Final Fantasy XI Exclusive "Future of the Game" Interview

[Cody Bye]

With the recent retail successes of World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online, it's easy to forget about the games that paved the way for these modern MMOGs, titles like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Final Fantasy XI. Yet among those three games, the title that is arguably still the most successful continues to be Final Fantasy XI, which continues to boast hundreds of thousands of subscriptions. Nearing its seventh year of live service, FFXI recently held its annual Fan Festival where Ten Ton Hammer's Cody "Micajah" Bye caught up with the developers and talked with them about the future of their long lived MMOG. Topics included solo vs. group play, end game content, and the recently announced mini-expansions.

“Solo play is definitely something that we want to engage in and that we want to introduce more of into the game,” the developers said. “But even when players are engaging in solo content, we want make it so that players are exposed to party play and find out that party play is also fun. The depth of gameplay is there [in party play], and they definitely want players to develop an appreciation for that area of the game.”

To read the rest of our exclusive FFXI interview, click here!

[Barbarious]

Why should Square-Enix focus on Solo Content?

I know most of the population is ignorant drones who believe that Blizzard gave birth to MMORPG's when they made World of Warcraft and that the game-model for WoW is essentially the Holy-Bible of gaming, but that's why we call those people idiots.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of people don't want solo content - at all.

It has worked thus far for FF11 and I highly doubt that their community has been waiting around for 7 years on the off-chance that they're going to get a bunch of tedious quests and solo content. LoL. No.

I'm not about to unload a fistful of boomstick on WoW though. It's currently my main MMO and I like a lot of the features that Blizz. has put into their game.

However I do want to defend FF11 and say that they have made a smart game that gives a certain community exactly what they want and they have no reason to cater to anyone else by focusing on solo-content at all.

In fact!! I would go so far as to note that Blizzard's recent expansion has rubbed large portions of their own community the wrong way because of how easy the content is and how little focus there is on challenging group content.

I think gaming companies often underestimate the masochistic nature of human beings.

Casual players love to complain about how they can't compete with the "hardcore crowd" and how they should be on "even footing" etc... I have a handful of friends who are in that crowd. Yet even they admit that a game in which all of the content is easily accessible to the entire community would lose its allure in a VERY short amount of time.

The fantastic unreachable and outlandish locations and challenges of a game are what keep them interesting and dynamic. Many casual players I know played the game simply BECAUSE they had never seen that top-tier content and probably never would.

The mere "idea" that undiscovered, unimagined content and lore still existed in the land is what kept them playing.

It seems like lately games are all taking the opposite approach and instead putting players into an infinite grind-cycle on repetitive quests and tasks to reach max-level where a few small hurdles separate the player from boundless wealth and epics.

It's a good model in theory - it makes for a fun game that everyone can experience. However if you consider that "Everyone" can experience and you note the frequency of play-time on these games it becomes pretty obvious that the intrigue and fun of this type of content will wear terribly thin.

Heck - my casual raiding guild (2 raid nights a week at best) just completed all of the 25-Man raids in Wrath of the Lich King, even with most of the difficulty achievements.


So why should Square-Enix cater to a crowd who is already playing a different game?

If Blizzard wants to be the King of Casual, then clearly Square-Enix has a lot of ground to gain by catering to the disenfranchised and bored, hardcore players.


+10 Respect Points to Square for Not Being Pushovers.

[Cody Bye]

It's not so much solo-content in the end-game that Square is talking about - it's more about the solo content in their entry level game; a place where newbies run around being lonely. Being a relative FFXI newb myself, I totally understand why the need for solo content in low levels is absolutely necessary. There just aren't enough people willing to level sync down to you to get a party together.