I've been seeing numerous posts about people fearing that FFXI is going to end soon and everyone has their own speculations as to why it will. Just the same, everyone has their reasons for why it would be a good thing or bad thing ranging from "I'll Play FFXI till the day I die and have every relic," to "Finally it'll end and I can have a social life again."
This topic is to discuss the future of FFXI and centralize all of the "Oh Noes" popping into every other topic. So, on with the topic at hand...
Why FFXI will continue for a few more years.
Final Fantasy is Square Enix's flagship series and after so many years, there is still a large fan base and player base playing FFXI. If they were to one day say "FFXIV is now online and playable so Fuck You All!" and turn off the FFXI servers abruptly, it would piss a lot of people off and compromise their future customer base.
What's probably going to happen is the same thing that happened to Everquest and Diablo. When FFXIV comes out, FFXI is going to have a huge loss in players (possibly 50-75%). When that happens, they'll consolidate and merge servers. As the servers get to be fewer and fewer, then when get into overhead costs.
Overhead costs for Square will be composed of the salary for the FFXI maintenance team and the FFXIV team, as well as server up keep fees, utlity bills, etc. Eventually as they continu to consolidate servers and all that reamins is Bahamut, Asura, and Ramuh (just name dropping). They'll have to see if it's still feasible or not.
Feasibility can come down to FFXI and FFXIV balancing each other out. If FFXI is losing the company only thousands of dollars but FFXIV is profiting millions, it's justifiable to realign the budget. If FFXI is losing too much though then a few options finally come up in like 10 years.
1. Shut down the servers. Hope you enjoyed FFXI, hope you have a good memory cause as your grandkids are playing FFXXV they'll never see this gem.
2. Open Source/Free Server. The Diablo series path. Still being played by lots of people, the company doesn't give a shit cause it doesn't effect there profits good or bad with minimal maintenance required.
I know this post ran a little long but I'm sure this will turn into a big debate amongst you. Just try to keep the flaming to a minimum because everything is speculation and everyone is going to have their own view.
Discuss.
