This is one of the best sounding MMOG patches I've ever seen. I can count the actual number of nerfs on one hand, and even those are arguable.

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>"It'd take a spectcularly bad game to fail in a competition-less industry such as that." - Well, then, we don't even need to consider the fact that this is a good game now. Horray!</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>The simple fact that you are using Diablo 2 as your standard for online RPG economies shows just how little basis in the reality of this argument that you have. You're not even discussing with us on a meaningful level at this point.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>FF11's Japanese numbers are about as relevant as Lineage's 3 million subscribers being the national sport of Korea. If you want to talk about games that are successful then nothing is even relevant compare to Lineage. It's bigger than everyone else put together times 3 if you go by the figures they quote. There is a reason why Lineage is virtually unheard of in the non Asian world, because competition exists in the MMORPG world outside of Asia. I can find some equally amazing numbers from the figures quoted on various MMORPG that you wouldn't be able to sell here at all in Taiwan. The Asian PC market is a joke. It's like trying to sell a PS2 game to a country that just got SNES.

Having your legion of fans who will buy anything with a Final Fantasy name on it doesn't make you the #1 MMORPG. It's not like you don't know there are plenty of Japanese who will buy anything with a Final Fantasy name on it, just like when Worlds of Warcraft comes out it'll have a ton of Blizzard fans that will buy anything with the name Warcraft on it. The Japanese market, lacking any real competition at all, also manages to retain such fans that'd normally quit after 3 months, but the retention is from the lack of competition not the game itself. This is because if a game is actually good enough to retain 300K on virtue of being good, it's got to be the most amazing MMORPG the industry has yet to see. Instead if you throw out the Japanese numbers, the numbers you get with FF11 looks pretty comparable to that of DAoC at launch after you factor in FF11 is a much more visible game than DAoC ever was. The early comer advantage is huge and if you just start off as well as DAoC (which is still pretty good), I do not see why it would even pass up the well-entrenched DAoC at #2 spot.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Sure let's ignore the fact that you pad your subscribers in 300K in a country where you can't possibly fail due to lack of competition and then use that number to make claim about a game's greatness. That 300K FF11 padded on their worldwide number from Japan sure is every bit as hard fought as say, DAoC had to get starting from a noname company to #2 MMORPG on the market. And while you're on it, I'm sure the fact that Lineage is the national sport of Korea has no significance on its 3 million (grossly miscounted too) subscribers. It must be the greatest MMORPG on the world, probably a few times better than all the other MMORPG put together, even though virtually no one outside of Korea plays it since every person that Lineage counts 20 times is such a hard fought win.

I think you're just utterly clueless as to how bad PC gaming is in the Asian countries. It may be hard to imagine since you do live in the land of the holy grail of PC gaming but it is true that in other parts of the world, absolute junk can still pump out respectable numbers in sales.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Diablo 2 is a very accurate representation of the economies that exist in a MMORPG. You have a virtually endless supply of junk that people are trying to try to get something meaningful. Although people are slightly more intelligent in a MMORPG so you see less 'my package of junk for your Zod' equivalents it's ultimately the same thing. And I don't know where in the paradise of MMORPG you play in but as I am in an uberguild in EverQuest I sure know about all the uber tradeable items sold on my server and almost every one of them is sold at less than half of market value because we ubers don't want to deal with the hassles of the economy. Does that sound like a functional economy to you? And before you say this is EQ, what game system can possibly remedy the fact that when you're selling a high end item for less than half of market value you still get ungrateful newbies that want to see if they can haggle you some more? Or is everyone playing FF11 a grateful newbie who actually knows items are being sold at less than half of the market value?</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>If content is there, someone will use it. I have been to Lower Guk, which according to even people whose father was killed by EQ, is the greatest dungeon that has ever been designed and ever will be designed (one of the expansion's selling point was that it's related to Guk). It is now a wasteland except for some people PLing their twinks. I have also been to Sanctus Seru, which is supposed to be designed by monkeys that want to trap your character in a death loop. Not surprisingly I am usually the only person in the zone as well. So if one zone that is supposed to be the greatest dungeon ever in a MMORPG (agreed by people who utterly hate EQ) and the zone that was supposed to be designed to see if you'd quit the game gets the same average population (0), then that to be says people don't really care that much about the quality of the content. If you build it, they will come. I remember going to Katta Katteselum and wondering why anyone would ever come to this stupidly huge city where every shop is separated by a mile, but for whatever reason, I went there, and I can usually find 2 or 3 other people in that city who for some inexplicable reason were there too. As long as a zone has purpose, it will get utilized. I guess you can say these content are just filler content but they need to be there. You can't just be raiding or xping all the time. There's got to something else to do instead. This is where the early games have a huge head start.

