How Long Do You See FFXI Lasting?

The thing that's limiting FFXI's longevity more than anything else is really their development resources. S-E grossly underestimated how successful FFXI would be long term and originally FFXI was only planned to go up to the ToAU expansion. In 2007 S-E broke up the original programming crew and hired new staff members to take their place in a move to reassign people to new projects, such as the upcoming (at the time) initial FFXIV release. The reason this matters even today is because when FFXI was developed it was done in a PS2 environment. Assets are created with Ps2 devkits, and then ported over to PC via a Directx conversion. When they dismantled the original crew they never converted FFXI's asset creation process to a PC environment. That means in order to create new assets, IE gear, models, sprites, zones, animations, spells, etc etc etc they can ONLY do so with a Ps2 devkit. Right now they're down to only a dozen or two remaining working Ps2 devkits. The machines have a limited lifespan and after a while they break. Sony stopped developing ps2 devkits over a decade ago and new machines will never be available to S-E. They went on a huge buying spree to snag as many remaining kits as possible several years ago, and now there are no more left. So once the current supply of devkits burns out that's it.... No new assets ever again.

Apparently the only people capable of transitioning FFXI's asset creation from a Ps2 environment to a PC would have been the original crew. The current devs don't understand how it was done, and after reviewing their documentation they admitted that they couldn't do it. Most of the original crew no longer works for S-E, and even if they could be reassembled they're probably so far removed from using the code that they wouldn't be able to pick it up again. S-E CAN"T release a new full scale expansion anymore because they're afraid their supply of devkits would all expire in the middle of the development process, levaving them unable to complete the design mid expansion.

S-E had the opportunity to port the asset creation process to a PC environment. They had the development resources, budget, and manpower back in era circa 2007-2008. But instead of doing the responsible thing they chose to funnel all of those resources into FFXIV 1.0, and we all know how well THAT turned out. By the end of the initial flop, and after the ensuing 2 year shitfest of trying to salvage their new but rapidly sinking flagship it was too late. They salvaged FFXIV, but in the process they forever lost the ability to develoip new assets directly in Directx on FFXI; its growth forever stinted. In order to remedy that the current devs would need to learn a lot of things about Ps2 developing from scratch, things that right now they (presumably) don't know (as admitted in public interviews dating back only a couple years). It would be HUGE if S-E was trying to actively remedy this issue, but realisticsally their 3 year plan is probably just a huge player appreciation event to thank people for 20 years of loyalty.

You expect anyone to read that, it's like pasting the first 5 pages of the great gastby....

Free speech ***!

At least until this thread gets locked.