Shit Server

Code

"Current retail has no horizontal progression unlike the best era of ffxi: pre-abyssea"

2003: E.body
2004: E.Body
2005: E.Body
2006: E.Body
2007: E.Body
2008: E.Body
80 cap: E.Body
85 cap: E.Body

Peak vertical progression

Its really weird honestly, you could write a whole case study/book on it. After that they clung onto "Trusts" "trust babies" as the death of XI. These people can literally never let go of the 75 cap... to the point they somehow think its the pinnacle of job balance and constantly use that era in private servers. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug I guess.


Good, they don't appreciate XI anyway. Its hilarious how they act like Horizon is better than the actual game.. Just completely silly, how can you be a fan of something and prefer a knock off over the real deal. I have asked many of them and some of their reasons are so weird, "retail has too much content"

The retail/post abyssea vs private/horizon stuff always seemed so bizarre to me. Why does it need to one extreme or the other?

I am currently burnt out on the sortie/ody/rema retail grind and enjoying the horizon experience thus far. I am sure I’ll circle back to retail in due time. I’m also sure there are lots of others in that same vein of thought (I know because I talk to them on horizon). Live and let live, weirdos.

Both are ***and everyone is terrible.

It really isn't being a "weirdo", you would probably understand if you didn't play on that server. Because you got bored and you do play on it, its biased.

It's pretty simple, people playing retail XI are actively paying money.. the other group is not. XI is going thru a dark time now and this other server constantly comes to recruit people. If you want evidence of them doing that I can show a lot of screenshots of it. They literally try to persuade people away from retail and to go to that server. They being the paid sponsors streaming and promoting it and the random people who got bored or who hate post 75 cap and thump from private server to private server.

Honestly, its bizarre that you don't understand why people would dislike that server... The biggest gripe for me is the excuses they use to justify why they think its better, its completely ridiculous lol. They are literally playing the same content we've done a billion times over, the same EXP grind (while hating on master levels/retail saying its too "EZ") and the list goes on. You can't debate any of them on it because they are completely blinded by nostalgia.

While you quit and enjoy yourself there, eventually there might not be a retail to come back to and I feel like these things just expedite it. I mostly blame SE, but I also don't think these servers help the situation at all.

I can only speak to my own experience but I am currently paying a retail sub (2 actually because I have an alt) and still playing on horizon. People can enjoy both, that’s all I’m trying to say here, Draylo.

I get what you’re saying regarding the private servers expediting retail turnoff but private servers have been around for a long time and it hasn’t significantly impacted retail (yet).


The horizon draw is definitely mostly nostalgia, but it’s also a completely different pace and style from the current game. When you play retail on a Monday and horizon on a Tuesday it’s pretty obvious…

Yes but the difference with this server was that there was a literal millionaire who paid a large sum of money to back that server and promote it. That clearly worked as it brought in a large amount of players initially to play it. The behind the scenes manipulation to make it seem like XI reborn was pathetic but people are blinded by nostalgia and fake numbers.

This is the talk that got shut down last time but it was acknowledged and with video proof multiple times.. If only they put that effort into helping the actual real deal and not a knock off, maybe the boost in numbers would have helped retail. I know the blame is mostly on SE, but I can't deny it is annoying to see people hate on XI to promote that garbage. I just can't fathom how someone can be a fan of XI and prefer a cheap knock off made by people who couldn't let dragon aery go.

They can enjoy both, and we are all just leaving opinions here. I am not trying to actively shut down the server or make a call to action, just giving my opinion like the OP I assume. You also can't just dismiss the fact we are all paying real money here and others are playing free with stolen assets.

As far as the content, what difference is there in someone making an EXP party on Horizon vs making a master level party on retail? The numbers are bigger on retail, thats about it. Why don't they do it here? Its all hypocritical. Why do they complain about low shinryu drop rates, or being "forced" to do Odyssey/sortie everyday, then go to a 75 era where they are literally FORCED to do the same events over and over on a cycle every week lol. They have to camp NMs with super low drop rates or events with low drop rates. The pace isn't really that different, we just have way more freedom now.