If equal utilization is supposed to be a good thing, then all game would have just (# of players on average during normal hours/(20-30)) zones. It's obviously not the case. And honestly it won't even work at all if you do something like that. It just won't be the same gaming experience if every zone you go to has just enough people to do something (20-30). You got to have some crowded areas and you got to have some wastelands. I think it builds into the whole immersive nature of the genre. Sometimes you want to be part of the crowd, other times you might want to be part of the normal society, and sometimes you just want to be alone. To accomodate for all these types of people you necessarily need a good deal of wasteland space.

This discussion obviously does not really concern people who perpetually lives in one or two zones. There are people in EQ who will still play if the world is down to 2 zones as long as the two zones left over are The Bazaar and Bastion of Thunder. For such people it is not relevant what other content exists anyway. The extra content were never made for such people anyway.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I personally could care less about the Japanese playerbase numbers, which happen to be very solid. Stop throwing out backhanded insults about the game's quality, and maybe we'll be more receptive to your points.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>This is not Diablo 2, where all trading must be done face to face, where haggling is mandatory, and the coin has become so deflated and utterly worthless that a unique jewelry item has become the standard unit of currency. (Before you get your panties further in a knot, I will mention that Asheron's Call has the same sort of hyper-deflation of coinage coupled with special items becoming the basis of currency and trades. guess what - I've played that too!).

The auction house in FFXI is the basis of our economy. Some people use the bazaar for extra items to sell, but it is completely secondary to the AH in terms of usage and convenience. Market value for that local market (there are 4 auction houses) is prominently displayed for every item with the "pricing history" option, where you can see the dates and prices on the last 10 transactions for that item. Amazingly enough, when you see that the last ten stacks of fire crystals sold for 1700, and that torso piece of chainmail ranges from 8000-8500 gil, you can actually DETERMINE THE FAIR MARKET PRICE FOR YOUR GOODS. And not only can I find out the local market price, I can also find out what the price is in other markets by simply typing in "/linkshell Need a price check for a non-San d'Oria AH, anyone around one?" - OMG AMAZING.

And know what? People do undercut. I do myself, to a limited degree to help my items sell faster. But you're not going to cripple the economy, unless you are the only supplier of one particular item to a particular market, in which case you are a complete and utter moron in driving down your own price (see, the nice thing about the auction house is that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO STAY THERE AND WAIT FOR YOUR CUSTOMER TO BUY YOUR ITEMS. If the item you have is rare and desirable enough, you will sell it quickly anyway).

And moreover, if you do list that stack of fire crystals worth 1700 for 1500 to sell it faster, you just might get 1700 anyway. See, while some people do haggle with the auction house and try to see if an item may have been listed for less than full price, others won't bother haggling and will just put in the standard bid of 1700. And if yours is the cheapest one listed, you're not getting 1500, you're getting *gasp* 1700 gil! (Before you point out how ignorant FFXI's playerbase must be for not always haggling to the full extent for every AH purchase, I will point out that if you've ever bought an item at full price rather than looking around at other stores for the same item on sale, it would be hypocritical to argue such).

