f13.net

It's been a solid four years since I last set foot in Final Fantasy 11, with my initial exposure lasting for all of about a week before the asian torture grind drove me off.  I was content to leave it that way too, until I saw a $4 one-month trial disk while bored in the wake of finishing BioShock.  I got it, installed it, and was surprised as hell to discover that they've actually lightened the grind to a more tolerable weight.  Grouping is still fairly mandatory upon hitting the teens from what I've seen, but a quest for characters in their 30s lets you summon an NPC henchman, and you can assign them a role (tank/healer/damage) to fill whatever you'd need for a duoing partner.  Additionally, rings are easily available that hold charges of an experience boosting enchantment, and that has given me a very swank boost in leveling speed that didn't exist back in the olden days.  The signet spell that the town guards can cast on you now gives an experience boost to partied people and a stat boost, both functions that didn't exist at launch.

That being said, FFXI is still one of the least user-friendly MMOGs ever devised.  The learning experience is akin to walking into an unlit, pitch-black room and yanking on unlabeled levers to see what happens, only to be told half an hour later that a naked pervert was standing in the room the whole time and you really should've been more careful about which levers you were grabbing.  Dying carries a price tag of 10% of a level, and the game isn't at all shy about de-leveling you.  Getting from point A to point B can involve a dizzying web of transportation involving chocobos, airships, ferries, and teleport magics from NPCs or PCs, and until you've completed the quests and have the money for those transport methods, you get to walk; no cheap griffon rides for you.  You do get a quest log, or at least a list of your active quests, but the NPCs are all playing coy about whether they're quest-givers; no floating exclamation points to be found.

The graphics engine is a weird chimaera; character graphics are excellent, but the environment looks like ass.  Muddy, low-res textures are used for terrain and objects, barely better than EverQuest's textures, while characters are running around looking crisp and detailed.  And despite the environment's low resolution and very short range for drawing PC and NPC models, it's not wholly smooth even on a 640MB Geforce 8800 GTS.  The engine is in dire need of a rewrite to improve its performance and replace the shitty textures with those of a decent resolution.  It looks better than EverQuest, but can't compare to any of the modern generation MMOGs.

The control scheme still sucks compared to a proper mouse-driven UI, but Xbox 360 controllers work very well with the game, better than constantly wrestling with its half-assed keyboard/mouse scheme.  Plugging in a console controller helps the handling considerably, but players would still be well-advised to create macros to automate commands that might take too long to enter through the menus.

All in all, I have to say that FFXI has gone from 'slamming your dick in a car door' to 'crotchety, unforgiving old MMOG that has potential for fun if you're willing to climb the steep learning curve'.  One back-handed benefit of that learning curve seems to be the discouragement of imbeciles; I haven't yet encountered anyone that I'd consider to be an utter moron in the game.  Presumably the morons never figure out that their characters aren't automatically equipped with their starter weapons, die in short order, become discouraged, and quit.  This is not to say that the population is immune to the presence of trolls, griefers, exploiters and other such rejects, but the utter lack of handrails on the game make it virtually impossible to use without a degree of care on the part of the player.

Can I choose which server I want to play on yet?
Does installing/patching require less than three hours?
Can I have more than one character per server without paying extra?

Actually, I could probably live with no to any or all of these questions, but I want to be able to travel easily between any of the starter cities. If I was to get back into the game again, it would definitely be as a Taru in Windurst. Bastock was complete and utter shit (can't speak for the other city) but I don't want to have to travel far and wide to party just because friends chose to be in another city. I had to basically delete my first character because they got stuck in the lands separating Windurst and Bastock and when I re-rolled in Bastock to play with friends I wanted to rip my eyes out. It was like playing in the Barrens but even drearier. And the Dunes. The Goddamned Dunes. Tell me they took out the fucking bats that patrolled both ends of that tunnel that connected the two parts.

Ugh. nvm.  I'd rather play in EQ's PoD with the USB cock-stabber attachment.

Just one question:

Have you seen EverQuest 1 lately?

I haven't been on it for a solid year, when I last logged on to a friend's account to say hello, but a lot of the old zones have been revamped to a much more modern-looking MMOG quality (Freeport upgrade design aesthetics aside).

Does a guy who makes a level one newb in EQ1 these days even see any other players?  Or is the entire playerbase a bunch of level 9000 guys on the other side of the world?

Probably not, and probably yes. I think the level cap is 75 or 80 by now.

Such is the way of things, in an 8-year-old Diku.

There is a newbie area now in Everquest called the Mines of Gloomingdeep where all 1st levels start out. This takes you to level 10 or so, and then it is off to the Plane of Knowledge to run the next set of quests.  Last time I checked in with EQ was with the release of the Serpent's Spine expansion (about a year ago)   which included a new starting city 'Crescent Reach', the new Drakkin race which  allowed you to level from 1 to 75 with the new quests/content.

Suprisingly, both Gloomindeep and Crescent Reach always have quite a few low level characters and there are  lots of people in the POK going to and fro, however the original starting cities are completely empty.  For yucks I once ported over to Freeport from the POK to bash some rats, and I don't think I  ever saw another character.  Overall the game does feel nicely poplulated even though some areas are compeletely underused.

Concerning FFXI  do you still need to re-buy the entire game if you haven't played for over three months? Last Christmas I picked up the 360 version for cheap and played for a couple of months, and would like to try it again some day, but I'm not going to buy another copy. This is the single-most retared customer-hating policy  that I have ever seen.

Yes, they dropped the stupid worldpass thing.  They do have a gold worldpass, which is like a referral bonus program where if someone signs up with a gold worldpass given by an existing player, the new and old players get bonus stuff, but it's not required to choose your own server.
Yes, thanks to putting everything on one DVD.  Still takes about an hour and a half, though, big patches.
Nope, they never did change that.
Airships can take you between cities, but to get the ability to ride the airship you either have to reach rank 5 through missions, or pay 500,000 gil for a license.  So not a big help to a starting character unless they've gone to goldsellers.
I walked through that tunnel with no sign of bats, but it was daytime, so dunno for sure.
I have no idea whether that insane re-buy the game thing is still in effect or not.  I do know that next week they're having one of their 'please come back, we miss your money' promotions where they'll restore your old characters even if they've been deleted, so I'm presuming that as part of that, they'll re-activate expired game accounts without trying to make someone buy the box.  However, unlike some other MMOGs that throw in a free month on their 'please come back' deals, FFXI is 'please resubscribe and pay for a month and come back', so we can see that Square is still not entirely conversant with the idea of good customer service.

