Hiromichi Tanaka: "we're not sure" on FFXI future...Follow

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding happening, possibly. People always seem to get incredibly pessimistic about everything at the slightest chance.

For some reason I am reminded of Toy Story, whereas FFXI is "Woody" and FFXIV is "Buzz Lightyear."

I think for the most part, while they are obviously going to be diverting a lot of attention to their flashy new toy, we will not be forgotten in the long run.

It would be utterly stupid of them to simply drop support of FFXI just because they have another MMO. At the very worst they will continue to maintain it but with no major future updates, though now even that seems unlikely.

Somehow I have the feeling that when they are "communicating with the player base" they are largely referring to the players they are closest to, that being the Japanese player base. If they are to take suggestions, it is probably almost, if not entirely exclusive, to them.

What we are getting is probably what others have suggested already-- a misunderstanding born in the process of translating two completely different languages.

With the way things are worded in Japanese, it is very possible that a lot of the things that have been "communicated" to us have been taken completely out of context.

I agree completely. If they would just talk to us, it would save so much trouble. With better communication I would have never quit...

Edit: if anyone cares, I changed my username from bmstreet to drunktexan

Edited, Aug 27th 2009 10:35am by drunktexan

Edited, Aug 27th 2009 11:01am by drunktexan

Edited, Aug 27th 2009 11:02am by drunktexan

There are questions they just will not answer, or will just lie about.

If they knew that they were pulling the plug the day 14 came out, they will never mention it until probably the month before it happens. They will either completely ignore the question or straight out lie.

If they said, we will not have more content for ffxi, or the game will shutdown when 14 comes out, they would lose 10's of millions of dollars in sub fees.

they will continue to say either yes there is more content planned, or they are looking into it, thinking about it etc. That wont change.

In fact, It is usually safe to make the assumption when a company doesnt commit to a solid answer it usually means they hiding something. If FFXI was going to continue to recieve content they would just say that, if it wasnt, they would say, we are looking into it, but nothing planned as of yet.

thats how companies work.

I have a feeling he was told not to divulge any more information about the future of FFXI than they'd already trickled out. Hence the wishy washy answer. The English phrase equivalent is "I'm not at liberty to say."

Its a pretty simple strategy on SE's part. Wait and see how many people jump ship to the new SE MMO and if demand warrants, they'll continue with more content on FFXI. However its clear from their statements that they are making the new MMO as FFXI like as possible to smooth the transition and thus entice as many users as possible to make the switch. They need to start recouping their investment in the new game ASAP. Anyone who thinks FFXI will continue status quo is kidding themselves. As with every MMO, there comes a time when the servers downsize in numbers and new content becomes few and far between.

His statement may be disheartening but I appreciate the honesty none the less.

"I'm not at liberty to say" in a business says means "My bosses said I can't say anything about that."

If you've been in the corporate world, you know how it is - you can't say X about Y until the people above you give you the go ahead. I did marketing for IT companies, and we weren't allowed to discuss upcoming promotions until we had the go ahead to start. So even if I knew there was a price drop coming, or a special buy one get one free, starting tomorrow, I couldn't tell you about it today. If someone asked me "Are there any specials?" the best I could answer is "Not right now, but we have specials coming and going all the time, and we'll let you know when our next one is."

Nope, they don't have it any better than we do.
I couldn't find the exact link I was looking for, which had a comment about enlisting us "ferocious NA's" to get SE to budge on something..

Yep, I do. And apparently so did SE which is why FFXI is on the backburner until they finish FFXIV.

There was an interview a little while back where SE admitted to taking too long to release games.

And in this interview there was the comment where Tanaka said for FFXI he did everything himself, but for FFXIV he has to delegate a lot of the work (maybe against his wishes?).

Of course this is speculation, but there is a chance SE management is really pushing the dev team to get FFXIV out onto the market, forcing the developers to stop taking their time to make it "perfect"; which is why WotG isn't finished after 2 years.

It's August 27th and there hasn't been a single FFXI related topic/article/anything on the POL main page for the entire month. I think this is the first time EVER we've gone a month without SOMETHING on the main page...wonder what they are all so busy with....

I dont want to disagree with anything you say, but I wanted to make mention that you make this sound as if they are willing to miss deadlines/stay late etc etc in a crazy frantic (or calm) state to get the job done....lets be clear about this: They had a pre-set plan that they would release quests every 6 months and Mission every 6 months.

In my opinion all that is for WOTG has already been scipted, drawn and translated...all they are doing now is releasing it in that pathetic manner of "missions twice a year and quests twice a year"

Ive said this many times, I think the core of the development team are doing a good job - their only problems is an out-dated technology/graphics machine and an head of department that is fookin with their ideas/creativity.....Get rid of the development team leaders - they SUCK!


EDIT: PS. its almost 3 years I think.

and also...



Glad I wasnt the only one to notice - I think this may be a record for them....expect a thread coming up soon to discuss this...


Edited, Aug 27th 2009 11:48pm by Abbottone

It still may not be something that they agreed to disclose yet. Doesn't matter how high up he is, if the rest of the development team has agreed to keep hush hush about it for now. Square Enix loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooves secrecy.

If you've ever done "the rats", the Assault called "The Double Agent," then you're familiar with the sneaky Qiqirn who are gathered in the field, rounded up by Imperial Agents, because one of them is a spy. Some of them give cutesy clues in the form of directions or distances, others say stuff like "Qiqirn is network is veeeery secret, maybe even have secret spy, you know?" or "La la la NO LISTEN" or "Hmf, I know no seeeeeecret spy, I just came here for fun, you know?" And at least one or two of them will outright lie, saying the spy is north, or very far away, or very close by, when its not.

Anyway, I just imagine those guys are the Square Enix executives, and the "spy" is the future of FFXI. They all know what's going on, more or less. They know who the spy is. But they will never come right out and say it. They'd rather tease and taunt and have little clues and hem and haw and then, finally one will say "You want the seeeecret spy? He's south 10 yalms!"

And then we get a POL announcement with much fanfare and hype.

True, but the interview I quoted was the first genuine sign that they were meant to be working on anything. They pretty much said "avatars are in the pipeline" whereas the interviewee mentioned that they were working on avatars that worked differently and gave a bit more insight.

But you're quite right that they've been a long time coming, and we have heard very little from them lately, which implies they've either not figured out how it's going to work or scrapped the project entirely. I hope that the latter doesn't prove to be the case.