Horizon Strikes Again

don't yall get bored of rehashing these same talking points for each side every month or so for 20 pages

It is all about revenue! the more their brains rot the more likely they click ads. Over engagement in these topic can clearly cause brain rot. FOLLOW THE MONEY who benefits from ads clicks?

You're asking FFXI players this?

it's peak ffxiah that you asked for this to be hidden, it got hidden and you're still posting here.

just peak ffxiah poster

No they are correct, it's hidden from the front page (which is good and appreciated) but you can still see it from the forum page. Honestly why have it at all, every single post is people being mad and trolls trolling them to be more mad.

To a point I get it, they need adrev and they need a thing that gets interaction up. However having a private server forum is a stab in the guts to someone that really likes the game, especially one that is as hated as Horizon is.

Most people do not have a problem with the base open source project itself or most PS, but this one is different due to their actions and people don't want it in our faces every time we come here.

Horizon is the worst PS that has ever been setup (so no surprise some of the scumbucket dregs all went there too) and has actively hurt and divided the entire 11 community in a way no other server ever has before, in that the people who own and run it are scumbags and do not care about FFXI or the FFXI community and only care about themselves and their own ego (and probably wallet). Not only do they happily hurt retail but other private servers too by advertising like a $10 hoe everywhere shamelessly, they also give nothing back to the place they took everything from in the first place.

As I said before, the majority of the adrev of this entire site is based on AUCTION HOUSE interactions and effectively promoting a server that does not work with that will hurt the site long term far more than any short term gain.

Also since Yoshida is effectively throwing FF11 a bone and adding a FF11 raid to FF14, and that will lead to ff14 players potentially checking out the game. Having a PS forum here is really damn crappy behavior, it does condone it from one of the biggest remaining ff11 sites and makes people think it's ok to go there. When it's not ok at all.

They can do what they want, but it's still objectively bad.

How does one make it through life being this fragile? How do you type out a post like yours' without any sense of shame or self-awareness?

jesus christ you are insufferable. you literally have to click into the forum and click on the private server to even SEE that there are new posts. you have to ACTIVELY BE LOOKING to see new posts. not to mention 99% of people likely only use the active topics widget on the front page.

also didn't you say you had blocked me at one point?

the quality of poster on this forum really has deteriorated over the years, this is peak entitled baby behavior

It's honestly both sad and weird to the point where I want to believe that Draylo and Radial are shitposting. They write mopey wistful posts about FFXI as though it's their lover that died an early, tragic death. They complain about private servers as if they have an actual measurable effect on retail. If FFXI were the Titanic, SE is the iceberg and private servers are the people tossing furniture into the water to stay afloat. Draylo and Radial are the guys in first class sitting on the deck as the ship sinks, bemoaning the people tearing up the furniture as ruining the splendor of the ship.

I think you're overestimating this entire community thing. im betting the majority of gamers on both sides just log in, play whatever, and log off and don't care about any of these extracurriculars. i can't for the life of me understand how and why people are upset about any of it. horizon and every private server that's existed over the last decade isn't impacting retail in any significant way. the 'community divide' is 13 people arguing on a forum. on the flipside, the 'scumbucket' GM's and RMT on horizon isn't impacting the normal person's gameplay either, you're still just logging in and AFKing while looking for a party as you take 3 months to hit 75 and farm stuff with your LS.

i get that it's a forum so discussion is the only function here, but the way these discussions end up going just shows some of you take this gaming hobby a bit too serious. we're not 16 anymore, who actually cares - just log in to wherever you want spend your time, enjoy yourself, and log off.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You act like it's totally our fault. We are not bullfighters playing your eyes with our muleta where it shows HorizonXI.

Are you not paying attention? The retail folks occasionally see lines of text on their screen saying "If you miss classic FFXI, give Horizon a try" or "Horizon has a big population these days". Do you not see how problematic that is?

when you put it that way i'm left with no other choice but to apologize. we can't have this blasphemous speech out in the world slowly eroding away our beloved FFXI.

you for sure need a hobby my guy

My hobby is actually playing games instead of paying others to do it for me. You should give it a shot.

We can't wait for the XI-XIV raid bump. We are going to steal all of those precious new players from you and there is nothing you can do about it.

Neither game is stealing a relevant number of players from the other.

