twesterm said:
dahuman said:
Killiana1a said:
I am going to say what is on every Western gamer's mind, but they are afraid to say it because they don't want to upset their Japanophile friends:
No MMORPG from Japan will ever reach comparable numbers to the World of Warcraft. Why? Final Fantasy is too Japan-centric for those who have never heard of Final Fantasy, while anyone who has read a Lord of the Rings book or a Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance fantasy novel inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien can easily relate to Warcraft.
Final Fantasy 11 has been out since 2002 and according to Wikipedia (take it how you want to take it), "In April 2009, Square Enix announced that the total number of active characters exceeded 2 million for the first time in game history."
7 years to reach 2 million monthly subscribers, while when I played the World of Warcraft exclusively from January 2007 until July 2009, the lowest subscriber number I ran across was 6 million according to the WoW Census on www.warcraftrealms.com.
Redressing Final Fantasy 11 as Final Fantasy 14 is cute, but the past numbers speak for themselves and portend what is more than likely to come in the future.
I would call Final Fantasy 11 a failure in comparison to the World of Warcraft, but that is as trite as saying "its hot" during a sunny day.
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You do realize that WoW crushes western MMORPGs too right? Fucking destroys them, at least FF11 is still making money which is not something I can say about a lot of other MMOs that blew up or are dying atm, from the west of course.
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Yeah, I think he forgot that FFXI is one of the few successful MMO's out there. About five years ago there were countless MMO's coming out trying to cash in on WoW's success. The few that actually even released lasted almost no time at all.
Saying FFXI wasn't a success since WoW sales so greatly outnumbered it is as stupid as saying Bioshock wasn't a success because Modern Warfare 2 sales so greatly outnumbered it. Just because something isn't the best or highest selling doesn't mean it's automatically a failure.
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No, I have not forgotten. I still remember playing Anarchy Online and cancelling it after a month of playing.
As for comparing every MMORPG to WoW it is the necessary and right thing to do as WoW set the benchmark, is still the MMORPG leader, and is the game to build one's MMORPG around in order to usurp WoW's throne.
I was still playing WoW when Age of Conan and Warhammer Online came out. A few guildies left to play one or both, but sure enough, they were back within a month or two. I have not forgotten.
As for the comparison between Bioshock and Modern Warfare 2, you are right eventhough you are leaving out the massive marketing push that Modern Warfare 2 had.
As for a game being a failure or not, MMORPGS are judged on their monthly subscribers more than first week and first month sales alone. That being said, I am perfectly right and irrefutable in saying that Final Fantasy 11 has been a failure in comparison to WoW because it took 7 years for Final Fantasy 11 to reach 2 million subscribers, while WoW did that in less than 6 months.
As for the original question by the OP or should I say whine from Square Enix, Square Enix is expecting Microsoft via Xbox Live to provide a free lunch in the form of Microsoft taking the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to own, run and maintain the Final Fantasy 14 servers.
I can understand why Microsoft would be hostile to giving Square Enix something for nothing.