Well, since they apparently delete characters after 90 days, I have 0 interest in ever installing it again.

That's the point of the 'please come back' thing, they'll un-delete the old characters.  If they had more sense about it, they'd do what Sony did and never delete any old accounts, but they apparently do have the ability to archive and restore old accounts when they want to.

FFXI was a great game completely ruined by Squeenix's arrogance and refusal to adapt to the western market. The problems were so simple to fix. So obvious. Don't delete characters, use an easier launcher, create a standard control set. Nevermind running NA servers with faster XP and looser grouping. Just those three things would probably have netted them tens of thousands of accounts over time.

I had my character restored at one point, but I was still stuck at the kazam airship block and a week later I was still sitting in the exact place I had been a year earlier shouting for the same group that wasn't going to be there. Just not enough players.

I found this on the ffxionline forum site.  For the tl;dr people, the upshot is that Square seems to have finally abandoned the whole 'go buy a new box of the game' thing.

[Edit: Spoke too soon, after that post were other posts reporting that they were unable to get back on with their original copies of the game.]

I'm tryng to remember, were there two or three different sets of usernames/passwords none of which could be the same?

The whole thing is like The Vision applied to customer service.

Yeah the "buy a new game" after you cancel thing only happens if you actually delete your old Playonline ID. Since it's free there's no need to do that. All you do to cancel is stop the subscriptions for each of your individual characters.

Still, with squenixes convoluted and stupid signon system I can see how it would be a normal thing for someone to do when they try to unsubscribe.

Yep, it's... unique.  There's an ID for logging in to the PlayOnline service, and completely separate IDs for the game itself.  NCSoft has a similar asinine setup where you have to first make an account on NCSoft, then make separate accounts for their games.

You've never had to buy a new game and old characters can be revived.


Bats are still there, but you can just ask a high level player to kill them for you.

Travel between the cities is not bad with outpost warping, teleport spells. chocobo whistles, airships, special teleport necklaces, etc. But it does take some time and effort to gain those things.

For the uninitiated -

What does FFXI offer, at present, that other games don't?  Preferably things that I'd be able to experience within 20 hours of casual, relatively non goal-oriented playtime.

FFXI's biggest draw is its storyline. As you grind your way through the game, you complete missions and get real final fantasy style cutscenes. It's pretty cool.

Downside is it's a grindfest of the worst kind, totally infested with RMT, they delete characters after 3 months and force you to re-buy the game to resubscribe, players of different levels can't play together because they advance nonoptimally, and americans are second class citizens. If you really liked sitting at the Guk zoneline trying for a frenzy group in EQ1 way back when, you're a total fruitcake, but FFXI is EQ1's logical successor. It's a hard core grindy frustrating masochistic MMO.

A lot of that simply is not true. You do not have to rebuy the game. Characters are not deleted after 3 months. (Although after some period of time re-activating them is a pain) The game is not infested with RMT and different levels grouping is really no different than most other games that don't have some sort of sidekick system.

As far as the original question, what are you comparing to? Compared to something like WOW it has a much more world-y feel, and is much more "hardcore" in a variety of ways both good and bad. In the end it's more a question of taste than anything though. It's hard for me to reccomend any MMORPG other than to say "you might like it depending on tastes."

They may have fixed some of that stuff, it's been a long time since I looked at FFXI. I find it hard to believe that they fixed the RMT since it was so incredibly pervasive. If they did, do you know how?

You say that like EQ1 had no redeeming features, when in fact it became quite a good game over time, especially once Brad's Vision was cleaned off of it. Aside from wiping half the playerbase in one fell sweep, the release of WoW was the best thing to ever happen to EQ1's gameplay because it forced change for the better, hard.

No, I played the game and I really loved it in a lot of ways. But those things are mostly true.

This is a simple factual question. The things that I called out are simply not true. You do not have to buy the game again to re-install - that is a simple fact. (I've done it myself)

FFXI still has its fair share of RMT but not nearly to the degree it once did, for a variety of reasons:

Automated fishing bots are harder to run.
Many notorious monsters and Rare/EX drops have been adjusted in how you spawn them, get them, etc.
Many formerly tradeable items are now Rare/EX. (Not tradeable AKA "soulbound")
S-E has been more aggressive about removing RMT money and players from the game.

Basically it has gotten to be progressively more of a pain in the ass to do RMT in FFXI so some of the people have moved on to other games. It still exists but it not nearly as bad as it was a few years ago when it was basically unchecked. The main problem now is that certain spawns are still camped by RMT but again a lot of spawns have been changed to avoid that. (Spawn them with an item and then they become your claim or something similar)

As far as the overall game it is pretty similar to EQ1 I suppose in overall feel. It's "harder" than WOW and grouping is the norm. Compared to when it first came out it is a lot less punishing but still punishing.

EQ1 may have become a better game over the years but that specifically was not what I was talking about. Unless you're still camping frenzy in 2007... in which case OH MY GOD GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!

Good to hear that they addressed the RMT campers. I expect you're right in that the main reason why they're gone is because they're grinding gold in WoW instead.

That's not what the site says (https://secure.playonline.com/polapps/s/s.kb.html.Qa?ZUID=3&polg_loc=en&id=1627&qs=id%3D0%26c1%3D0%26c2%3D0%26k%3Dcancel%26s%3D0%26o%3D10%26term%3D0%26caseNum%3D10%26polg_loc%3Den):

There is a distinction between unsubbing from PlayOnline and unsubbing from FFXI. PlayOnline costs nothing and there is no reason to unsub from it.

Trust me I've done it, you don't have to buy a new box. I uninstalled both FFXI and PlayOnline for over a year and reinstalled without problem.

What is there to do that's not advancement related?  I'd be interested in futzing around assuming I don't have to worry about leveling up much.  Are there other things to do?  I saw a mention of fishing and monster breeding (?) in this thread... are those fleshed out well?

