The Players and Daily login numbers are estimations based on subscriber numbers and online sentiment. Final Fantasy XI is set in the high fantasy world of Vana'diel. Each major region in the world is divided into zones, which include outdoor areas, cities, towns, wilderness, and dungeons.
It was an MMO that really fostered cooperation, and it showed. Apart from that, Final Fantasy XI stuck true to the series' roots and doubled down on story and lore. It tried to make players feel like a part of a breathing world and succeeded in that for the most part. With these two main points, Final Fantasy XI fostered a tightknit community.
The game has thousands of players still subscribe, nearly 40, a month according to the site MMO Population. If you head to the Final Fantasy XI subreddit there's still several posts every day, even if things have slowed down.
It's a testament to how many players were invested in the game over the years. Strong design and a dedicated community can keep a game afloat for a while, but true longevity only comes when a developer continues to iterate upon what they created. When Square Enix shut down the console versions of FF11 in , that seemed like it would be the beginning of the end.
But in reality that was a relief for the developers, freeing them to ramp up the visual quality of the monster designs, armor and weapon variety, and overall game graphics. We were also seeing fewer and fewer game developers making games for the PlayStation 2, so much so that I believe Seekers of Adoulin was one of the last releases for the PlayStation 2 in the world. The developers did the same with the Xbox , refocusing their efforts on Windows. Final Fantasy 11 couldn't be completely reborn—it was, after all, originally built for the PS2—but one of the biggest limitations from the console hardware, memory, was no longer an issue.
We just feel it was a milestone at that point, and maybe some people took that as a sign to pause their playing of FF That transition was actually timed to coincide with a narrative arc reaching its conclusion. As the player base has dwindled, the devs have done an amazing job adapting the game to accommodate more solo play while still maintaining challenging group content. A lot of veteran players don't like how much easier things have gotten. In my experience however, as I've been playing catch up in recent weeks, it's not exactly easy.
Yes, you can solo most content and it's not as gear or item intensive as before but, I still wouldn't call it easy. You can't just shut your brain off and walk through. Even though official support for FF11 will one day end, most MMOs find a second life in small but fiercely loyal private servers. But Final Fantasy 11 didn't end.
Amazingly for its age, FF11 still retains a certain elegance thanks to cohesive visual design, smart architectural decisions stairs look like actual stairs unlike, say, World of Warcraft's spiraling ramps and fluid character animations. In short, it has aged gracefully—no longer shackled by the limitations of the PlayStation 2—and subtly improved the complexity of the weapons, equipment, and the creature design and bosses.
Matsui credits the talented artists Square had in the early s, when the team was juggling a number of big projects. I think the designers took a lot of time in putting the effort into the designs to try and get the quality raised as high as possible to the last minute.
Fujito added that color is critical to how Final Fantasy 11 can still look decent today, considering its PS2-era limitations. I really need a Blu-ray that compiles all the cutscenes into a single movie or something, because the characters in FF11 talk a lot.
Usually by the end of all the grinding I just wanted my quest rewards, because for me the pleasure was in the playing, not the reading FF11 does not feature voice overs.
Square Enix has typically ported every Final Fantasy game to any device that would run them. Surely, then, FF11 could be ported to something newer, right? The trouble is that even though a port would be feasible, maintaining the game on multiple platforms would require a larger team that's hard to justify. It seems like Final Fantasy 11 is largely still alive and being updated because it's a lean, efficient operation. I wondered, too, if the developers had thought about adding entirely new features to the game to lure in younger players.
What about a trendy mode like battle royale? You might get a few testimonies from people about endgame, but I've always been in for the stories of the Final Fantasy game even Square Enix never seems to talk about, and they were worth it, although I wish they'd have made them simpler to experience earlier.
The fascinating thing about a game that's survived this long is that players have all but mastered every aspect: the boss battles, the narrative quests, the exceptionally deep crafting systems.
And so their reasons for playing change. So the developers have changed with them, letting those earlier areas of the game fade into disuse while they focus on adding new gear and new challenges to the endgame. The goal is no longer to maintain FF11 holistically, but to keep the road stretching out ahead of those who've stayed. And the story, surprisingly, is continuing, despite the supposed end in It was released in February , and it was the first time in a long time that we had [content with] a significant story behind it.
We got a lot of praise for that—a lot of players really enjoyed it, and some of the feedback we received was ''Yeah, we were waiting to do something like this. Looking back, I think my worst times in FF11 were due to real people. Or people who are just crappy to others. Sometimes I just want to play without the headache and expectation that comes from dealing with real people.
They could do skillchains and magic bursts, too. Most even had text macros to announce a special attack or move, making them feel like real players.
I'm now much happier to play FF11 as a singleplayer game. And its servers won't last forever. After so many years of development put into making FF11 playable without a group, could it ever be reborn as an offline single player game? When thinking about the 'FF11 experience,' [we] believe the existence of other players and a community plays a much bigger role than we may think. But we believe that a big part of FF11 is the communication between the players We feel that the game is the platform, the fertile soil on which we grow these relationships and communications.
But how much of that communication is there today on the more sparsely populated servers? User Info: JustMyOpinion. TaintedSeraphim posted You are a terrible person. Voted best user on CE , , , , , , , , , and H1 Current e-argument streak: , wins.
More topics from this board When are they pulling the plug on this game? General 10 Answers Does this game end? General 1 Answer Do I have to pay every month or do they charge me automatically? General 1 Answer. Ask A Question. Browse More Questions. Keep me logged in on this device. Forgot your username or password? User Info: defster defster 8 years ago 2 Nope.
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