FFXI News During 14 Live Stream

One of the Windower devs that has moved on to 14 years ago shared this.

During 14s dev live stream they mentioned this for the people that think XI is still dead even though AH numbers said otherwise:


◆FF11は20年続いていて黒字
→この先アップデートできなくなってもサーバーはずっと開けておいてもいいと思う。ユーザーにとって思い出の場所だから

Final Fantasy XI is still making profits despite being a game entering its 20th year Even if there aren't any more updates for the game, it's still a good thing to have the servers remain open since it's a memorable place for the players.

Mostly posted this for those people that say year after year the game ending soon.

Of course it's profitable, it runs on $5 servers and 3 cents worth of electricity with 6 employees. 1 bot army generates enough subs to be in the black.

I don't think anyone would really think it doesn't make money, the point of contention is does it make enough money to bother. There is a point where the juice ain't worth the squeeze... even though the squeeze is literally zero effort.

I think the statement just reiterates their plan to keep servers live well beyond the point of adding expansions or new content. This game had already recovered it's investment costs only a few years after launching. Then it went on to become the highest earning FF title over several years that followed. Now, nearly a decade later it's still making profit.

Oddly enough, the only people I see regularly denying this point are multi-box players. I don't really care that people want to spend money on more accounts to let them do something they can't do on their own. Pay to win isn't new and not likely going anywhere as long as people can afford it. I just wish they wouldn't do it under the guise of "keeping the lights on".

There's a good possibility that the amount of subs specifically tied to multibox may be the break point.

If people couldn't, then it might drop below that "enough" threshold. It's hard to say. No one knows that threshold, nor the real amount of players/boxes. But it's a reasonable assumption. It is possible the bots and boxes really do keep the lights on.

Translation: "XI is too much of our profit margin to ever shut down the servers."

the bar for news really speaks to how starved this community is lol

Even though there arent any more updates.... yet they have updates planned through at least next year with stuff lol Never understood that wording, sure maybe not an expansion, but what is this Voracious Resurgence? Whats the empy 2 and content they talked about with that lol are those not updates?

I would *guess* the "updates" they mentioned would be expansions.

Almost all of our latest content in retail is just recycled 10 year old content. Even for the players who love FFXI but don't enjoy retail, they're all playing 10+ year old content on private servers. I think it's pretty fair to say that the money earned during that stretch of the game's lifespan could carry the game's current costs on interest alone. There's almost no cost for development.


"Enough" is a benchmark we passed long ago. Meanwhile, people are pouring a gallon of water into Niagara Falls trying to RP as someone responsible for the waterfall. I don't get it.

made money, isn't making money.

What it did, when it did it, doesn't mean you would just leave it going. When the gain stops being worth the effort the game goes off, no matter how well it did previously.

There will be a point where they go "we only make (X mil a year), it's not enough to bother anymore" That's just how it be. Even though it's made many hundreds of millions since the beginning.

Just keeping the servers alive alone is like keeping a sick patient that’s barely alive on life support.. They can do the bare minimum or push for more money from SE HQ and push for larger updates again..

Odyssey was a small dose of nourishment but not enough to revive the sick patient yet...

I’m hoping that they deliver and respect the community that is keeping them profitable still and fighting for hope in better updates than even Odyssey... Hopefully some awesome new juicy 18 man content! I’m hopeful still.. but also doubting the brighter future..

They have lots of options, let’s see what they choose.. Drive the game further down or take it to new higher levels...

Sort of ironic that your avatar is a picture of capped gil. Assuming that you earned that from scratch, you should understand the concept of money making money as much or more than anyone else... unless you think SE is also subject to gil cap XD

Again, we're playing recycled content. They already stopped bothering. They're making millions for little to no investment. There is no point where it's not 'worth it' unless they actually start having to reinvest in new content. We already know that's not happening.

I’ll be really *** sad when this game closes down.I don’t care if it’s 10 years from now and I’m no longer playing.

On quetz, we had a site just for our server. Qcdn.org. Quetzalcoatl Daily News. It was up from launch and is still around, but died out in 2010. Was sad to see it go.

This place will have that same fate, but hopefully not for a while.

OP literally said "only posting this here to silence the FFXI-is-dying crowd".

I do actually enjoy this though. Not in a newsworthy sense, but it's nice to just know that they aren't planning on pulling the plug in some grand server closing event. I had never really expected them to due to this being a numbered FF. If it was just called "Final Fantasy Online" and not "Final Fantasy XI", then I would have been more worried about an inevitable chopping block at some point, much like many mobile games before it.