This is not a game where lower drops are completely trash-worthy. This is not a game where you can twink your level 1 character the uberest plane raid sword evar and actually use it. There is a constant demand for equipment and spell scrolls for every job type, for every level range, and so the ECONOMY REMAINS FUNCTIONAL AND CONSTANT.

So do us all a favor, and take your holier-than-thou Everquest uberguild attitude and shove it. You're making completely unfounded assumptions based on your experience in other MMOGs when in fact they are NOT COMPARABLE IN THIS INSTANCE. I don't give a rat's ass if you go to the Bazaar zone in Everquest, sell off your raid-level loot for 20% off, and walk away with your cash.

Because this is FFXI, and I don't need to. I'll sell my crystals, I'll sell the armor and weapons I just grew out of, I'll sell some items that can be used for crafting recipes, I'll import and export goods between different auction houses, and I will make money. And I will then turn around and buy goods from other players I didn't even know existed, because I don't need to go face to face with them to make the transaction.

I'm done arguing with you, Don. Take your Everquest attitude elsewhere, nobody wants to hear it, and I'm annoyed as hell that you turned a simple "Here's the new patch notes" thread into a gigantic flamefest perpetuated by your ignorant assumptions about a game you don't play.</div>

[Derithian]

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>Hey cocksmoker, play the game before you bash it.</div>

[Oracle]

<div style='font: bold 10pt ; text-align: left; '>I like tort, now I don't have to type that paragraph :p</div>

[Oracle]

<div style='font: bold 10pt ; text-align: left; '>Ok, shit, I'm done with this topic. This just got a little too IRCish ><</div>

[Oracle]

<div style='font: bold 10pt ; text-align: left; '>"I am in an uberguild in EverQuest I sure know about all the uber tradeable items sold on my server and almost every one of them is sold at less than half of market value because we ubers don't want to deal with the hassles of the economy." - I don't think this really needs comment</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>it's ok Tort, when you've wasted $200 on software alone and another $200 on subscriptions for one game everyone else knows is infernior and bad you're bound to get a little guarded about it</div>

[G-man Joe]

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>I'd like to get into this argument. Uh.....LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! sleep! LIGHTNING BOLT!</div>

[Oracle]

<div style='font: bold 10pt ; text-align: left; '>UO and EQ had no competition at the time, they established a market, and held onto those "3-4 month" people who played longer because nothing else was out. Then they had a core user base, like what FFXI is building, and were able to maintain much of that user base because they had a head start advantage over the second gen MMORPGs.

The Japanese MMORPG market numbers are a hell of a lot more meaningful than that sputtered lineage crap in Korea. Japan actually has it's OWN VIDEO GAME MARKET, where as Korea and the rest of Asia can't even produce a decent console based or non-online PC game, let alone a quality MMORPG by today's standards.


<i>This is because if a game is actually good enough to retain 300K on virtue of being good, it's got to be the most amazing MMORPG the industry has yet to see.</i>

And again, you are discounting the fact that the game FFXI might actually BE good. So if indeed it IS good (which I happen to believe), and has this kind of head start in Japan, that will just make it even more difficult to pull players away to competing MMORPGs if and when they ever come out.
Also on your comment about FFXI being more visable than DAoC ever was at lauch... DUH. That is a BRILLIANT way for Square to create their market for MMORPGs. You seem to discount the success of this MMORPG because they didn't start as a no-name from the get go. So what? It's a good way to present a new type of product, that doesn't make those extra numbers from the FFXI fanbase just not count.

