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Went and checked FFXI beta comments.......
Tanaii
Member Posts: 41
I went through many old forum threads for Final Fantasy XI on this website and many others that were around in the months prior to and immediately after the release of Final Fantasy XI and this is what I found:
complaints about the user interface, particularly around keyboard/mouse/controller issues
complaints about multiple crashes
complaints about multiple maintenances, particularly on OPENING DAY
poor graphics
poor performance, stuttering, lag, disconnects
issues with downloading updates, unable to download clients
game play was slow and boring
not being able to connect at all for long periods of time
difficulty traveling
need I go on?
Any of this sound famliar? The point I am trying to make is Final Fantasy XI had its growing pains in the beginning too.....and guess what: IT IS STILL HERE. Many people are highly devoted to the game. Final Fantasy XIV will be the same way I feel. It is off to a rough start (as was its predecessor), but it will evolve and establish a highly devoted player base. FFXI's beta was AWFUL compared to FFXIV (as most remember I am sure).
I believe there are sooo many mmorpgs around that people are beginning to have high expectations for every game they get "psyched up" for only to be let-back-down-again when the launch isn't perfect. Hang in there, everyone.....it will be okay.....just breathe
Comments
Not to naysay or doom on you.
But FF11 was released forever ago. It was a different MMO era, it was pre wow and the big MMO boom.
Those kinds of launches were the norm and expected back then.. Now days.. not so much. People have a different view on launches now, games are forced to be more solid and well polished at release or feel the wrath of MMO emptyness.
I just want to be able to do more quests. I have an MMO on my desktop that doesn't want me to play it because there's nothing to do. Feels like EVE, but at least EVE rewarded me for not playing it.
^Attempt at a joke and how I feel right now, not as much as a bash as you'd think.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
That's a sign that a company isn't really listening to its customer base, or its stagnant. They design excellent games, at least the first person ones that I've played have been quite enjoyable. Its not a good sign that the list of complaints is basically identical the second time around. I suppose its nice they have the freedom to keep making the same mistakes, but most companies seek to improve and thus grow. The market for MMORPG's is bigger than ever, if they can't manage to draw more players than their old game they'll take significantly longer to recoup their costs because budgets are certainly not shrinking. There's a whole list of reasons why that list is so disturbing.
Initial sales figures aren't enough, the AAA releases in the market are so few and far between everyone and their donkey buys it, its the subscriber numbers after the free month is over, and over a couple months later.
Barely. Its base of subscribers wasn't exactly successful.
I can totally understand what you are saying. However, you must realize that it is not simple to make a game.....especially with the way computer technology is booming right now. Computers and graphics are MORE complex now.....which means developers of games have so much more work to do to make a game run perfectly. Think about Microsoft Windows operating systems and the aches/pains it has gone through over the years ---and MOST issues were because of the hardware changes occurring so rapidly. It is sorta the same thing with games. As graphics and systems get more advanced and systems are more "diverse" in their building, it makes it harder to make a well polished game . YES, they should do everything they can to make a game more solid before launch and spend the time it takes to do so.....OOPS, WAITED TOO LONG........a new OS was just released, new graphics cards on the market, now we got new drivers.....and so on. The point is, it isn't any easier today than it was back then.
Actually it is easier these days, as there's development packs and OS' have inbuilt APIs dedicated to graphics, etc, aimed at gaming.
I do beleive that this game will have a dedicated fan base, but I don't think it will be very large. In the last few years, it seems that every game that has gotten alot of bad hype turned out to be a bad game. There can only be so many story driven pve raiding type of games. The asian artwork does not seem to cross over well at all with the western world either.
Every positive comment I read about the game is coming from people who clearly love the franchise (aka fanboys). I have read enough from the beta to know that this game will offer nothing new. It is a slow pve grinder that is lacking in player competition, which is what is needed to make a game exciting and a success.
No disrespect to those who will be playing, I am jealous that you have found a game that you love.
Because they werent american?
FF11 has a huge japanese playerbase.. why do you think the game has been running for 8 years because it failed at launch?
