Non-Japanese players who want to return to Final Fantasy 11 really just want to be able to afford it. That’s one conclusion from the official Square Enix survey for the MMORPG game, which was given to players who are currently or formerly subscribed to Square’s 2002 MMORPG.
In the “census,” lapsed players were asked, “Which of the following would possibly convince you to return to the game?” There were 11 possible responses, including an “other” answer, and it seems players could choose multiple answers.
Of those surveyed, 57.4% of “overseas” players (meaning non-Japanese) chose “Lower monthly subscription fees” as an answer. Japan did see about a quarter of its players note that they’d like lower fees as well, though it wasn’t as prominent as some other answers.
Plus, there’s an additional curious comment made by the census report: that players would love to see FF11 and FFXIV bundled together.
“[W]e noticed that numerous respondents wanted to see a discount for subscribing to both FFXI and FFXIV at the same time,” the census post reads. Basically, it’s implied that a lot of FFXI players don’t have the budget to play both this and FFXIV, which is fair.
Subscriptions for FFXI start at $11.95/month with a $1/month fee per character, while an FFXIV basic subscription is $14.99/month for 30 days on a basic account or $12.99/month for a 180-day expanded subscription for more characters. At the cheapest, that’s a combined approximate $25/month before taxes.
Meanwhile, Japanese players’ highest category was “Changes to lifestyle” at 41%, namely finding more time to play, followed by “Additional scenarios and quests.” Overseas, the second-highest reason was “Other,” which they investigated and found to mean that many overseas players, likely inspired by Blizzard’s developments, want to see a “Classic” server that recreates the level 75 days.
The maturity of answers here makes sense—the highest population who answered the survey was in their 30s to 40s overseas, and 40s to 50s in Japan.