Whenever you talk number, you always manipulate them by saying something like: ok, let's toss out the fact that FF is a popular name, so those players don't count when we talk about MMORPG numbers, and the fact that I don't think the Japanese MMORPG market exists, so we toss those numbers out, and people born under the year of the pig shouldn't count either.... sorry, just too much spin.</div>

[Oracle]

<div style='font: bold 10pt ; text-align: left; '>Ok, shit, I'm done with this topic.  This just got a little too IRCish :p</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Everquest is not a bad game. It's not the game for me, but it is one of the best MMOGs on the market.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Which it obviously hasn't done. I recently looked up Ragnarok Online and it had 230,000 subscribers from Japan as well back when FF11 had 280,000 subscribers in Japan (and RO had 600,000 subscribers in Thailand if you want to play pad the subscription game), and this is something I don't know of anyone who is still playing in the US/Euro world. Just because a large portion of your populace comes from a competition-free area doesn't mean the game has to suck, yes, but it also by no means guaranteed greatness. The Asian PC industry is riddled with such ridiculous cases of high subscribers on junk that you can't possibly use the 430K figure that FF11 counts (of those 300K from Japan) as anything relevant. Like I said, take away the Japanese numbers and you get a game that looks kind of like DAoC when they started, which really isn't that bad. I got my order of the top MMORPGs wrong, it's currently still EQ/SWG/UO/DAoC but #2 to #4 are all pretty close (all around 250-275K). Of those, there are no new game that can possibly be in the same position as SWG except WoW, seeing SWG started out with the Star Wars name plus it was made by the biggest guy out there. Likewise being the first MMORPG has to count for something too (UO), so I think DAoC is the legitmate #2 game to beat. Certainly no new comer, minus perhaps WoW, will be able to enter the market from the position that SWG or UO enjoys when they entered. So if the trend persists, FF11 has to pull at least ~200K non Asian subscribers to topple DAoC as the #2 MMORPG out of the newcomers. Maybe it can do it, maybe not. It's currently at 150K (430K - 280K = 150K) but now it has to get more people in the non Asian PC world where there's no easy money like at home.

EQ/UO may have started in a competition free era but even then at least they have to compete against each other and they turned out to be #1 and #2 even today, and there was no shortage of competitions during EQ and UO's rise to power. What did FF11 had to go against? Ragnarok Online? Although the console market of Japan is certainly well-developed, I think MMORPG is one of those games that strictly fall into the domain of a computer game, and this is an area in Japan where competition is sorely lacking. I don't see MMORPG players as directly conflicting with console games so I don't think the console competition matters. I certainly have never heard of anyone who quit EQ to play Final Fantasy X2 or anything of that sorts.

If you want more information on subscription numbers, check out: http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.html

Check out Ragnarok Online's numbers, BTW. It beats DAoC with just Japanese numbers alone. If you add Thailand numbers, it's bigger than the current population of EQ and the inflated FF11 numbers put together.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I said, FF11's numbers look a lot like DAoC's numbers at launch, which is a good thing because no game will ever launch with the position 3 of the current top 4 enjoys (EQ, SWG, UO) besides WoW/Sigil's game/EQ2 so that means, it's starting about as well as the best of the newcomer ever did. Of course, you don't want to be told that it hasn't even got pass the well-entrenched #4 (who would've been #2 if it wasn't a newcomer.) so you had to pad it with 280K from Japan. Do you know that Ragnarok Online has 230K from Japan?

It is not up to me to tell you if your game is good or not, but your game still has a lot to prove before it can even make a legitmate run at the #2 (and #4 according to subscribers) game right now. As for the EQ behemoth, there are only 3 games on the market in the next 5 years that can possibly defeat it: EQ2, World of Warcraft, and the game Sigil is making. Other than those games, your game doesn't even matter to EQ community. When they interviewed Sony what they think about the other MMORPG out there, they're not kidding when they say they think it's a good thing because it expands the market, because they know EQ's size will crush any that dares to stand up to it, minus the 3 aforementioned game that has enough of their size of their own to take on EQ directly.</div>

[Oracle]

