New Zones

Still, if SE shut down ffxi in like, six months, I bet some people would switch to 14. But then others would absolutely and specifically stay the hell away from it, too. I don't know how or when ffxi will end, but if it's abrupt, people will be pissed.

I'm curious about those numbers, because the lodestone never releases info like that. Can you link the source of that info to backup your post?

SE doesnt release the information, probably because its embarassing, but this is the article i read back then that provided them.

The biggest question is why is this data just lying around for anyone to find? What sense does that make? If they were getting ready for a surprise announcement at vanafest (which would include the ability to for people to log into the test server to try the zones out) then they'd be a lot more presentable than they are now, with their appropriate textures etc.

Another thing to note is that not only textures but entire pieces of architecture have been recycled. Archways, signs, even the building atop "stairtown" looks like someone took the Sandorian cathedral and added a few things to it.

The whole thing doesn't even feel like it fits, particularly the towns feel like they're part of another game, a graphically inferior game. And everything seems, how to say it, like a scale model? Buildings seem so tiny and lack detail we see in the zones of the real game. Maybe that's the fault of the model viewer, I have no idea. Anyway, draws even more question as to why these were uploaded to test server clients if they're not even finalized for test server use.

About the recycled stuff, I'm assuming that they are placeholders, but I could be wrong.

It's not accurate and based on assumptions, also a great deal of players joined up/resub when patch 1.22a released on april or something near that . but i do not deny that the game could have 12 or 13k users, I'm very sure ffxi hold those same numbers (a lil more of course like 15 or 16k). lakshmi hardly reaches 1.2k users on jp prime time. It's prolly the most crowd server

There are about 2k people on Bismarck right now .-. it doubles during JP primetime.

They had a 10 day free trial for all existing members, subscribed or not, for 1.22a I think (it was in May, at any rate). I'm sure a lot of people will come back to check things out as long as it's free, but I wouldn't count on many of them staying.

The biggest indication that SE themselves has little to no faith for FFXIV is because of the permanently reduced subscription they're offering to "legacy" (read: suckers) members. You don't offer "significantly reduced billing fees forever" unless you're counting on forever not being a very long period of time.

Placeholder's, or SE knows about our tendencies to /tinfoil at new content.

lol completely illogical argument honestly. It's to entice people to start now and get hooked. the game is actually good... "I wouldn't count on many of them staying." Do you play 14 atm? Do you have gripes with the game atm that would back up your statement? Just curious. Damn it. Sorry for the re-derail ><

We don't really have much to base what we're seeing on. This is like the first time we've ever seen a zone in a state like this. It's the first time I've seen a zone that wasn't fully completed anyway.

Bahamut at 2.4k

I should have named this thread New Zones/FFXIV Chat.

There are youtube vids of "unused zones" no?

bleh skyrim online and guildwars 2 will destroy all mmos anyways!!!!!!!!!! anyone seen wizardry online? it's on JP only, but it will be on USA/EU very soon, it looks very run like demon souls

I'm not quite sure, but I doubt they look as incomplete as these ones.

SE knows people mine this stuff. They know that if they put this stuff in the game people were going to find it. They aren't the brightest bunch but you'd be pretty silly to think that they wouldn't know that we'd find these things in the files. Japanese players check that guy's blog btw for the .dat mining images he posts. That guy is pretty well known.

I think they wanted us to find them. I think they want us to find them because they want to generate hype for Vanafest, get people interested in resubbing (as you can see, that was a success), and get as many people who left the game because of how its changed to tune into Vanafest to get them to come back. It's clear that they are planning for Vanafest 2012 to be a pretty big deal and they are devoting a lot to making the game last... not only will we get answers to what these zones are about, but we'll also see the new and improved user interface... I can't think of anything nicer to entice people to come back to the game.

As for why they look so lame, these images are just prototypes obviously. The reason they may be in the game is to test pathing, to test size proportions and run their test characters through them to see if the levels have the right size and scope that they are looking for. Once they finish with that they can start finessing the buildings and make them more detailed... wouldn't want to spend a lot of time detailing a zone only to decide that that you want to change the whole layout.

Quality looks some what better in that zone than the new ones; however, it won't really give us an idea for these zones because we don't have a finished version of that zone to know how they develop their maps.

I dont think anyone has resubbed on account of some new zones that we know nothing about.

I know it's an enticement. It's also a desperate one. You know what they did to entice people back when they thought they had a surefire winner on their hands? Free ingame item. OOOOOOooooh sign me up for that ***. Or how about their "3-month onry" FFXI promotion? Laughable. Throwing around the word "forever" to entice people wasn't something they were willing to do when they thought the game was going to be another cashcow. They can throw it around now because realistically, it doesn't really matter what they do at this point. The stigma of the game alone in a market saturated with fresh, new, incredible games will sink the ship. It's only a matter of time.