If the private servers had a subscription fee, it would be dead. One of the primary reasons players are on private servers is because it is free-to-play. The main game has suffered because of that, but it is on SE for not doing anything to stop it. The players cannot be blamed for enjoying a free alterative. Another reason is nostalgia, but also, because the content is simple. You gain EXP, travel, do some missions, make some friends, and because players already know what to expect, they don't have to think too hard.

You can't say that about the main game. Returnees have to put in a TON of effort to get to a point where they will get to party with another player who isn't a friend/family member. The main game is almost anti-social because there is little incentive for current players to do old content to help those returnees to reach their level of play. Also, there are an incredible amount of systems and mechanics to learn in each content a returnee tries, which can be overwhelming. Private servers don't have this. You get to level 10... and boom! Valkurm Dunes party. You make friends, and the MMORPG experience is immediate. The main game isn't like that anymore. You solo with trusts for 6 months, and if lucky, you'll join an Easy Vol.1 Ambuscade with your Linkshell friends who are kind enough to let you leech.

It could also be said that private server's appeal is everyone knowing its limits. The main game rarely sees substantial content added, but is still evolving. There is a target to reach, and it will take a long time to get there, but at least the players know what the endgame is and how to reach it. Otherwise, if reaching endgame isn't important, a player can mess around, make friends, join EXP parties, and leave whenever they like without feeling they missed out on anything. There is nothing to look forward to, because players are forever looking back on everything, and that provides a great comfort to them. That's not how I feel, though. I like to look forward. I do enjoy reminiscing on the old times, but I don't want to relive them. I'd rather make new memories while tackling new content.

I play on there currently to make new friends and find a community of others to hang out with and chill. I love to party, and I don't get that experience on Fenrir. Dead server is dead.

Kind of a silly way to put it. Classic XI and current XI are two very different games. You have to be willfully obtuse to not recognize the dramatic changes FFXI has experienced over the course of its lifetime and how the current state of the game is dramatically different than the 75-era state of the game.

Horizon is a pretty faithful adaptation of classic XI. While not a carbon copy, it captures 90% of the experience and has made some decent QoL improvements. The general collaborative effort required to progress is more prevalent than that of current FFXI. The current amount of regularly experienced relevant content on Horizon has a greater range of diversity than current FFXI. Horizon overall has a better sense of community than current FFXI(or at least better than the community of the server I was on before I called it quits).

Current FFXI is the "real deal", of course. But it no longer resembles the classic FFXI that most Horizon players like. Odyssey and Sortie are the only two forms of relevant group content for a significant portion of the playerbase at this point. Some may supplement in thing like Omen, DynaD, and Ambu, but there's a huge portion of the playerbase that simply doesn't need to do these things any more. I suspect you are being somewhat disingenuous when you say people are complaining about too much content when they are likely saying there's too much content that isn't regularly experienced. This can be especially frustrating for returning players or people without a ton of time or connections. That's not even mentioning the fact that the game is bloated with huge amounts of now-dead content. Nearly every single mission in the game can be soloed with ease now, as can most the quests.

I say all of this as someone who did almost everything current FFXI has to offer. I didn't quit retail to play Horizon. I play Horizon now and it's not better, it's just different. You have this weird grudge against Horizon because you seem to think it's taking players from current FFXI, but I'd wager the amount of people playing Horizon instead of current FFXI is very low. They're different games that appeal to different people. As an example, at the time of this post, I asked my two shells on Horizon if anyone had played retail XI recently. Excluding myself, only 3 of the over 100 combined members of the two shells had played in the past 3 years, only one of which had played in the past year.

Draylo is a retard if he thinks the people playing Horizon would suddenly start paying to play retail.
There's a reason the game's been dying for the best part of a decade, and it's not because of private servers.
They're not making SE lose money because they weren't interested in the current game to begin with.

Whoops, meant to type I'm gay.

Do you ever bring anything of value in your posts? More like a spam bot

Agree with you that the games appeal to different people, but I think the venn diagram of people who want to play retail and want to play Horizon is not 2 separate circles.

Also keep in mind that if Horizon (and other private servers) didn't exist those people would either have to play another game or play retail. So the fact that these servers exist definitely takes away players in the center, and probably a fair bit from the "horizon only" group. Maybe those people in your linkshell WOULD'VE picked up retail if Horizon didn't exist, but since it did they just went for Horizon and stayed there.

