[Feba]

it also goes against their advantage of being able to save hueg by having servers running 24/7, and sustaining 'peak' hours all the time, instead of having lots of time with little going on. Of course, that's probably not nearly as big a deal nowadays, as it's probably lots easier to have nodes switch around as needed, but that would require redoing their server architecture.

But still, FFXI needs fewer servers, not more. If they're going to redo the way they're sorted, they should focus on making it feasible for more people to share a server, instead of trying to break people up.

[Raydeus]

Originally Posted by Mhurron

The windower may improve performance on some cards but that's because the whole thing is a hack from top to bottom, there is no reason to believe that simply upgrading to DX9 would give the same performance as SE has to think about compatibility, not just raw speed. You can force some things when you don't actually have to care about customers.

Minimum requirements for graphics are a GeForce card, that was a DirectX 7 card. The game is only explicit on DirectX level is for audio. The game uses either DirectX's backwards compatibility or uses no DirectX 8 specific calls for it's graphics.

Now that's depressing.

[ospeff]

Originally Posted by Satimasu

Wouldn't that contradict everything about the whole players from across the world playing together? As soon as they add something like that, it'll pretty much kill any server that isn't region only.

Not really, if they did something like that none of the current servers would have JP. Americans, Canadians, Europeans, etc. are not raised in a fucked up racist culture, we have no problem playing with each other. Remember "NA ONLY" does not exist. The whole thing is funny anyway because in real life Japan is America's bitch.

[Firewind]

Originally Posted by Satimasu

I've never seen them really advertise hard. I remember seeing the PS2 ads for XI during some primetime spots, but I think word of mouth works best for them. You don't always have to pump oodles of money into ads for people to know about it.

Well with franchises as popular with gamers as Final Fantasy or Mario little more than knowledge of release dates is enough to get the game to sell to the core demographic of the game.

Here in the UK you see plenty of ads for other SE games like Lost Odyssey and Infinite Undiscovery on TV. I've even seen newspaper ads for Star Ocean: Second Evolution and Disgaea 3 (SE published those two games in the UK which explains why we had to wait nearly a year to get them). Final Fantasy ads...I've not seen one on TV in the UK since FFX first came out.

There might have been one for FFXII so I may be wrong though. Only the huge cash cow mainstream franchises like Mario, Sonic, WoW and whatever FPS and/or sports game is coming out on the 360 this week really get prime time ad slots in the UK.

EDIT: Forgot about all of the shovelware being hauled onto the Wii and DS too. Especially during the times kids are getting back from school. Some of the games I've seen advertised make me think: "Why do they think this is going to sell? O.O"

[TheGrandMom]

So did anyone click around and look at stuff off that site? There is a little video on one link that made me bust out laughing. It shows an elvaan woman and then a taru goes running past with a crawler, couple bees, and mandys on him. LOL @ that advertisement! "Come to our game and get your noob ass owned!"

EDIT: Heres the link

FINAL FANTASY XI

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Firewind

Here in the UK you see plenty of ads for other SE games like Lost Odyssey and Infinite Undiscovery on TV.

Originally Posted by Firewind

Only the huge cash cow mainstream franchises like Mario, Sonic, WoW and whatever FPS and/or sports game is coming out on the 360 this week really get prime time ad slots in the UK.

It's more or less the same here in the US.

[Firewind]

Originally Posted by Yellow Mage

It's more or less the same here in the US.

Well replace Madden with FIFA and yep that is pretty much what it's like in the UK