As the proprietor of a once-prominent Final Fantasy XI website, The Vana’diel Lobby, I wonder whether this will be the last Christmas that most players will spend in Vana’diel. Square Enix has opened a beta test application period for what will undoubtedly be the heir apparent, Final Fantasy XIV, and with a 2010 launch, it is inevitable that players will make the switch. So how much time does Vana’diel have left?
Square Enix has released a FFXI expansion collection labeled for 2010, and is selling it at a discounted price on Steam into the first part of January. The game is up to four full expansions plus three add-on content packs, after an initial Japanese release in mid-2002 and an initial North American release in late-2003. (Recent press releases by Square Enix indicate that FFXI still has a solid user base of approximately 500,000 players and 2 million active characters.) The last expansion pack, Wings of the Goddess, was published in 2007, and the three add-on packs were released in 2009. According to trade reports, some of the big-name developers who worked on FFXI have moved to FFXIV, suggesting that Vana’diel won’t get another makeover as Square Enix focuses its resources on development of the new MMO.
While it’s clear FFXIV isn’t a sequel to FFXI — much like the single-player Final Fantasy titles are not successive sequels — and the two games appear to have separate “lobby” environments (PlayOnline for FFXI, a “Square Enix ID” is used for FFXIV beta signup), how many players are really willing to cough up two sets of subscription fees a month to play both games? I can’t comment on the effect of Everquest II’s release on Everquest (original) since Sony has not released subscriber or character counts, but it’s fair to say that most players probably subscribe to one or the other, but not both.
So as the holidays draw to a close, those in Vana’diel will celebrate the holidays — the large Christmas tree in Bastok, the music in Jeuno, Moogles in hats — and hope for a year of new adventures before the sun starts to set.
