Someone posted this on Reddit. I'm surprised they didn't come post it here, so I'm doing it for them. While I think we can all agree this will sadly go nowhere, not signing it feels just as bad!

https://www.change.org/p/square-enix-official-square-enix-final-fantasy-xi-level-75-era-server

/signed

Just about anywhere pre Abbysea would be sweet. Granted, we did have fun in there as an LS... but have a lot of fond memories of TAU and even up through WotG time frames.

Signed, though I do have to say I'm not thrilled about the idea of losing all the progress I made on Nasomi and start from scratch...

The early days of a character are the best part.

_________________

If you're a masochist
Seriously, not even a new character, just a new job, it's pretty bad. I just had to level BLM, which I ignored and was still level 21, and going back to the dunes was not fun. Starting over from scratch will be really frustrating for me, especially leveling the fishing skill again I guess that's why I haven't heard even a single case of someone who got deleted and decided to start over.

No offense, but I can't see you having done much endgame content if you say this. Nothing compares to the complexities of party interactions @75 in high level content. Its truly the great thing about this game.

Can't decide what's worse here between not seeing how different an official server would be from Nasomi in terms of quality (and depth) of the experience, or that you think that a game you're (if you're part of the 99%) playing for dozens of hours every month isn't worth $10 a month.

As far as gaming/entertainment goes, seeing an official FFXI Classic server opening is pretty much on the top of my wish list and I'd gladly pay 2x $15 every months for two chars.

Who gives a heck if FFXI is a 2002, 2004 or 2018 game, to this day it's still the best PvE MMORPG ever released ! You really think people are here because they can't afford to pay 10 bucks a month for their game ? LOL

There's also the risk of an offical retail legacy server getting overrun with RMT. If memory serves, SE didn't do a terribly good job at controlling RMT/bots/hacks/etc. However, from what I've seen, nasomi doesn't hesitate to ban speed hacks, rmt, etc. If Se opened a classic server, I'd want to see some effort on their side policing cheats/bots before I waste my time and never get ahead because i don't buy gil or bot.

Yeah I always chuckle when people claim people only play here cause it's free.

I've played on multiple legacy private servers for multiple MMOs and there are tons of people who donate. Some servers even have cash shops and people gladly throw their money at it. People have been begging Nasomi for YEARS to take their money.

I don't doubt there are people who are absolutely playing here because it's free. But there's plenty of us who would absolutely pay.

Also, it's not just that an official server would be higher quality, one of the main things I miss from retail is the Japanese community. At night time instead of the server populations going down, they actually went even higher. Communicating with them with the auto-translator to get through content was revolutionary.

Probably nowhere unfortunately. The potential player-base for a legacy FFXI server are the few hundreds of people here on Nasomi plus probably a few who for some reason haven't hard of the server (and not everyone here will inclined to switch to classic-retail and lose their months to years long progress), so let's say around 700 people (and I'm being generous here). Multiply by the monthly subscription fee of 12.95$ and you get 9065$ total worth of potential gross monthly income from classic players. That's probably change for S-E and I'm not sure it even covers the development team salaries.


Just how many MMOs do you play at the same time? FFXI is already very time-intensive. If you'd rather put your money on a different game then go ahead.
The real point that you have is indeed the progress - I doubt that S-E would actually migrate player data from Nasomi - There are various technical difficulties, mostly due to the fact that Nasomi (and all private servers) are not based on leaked server software but on reverse-engineering the client and network traffic, which means that servers' internal data structures are probably way different. Also there are various legal and other issues, e.g. if you agree to migrate player data from Nasomi then other servers will want the same treatment and you can't agree to migrate player data from every kid who downloaded DSP and has a server with zero content and only one player who just happens to be level 75 on all jobs with legendary gear and billions of gil because of GM commands.
So yeah, progress will likely be lost but you know what, if everyone starts over it could be fun because it's everyone together.


Actually I heard that additional characters now cost only an additional 1$/month each. Some out of era things are not that bad


Actually while I said that I'm more than willing to pay for a retail classic server that's not the case for Nasomi. Legally this community is gray area as it is and one of the main reasons for its flourishing is that S-E does not try to hunt it down like some other MMO game companies (good luck trying to find a classic WoW server that survives over time) but I doubt that'll still be that case if Nasomi (or anyone else) starts charging money for that, it's practically begging to get sued, especially if you're US-based.
Regarding the Japanese community, I wouldn't get my hopes up - Recent reports from retail players (assuming that they aren't outdated) indicate that only two of the retail servers have a decent player-base - Asura, which is almost exclusively English, and Odin, which is almost exclusively Japanese. Sure, Odin won't block you from creating a character if you're not from Japan but I assume most players there would not expect too many people who don't speak Japanese.