It's a very Japanese game, shameless with its grind and very dedicated to the achievers.  The thing that makes those qualities charming in a masochistic way is that, while the player is presented with dozens of different things to achieve, the game gives you NONE of them without the player having thoroughly earned them first.  You wanna ride a chocobo?  Gotta be earned.  Ride the airship?  Earned.  Dual class, get an advanced class, get a pet?  Earned, earned, earned.  The only handout anyone gets from FFXI is fifty gil, and even that requires that you track down an NPC in town to hand in a ticket.

Here's an example: teleport spells.  White mages can teleport folks, but the person being teleported has to have gone to the teleporter spot and retrieved a crystal from it before they can be teleported there.  You can be teleported to outposts of your nation by an NPC in town, but first you have to take a quest to deliver supplies to an outpost before you can use it as a teleport destination.  Anyone wanting to be able to have the convenience of teleporting around has to first build their own transportation network, no being able to pick up flight points whenever you wander into a new town.  It's up to the individual to decide whether that leads to the satisfaction of accomplishment or the fury of a game going out of its way to be a jerk.

My mind has been leaning to the "jerk" part.  I play my games to enjoy time away from the world, not to be frustrated and grind it out.  This game doesn't sound like a productive use of my time.

Honestly the vast majority of the game is advancement related. If you aren't interested in that then it probably isn't worth your time.

Yep, they call their classes jobs for a reason.

Where's Grunk?

Probably OD'd.  On Drugs or FFXI, I'm not really sure.

I think what turned me off was the inability to solo past 14 or so. I'd sit in the Dunes and ask for groups and would waste hours not being able to do anything because I'd get my cute lil' kitty ass handed to me if I went off on my own. And the mob AI would do weird things. I remember hunting in a swamp area near Bastok and was sitting resting and watching some guy battle a goblin at least a half a football field away. I mean, the goblin was way out there. Then for no apparent reason, the gob turns in my general direction and with no provocation bee-lines it for my sitting spot and kills me. Two hits. The guy originally fighting it was running behind it whacking away, but no, Mister Goblin had other things on his mind that day and I guess wanted a fresh Mithra pelt for his collection.

And then there was this Renki shit. I'm sorry. I don't want to play a game with a combat system so involved and convoluted that I have to memorize attach moves in a certain order and ccordinate with the other members of the party just to pull off some uber move. Some might like it but not my taste. I just want to whack the foozle.

If the game was $4.99 (or free) I might consider it again. I'll still go back to my EQ if I need to remember what pain was.

*golf clap*    :roll:

You suck balls.

They just banned some 9,000 accounts today for exploits and gold-selling, better hope he was on the up-and-up or they might find him swinging from his sheets in rehab tonight.  You have to respect a company that manages to be ruthless in bannings despite not having a large subscriber base.

Yeah, probably. The whole idea just seemed way too complicated and let's face it, we have enough trouble coordinating the action in groups with people we know let alone PUGs. And by the time I quit, I think I knew two other RL friends who played FFXI.

The problem is that whole attitude is why we can't have nice things.  You doom us to mindless hit the hotkey when the monster glows bullshit combat systems because anything else is too taxing on the minds of the LCD.

When I want to put my brain on autopilot I read a book or watch some tv/anime or sit around and chitchat w/ friends or drink a beer and watch the sunset.  When I want to be challenged to complete objectives I play games, usually with human opponents so there is the thrill of besting a thinking enemy.

MMO "gamers" simultanously want no challenge and achiever DING!GRATZ goodies.

What is the result?  Predictably games that award people for time spent not actually learning a game system or being good at the game.

Fucking fantastic that..  Doing great things for the medium.

I don't think that's it at all.

You can have interesting combat mechanics all you want... if you're by yourself (see fighting games). If you want to do that with other people though, and have it based off of something other then "hit the pretty lights!", you're just asking to get stabbed in the cock (see LotRO, FFXI, EQ2).

I would love it if a game challenged me with awesome group PvP at the same time having me do integral calculus while reciting The Epic of Gilgamesh backwards to unleash massive damage... but that's not going to happen, because that would require X people that can also do that.

If you play fighting games solo only I'm not even sure I should be talking to you, but lets ignore that part of your post.

FFXI's cockstabs have fuckall to do with renkei, its not a cockstab its an interesting combat mechanic.  The cockstabs were forced grouping, holy trinity class balance, slow leveling and massive death penalties.

I'm sorry if renkei is TOO HARD to be considered a valid mechanic then we should all just go home because apparently there aren't enough people who can do X and X = anything beyond hit the hotkey when the cooldown is up!  4tw!

Yes, it sucked being in groups that couldn't handle renkei, I agree it sucks other people were too stupid and their attitude matched Raydeen's post.  They were content to get 1/3rd the xp/time rate because then thinking wasn't required.  I agree, fuck those people.

But by that logic Guitar Hero shouldn't have hard songs because then you need a friend who isn't a fucking moron of epic porportions to play them with.

Except nobody says that.  Only MMO's get that fucking crowd..

Ok, I see where you're coming from. But was Renkei really a 'nice thing'? The concept didn't appeal to me. Granted it was way better than the EQ hit auto-attack and wait but it seemed that it crossed into madness. Or maybe I'm just old and wanted something simpler. Right now, CoX and WoW have the best combat systems for me. They're both simple enough that I can grok them but not so simple that I'm going to step away from the keyboard knowing that the fooz will be dead when I get back. Both systems off enough (seeming) action and diversity that I don't feel like it's just an exchange of dice rolling.

And if you didn't get my original spin, I didn't like renkei but did say that some did. So it must be a somewhat valid mechanic. It just wasn't for me. I"m all for innovation but I just didn't see that as fun in an online game. If you did, good for you. It was too much for my brain to handle.

Link (http://www.garagegames.com/products/148/)

@Raydeen:
You know, you are too nice.  It makes me feel like more of a dick then usual..

I'd write up a post about why I liked renkei but really it comes down to I feel games should offer a challenge, I expect people to die to mobs I expect fights to actually get my pulse up, not just to sit there eyes half closed tapping 3 hotkey buttons over and over while alt tabbing to my desktop to read f13...

There has to be something between a challenge and The Vision and Brad-flavored Koolaid, it can't be that much of a slippery slope.

Nah, yer not a dick. I was actually glad someone insulted me. I think you and Ironwood have been the only two to ever call me out on something. I figured nobody ever read anything I said 'cause I know I've said really stupid things and others have gotten quite the bitch slapping just for saying 'hullo'. I feel like part of the show now. I'm so happy! *sniff* :D

I wasn't too clear, but I meant "by myself" as in "not part of a team/group". Fighters pit two (or more) people, all by themselves against each other, that works fine.