As for the quality of the game, it could be fantastic. I don't honestly know. I do now that even if it is fantastic, it's now competing with other fantastic games. The mistake they really made was releasing FFXIV thinking it was still the same untapped market it was when they released FFXI. So when I said I wouldn't count on most of them staying, it was because most people will seize an opportunity if it's free. Charge so much as $0.01 and you'll see them drop off like flies. We already saw proof of just how much of the FFXIV population was hanging around for the free ride earlier this year.

Kong, you literally make no sense.. The Legacy discount isn't even open to all as it is. You have to pay for 3 months prior to the 2.0 Beta to get it. ANYWAYS. I think a ton of your mud slinging about 2.0, and 14 in general, is baseless, really.

So an MMO that is only 2 yrs old isn't "fresh"? News to me. It's still a promising game, and has a lot to offer players. If people like you didn't just sling mud at it needlessly it might overcome this "stigma" you speak of. God sorry guys. I'm kinda feeding into this hook line and sinker, my bad >_<

You are right. I don't think anyone has resubbed for this yet either. But you should read what I actually said instead of what you think I said.

Yeah, I don't even want these to come out right away because I'm not ready to commit to playing again, and I like the money I've been saving from not having two active characters.

The point he's making, and I think that SE would agree, is that the game isn't anywhere near the place where they would like for it to be. They are hoping to push it forward with 2.0 and are hoping for a ton of people to give it a 2nd chance.

I have a subscription to FFXIV and I play it here and there. The game has come miles, and is even enjoyable at this point. But its an uphill battle for SE when it comes to FFXIV's future prospects. Good game or not, its got a really nasty stigma to it. Stigma can slaughter a game. But yeah, SE wouldn't be able to offer lifetime discounts for the game if they thought they could get away with it otherwise. This is coming from a Legacy member.

Ah, well. I think the general populace of people that have deactivated, like me, and are waiting to re-activate are targeting the Neo-Salvage update. Thats just my opinion, I could be wrong, but it makes sense (to me at least). I think that in order to get people to resub earlier than that, these new zones would obviously have to come out soon. And I really do not see that happening.

And Eik, I'm just going to say this about XIV and be done with that issue: In order to build the playerbase to what Square Enix (and its ego) would consider acceptable numbers, it has to go F2P. Its amazing that the game is still P2P considering the competition it is dealing with. If SWTOR goes through with F2P like many expect it will, and XIV doesn't, the game is done.

By this logic, Everquest, Everquest 2, and DaoC should have stopped getting updates years and years ago, and they should have stopped charging years and years ago, only did they start doing it recently where they had a premium service w/ p2p servers and a release a free to play service to everyone, still get the same game but with a lot more restrictions in free than you do in premium(holy ***, paying actually gives benefits to a player?!) Die hards will always be around for any game and defend it like a peon would their king in a castle besieged.

This game wont suddenly go off the map until they decide to pull the plug, which as long as it generates a revenue of over 100k a month I'm sure they'll keep it around cause 100k a month will easily cover server up time costs, and paying their staff, and anything left over can be used for other projects, you can say its all going to XIV but its most likely going to all the other projects that are costing more overall than the silly MMO that is not even complete but is most likely generating enough revenue now on its own to help cover the damages it made to the company.

An expansion wont save this game, nor will it lead it to its demise, with it worked around the PS2 there is no hope of a full revamp of the game that they could do over a long period of time releasing new tile sets to give everything a more vibrant look, area by area, XI is in a grey area where it wont get better and it can't get much worse unless they start neglecting the community and refuse to give them new content to keep them entertained.

So TL;DR: it's a marketing gimmick?

I don't buy it. Whatever information is released at Vana'fest will get out regardless. Counting on people to resub (or subscribe, hello..) from watching a livestream of the event isn't very realistic. The majority of FFXI fans, subs and non-subs probably won't even be able to watch the event live if we consider the global community, and will get the important info, if any, down the chain.

What would sell this to anyone is polished pictures of the final product. I don't know how anyone could get excited over amateurish screenshots of works-in-progress. Some might even believe what they're looking at to be finalized design and become turned off.

It's really hard to get excited about something when I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at. For all we know, these are 10 year old conceptual design models of Jeuno, San'doria and others existing areas that have long been scrapped/archived and for God knows what reason accidentally ended up in the test client, the test client being further up the development chain and less scrutinized by QA.

I've seen the website earlier and Honestly, I hope they aren't new areas.The game is old and outdated, they just really need to make a new one or make the entire game more "actual" >.<

They have a new game called FFXIV.