Is FFXI Dying?

He's wearing a mask and cape.

Speaking of loljobs. I'm Seeking on lol75thf(who will merit with me!?) right this very moment.
I'm expecting to keep my flag up for the next 12hours or so without getting a single invite. ^.^

Oh, and the troll isnt even anatomically correct.
He's like a Ken doll.

Exactly... for a minute there I tried to explain myself and argue, then I realized it was pointless because people like that always get a hard-on by insulting people on the internetz, so I just let them carry on without me. lol

But still i'd best OBEY.

Can you not see the testosterone oozing from that troll?

Robocop...sees...ORGY

You actually buy a Satchel for 10$/10€...

I know many will disagree but if SE just went ahead and sold in game currency/items/bonuses, it would significantly if not entirely eliminate RMT, which have used tactics far more ruthless and irritating than SE has yet to do.

But it would suck *** and ruin the game.

And RMT haven't already accomplished that?

Not to the extent that allowing it and letting SE run it would. SE tries to control RMT. If they instead decided to run it, I think a lot of people would start buying the ***and ruin the in game balance. This would lead to a lot more people quiting because of how lame it would make the game. I think it would ultimately be a really shitty business plan for SE. Short term gain maybe, but people would definitely start quiting.

I'm not suggesting throwing Morrigan Robes on sale, of course this would have to go under careful consideration under what would be available and for how much, but statistically a vast majority of FFXI's player base is very casual and doesn't have the time nor patience to deal with camping HNMs or spamming dynamis/salvage/nyzul etc.

Having the option of purchasing a small boost to get more out of the game without having to expend so much time and effort would do the game alot of good as a whole. But again this would have to be selectively limited and carefully planned to truly work.

I don't think S-E has the ability to do something like that without *** it up in a BIG way.

Weekly lotto!

Problem solved.

My main point was that RMT are ruthless in that they do not care about the legitimate player base in that they would without hesitation resort to MPKing, 3rd party hacks, bots, market flooding/crashing/killing, etc.

If they were to be eliminated entirely the market would have time to settle and be 100% player based instead of 75% RMT based like it was years ago. Once the market settled to how it was intended to be, SE can project how much the value of gil truly is similar to the updates changing the costs of Dynamis, Limbus, etc.

I meant in the sense of selling idk a D.Ring for 40 USD or w/e

Which some games do that kind of stuff, according to me it takes the fun out of it. If you can pay you'll have good gear.
Or benefits like the Satchel... but I did buy their argument that said that the satchel is just an incentive to improve security, they have been fighting hard against account thievry!

If any of you are quiting, please transfer and send your gil and items to me. If you cant transfer I will make a mule to get it off your hands. :)

And this will stop RMT, or just make them a competitor? I would imagine they would want to try and stay in business. I suppose SE could make gil really ridiculously cheap compared to RMT prices, but then what about people who don't want to buy gil? Doesn't this put them at an even more severe disadvantage? If they make it cheap enough will people even farm anymore? Then materials become more scarce, as do products coming from them, and I think the economy crashes anyway. So everybody ends up loaded and there's nothing on the AH to spend it on.

Hence finding the right balance in allowing casual players to get the minor boost and keep playing as they normally would as opposed to the typical stance in which players get fed up with everything permanently being out of reach because of their limited playing schedule.

This would encourage more casual players to play and for longer. This wouldn't really affect the high level elite players as they are pretty much the unofficial patriarchs of the player base despite being a statistic minority.

Also, this would allow SE's focus to be taken off RMT and catering to new content and pleasing the real player base instead of being spread thin to police the RMT which has turned away alot of time, attention, focus and money away which could be spent on making the real players happy with better customer service and more content that appeals to us.

Actually, as far as MMO companies are concerned, getting you to keep paying a monthly fee and not logging in is the most profitable for them.

End game players that spend many hours a day logged in sucking bandwidth and monopolizing spawn real estate, and also take up a lot of GM and development time whining for support or new content tailored at them, are actually your worst customers because they aren't paying you any more for their increased overhead.

Have you seen RMT gil prices as of late? The market is not to their advantage, as the value of gil is so high, even the smallest pocketful of gil would cost more than most people would ever be willing to spend for it. Therefore it won't be hard for SE to always keep the one-up above RMT and in essence run them out of business. RMT wouldn't be able to "compete" with a monopoly if SE ran the whole show. Also the reason why things are so cheap and are constantly being undercut is due to the lack of buyers. So the value of gil rises, and the people resort to NPCs and NPC quests to get their gil more than ever now so the AH has less materials for sale because it's not worth putting up on the AH anymore.

People having ready access to gil for those who would choose to buy it would encourage more buyers, and in turn would encourage more farming for a much more lucrative result than the way things currently are.

But this is merely how I project things could turn out if SE took over the biz. The economy is fickle and it could be 180° opposite of what I predict so I could be wrong, just throwing something out there to ponder about~

Art, you just became my best friend. lol XD

I think it is dying for people who have played since launch. I mean, what else is there to do after 75 and beating every possible mission? You have end game activities, and a few other things to do. That means it's game over for you. Give it up and let the other so called "nOOb" players experience the wonders of this game. People like me who have been playing for a year see and learn new things everyday. There are also tons of new players joining so I don't see this game going anywhere anytime soon.