FFXI renkei are just doing a special attack 3 to 5 seconds after someone else does one. (And knowing which one to do) They really aren't that complicated and the damage they add is fairly minor in many circumstances. They do make a group more efficient but the difference between a group that does them and a group that doesn't is not very large.

As far as holy trinity, that does not exist any more in FFXI. It used to be that every group needed a white mage, usually a black mage and then a tank but all the options have gotten wider. Red Mage and Summoner can both main-heal as can combinations of other jobs and a variety of jobs can tank. (Hell, my NPC tanked for my group once very effectively) Groups are a lot looser than they used to be in terms of both size and content. Also there is a lot of powerlevelling these days which makes both healing and tanking requirements lower.

It used to be that you could sit around for hours waiting for a white mage but that is not a problem any more. The main problem as a low-level person is that not many other people will be at your level, but if you can find 5 or 6 free people you can often form a party regardless of what jobs they are. The main challenge is not in finding the right combination but just in finding enough free people at your level.

At launch the difference between a group with no renkei and a group w/ a good setup was huge.  I would say x2-x4 leveling speed which was huge when normal leveling was painful as shit.  This was super true when you were at a level plateau where the BLM's had just gotten the next damage spell.

BLMs are not that common these days so the ability to do extra damage on a magic burst doesn't matter as much. Also these days because there aren't that many new players you don't often find the really bad groups of yore that would actively lose XP by getting wiped constantly. Typically if you are playing with lower level players you are playing with people raising a subjob, who while far from perfect are not total idiots.

The main bottleneck to XP in FFXI is downtime including death. If you can pull enemies steadily without resting and without dying you are in pretty good shape. And now that powerlevelling is pretty common that isn't hard to do even for average groups. (There are also changes to spells and abilities and signet effects etc. that make this easier, for example smart Red Mages now have essentially infinite MP)

Then newest expansion also introduced some areas that have easier enemies relative to their levels.

One of the trends has been rather than to pull very strong enemies to pull weaker enemies faster. This avoids death better and also requires fewer renkeis and magic bursts to be effective. Against an IT++ enemy a lot of your damage is going to come from magic bursts and renkeis, against a VT to IT enemy it doesn't make as much of a difference. The fact that the lower level areas are less populated also makes this more possible because there is less competition for pops.

In the old days I was in plenty of groups that either lost XP or gained it very slowly, that only happens maybe 2% of the time now.

FFXI is still a punishing game but compared to near launch it is a lot better. Basically there have been a bunch of small changes in both the rules and the player base that have had a cumulative effect.

The 'please come back we miss your money and are such great guys that we won't force you to re-buy the game, honest' deal started up today. (http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/campaign/wcb/index.html)  I tried to restore my old character for kicks and because I don't even remember what my old character was, but their web form couldn't recover it.  I was told that it'd be done manually and that I'd hear from someone in five to seven 'business days'.  I hate that term, why can't anyone just say, "Yeah, it'll be about a week."  Don't try to couch time in some bullshit perspective that ignores weekends.

I pulled my first stint as party main healer last night as a white mage, and let me just say: holy shit.  I've played healers since EQ, but I've never been so consistently pressed to keep people alive, and especially not at such a low level.  It's a distinctly uncomfortable sensation to have to sit down in the middle of a fight and pray that the mana comes back fast enough to get off that heal while watching the party's health bars sinking fast.

White mage is a fun job. And if you're good at it you'll be remembered. Far too many WHM's hate it and just do it because it makes getting a group easier.

FFXI was fun hard pve, only game I've ever actually gotten a thril from the pve encounters on a regular basis.  Wasn't enough to keep me subbed by a long shot but they did a way better job then any of the other AAA titles I've played (all of them unless you count SWG) at keeping pve interesting.

I was a WHM and I still spent hours and hours waiting for parties.

What level were you and what were you fighting?

Also at low levels these days there is sometimes actually a glut of white mages, especially with power levellers.

I was around level 14 and the party was fighting crabs, bugs, and the occasional goblin in the dunes.  I learned today, however, that the struggles of yesterday were largely due incompetence.  I couldn't find a party so I made my own, grabbing a Warrior, Paladin, and Black Mage to hunt around the same place as yesterday.  It was smooth as silk, despite having two fewer people.  The warrior didn't grab things way above our level and didn't pull the AoE-exploding monsters right next to the mages, the paladin did a fantastic job of holding aggro, the mages paced themselves and never got aggro or ran out of mana.  And since there were fewer of us in the party, we were actually getting more experience per fight despite fighting weaker monsters.  Later on we picked up a fifth person and bumped up to more challenging fights without a problem.  Though by then we'd all leveled at least twice, so that was toning down the difficulty somewhat.

By the end of the evening I broke 19 and got halfway to 20, much faster than I'd expected to.

Well congrats! You're almost out of the dunes. Have you done your subjob quest yet? New characters often have a problem getting the skulls for that one before they outlevel Valkurm.

No, I'm still waiting on a skull.  We found one, with two members in the party needing it, and the other person beat me on the roll.  Then an idiot who already had his subjob lotted for it and beat her, so the skull went to someone who didn't need it and couldn't use it.  I'd lost anyhow so it made no difference to me, but I felt bad for her.

There's a dungeon not too horribly far away where those skull dropping ghouls are very common. If you're lucky someone will have a high level buddy who'll take a group of low levels there to get them set up.

I don't remember if you've played this game before or not so I hope you aren't too displeased to hear that people are going to expect you to have your subjob properly leveled before you move on to the next hunting ground. 20WHM/1BLM just doesn't cut it. :)

OMG the skulls. It took FOREVER. Now it's making me feel nostalgic. Something is deeply wrong with me.

Me too, this thread is making me want to play again.  HG:L can't come soon enough!!!   :inluv:

I just went hunting for skulls again to gain entrance to Ahrt Urghan. Took forever even with Thief sub for treasure hunter. Was in Gusgen mines. (Other 5 items were cake, took 5 minutes each) The first time I needed skull for subjob I literally lost on rolls to other people maybe 15 times in a row.

What server are you on?