It is sad because it doesn't have to be like that, they wouldn't even need to expend that many resources to get this game to be even more profitable. Bundling a sub cost decrease with XIV would be a great start, no idea why they got rid of that.

FFXI has the kind of STF that would ban itself for RMT if that were the case.

Keep retail updated like it is, Allow Classic servers for classic andy'= profit!, Now they can add stuff in retail

The game is updated often, they just added a major piece of content a few months ago.

Translation. Update is used to mean 'adding new content'. As mentioned earlier, Odyssey has been in the game since Walk of Echoes, a decade ago.

Honestly what they said is to be seen more negative than anything else, so I would even possibly say they said it gets no content to try stop 14 players moving to 11. Which is happening due to 14 "respecting players time", which means lack of content in PR speak. 14 has content that has such a high burn rate (cause it's made for mega casuals) that it literally has less to do in real terms than 11 does, which is why so many 14 players are playing 11.

The online division needs 11 more than they pretend it does, which is the real reason it's still running and getting updates. I know there is this narrative that xiv is this massive, ever growing game that rivals wow but it's actually not true at all and is all smoke and mirrors.

Not only have they added next to no new servers since 14 launched (and they don't have that many to start with compared to wow), disproving this continually growing narrative they constantly push but they also abuse "free access times" to reactivate all the dead accounts so they can say all these dead unplayed accounts are actually now magically "active accounts" on news articles (and these players don't even login, they are just auto activated for the press numbers). That they have to do this shows it's not doing anywhere near as well as they pretend it is and they have to continually lie about it to save face.

"20 million players!" on the same number of servers as when they had "under 1 million players for all our games combined!" near launch and almost all of them are low population on the server webpage, and "20 millions active accounts!" only around the time all those dead accounts are re-activated for "free access!" Amazing.

It's one of the single most heavily monetized mmorpgs that exist, with a cash shop in a p2p game that rivals korean f2p games. They sell everything from outfits, mounts, pets, emotes, dyes, weddings, mog furniture and anything else they can think of to grab your money, they also blackmail players to not stop their sub or they lose their housing plots.

When you have to continually lie about how mega massive your game is and have one of the most heavily monetized games in existence, it's not doing as well as you pretend it is.

The same zone is used but the content is not the same.

Just to add to this, the main reason why people enjoy FFxi imho is that it feels like an authentic Final fantasy title over other FF14/MMORPGS. No press 1 2 3 4 5 6 repeats for DPS, Stay out of the red circle of death every 20 seconds, Press the button at the right time, or your whole party wipes mechanics. It's just good ole gear up and gets rare stuff while keeping/making gear for situational needs.

This thread has some real potential.

it is actually better than wow and with a higher playerbase right now,just because shadowlands and the previous expansions were a FLOP and how messed up the loot system became after the transition from Classic to New Wow Era, when the dev's left to make Titan to over watch and than leaving (The lead devs) before even OW launched, Same thing goes for Diablo 2 >>3 Activision pay checks seems to be the problem,

https://www.dreamhaven.com/ This is actually blizzard right now

We get it already you hate XIV you rant on about it in every thread that XIV is mentioned.

Different != New

Nearly all of the assets for Odyssey existed in the game ten years ago. Those that didn't exist were small additions like icons/items, key items, currencies and the like. This is why Odyssey doesn't fit the bill for 'update' here.

It's not new, but that's exactly why the game is so profitable. They didn't have to go out and hire a team of artists to create a bunch of assets like areas, animations and music, ect.

they actually don't need to do work so much, i am 100% sure FFXI Engine is the same as FFX, If FFXIV can copy pasta Mob/ boss models from XI TO XIV, They can definitely do that to FFXI by copy pasta FFX MOBS/ Boss models to this game i think its an easy task, but i have no knowledge of game coding or anything like that, just my 2 cents, I don't even see how is that hard to do, or just add like 5-10 dev's to this game that's all it needs i don't know the ps2 kit works but we are no longer playing on consoles unless there was a way to convert it to Switch? No idea sorry for the ramble

hell even the modifiers of this game is nearly identical to FFX

It's not ironic at all. I understand the simple concept that free/easy money no matter the amount is worth putting in zero effort to get. SE as a business, has a different prerogative. Businesses will decide the profit isn't high enough and close the business because they could, in theory, be making more.

And you come in right after to defend it, "we get it already"

They added new music