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
True, I understand that completely. But if you just read developer websites for these games, you will see how complex it is. I am not saying a game should be released unpolished.....it is evident that SE needed a little more time to work out the flaws.
FF XI has on the last account 350k subscribers worldwide. The vast majority are indeed in Asia. However for an Asian game, even if it were the full 350k its not huge for the region.
Yea, westerners did have a hard time sticking with FFXI. I am from America, and it will be 7 yrs this fall for me I've been playing.
350k times $10 a month in sub fees isn't exactly peanuts.
I wish it was $10 per month LOL
What has that to do with anything? There's such things as tax and overheads, so its actually not that great on a corporate scale. The vast majority of which could easily be burnt up on infrastructure and BAU.
Anyway the point was within the Asian region 350k subscibers is small.
I brought this up in other posts over the past few weeks. As a hardcore FFXI player I was hoping that they would take those problems that were apparent in FFXI and completely avoid them for the most part in FF 14. The sad part is they pretty much have brought the same exact garbage that was not well liked from their previous MMO.
Back then the company never listened and its becoming apparent they never will. Sadly players still will flock to this mmo come launch. Question is how many of them will stay past the free month.
As to an earlier comment. I think most records showed 500k total members, which seem to never change. Though I played on a couple servers and I can tell you there were plenty of times you would see less then 1k players on at all 3 prime times.
SE in ffxi had 500k sometimes 1 million stable subs, but many people leave ffxi when SE announce FFXIV and crappy secure code where many people cant pay the fee for this reason
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
It was 500k (world wide), up until 2009. Since then it has dropped to 350k. There's some indication it has dropped another 150k, to 200k recently. However that hasn't been proven.
Were they complaining about artificial limits on exp gain too?
Those 350k numbers are worldwide though, NA, EU and JP plus whatever other countries jumped on board. It also spans across 3 systems the Ps2, 360 and the Pc.
That small number just got smaller.
Everything you've seen people complaining about, have also been made on the offical feedback threads.
Many from close beta (my self included) wanted this game to be good. It feels like talking to a brick wall though.
The point is that is profitable.
I highly doubt that they spend 3.5 million dollars per month on overhead. You obviously have no idea of what corporations pay in taxes. It's next to nothing, which is why companies incorparate.
Just because you don't think 350k isn't enough people doesn't mean that FF11 wasn't a financial success for SE.
Hey, for a western MMO 350k would be good. FF XI isn't a western MMO though. I'm simply correctly someone's statement saying it's huge in Asian. Its not, when compaired to the other games they play, especially when you take into account they make up the vast majority of its subscribers. Its small.
Now please lower that shield, as you can't avoid what's factual. You also have no idea if its profitable or not, and neither do I. It very well could be suplimented by other products, as far as we know. Around $42,000,000/annum pre-tax, pre-run costs, is unlikely to be huge profit. Profit is profit though, but it is completely sidelineing the intent of what was stated.
Maybe it's just my luck, but I've never been around at a launch of an MMO that went smoothly. Granted, it's been a relatively few that I've joined at launch and two of them were notoriously terrible launches (Vanguard and Tabula Rasa spring to mind). While I agree that I think people have higher expectations for a AAA MMO launch, I have yet to see where those expectations have been close to fully met. It seems to me that with every MMO, the first 3-6 months after launch are an extended beta test as they scramble with game balance, squashing bugs, and adding content that couldn't make it in to the product by the deadline. I can't recall ever going in to a forum of a game about to launch and hearing "Wow! This is going to be a butter smooth and feature complete launch! The game mechanics all make sense too! WOOT!"
I'm not trying to defend this practice, but it seems to be an industry wide problem. I don't think it'll be any more impactful to FFXIV than any other game.
He said Japanese you said Asian.
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
It looks like FF isn't doing bad according to those stats. Factually speaking.
Where do you think Japan is?
You also linked to 2008 figures, which was indeed around 500k. Its not now though. In fact it stayed at around 500k until 2009, but dropped to 350k by the begining of this year. There are unconfirmed reports that its dropped to 200k since then. Since that is unconfirmed I'd stick with the 350k, until its proven.
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png