At level 14 crabs can be pretty tough. With stoneskin and defense boost monks and one-handed weapon users often hit for single digits or even zero.

Smaller groups get better XP than they used to so grouping with 3 or 4 people is much more viable than it used to be.

I have BLM to 14 already, so the instant I can access it I'll have the subjob leveled and ready to roll.  My original plan was BLM to 18, WHM/BLM to 30, then start playing with the advanced jobs, but I couldn't get a group to save my life as BLM/NUB, so I switched to WHM before having a subjob just to be able to get the parties I needed to level to 18.


Midgardsormr.  It seemed to have a decent and active population and so far hasn't disappointed.  Hardly crowded by any measure, but enough people running around to find parties.


I had party damage messages turned off so I could more easily keep an eye on how much damage the monsters were doing to the party, so I have no clue how much damage people were inflicting on the crabs.  The problems hinged heavily on the tanks not holding aggro very well and the pullers pulling the monsters right smack into the middle of the party, who would then start tossing bombs and catching the casters in the AoE.


Not only that, a patch about a year ago made the Signet buff gives an XP boost to small parties.  An unbuffed duo gets 60%/60% of monster XP, but with Signet on it goes to 75%/75%.  There are diminishing returns with more people in the party, with a full party getting no benefit at all, but small parties are helped out a fair bit.

Well. once you're level 20 and have your subjob you'll be ready to move on to the next hunting spot and get your choco license as well. If you're going as a WHM again I highly recommend that you buy your spells in advance if you can. Regen is an awesome spell and you're going to want to start casting it the moment you can without having to run back to town.

The next big cock-block is the hunting area after that starts at level 25. For that you need a Khazam air pass and getting the stuff for that quest requires visits to 3 or 4 widely seperated dungeons. It's a massive pain in the ass.

Thanks to the kindness of strangers I got the skull, got my support job, and got a guide to Jeuno.  On the way, I learned that FFXI is almost as cruel about invisibility as EQ was; it won't drop without warning, but it sure will drop after twenty seconds.

Even so that Invis spell is going to let you do a lot of your rank quests solo that other people would have to find a group for. The one that lets you move silently is important too. There are lots of mobs that rely more on their ears than their eyes.

Bah the first time I ran to Jeuno I didn't use invis, I just dodged like a man.

How are things going Kitsune? Have you burned out and quit yet?

I have overcome the Kazham cockblock, and with the required keys in hand I am valiantly striding forth... so I can be cockblocked by my lack of money.  The cost of equipping a character has shot well past the amount of income I've achieved, with spells going for 5,000 gil apiece and the set of level 20 cloth armor being around 40,000 on the auction house.  I'm still wearing level 11 equipment at 23, which I can only get away with by being a caster and safely on the back lines.

This has forced me to investigate means of making money.  Tradeskills have been prompt about devouring my crystal supplies but rather reluctant to produce much in the way of results, and mining lead mostly to broken pickaxes.  I've been told that fishing is the best way for poor people to get some money for supplies, will be giving that a whirl to see how it pans out.

Oh yeah, forced crafting that was super weak..  I did like the growing things system though that was sort of cool.

The best way to save money is to only buy what you need. As a WHM the only thing you really need is spells, and you can skip even a lot of those like the crap bar-spells. (Barfira is nice against goblin bombs, that's pretty much it...I don't even have all the WHM spells I could...) +MND gear is decent if you are casting slow/paralyze sometimes.

Your armor is really irrelevant for the most part, as a WHM I wore a Linen Robe into the mid-30s along with a level 8 shield. Trader's gear is probably a waste of money (but it does look cool), you can scrape by until Seer's gear at 30 or until you start getting the first set of Race Specific Equipment which starts becoming available at level 27 IIRC.

From what I understand it's hard to make money on tradeskills because the game is mature at this point and there are a lot of crafters. It can still be done if you pay close attention to what is in high demand but don't expect big returns.

The way I made money was I toughed it out till level 40, did a BCNM and got a Peacock Charm that I sold for 2.2 million. You can also make decent money raising subjobs by focusing on the right mobs - bees and crawlers. (For beehive chips and silk thread) If you level your subjobs around Bastok you can kill bees on the hills in South Gustaberg then move the Fumeroles, then move to Konschtat highlands and kill nothing but bees for 10 levels. This can make a decent amount of money (in the tens of thousands) as you level through the levels where you don't normally form groups. Sapling type enemies (the little wandering sprouts) also drop a variety of valuable items at low levels.

That's what I like to do to kill two birds with one stone, raise a subjob and make some quick cash.

Moat Carp are your friend. I've been out of the game a while but I doubt that's changed.

Moat Carp can be caught in low level areas with very low fishing skill and there's a quest that requires that you turn in 10,000 of them to get the best fishing rod in the game so a lot of rich high level guys just buy their Moat Carp off the AH.

It's possible that something has changed since I last played so check the AH to make sure but fishing is how I made all of my spell and equipment money. It's boring but it's easy.

ffxiah.com is a good way to figure out what to fish/farm. Looks like Moat Carp don't do very well these days though I'd double check an in-game AH to be sure.

The FFXI economy has a lot of deflation these days for a few reasons: most people have what they need out of the lower level stuff, RMT bannings, end-game activities take money to enter, etc. The price on virtually everything is dropping and has been for some time.

Geeze, all of this talk about FFXI has me half convinced to resubscribe for a month or two to see what's changed.

They are doing the "Return to Vana'Diel" thing where they can revive old chars so now would be a good time.

I did that to see if my old Dragoon is still around from 2003 and I suppose I lucked out since he was.  Bastards charged me $30, though; not sure why.

Quite tempted at first to reroll a new galka character, but damn is downtime in the game still slow. Completely killed my incentive. There's something about the weapon abilities, cutscenes, and music that is luring and always tempts me when I'm not playing (gd nostalgia), but fuck if I can justify the grind for it. I'll likely give leveling another attempt this weekend and see if the Dunes are active; my concern isn't so much about soloing as it's whether or not there is anyone to reliable (as in, within sitting around for hours LFG) to group with randomly. I rode my Dragoon around for a while and a lot of areas looked dead.

From the websites I checked, the new XP rings and healer/tank/dps 'pet' you can acquire seem like helpful additions.

Don't re-roll, you'll hate yourself for it. Race doesn't really matter.

