WingsXI Is Fun

Emulating Wings at level 75 is as custom as it comes. The final reward is a level 90 earring.

Continuing the fine tradition of "We want level 75 vanilla buuuuut..."

This is a perfect reason for SE to never make a 75 server even if all of the other reasons why it would be a bad idea/impossible didn't exist.

because they'd have to actually do some work into what people actually want out of it just like every other classic game has done?

yeah you're right, they can't even be bothered to put decent development into the retail version of the game.

"What people actually want" This very thread is existence that you folks have vastly different ideas of what "you actually want". Completely vanilla 75? 75 with QOL improvements? 75 with X? 75 with Y? You VASTLY over estimate how many people want classic, and would pay a full sub for, especially given that the content would be 100% stagnant and people would very quickly cycle out once they finish everything they want to do in the game.

At least current XI is getting new content.

didn't you just come back to the game?

it's always weird seeing people stan retail ffxi development after taking 3-4 year breaks.

FFXIAH isn't the target audience for what people "want" out of a 75 era server, not to mention there's literally no posts stating what they want in this thread. what are you reading bud?

pfffft, it's all about 80 cap era.
Perle gear, Teal set and that sweet sweet pink Aurore

But for serious, Tarage is right. We can't even agree for 1 page what we want in a "classic" server, there's zero chance they could cater to it properly. Ultimately, people just want that time period back. Camping NMs to watch them pop purple, or waiting forever to gather in Sky and watch people get lost, or have shitty tele luck for Kirin portal etc wasn't fun.
Being late teens / early 20s was fun. Being able to play this til your eyes bled without the responsibility of kids, a job (or a job you cared about at least) was the fun part.

literally no one is arguing what they want in a server, one dude said what qualms he had about nasomi. the rest of us are arguing about what we think others want in a private server with jessikah providing some extremely misguided information.

it's wild that you're attempting to call this the same thing

You do realize I said I'm completely willing to change my mind if you show me evidence. That's all I ask.

Otherwise, I feel like the success of servers like WingsXI and CatseyeXI and the anticipation of HorizonXI's December release are proof enough that "99% of the private server community" wanting only up to Treasures of Aht Urhgan is false.

From my experience, it seems like most people are happy with Wings of the Goddess and Seekers of Adoulin, as long as the game maintains an even spread of levels and is balanced around an unchanging 75 cap.

This isn't really proof of anything. The servers with the most active players tend to get more players, because they all struggle for population and people would rather compromise on range of content than play a dead server. Wings was not even remotely successful until they lucked into Ninja streaming them. They also had a ton of 'quality of life' changes(and just plain bugs) that amounted to easymode for huge chunks of the game. PDIF cap too high, skillchain delay cut significantly, ranged attack broken to the point that DRK crossbow outdamages scythe and gs. I don't know why easier versions of 75 are so popular, but that gave them a boost too.

Not taking a hard stance on TOAU/WOTG, but that's far from the most important distinction between servers, and the decision of which server to play isn't made in a vacuum.

I agree that population alone isn't enough. Heck, I don't even know that much about private servers, so as far as I knew there might have been one extra-popular one that was popular because it stopped at Treasures of Aht Urhgan.

But while Wings of the Goddess doesn't really have noteworthy endgame content, it still has a competent story, new areas, and two very fun jobs. Just because people aren't clamouring to the past for their content doesn't mean they wouldn't take the expansion for what it is.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, whenever it comes up, I see people debate what would make the "perfect" classic server. It's never "99% of them" saying "exactly patch number X in Treasures of Aht Urhgan".

I assume people in the private server community are more interested in the balance offered by private servers vs. retail, rather than a specific stopping point. The reason why people don't like Wings of the Goddess isn't because of the expansion itself, but because it was during that time period that the level cap was raised and a lot of the 75 content was made obsolete. As long as the rewards from Sky, ZNMs, and so on aren't made obsolete, who cares what other content is added afterwards?

EDIT: And I'm also assuming that that's why HorizonXI is getting a lot of traction. The idea that you'll be able to experience the entire game including WotG and SoA balanced around a Lv.75 cap such that RotZ, CoP, and ToAU aren't made obsolete is likely what a lot of people are looking for. But even then, there's a lot of people debating which QOL updates should be added. Which abilities and spells do they keep? Do they add Trusts? Mounts? Home Point Warps?

eden as the most tried and tested server with a very active end game scene is probably the thing i would use to show what people really want. most other servers do not get enough traction to even develop a scene. there are a ton of new double xp/movement speed, all outpost warps, home point warps, trusts, fov, double skill-up speed etc and they all fall off pretty quickly. people get nostalgic, think that can be an easy way to fill that void, but it's too easy, they get bored and go to the next server. eden's level sync is different than what retail was at the time, but i think that end of toau is the pinnacle of xi. i like wotg, but /dnc kinda broke xi. which makes me sad cause i looooove dnc.

eden currently has 718 people online. in all fairness at least 200 are dual box.

Been playing the game solid for it's entire life. I never left. I never took a break. Get off yourself.

Why am I reading this thread? Because I was curious as to what it was about. Got to see your idiotic ramblings, so that's a plus.

