Infographics Pros & Cons Of Pserver Vs. Retail

and im pretty sure i'm not writing a book. good to know instead of engaging with the actual discussion we're just going to whine about a lack of indentation. super constructive.

I haven't ever made a call to action, I doubt you read me seriously typing that I'm going to send SE a letter... lol we all know how pointless that is. I have given my opinion in those videos, because I think it's fair given they do it also. There are people impersonating me on those servers. I can tell you I wouldn't be caught dead there while the real game is alive. The same energy you feel about seeing my comments "everywhere" is the same I feel about theirs. You just only see it from tons of nameless commenter's, most probably with something to gain. They aren't direct personal attacks btw it's in general, not aimed at anyone in particular. If I'm debating someone on a topic or discussing something it's usually generally.

It doesn't bother me they are playing a fake version of the game that is bugged and limited. What mainly annoyed me was the fact they go to literally every possible XI source to promote their game over the real deal and actively disparage retail. Something no other server did before, so we easily ignored them until now. It also comes at a time of the games life where all the sub numbers count to give it a future, so of course i will be more opinionated on something I enjoy a lot and want to succeed. It's a shame others don't feel the same because one day this won't be here for them to steal assets from.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to look at my post and contributing to the discussion.

I'm reading through every comment closely.

I also want to comment I like how you can check and review each person's profiles and past forum posts. It helps me understand where people are coming from and what their general language and attitude is. I don't take anything personally for that matter. I respect everyone's own personal experience or why they might feel hurt and triggered that I made a bias post.

The infographic on the other hand I tried to be fair as another person would put it. I imagined if I had to start over again, I wish I read this review. For another person similar to me.

So my background is: I had not played this game. I don't relate to people who have given 20+ years of their life. Whereas as I, it was 2 years, but even then, on and off.

I'm going to be frank, if I had to sit my friends and parents down IRL and explain this game and what I went through and seen, I'd be doing so with a lot of embarrassment, they'd think my IQ dropped immensely (not to say that because there's people who look down at people who game) but it's just because, again, I don't really invest in social circles too much or drama. I always detach at some point quickly and do my own thing.

So when I did approach this game and community for that matter, it was very innocent for me.

I idealized people thinking they either thought similar to me to why they might play a game... for just a game to zone out and a type of escapism.. relax.. make some friends.

Also the majority are much older crowd, so I immediately thought there was a level of maturity, safety and protectiveness.

It's just not entirely the case here. It's probably also due to an entirely different culture I'm dealing with when it's online than I'm used to and growing up with.

Not everyone has built those type of traits and probably still stuck in a primary phase of developing it.

I had to have people from the private community with years of experience walk through with me on voice chat that it's literally a dedicated hardcore fan base. Like they have given their whole life to this game. They integrated so much that they identify their whole identity or what makes them feel like an important individual. Because I just lack the sympathy to understand that. I can't put myself in people's shoes with this game.

For me the private server game just by content, was 10/10 and retail server game is going to end up being 10/10 by the end of it? Not because of the attention to all the incredible details of what goes into content. But it fulfills the main goal: I zone out, I'm not stressed, I get to be in a world of fantasy, and hangout with friends. It is fun. Once I'm done. I log out and don't think about it as much anymore and go on with my daily life.

Even with the HNM scenes I just showed up. I was not personally invested in the clique circle. I know they are people I would not hangout IRL. You just can kind of know the vibes and like who you sync with or repel. It's nothing personal. I wasn't going to be friends with everyone and I just like that feeling I am not obligated to a group but I just have very few close friends instead.

So with all the different types of harassments towards me and others, I knew it wasn't a normal occurrence. It was blatantly really weird and messed up levels that could get you quickly expelled out of high school or even cybercrime levels when staff are all accumulated in the one LS and with there history of instigating those types of abuse in the past.

It was too great of a grey area that, again, would not repeat in under a retail settings due to laws set in place.



I initially planned to silently walk away like others because I mean that's what you just do. You disappear from the game and no one knows or why you left.

I do have people in the game and outside who are instinctive and want to protect me and so they went to higher levels with that for me: THAT by the way.. only made it so much worse as that's where I became vulnerable, mishandled completely and unprofessionally disregarding all "Code of Conduct" & "Conflict of Interest" section etc. All stated on the website.