Drg/Whm is a pretty good solo combination, though I'm not sure at what levels. Since 2003 Dragoon has been improved a lot, you can heal your pet and call it more often (every 20 minutes as opposed to 2 hours) and 2-handed weapons got a boost. (well, a boost after a big nerf to Pentathrust...)

XP ring can be gotten from the guards in town, are nice. Also if you got the anniversery ring that kicks ass. (Double XP) I don't think you can get the NPC helper until level 30 or so.

The big problem with levelling now is that so many people are high level there just aren't many people to group with at lower levels. A new expansion is coming out with new jobs in a few months, that should increase the number of low-level jobs looking for groups a lot. When the last expanion came out the lowbie areas were pretty busy with 30 blue mages running around in them...

Also don't be afraid to form your own groups, that really is the key to consistent parties. Don't just LFG, form your own, and remember that a group of 3 or 4 people is still pretty good these days.

I'm on Ramuh by the way if anyone who reads this thread is on Ramuh and needs help.

I had no problems finding a group in the dunes, plenty of people are leveling new jobs at any given time.  One nice thing about the game, the steady churn of the entire playerbase through all of the level ranges keeps the newbies from winding up completely alone while everyone else on the server's in the endgame areas.

I looked for a trial or something but didn't get anything. Is there any way I could try this without buying a box?

Pretty sure the answer is no.

There's a $2 one month trial. Not sure what you have to do to upgrade that to a live account though.

The game itself is cheap anyway. 19.99 for the game and all of the expansions includes 30 days I think.

They're selling trial DVDs in Gamestops, I think it was five bucks, came with the game and expansions and a month subscription.  The trick is that when the month's up the license keys expire, so you need to go buy the full game and use the registration codes from it to continue playing.  Which is the same deal as the WoW trial disks, so it's not a scam or anything, but prospective buyers should be aware.

I bought the retail box of the game today to continue past the trial month and it came with a one-month buddy pass; anyone who wants it can have it.  Gamestop has put the trial DVDs on sale for two bucks, so honestly you might find it's a better deal to just pay the money and avoid the hassle of downloading the client, but the offer's out there for anyone who wants it.

I've been steadily surprised at how thoroughly helpful the players are; strangers have practically been falling over themselves to help me out with quests and getting around.  Earlier today a member of a party that I was in handed me thousands of gil worth of equipment, told me to mail it back to him when I was done with it, and left.  I couldn't even conceive of loaning some random person in a PUG in WoW lots of valuable stuff, it'd be on the auction house before you could blink.  It's almost creepy seeing high-level people wander into low-level areas and start healing all the lowbies for an hour, that sort of behavior's really the opposite of what I've come to expect from MMOGs.  Back in EQ, occasionally a high-level person would come and camp in the newbie zones and help out, but it was rare back then and I never once saw it happen in WoW.

Forced grouping builds a strong community. I saw that stuff beginning to happen last time I reactivated my account a couple of years ago. It sounds like it's even more common now.

Games like this tend to weed out the tards.  Anyone who sticks with FFXI or EQ or what-have-you will generally be a much more mature player. It's good to know that the whole MMOGsphere hasn't de-evolved into a mass of jibbering idiots telling Chuck Norris jokes. (although I love a good CN joke) I've occasionally logged into EQ with my druid or BL and showered buffs and money on people in Crushbone. It makes the day a little brighter for everyone.

Also people are used to hardship in this game thus they have sympathy for others. Whenever I pass a lowbie I heal them and cast protect on them, and if I'm looking for a group with nothing to do I'll gladly heal people for a while.

Yeah, it takes a real man -- kids won't let themselves get kicked in the balls more than once or twice before giving up.

it's true though; once you get past the ball-busting gauntlet, you know that the only people who are left have also had the fortitude to get through it too.

I suppose in a way it lessens the burning, shooting pain.

Yeah, after 'Congratulations! You've improved at having your cock stabbed (255)', you tend to feel no more pain and actively try to help others reach the max level with as little pain to them as necessary.

The grind is the grind, and the changes in FF have brought its grind fairly in line with WoW or any other MMOG.  The only trick at this point is that instead of soloing for seventy hours you group for seventy hours.

lol nah im still alive. Ive just been busy with RL crap.

I have said all along that travel issues have been fixed. Outpost warp fixed this... and it is very easy to do the outpost warp quests.

SE did a damn good job with the 2hander fix... which made me, a DRK main very happy.

On my server, I can say 80% of the RMT have been removed. Truth is, a lot of my Gil, was generated by RMT buying my goods... Now Gil is so rare... and the trade skill system has been destroyed because there is no reason to do it... In the past, I could just garden and be a middle man, now if I want to actually make gil, I have to go out and gather the stuff (IE Farm, which with heavy RMT, you could never do).

In regards to the complaint about the textures being poor. Well you need to customize your settings. A stock install, is just a PS2 version of the game. I run FFXI in on a 46’ screen, in high def… looks great. No draw in issues, everything looks great… trust me, I am an eye candy wh0re.

IMO, the real draw of this game is the end game and its linkshell system. the other mmos ive played/play, I have always had to be part of a clan/guild. And was forced to do what ever that clan was doing. In ffxi this is not the case. In FFXI, you can join what we call an Event shell. For example, I don’t want to do crap like Sky or Dynamis (or maybe when I can fund my own relic, ill do dynamis). I don’t want to do Kings (or have the time). In fact right now, I can only play 2-3 nights a week… for about 4 hours a clip… I am casual end game player (yup there is such a thing) and guess what, I have all the uber gear that those other guys have… thanks to the linkshell system I can do my Sea/Limbus/(soon to be Salvage) without having to give up my RL life. Do you wow players get to pick and choose what content you want to only focus on? I sure as shit didn’t get to in EQ…

Bare in mind, that yeah getting loot in ffxi takes just as long as it does in WoW or EQ or anything else ( I know BLM’s that took them a year to get full nash, I know a pld that took him 7 months to get pld relic body… and ive been doing limbus for 7 months with only the legs to show for it…) but it is worth it in ffxi and not because it takes so long, but because the shit is hot. Stuff like homam, Aries etc… really cool gear.