<div style='font: bold 10pt ; text-align: left; '>Yes, I had looked at that graph too, but it stops at August 2003, so no real use of me when I'm arguing points on FFXI. That's why I used the slashdot quotes.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Obviously since this game hasn't been out for too long, so your server is on a non top-heavy leveling distribution. When you're done with your level 5 gear you can expect there to be another guy who didn't play as much to buy your gear. It works like that in EQ or any other game out there back when demand actually exists. The newbie economy of any MMORPG has always been quite stable. But at some point, your demand will run out, and you will not find another level 5 guy to buy the gear you just grew out of. I don't need to play your game to know that it will not fix one of the fundamental flaws of all MMORPG economies, namely supply is infinite, but demand is not. Actually, this problem is the online auction problem, which is NP-Hard, and therefore a solution cannot possibly exist. MMORPG economies will never be fair because it is not mathematically possibly that they turn out that way.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>There were 280K on Auguest 2003. Assuming Japanese population did not decline, FF11 could not have more than 150K non Asian subscribers right now since you quoted 430K. That's below DAoC's ~250K by far.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>For fuck's sake, YOU were the one to bring up the numbers, NOT me. You're getting as bad at putting words into my mouth as Seeker is.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Well, if it's mathematically impossible for the problem not to exist, then SHUT THE HELL UP. If you're ragging on FFXI for a problem that Everquest and every other MMOG has, then you are such a fucking hypocrite that it's astonishing.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>ok sit down-- now you're just delirious</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>Maybe there are a lack of low lvls in EQ due to the fact that noone wants to make a brand new char just to try a new job/class. In FFXI a lvl 75 warrior can start over as a lvl 1 WMG while staying online with HIS name and HIS friends list and all the other stuff that one who starts over would be frustrated with. Then that lvl 75 guy will still need lvl 5 stuff. Until everyone in the game has lvl 75 with EVERY job than i dont see the demand running out anytime soon.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Online auction problem? And NP-Hard does not mean a solution doesn't exist. It means that no polynomial solution is known to exist (and the problem is not known to be in NP). But the solution can still exist.</div>

[Tortolia]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Nope. EQ is better than AO, DAoC, AC2, E&B, TSO, Horizons, SWG, and modern day UO. I prefer AC1 but that doesn't mean it's the better game. EQ does one thing and it does it very, very well. It's just the treadmill is a bit more glaring than in other MMORPGs.</div>

[Tessian]

<div style='font: 11pt Dominion; text-align: left; '>everyone step back! Give Tort some room, he's having a seizure!</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Further approximate solution do not exist either that's within any reasonable competitiveness with optimal. The simple explanation is that getting people to tell the truth is impossible, and you must know people's demand is to have a reasonable economy. However, since lying drives the prices down (due to infinite supply), the only way you can beat people at their own game is to sell so low that no one will have an incentive to lie to drive the price down further, but of course you'd have to sell so low not to be anywhere near competitive with the optimal solution.</div>

[Don]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I never said EQ does this better, and I didn't say FF11 sucks for not being able to solve this. I'm merely saying your system, no matter how great you think it is, will not solve a fundamentally unsolveable problem. Your economy exists because the game is young, just like an economy once existed in EQ. But eventually people will figure out that if they all just lie about how much they're willing to pay for something they can drive the price down (because supply far outstrips demand, and further supply is effectively infinite), so unless the game is played either by a bunch of totally clueless individuals (who never realized that lying benefits them) or by a bunch of perfectly altrustic beings (who does not lie for their own gain), the economy will fall apart at the end. You can't possibly design a game system that makes people not liars, and in all MMORPGs, it is advantageous to lie because it benefits you.

But then I don't know why you're getting so upset over this inevitable outcome. I don't really think having a functional economy has anything to do with whether a MMORPG is enjoyable. The economy in EQ might as well be a truthtelling economy because sellers get ripped off so much, there's no reason for buyers to lie about what they're really willing to pay because it's not going to get any cheaper. Actually, that is believed to be the only solution to this problem: sell so low so that even the weasels won't have an incentive to lie about what they're willing to pay, and that way at least something gets done.</div>