Somehow I missed these last few pages, it got hidden again


I guess Homs is lying because literally 90% of his posts are some kind of attack towards retail players. Almost on a script, criticizing their opinions and trying to devalue them by suggesting they are afflicted with some kind of mental illness. Really, just use your own logic back at yourself. You are posting on an FFXI fan site forum... for the official FFXI game, which you don't play and clearly dislike as you constantly disparage it (which you said you don't do, even though on the last page you are suggesting theres no challenging content. Yet you said in the past that 75 era ***is somehow a challenge... what a joke) How in the world do you think you are somehow superior to us asylum escapees bothering to care about a game they played for many years?

Radial is right, it is nothing but a detractor for FFXI. Filled with people who hate retail and everything its done thru each era, a jaded player that wants to see it fail. The biggest damage to the game is SE, for sure. But I don't see how this server with its massive ad push has helped retail XI in any form. It just hurts it, we've seen many XI content creators lured to that game thru the advertising, we've seen this forum get harassed by those losers constantly, we've seen active recruitment across any and all XI videos (which I've referenced multiple times, any retrospective or XI related video will have one paid shill in the comments.) To me, its no surprise that people who care about the real XI would have strong opinions against this server. Why you continue to keep caring that people care, is weird, and the fact you are constantly posting here attacking people that play a game you don't care about is also weird.

Just imagine if I went to horizon XI main forum or discord and continued to constantly create posts attacking people and harassing them. Wouldn't that be weird? I guess not to you, lol.

P & R is fun this is not

Spoiler - there is only one game. The "other" is a megalomaniac's attempt to relive the glory days of LS banks, points for Dyna participation and lording over entire LSs with an iron fist.

There are literally people that quit XI years ago showing up on discord servers for still active LSs advertising how awesome Horizon is and how everyone should give it a try.

Man, stfu.

Respectfully, who cares?

As somebody who used to be a hardcore classic player/server admin/stan, and having spent a lot of time talking to people like that, I can confidently say that there's an extremely small amount of those people who would ever be interested in retail. Private servers aren't "dragging people away from retail," those people would just not play the game at all. The ones who do like retail usually just dual box it alongside of a private server.

Its sort of like people's taste in attraction. Some people like em thicc, some like MILFs, some like a mix of the two. Its all well and good as long as everyone involved is having a good time. If people enjoy Aerec's ***show, let them. They enjoyed my ***show and they've enjoyed plenty of other ***shows before that. It isn't hurting you.

The point of people that do not play retail and have no interest in retail going on retail XI discord servers purely to advertise horizon is.. what exactly.

Not caring goes both ways.

Except it does happen, and all the time. Not as much now because its already dying out. Honestly, most of these people were the dummies back in the day wearing full AF1 at lv75, or the perle crap in Abyssea or sparks gear. They are the same dummies from then that don't even know what they want. I literally want to do a case study on this, it just boggles my mind. How in the world could someone enjoy lv75 cap only... with all the advancements we've gotten, all the cool things that came along and adjustments. To actively want to do that "content" you have to be kidding me.

Maybe someday your father will tell you how proud they are of your ffxiah post count and all the REMA you've finished.

Retail VS Private aside:


Their fun isn't wrong because you cannot fathom it being fun.

It is like watching kids kick a beat up old soccer ball in a dark dirt lot when 11 feet way is a grass field with boundary lines, goals, lighting, and a nice clean soccer ball. But those kids insist that their field is better because it is how the game is meant to be played.

It just sounds stupid, thus it comes off as simply wrong. I do not see any way to change that perception for either side.
(which to be clear you could apply that analogy in either way if you want, kind of the point of it)

I just wish these threads were not visible in latest topics > view more

Then stop bumping them, especially with non-sensical analogies.

Era is vinyl, Retail is Spotify. Classic, timeless and the way it was meant to be played vs petty shallow convenience at the cost of the soul of the art.

I know you were asking a rhetorical question here, but what you probably didn't expect is that someone who has thousands of hours both playing and developing 75 capped content would be willing to answer your rhetorical question. I don't really have a dog in this fight since I've played both retail and private 75 cap pretty extensively and I think they both have their selling points, but the real fact of the matter is that they just don't appeal to the same types of people either.

75 capped players don't care about advancement like retail players do. These are the folks who have started over again every time a new private server rises and falls, moving on to the next one as it comes up. They know that there's a strong possibility that their character could be gone tomorrow, and they don't care, because the advancement isn't really what keeps them playing. Many of them enjoy the social PVP aspect of the game more than they do the game itself. They wanna join a linkshell, do the DKP thing, and compete with others. Some of them are simply people who played in their teenage years who didn't have the ability to stay up late and grind to get all of the things that they wanted, so they do it on a 75 capped private server instead. They'd do it on a 75 capped retail server if one existed, too. We've actually seen this with WoW Classic, people are more than happy to simply restart to go back in time even in spite of the "You think you do, but you don't" a la J. Allen Brack.