I dont get this. It took me 3 months to level my ninja to 75. Just doing pugs, with a 50 hour work week. I mean, WTF do you want? to kill one mob and ding 75? with all of the exp bands, if you cant level and be productive, then thats your fault.   What you wana solo your brains out for 70 levels, then go and team up with a bunch of retards who do not understand the concepts of group dynamics (and wounder the phuck why lol). What, you wana get changed into a wolf and go murder the same sht for 80 levels? lol.... Or phuck better yet, how about this? you can just login pick what the phuck you wana train or learn and just log the phuck off. GG

L   2    P

The real issue, is ppl that bitched. if they would actually bitch to someone ingame, or read a damn forum or get this... ACTUALLY GIVE A SHIT... who knows maybe you would have fun. Instead, you wana go it alone... be by yourself... shit wtf do you even play mmos for? Last time i checked, Elder scrolls was a shit load more fun then any mmo ive ever played.

You people FAIL so HARD. There is no way on earth that you people were hardcore EQ players, no phucken way at all. Because an old school player, he would have followed the same ideas and concepts that got him to the planes in the phucken first place (you know, actually talking to the people in the phucken world your playing in? lol). an old school player would understand that, it is not how fast you get there, but the actual journey that matters. That the shit has to mean something. AND THIS IS WHY, YOUR GAME SUCKS SO BAD. THIS IS WHY YOUR GAME FAILS. So stay in your fisher price mmo.


Now i am sure, someone is going to come in here and flame my broken english. But remember, you flame because your a fucken R'Tard.

HOLY SHIT, LOOK EVERYBODY, GRUNK'S BACK! WE'VE MISSED YOU PAL!

I wonder if you're sober/clean/off the smack? Judging by those posts, better luck next time I suppose.

THERE IS CAKE! Also!

Fixed it for you. You miserable waste of chemicals.

What did you do, wake up after a month in a coma, google yourself, and find this thread?

Lrn 2 troll plz.

Nah, took a time out at work and figured i would come here and take a look around. Glad to see A holes like yourself are still here, repin the F13 community, STRONG. who the fuck is trolling here? This is a thread about FFXI, you dont like it? Then GTFO. Your the fucken troll, you cock smokin turd burgler.

The only reason, you come here and bitch, is because I am correct and you are wrong. Now I release you, go back to MC or w/e the fuk you were doing b4.

ME > YOU (just fucken deal with it)

I was enjoying this thread. I was even thinking of giving FFXI another look.

So much for that.

O boo fucken hoo. Its ok, we got approx 500k subs. you people act like this game is like horizons or some shit lol. As if, we need more people...

But heck, if anyone here wants to give the game a shot, and needs help... hit me up on the Remora server... I'll give you the keys to the city.

There are refreshments?   :eat:

Wow, it may seem insensitive to say this to someone out of rehab, but man, you seriously need to take some pills.  I was complimenting FFXI by saying that its grind isn't inordinately bad, way to ride that horse in the completely wrong direction.

Phucken A, tihs thread delivars!

I laugh.

So hard I laugh.  Also bump, what if someone missed the triumphant return of GRUNK!!!

I love that he refers to FFXI as "we": 

lawlz, whata crazy fucker.

Fortunately I've never met anyone as deficient as grunk while playing, hopefully he's a bizarre fluke.  Although I've heard people murmur darkly about FFXI's version of endgame guilds, so apparently some of the 'I'm washing my armor with your tears' players are infesting the highest levels of the game.

Weird thing is, FFXI has instanced boss fights, but for some reason they stuck a whole pile of bosses outside of instances and in the normal game world, where they're subject to pissing matches like EQ's raid bosses were.  Apparently some players feel compelled to camp these monsters and be dicks about it to other players.

FFXI has a huge variety of end-game stuff, including "hyper notorious monsters" that spawn in the normal game world. Only a handful of them are normally camped, but the ones that drop the best items are camped all the time.

They've steadily added more instanced endgame stuff both for huge groups up to 64 people (Dynamis) and for groups of 3-6 people (Assault).  I haven't played in quite a while, but I had a very enjoyable 2-3 years (starting from US launch) of gaming in FFXI.  Having groups of friends to do missions with and to level with (static parties was the term of the art when I was playing) helped a lot, though I certainly had plenty of fun from time to time with random groups as well. 

It utterly amazed me how effectively they shut down the unbelievable inflation from the RMT madness.  It took them a while but they got results.  I gather the economy is bizarre in different ways now, but at least hyper-inflation is gone and the 2 million gil I have on hand (which was effectively pocket change back when I stopped playing) actually is kinda valuable now -- never saw that coming.

The most money I ever made crafting was when they added the puppetmaster class and people needed the crafted items to add features to their puppets.  A friend and I spent a couple days immediately after that update scrounging materials, doing a bunch of crafting, and raking in a ton of cash from the horde of people leveling the new class and wanting all the goodies NOW NOW NOW.

People complain about the texture quality and such, but I always enjoyed the look of the world and especially the armor models that aren't just a texture wrapped around generic boots #002 or whatever. 

- Q

EDIT: fixed typo

Yeah, the armor has a solid 3D feel that is missing from many games.

The whole gameworld blows every other MMO out of the water imo.  Too bad forced grouping is such shite.  Also they really should add some non foozle whacking, non crafting minigames.  They don't have any do they?

These are all the assorted minigames I can recall from FFXI:

Crafting:
about standard fare, breakage is a bit sucky, strangely addictive from an inventory management puzzle perspective at times.
Alchemy was decent money for me back in the day
HQ success rates tend to make crafting highly favor max-level crafters from a profit standpoint
Hardcore crafters hold all kinds of insane superstitions about what direction they should be facing, game day, phase of moon, etc.  Some of which do seem to have some statistical impact on HQ and breakage, but mostly are just noise.

Fishing:
I found both the original and the new (anti-bot-measures-included) fishing to be pretty tedious.
It was decent money when people were buying moat carp by the boatload or during the various rusty cap madness bits.
Used to be a popular thing to bot.

Chocobo Racing:
ride from point a to point b across some number of zones
various prizes (xp scrolls included I think), limited number of times you can do it per some external amount of time

Escort Missions:
Make sure NPC makes it from point A to point B alive.
Reward includes cash (first time) and XP scrolls (repeatable).
Repeatable weekly.
5 or 6 different ones available.
Generally need at least a small group, though at higher levels maybe not.

