[pancakelizard]

i'm still new to the game (partly) so i'm not sure of past year's events or situations but i was looking on ffxiah.com and queried all servers all time currency values and noticed they all all falling, fast. does this mean the game is dying because less people are playing or does it mean something else?

i know se is working on a new mmorpg but i didn't think it would be out for years.

[Armando]

Short answer: No.

[fallenintoshadows]

The game isn't dying, as far as I know the number of players are rising. Just because the economy on servers is failing doesn't mean the game is

[pancakelizard]

Originally Posted by fallenintoshadows

The game isn't dying, as far as I know the number of players are rising. Just because the economy on servers is failing doesn't mean the game is

ha then it's like real life!

my main concern is i would get really far into the game, want to do x, y, z, etc and then the population die off because something comes out and replaces it. i've only been playing for about 2 months but i love it - i should have picked this game up years ago.

i know there isn't a definite answer (unless some SE reveals information early (which is doubtful)) but how much longer do you think this game could be around?

[Armando]

Rapture is still a long ways off. SE has said it will continue support for FFXI as long as people play it. The more recent updates have been breathing new life into the game as well. I don't think you have much to worry about.

[Kafeen]

SE has been getting rid of alot of RMT over the last year or so and removed alot of money from the economy. That's why the prices are falling.

[Darkhound]

Also SE has taken BILLIONS of gils out of the econoy to make it healthy

[Ziero]

A few years ago, this game was overrun with RMT and a few high profit exploits and totally destroyed the economy. They caused massive, rampant inflation to the point where gil was damn near worthless. Then SE came back guns blazing and absolutely destroyed them and have been beating the beejezus out rmt ever since. The prices of things has dropped because the game is better now. Add in the fact that two servers had to close due to overpopulation, this game is far from dying.

[Elwynn]

In fact, if you look closer, you should see that the economy bottomed out in December, and it has been increasing since then.

FFXi is definitely not dead yet. I finally started using the one that came with my PS2 hard drive last year because I wanted to play before it became nothing but "old farts".

There are still new players all the time. The "official" number of players has been steady at 500,000 after the initial peak (of what, 600k?), so new players are still replacing retired players at a similar rate.

[Kouper]

I dont think its dying, but I will say the amount of lowbies like me is practically non existant, I think its mostly the games age though. Even with however many millions of subscriptions you dont see many people in the lowbie areas of wow... And the economy only really dropped because square removed billions of "dirty" gil from the game.

[Shirai]

Graph of most played MMORPG dated April 2008.



Source: MMOGCHART.COM
It's the latest I cold pretty much find regarding most played MMO research.

As far as the chart indicates FFXI had a solid 5th place among the MMORPGs with a market of 3.1% against a few worthy adversaries a year ago.
WoW is of course by far the biggest, but then again it's backed by a huge commercial force where others were not.
So by name alone it's far more famous among the generic crowd including non-gamers.

The 8th Vana'diel Census

Vana'diels anual census 2008, expecting 2009 soon.
2008 still gives a solid number of 500.000 solid subscribers.

Maybe the 2009 census draws a different picture with the bannings that have taken place over the last year, but so far the game is far from dying.

[hexx]

SSSSSHHHHIIIIIIIRRRRRAAAAAAAIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!


Simply no LOL, this game is still pretty far from over, i mean, otherwise, why would more expansions and such be released? Keep on leveling and doing your thing, safe in the fact that FFXI still has a few more years left in it ^^b

[Neomage]

O.o

I had no idea RuneScape was so popular... I tried playing it and I hated it. Not really surprised about the other though.

[Rae_Garuda]

It is sad that WOW is more popular than this game. People would rather have instant gratification than work for something. But in a positive aspect, it means we get to play with people who actually have ambision(sp?) instead of a wanting a cheap thrill of pulling a Leeeeeroy. Ugg...

And, no, I don't think the game is dying. Like people have posted previously, there are signs of SE holsting it up. No company would breathe air into a dying game.

[Seaofheather]

The WoW numbers are always a little fudged, since the numbers aren't based on number of account, but number of characters, so when you have 5 characters on your account, it counts as 5.

Also the Economy is on the slide, is because X item is worth 500k, then 10000 people get X item made, then Y item comes out, which is better than X item so everyone panics to get rid of X dropping the value.