Many retail players see things the exact same way that J. Allen Brack did in that video clip. The problem is that reality doesn't quite align with that notion because as we saw people did actually want that and WoW Classic was extremely successful and arguably still is even in spite of the fact that it's in what many people consider to be one of the worst expansions in WoW history - Cataclysm.

In my experience retail players are simply the types of folks who are absolutely addicted to advancement, and are willing to go to insane lengths to advance. The fact that we have so many people who multibox should tell you this. This is a stark contrast to the 75 capped approach of "make some friends, be social." These multiboxers went even further than being isolated with trusts, and are now just paying probably $100 or more a month to play by themselves. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it should make it clear that there is a pretty distinct mindset difference between the two groups of people because multiboxing is pretty common on retail these days. Private servers on the other hand have gone hard in the opposite direction and strictly prohibit multiboxing.

For me personally, I am often intimidated by the overwhelming amount of sheer things there are in retail. I have tried my best over the past year and some change to learn all of the systems, but the fact of the matter is that I still don't exactly know how I'm supposed to be advancing most of the time because I wasn't there when the content was current and there's not a lot of clear direction as to what it is I should be doing to advance my character. We always point people to the 1 to 119 guide, but once you reach the end of that guide there is still a LOT of things that you need to learn and things to do that are not immediately obvious and there's not really many resources to learn about them aside from a few job guides here and on bgwiki.

If I were a new player I could very easily see myself being turned off by the sheer amount of things I am expected to know. Decision paralysis is one of the biggest things that turns players away from games, and it is the chief complaint against other MMOs that have been around a long time. You see this point made a lot re: WoW and XIV. And while the game is better than it was in 75 cap as far as holding your hand at the start, it is exactly the same as ever once you get out of the starting areas. This is curbed quite a bit on 75 capped private servers by the fact that the game is significantly more social and you will very likely find people willing to answer your questions within your first few hours of playing. I didn't find a linkshell on retail until I was already 99, and that was not for a lack of trying.

On a different note, one of the reasons that as a developer you may want to stick to 75 cap is that if you're doing custom content, 75 capped gear and stats are simply easier to balance around. 119 stat bloat and the overall upscaling in power of spells, abilities, and weapon skills makes balancing content a lot trickier. Itemization is way more optimized and thus your fights have to be a lot more technically intricate to account for that. When I was working on Abyssea for Wings I started to realize just how impressive the Abyssea zones are from a programming standpoint and really changed my perspective on where the development mindset may have been during this time. I actually don't think that they were trying to "wind down" XI to make way for XIV like a lot of people seem to suggest when that topic is brought up, because the amount of effort and detail that had to go into Abyssea is off the charts. They made some poor design decisions, but the programming it took to build those zones is truly impressive.

Either way, most people who are developers for 75 capped private servers tend to agree that retail XI has a lot of really solid advancements. J. Allen Brack was right about some of what he said in that video clip, specifically that there are bugfixes and features that legitimately made the game better. They took some of those advancements with them when they worked on Classic, and later on went on to make "Season of Discovery," which is "reimagined classic." It has modern quality of life improvements and some class changes while still offering roughly the same sort of content that Classic does. Some of the XI pservers are also doing this too. Horizon is pretty much just Season of Discovery. Catseye is also doing something similar, although they're taking 99 content and scaling it back so that 75 players can do it. They have things like Records of Eminence, Domain Invasion, and are working on VWNMs and Hunts.

So yeah, while it may not appeal to you, not everything is for you. The day when you truly learn that will be the day that you stop caring how other people are having fun and simply learn to appreciate that cool things can exist without you.


So what? If they're playing a game and they're having fun playing that game then the objective has been met, fun is literally why games exist. I played street hockey when I was a kid because I lived in Florida where ice hockey wasn't a thing and I was perfectly fine with that. Never once did a Canadian show up and haze me for my roller skates.

Not a huge fan of his, but Asmongold sort of sums it up nicely as well as per my point of "worrying about too many things." I think this is another reason people who played when they were younger just default back to 75 cap. The mental burden of learning all the new things just isn't worth it. Plus if I go play on that new shiney field, I have to worry about messing up the grass, the paint, etc. I was already happy in my dirt lot, so why not just stay there?