It doesn't even exist when there's 5+ different HNMs and lead LS leader is a head GM and best friends with the clique LS. And when any other staff should've gotten involved immediately, did not happen that way, it was only and purely oozing "Conflict of Interest". And all the leaders were sending mixed signals to me in more confusion.

On top of that, people gossip rampantly to me. And I mean I don't even think staff and developers really know how much they are gossiped about and can come from their closest people and fans who still play on the server.. so disliked or spoken ill about. People ARE willing to put up with the behavior, be silent about it, and make sure they don't get caught with their view so they dont get banned. But if the whole private persona and architecture was removed.. Like I am being constantly told that staff cannot be trusted.

And I'm just sitting behind my computer screen playing a video game, and I'm sitting here going.. "What?" I literally had no idea what I got entangled in.

And then I get even more harassed JUST for addressing the problem of there being an abuse culture going on.

Fans and HNMLS members are so distorted in their viewpoint they misinterpret me like I'm trying to trying take down their egos.

I left the LS and server completely out of respect for others if they want to continue operating in that way. But mostly for myself. Before anything even escalated. I planned to initially leave silently.



I am trying to communicate there are clear problems and I'm not the first person in all private server history who has pointed this out.

And it makes me very uncomfortable that there's people who go back more than a decade with all this history with one another. Even lifelong enemies. You can read it up on all the forums too. It's like being in a mafia movie. And I'm here very unaware and caught into all these types of unfamiliar clique energy and just disconnect. It just takes the whole professionalism completely out of the equation.

It is literally not the case like I am trying to rob people of the game. I point these problems out so you can improve so you can desire to do better and the outcome is you keep people and know how to draw in more people by fixing these mistakes.

I do believe in Law of Attraction. If you guys want to keep funneling in certain types of people and push out people like me, that's fine.

That's why I'm so gladly and I mean ecstatic and relieved to pay my subscription now because I am paying someone to literally do their "job." Because they are working for me to make sure I'm satisfied with their product. It removes all the mental leaps and degenerate variables you just don't get when it's lawfully operating company.

When you're under a private server that is just NOT the case. There are other motives at play beyond "just love and huge fan of the game." The psychological analysis people have had to feed me like it's meant to fulfill something missed out in their teenage years.

And it all takes away completely from looking at staff like staff. That stopped existing for me completely. And HNMLS from just being HNMLS. And a game that's meant to be just a game for me.



Like I couldn't focus on the game anymore and towards a Herald's Gaiters.

And I lost all respect for private severs at that point and have to separate myself because I CLEARLY do not belong. I don't understand whatever that whole energy and warped mentality people are in. But it's not a normal game.

I've tried other Free-to-Play MMOs that are legally liable and it is for a fact, not that.

I can log on. Game. Escape for a moment. Log out.

This is a product for me. I'm not the most hardcore fan. I could review this like I went to my regular mall off of 4th street.

But yea I hope to never go through the mental leaps of what I had to or would want that on any other individual who came into the private server scene mislead into thinking it was like any other legally liable game.

It got too much going on. It's way too dark and heavy for me to deal with.

All of this stuff robs the magic away from the game. The fact I have to think about what kind of people are behind little cute avatars is far too disturbing to me. What I subjected myself to. It's like I went and downloaded an illegal movie off a website and now dealing with twenty different viruses and it keeps replicating. Like I'm done.

It's shifted everything that I won't even complain about paying subscription anymore because I just know what I'm going to get as I've always known: A game and a peace of mind.

SE:



Of course, we were the official forum posters but even if you get hired by SE. You are not going to work on FFXI alone. You have to work on FFXIV and then FFXI. Trust me, that can create a lot of headaches for them! lol

I mean of course I remember shenanigans from HNM especially my time on Hades/Cerberus but I’ve never seen the levels of dysfunction like what I saw in that LS. Some of the drama that pops up puts some of the stuff we saw in retail to shame. I feel like most of the drama you’d see on forums in retail were usually pretty comical beefs between players over a ridill and then hopping lses or faking their death to escape with an ls bank. Some of the things coming from Horizon are a lot more sinister because the people we laughed at then now run and operate these spaces and there’s no accountability even from their peers because the fear of being banned and dogpiled on.

