagine a new expansion in any form until they fix that someway.