Seriously, the sooner you admit that it's never going to happen and get on with your sad pathetic life, the better. Why am I in this thread? Why are you on this forum? Why are you here, talking about a game that you clearly aren't playing, don't want to play, and won't play again? Who's the pathetic little ***now?

you have serious mental issues

Nice non-answer to my question. Again, why are you here?

guy who got banned from BG for trying to plan assassinations, i don't want a private server, or a classic server. there's no chance SE would do it correctly.

i play retail, just like you do. i also didn't take a break from 2019-2022, i've been here the whole time

Again with the irrelevant statements. I must be hitting my mark because you're lashing out wildly like this.

I assume you are looking at my post history in a futile attempt to say when I did and did not play. How about we use actual statistics, like linked characters, which shows many AH sales from 2021 from me and yet... 2 for you in 2022 and nothing else.

But all of this is beside the point. You don't want to play on a private server, you don't want to play on a classic server, because "there's no chance SE would do it correctly." You play retail, you claim, yet all I see you do is whine and ***. It must be exhausting focusing all of your time and energy talking about something you clearly hate. Stockholm syndrome much?

I'll leave it with a simple request that even you should be able to abide by. Get help nerd.

Except in this case, not doing it at all is doing it correctly. Nobody would look at the current 'health' of private servers and think it would be a good idea to invest a lot of time and money into recreating something that was made decades ago. At least, nobody who cares about their time and money as much as SE does.


SE is committed to taking classic content and renewing it by adjusting it to ilvl standard. You get classic content with all the latest QoL features. It sounds almost exactly like what private servers are trying to be, except without the strange obsession with the number 75.

All you have to do is look at WoW Classic to know FFXI Classic would be a HORRIBLE idea, but some people can't let go of their childhood...

Matsui touched on this in discussion regarding the idea of XI Classic. Classic makes sense for WoW because of how WoW was developed. If WoW never had an expansion, vanilla could stand alone as it's own game. The expansions for WoW come with character boosts so you could completely skip over previous versions of the game if you wanted to.


Vanilla XI on the other hand was just a shell of the game. It was always their intent to increase the cap quickly and then expand with story horizontally. They planned out development over the expected life of the console(s) they were tied to, but ended up increasing the cap when they decided it was going to outlive it's expectancy. That and the fact that it was well on it's way to becoming the top grossing FF title.


XI and WoW are both MMOs yes, but apples and oranges are both fruit. These games aren't valid for comparison in many cases simply due to the philosophies that drove their creation.

There is no survey or anything like that to be able to say if it is really wanted or not, but if we have servers FFXI was 75 with a certain population and that means there is demand, how much and if it is relevant is another issue.

My experience is that I have hooked several friends on FFXI thanks to Nasomi/Eden, although they first played FFXI retail they didn't get hooked on the game, but the slower and harder experience of era 75 they liked it and enjoyed the game a lot.

You have to keep in mind that there are people from all walks of life, some of you have kids and slave jobs, but other people have more time.

After getting to know FFXI better in era 75, without the nostalgia that many of you mistakenly resort to, they went back to retail and now they've been playing it non-stop for about 2 years and they enjoy it a lot.

But when we talk about it, we all agree that era 75 is a better game even than the current one, era Aht Urgan or WOTG without experience books is perfect too, although retail does things very well like the many equipment configurations and some other things, but others terribly wrong like the teleports between crystals that kill the world or the uncontrolled scale of power that makes the rest of the world irrelevant.

And I repeat that they don't have the nostalgia factor, it's simply that FFXI is the pinnacle of the MMORPG genre in PVE.

And I don't know why some people criticize WoW Classic, if it shows that it has a bestial population and has helped to stop the bleeding of players leaving the game.
Or others like Everquest that every time they release a progressive server, the server is full for a long time.

you should talk to a mental health professional

Said to the mirror.

il take a official classic server over current FFXI every new content is just rehashed *** with time limit and obnoxious objectives New content = Old hallways with mobs what the F the only good thing about retail right now is the VR story that's it.

Also wingsxi is very very Dirty with cheaters don't play there

lol wow classic is thriving....

https://ironforge.pro/population/tbc/

Me and Mdk have been on Eden for 2 years. Usually between 600 and 900 people online, which is better than what I remember from retail servers I was in. Granted, a lot of that is dual boxing people but so is retail. It really feels like the old FFXI. Can't wait for salvage !

Have you tried Odyssey? It can be more fun than that. Also Asura regularly has over 3k players.

The problem with Square is they create Business Divisions, which is large groups of developers all put into one unit under a leads control.

XI is in Business Division 5, this division was made purely for mmorpgs. However they decided to make a single player game (ff16), which is really stupid considering they have dedicated divisions for that.

This means all spare staff in 5 are being pushed into working on ff16, since it's a year from release. Even XIV is being starved of developers and getting bare minimum while all hands on deck towards 16. Yoshi stated this in an interview a few months ago on the vana site, in a roundabout way.

Hopefully 16 is a financial disaster, then the other divisions can go back to making single player games and BD5 can stay making mmorpg content. Then we can get more gravy.

I think it would be nice a private server that is a snapshot of abyssea/VW era.

And another one till the Delve1.0 era but before the Ark Angels/HTBF era.

I really miss what for me was the prime era of playing this, and it saddening this era will never come back because, well, time never come back

I like this era but I want more stuff