I personally don't have any grievance against the server or the people who choose to play there. Barring omniscience, we'll never know whether it created or reduced demand for retail, by getting new people into it or by keeping players on private instead of on retail, but I think it's undeniable that it has had an impact on retail activity.

Then, of course, people on retail can't find community because the players quit to play private, or never joined at all because they're on a private server, so it snowballs.

ITT: people who can think about a hypothetical world in which private servers didn't exist, in an unbiased way, both for themselves and for thousands of other people at once. Thank you for using your powers to tell us that nope, none of them in this hypothetical reality would have ever played retail. You're doing God's work.

Hey Draylo, if you had to pick a private server out the bunch, which one would you recommend?

Considering that the vast majority of them hadn't played retail in 5+ years, it seems extremely unlikely that they would suddenly start again. Particularly at a time when retail is in its death throes, the most persistent issue of the game never got fixed(mismanagement from SE), and they'd have to pay for the opportunity. The population of retail has been on a decline since long before Horizon existed.

Like you said, you can never truly know, but my experience tells me that the number of people who are playing Horizon in lieu of retail is very low.

Horizon is not classic XI, it is someone weird vision of how 75 would be better with custom balance while lacking basic stuff.

I understand people playing there to play with people but sadly the server is (way) too custom and has almost nothing like 75 era beside the asset.

People there are really good at PR and making thing look pretty, but not a fan of "Final Fantasy XI revisited"

Oh I get that, and I'm 100% for horizontal progression, min/maxing niche sets is my jam (and something completely missing from XIV), but at some point, you can no longer grow horizontally and must start expanding vertically, no? I'm no game dev, but seems like it's just an inevitability. How they went about doing it is definitely debatable though.

Eh had nothing to do with level cap or abyssea, if anything the metrics show that abyssea was a massive success. It was people growing older and not having time to wake up at 2am to camp ground kinds for four hours, only to have the most expensive bot win. Back then authors of packet claim bots would only allow once LS per server to use their bot and HNMLS's got into bidding wars to buy them. The exact same small clique of people dominated "end game" on every server and people were forced into cut throat Game of Thrones like scenarios to get high end loot. Killing KB was easy, getting claim and locking out 20+ other people for lotting rights was hard.

That and Rangers absolutely dominated everything due to ranged not having a 50~200% attack bonus over every other weapon type at cap, level correction was no joke. We notice the nerf to ranged attack is omitted from the Classic servers.

Do you not know what a forum is for? People have opinions and discuss ***together. Why does it bother you that people are giving opinions on both sides of a topic? Calm down and stop being so radical and using hateful speech. I care about this game a lot more than most, so my opinion is going to reflect that obviously. Once again, since people like you fail to read and are blinded by hate, I am not making a call to action. I am simply leaving my opinions on a thread created. Get a grip

I would almost commend their vision of "no era of FFXI was perfect, so we're going to learn from the devs' mistakes", but they've done almost every conceivable thing wrong. Reducing item drop rates and not syncing equipment with level has obliterated its economy. They could have used the opportunity to fix job balance, but they messed that up too.

Instead you have this weird server where everyone is suiciding in droves to intentionally de-level because the only way to make money is to acquire Beastmen Seals. People claimhacking Orcish Fodder because the drop rate for their axes is half a percent and they desperately want to do the mission. Every party has a Thief because in addition to Treasure Hunter being the only way to score loot, it's also the server's ultimate damage-dealer.

Weird choices and a squandered budget.

I'll ease off the no no words but come on dude you can't hide behind the "giving my opinion" bs
Every single horizon thread since it launched you've been in them spouting the same 1000 word essays at anyone who disagrees with you.
I see you in comment sections in YouTube videos about horizon. I'm sure you're in other places I don't even visit.

This goes far beyond "giving opinions and having a discussion. :):)" you're actively seeking out and screaming your opinion in every single direction.

Just chill dude.

This is a ***post.

Imagine being this angry about a dead 20 year old mmo.

Once again, its a thread created and I left my opinion. I sub to XI videos on YouTube for over two decades, the most recent ones are that garbage server. Takes me literally seconds to leave a comment just like here. Its a little creepy you are following me so closely but the only one that needs to calm down is you, throwing hard R's and getting bent out of shape. You really have to do some mental gymnastics to try and act like I need to be calm lol.