One of Horizons biggest white knights raised a mild criticism in the discord and found himself banned and then was screaming at the sky about “How could this happen to me? I did nothing wrong!” This is the same person who used to love telling everyone any ban that followed was their own fault and deserved and anything shady was just misinformation and the GMs would never ever abuse their powers! Well he’s gone now by actions he defended, funny how that works.

i never said you sent SE a letter, i said you posted on numerous vidoes threats to try to get it shut down by sending one. thats really unhinged behavior to try to ruin other people's fun because you just dont find it entertaining. in reality private servers dont affect retail at all. if they were hurting SE it would be shut down immediately. you have no basis for the claims you make, and every time you post about horizon its just gaslighting or straight up lies.

you claim them playing a "fake version" of the game doesnt bother you, yet thats exactly what you cry about on every ps post/video almost verbatim.

the game has no future. its been maintenance mode for years. there will never be an influx of players(barring retail going free to play in some form) to bring the game back to its former glory and thats something you need to come to terms with. no amount of whining or gaslighting is going to change that. enjoy it while it lasts and be happy people are experiencing it in one form or another.

I think these things are true, to some degree, except I disagree on two points:

1) There's loads of content in retail FFXI that straight up can't be box'd unless you program your own bots which 99.99% of the players of FFXI cannot do.
2) The type of thing that PS offer (e.g. you can hang out with your friends and do boring shitty content together) you can also do on retail.

If you want to have an experience where you and your 5 friends auto-attack beetles for a few hours and chat in party chat, you can do that on retail. If you want to have a linkshell where you talk about the good old days and how you used to have a thief's knife back when it was hard to obtain, you can do that on retail.

You could literally take the entire community of people you're enjoying playing with and just...go play a better version of FFXI with them. There's nothing unique or exceptional about PS FFXI except the attitudes of the people there. Bring your (imo stupid) attitudes to retail and you can have your community of fishermen, EXP grinders, and nostalgia linkshells, but also have fun content to do and a stable product with professional support.

Have you been following the recent updates/news?

Maybe I misspoke but I was implying exactly this, there still is very much social content in XI if you actively look for it like I stated myself and OP just did on Bahamut while rolling new characters.

People who say otherwise only do the basic things that can be done with trusts and never step out of that box is what I intended to say so we’re in agreement on this point lol.

And yes I play retail and do all these things and I very much enjoy it far more than any experience on private servers.

The people who have been boxing their own content from escha through early odyssey are just choosing not to engage with that content or buying it.

These are true in theory, but in practice the people willing to do it with you are already on private servers and have the mindset that it is only possible on private servers. It's sort of like the effort to get everyone to move from X to Bluesky. You can do everything on Bluesky that you can on X, but as long as most people believe X is better for it, Bluesky will be a joke.

I appreciate the effort to push the idea, but it hasn't seen much success in my opinion.

Wrote prior paragraph before I got to this part and saw that you're advocating the same thing. I guess I agree with you, I just don't see it as likely to happen.

Yeah i was referring more to the "people don't want to engage with the social aspect" part. There definitely are people like that, but i think, as you said, there are plenty of social experiences to have if you bother to try, and retail ffxi actually offers LOADS of opportunities to group up and frankly forces it. The problem is people play retail for 2 hours, don't join a linkshell, and are upset that the dunes isn't popping with parties like it was 20 years ago.

That's because most of us grew up and realized the exp party is boring as *** and it's better to blow through leveling faster to get to the actual, good, group-based content.

"theres no new content in retail"
>>logs on private server XI to camp Fafhogg and farm Sky

You mean you don’t love watching another ls claim and kill for 59 minutes and 59 seconds then proceed to waste time in sky due to 5 lses claiming all the NMs you need?

Maintenance mode means there are no more big cake. Just some random dude to come to remove pests from your toilet and give you a small bag of Lay's chips once a month.

Oh yeah i fully agree it ain't gonna happen, but i find it hilarious that the main complaints about retail can be resolved without a single change from SE. It's not a system thing or server thing, it's just in the attitudes of the players, and yet here we are, having a debate about which server is better set up to make friends and have a social experience...

FWIW I've made many extremely close friends on retail ffxi in the past 5 years. People i met in person, I've shared extremely personal things with and they with me. We've had deep discussions, *** around and told jokes, stayed up way too late, helped each other out...the whole 9 yards. It's not at all difficult.

yes i dont mean there will be nothing released/updated, i mean the games population/popularity is on a steady decline. "there will never be an influx of players(barring retail going free to play in some form) to bring the game back to its former glory". SE's current model for ffxi is to retain players as long as possible not to grow. the game is old af and theyre just gonna continue to squeeze out as much money as they can from the current playerbase rather than spending money to get new subs, which kind of makes sense because 14 exists. from a financial standpoint it doesnt really make sense spending money to get subs for their older mmo that will inevitably die before 14. 14 is the cash cow 11 is like a a vending machine they just restock and collect money from once a month.

