Pools Closed (Asura Is Full!)

When they announce a server closure 5 days from now, in theory, doesn't this incentivize SE heavily, as RMT likely will create dozens of stash accounts in the interim and store them away to be able to continue their operations later on when the server is locked down? I'd imagine the server closure only partially slows down RMT activity (the big thing being cross-server item manipulation), but they can level new characters up on the locked servers and sell them when they're 99-ready. No?

Have no metric to indicate that the total number of "new" players is actually increasing at that type of clip

Asura clocked in at its peak at around 4k
bahamut 3k
odin 3k

all of that could be contributed to pho IMO.

are there new players? yes. but there is no indication that the game is exploding in population, it is a much safer assumption that people are just moving around.

There's an incentive to make dozens of characters right now, and stock billions on a server about to close, yes

Prices double when the supply is cut off entirely

Also; incentive to start piling accounts and money up on Fenrir as it becomes the next one to close. (or shiva, maybe)

Not really sure what you mean to ask here. Yes, there are going to be hundreds of accounts made within the next 5 days. Not just by RMT, people on Phoenix who have been toying with the idea of a mule are going to likely pull the trigger. Bonus since they did it during the discount campaign.

SE has a financial incentive to close servers to get those spikes, yes. It's also in their interest to allow some degree of account hoarding, because having the option of secondary markets to get a mule there can improve retention for people who want to get a friend into the game or make a new account after the fact.

Personally, I'd assume a lot of the people moving around are doing so because they wanted another mule, wanted to play with a friend, or got an account banned and had to replace it. Being able to freely create new characters takes away a lot of the incentive to transfer out, especially with how quickly an established group can boost their friend up to a working level these days. So, I think allowing new characters works against reducing population in multiple ways here.

It’s a good thing for sure.

Phoenix is an interesting case opposed from the other 3 in that it’s where a majority of new players have flocked to during this player boom. And for lack of a better term, new players are fragile in that they haven’t completely been hooked yet , so they’re easier to lose. That’s my concern.

In fairness the devs likely didn’t expect this kind of reception for XI, so I understand how they might be put on the back foot. But surely someone must’ve known to some degree that the XIV x XI crossover would create some sort of player increase? Regardless… the problem now is how this is being handled by SE. The solution can’t be to continually lock servers, at some point SE will need to actually put resources into XI to support the dev team properly and upgrade the servers, or they risk losing the moment.

It's the battle of the streamers for FFXI's next top trashcan.

Ejin vs Velner vs Heghmoh

All so close any one could be the winnar!

For what has to be the 30th time, there is no upgrade. Better single-thread performance doesn't exist in the commercial space. They cannot make better servers.

Recoding the servers to be multithreaded isn't happening.

Reducing the performance substantially enough to help isn't happening.

If they are currently resource constrained, that's it. The amount of money that'd have to be thrown at it exceeds FFXI's potential income.

The number of "Hi I am an new to ffxi, how do I..." messages we are seeing in the windower discord has gone up dramatically

Ragnarok doesn't kill Ultima/Omega, and I've gotten flamed for asking people to group up saying I need to "boycott Limbus harder"

Would not recommend coming to Ragnarok unless you love Shards and nothing else.

whoa whoa whoa, ragnarok has many great things about it please check it out before thinking about fenrir

Or making additional accounts to multibox.
That's at least the case in my ls on Sylph. A bunch of the older members lately have been adding their second/third accounts to the ls that they freshly made and even some of the newer people who joined are doing it too.

yeah it could be people getting banned, but i would still not view that as a net new player

basically a move with even more SE extra steps

No no no, Ragnarok is trash, Fenrir is much better.

ok but like shiva? i hear that place is really happening