"I couldn't care less about private servers!" said Draylo as he spent hours seeking out anything related to HorizonXI so that he could type up the same tired whining comments.

That is not what "maintenance mode" is, and it is not like SE ever really marketed the game to begin with so its not really a change in behavior. People have always complained about the lack of fan fest or special events being primarily held out of reach in japan.

I mean real quick how did anyone even hear about this game releasing when you started playing? I saw it at a best buy and convinced my dad I needed it or I would die of boredom for the summer. I never saw a commercial about

Lol what, i don't ever recall doing that with a serious intent. Much less multiple times, it makes no sense. Threatening by telling SE, who will do nothing. You are just grasping at whatever to attack me from a sock account apparently. Rest of that is just nonsense

I've observed the same thing. I get that people just want to relive the nostalgia of it but it is a bit irritating to hear people complain about retail then you find out they barely did anything then whined it's not like it was 20 years ago. To their credit somewhat though, the earlier levels and content can be really empty feeling even on a big server like Asura, the game doesn't start to feel occupied until a certain point, whereas before you'd be meeting people pretty early on because the content took so long early in the game. I still think it's silly to dismiss the game though and it's something you see a lot on Reddit, more than here anyway.

It's actually kindof an outlier at all that XI still requires you to level, some other MMOs just straight up give you earlier levels or allow you to buy boosted characters to bypass 10+ year old content.


I first heard about it when my JP friend in HS was arguing with someone else about whether or not it was gonna be better than EQ. I didn't think much of it (he was a HUGE UO fan at the time) until ~2002-2003 when someone else I knew started playing and got sucked into it.

Everything that you say can easily be applied to you and you repeat this every single time this topic comes up. You really have no ground to stand on lol. A guy who quit, actively disparages retail and it's content and it's players... and he spends countless hours on a forum dedicated to said game. And you are telling me this? Lol at least I don't go to their forums endlessly like you do here, I've never even seen their forums or discord. This is a common thing with these people, they hate on retail all day yet they still post here and i still see them occasionally play. So weird, at least in my defense those youtube videos are labeled ffxi directly

Please enjoy whatever makes you happy. Forget all the drama here. This will probably be just going on for a while.

I only pay FFXIV to support SE and that's enough for me though.

Another Draylo meltdown thread

Not really, because despite your impotent accusations, I actually like retail which is why I come to this forum in the first place and why I log on during the free campaigns. The only things I disparage about retail are the boring cash-extracting endgame grinds and the sour-grapes retail dweebs who seek out Horizon videos to rage about while making dozens of posts in every single Horizon topic that pops up because they're mad that Horizon is going strong while retail continues to decay.

Lol you can't make this up, these people who apparently quit come up anytime these threads are bumped or made. I think they are just sock account. This also isn't my thread, so try harder

Problem is there's ingame drama... then there is borderline like abuse where there's more people are being harassed outside the game through social media or people's personal information leaked. Women being exploited s*xually through anonymous and cowardly passive aggressive ways. And history of abuse through staff and it's coming from a LS with them.

There's going to be more of a serious problem that could arise from that. And I have read several cases if people complain just enough with receipts and under great distress. FBI have had no problem jailing people and shutting down servers before, if it's not SE.

Literally what. Where are your receipts?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I come to this forum because I like retail and like knowing what's going on there. This is something I've stated many times.


...what?

A forum is not my lawyer. A forum is a place to discuss and review. Also posts like that would get immediately removed as you're not supposed to disclose people's private information.

you're right it makes no sense. which is why i said it was unhinged behavior. notice how twice you havent denied sayin it, rather u only deny that you were serious.... which we all know is bs. youve done so much crying on so many videos i woudlnt be surprised you cant remember what you said( even though we all know youre fully aware that you said it lmfao) and of course you follow it up with gaslighting by claiming im "attacking you" by simply reminding you of your own words/actions.

"there will never be an influx of players(barring retail going free to play in some form) to bring the game back to its former glory" what about this statement is nonsense? how delusional are you to disagree with this?