Gardening:
Grow plants in pots in your moghouse.  Feed them crystals.  Get various results.
This used to be extremely good money.  A couple friends of mine had many alt characters just to have the max 10 pots per character for growing tree cuttings into saplings.  Saplings were used to grow trees to get high end crafting components.

NPC Adventuring Buddy:
Quest available at lv30 to get an NPC buddy you can summon periodically.
Helpful for soloers or small parties.  Can give NPC buddy different weapons, etc to use.
Can have NPC buddy adopt different playstyle (healer, tank, fighter, etc).

Auction House:
Some people consider this a fun minigame ^^  I used to make some money at times buying things that were underpriced and relisting them higher or listing them in another regional auction house where there was higher demand, etc.

Chocobo Digging (what's the real name for this?):
Can spend greens to make chocobos you're riding dig for stuff.  Mostly gets you junk, last I heard.

Seasonal Event Quests:
Random silly holiday events usually involving small groups of people trading random items to get a certain set to get some event-specific gear or house decorations or fireworks or food or items that transform the appearance of your character for a bit.
My absolute favorite one of these was a "test of courage" one they did where you and a partner get warped into some very high level zone temporarily reduced to level 1 and made invisible and need to find each other to return for your prize.  This was a total blast and pretty cool in that it let even brand new players get a glimpse of some cool areas they would not safely be able to see for a long time.

There's now some kind of pokemon-like minigame.  Don't know the details.

Make your own fun:
The sorta informal bunch of random friends linkshell (guild) I was part of hosted random events like "naked race to Jeuno" -- everyone set to a level1 job with no gear equipped and see who can make it on foot to the central city (Jeuno) from a starting city first.  Prizes distributed for 1st/2nd/3rd place, etc.  Totally silly but fun anyway.

- Q

I wish I had a higher level character to fall back on...

I had THF35, WAR1X, NIN1X if I remember right.  Oh well if I ever feel like I HAVE to play a diku-based mmo this'll be the one.

I may start playing again when the next expansion is released.  The CoP expansion a couple years ago was a total blast.  Some of those missions were pretty crazy-hard but it was a *lot* of fun and it was a nicely epic storyline.  You really do feel like you're saving the world when the final battle in the story is with the giant, banished twilight god in an arena where you can see the planet below you.  Very stylish.

I got a ways up there.  BLM75, WHM43, DRK34, most other jobs in the 10-20 range.  I did finish BLM leveling after they adjusted the XP requirements for 55-75.   It's a little less harsh now.  When I started level 63 was the halfway point XP-wise from 1 to 75.  Though with a good party and well-optimized foozle-whacking 8-10K XP/hour was possible, making even 44K XP for lv75 only a couple evenings of grind.  The renkei combo stuff made combat a bit more than button mashing, though still not a totall thrill-fest.

- Q

I totally missed this when I first read the thread way back when.  Midgard is a good place.  Keep your eye out for CurseTheYagudo or FantasyInsanity folks.  There's a ton of really great people on the server overall, but those guys I did a ton of gaming with.  CTY was originally just a handful of friends who had started playing together at launch.  We got pretty big but remained pretty silly all the way through.  It's good to know they're still out there, cursing the Yagudo, as they should be. http://cursetheyagudo.org/ for all your Yagudo Cursing needs.

- Q

I hit 30 over the weekend and with a liberal dose of help from a bored linkshell member unlocked the summoner job without nearly as much hassle as some of the horror stories have described.  I also unlocked beastmaster, as it was a quick little quest from Jeuno.

I'm now also completely fucking broke.  I can see how the gold sellers found fertile ground in FFXI; I'm only getting at best 3k per hour with fishing, the best money-maker I've found to date.  The tradeskills are gaping maws of money-devouring until you throw a couple million gil into them to raise them high enough to start making items that people will pay for, and with white mage as my main job, I lack the offensive power to farm rare monsters for their drops.  All of the money I've made so far has been going into buying the spells I need, my equipment is mostly level 11-ish.  Thankfully the white mage is seldom attacked, so having terrible gear isn't affecting me that much.

I've never been the best at making cash in any game; saving for my mount in WoW was a looooooooong process, and it's that much worse in FFXI.  Scary thing is that from everything I've heard, FFXI's economy is the best now that it's been in years.

When you get to level 40 you can start doing BCNMs, you might even be able to do some now. BCNMs are a good way to make money. I do BCNM 40 "Under Observation" because it drops both Utsusemi: Ni (400k) and Peacock Charm. (2 million) Even a terrible run should net you 10-20k+.

I believe that BCNM is the most value for the number of beastman seals.

If you are only making 3k an hour it might be better to farm silk or bees. Bees drop beehive chips and honey fairly often, both of which are somewhat valuable. The gustaberg area bees all drop nice stuff, except for the level 1 bees.

If I were you I would raise Summoner from 1 to 12 or so, solely off of bees. Not only will you be raising a helpful subjob for WHM but you should end up with a few stacks of beehive chips, honey and wind crystals.

If you were on my server I'd send you some money...

Pretty soon I'll need to make money again after I finish buying the level 51 HQ staves, maybe I'll discover some better tips I can share with you.

By far the best implementations of fishing and gardening ever.  Oh Noes!  It's watersday, so sorry need to run back to moghouse and harvest.  Can I get a warp please?  I'll brb.

The bitch to FFXI is the high cost of getting started in most money-making ventures.  I looked first at mining.  200 gil per pick, picks seem to break about 1/3 of the time when mining, and I dug up primarily iron ore.  Iron ore is a non-stacking item, to make it stackable you need Blacksmithing at level 20 to smelt them into ingots.  I spent about 7000 gil to raise Blacksmithing to 7, then ran out of gil and crystals.  At the rate things were going, it looked like it would run me another 20-25k to get Blacksmithing to 20 to be able to refine and sell the iron ingots.

The other thing I was finding in the mine was silver ore, and that's a whole different deal with Goldsmithing 20 to make ingots.

Once I actually get those crafting skills, a stack of iron ingots seems to go for a tasty 35,000 gil, and silver ingots for 25,000.  Very good money for someone who's never had more than 20k in his pocket.

The fishing is dirt cheap to do, but sloooooow at giving any sort of return.  Moat Carp go for 2,000 a stack, but it takes at least half an hour to get a stack of the things.

I have around 45 beastman seals now, so once I hit 40 I'll be able to give that fight a whirl and pray for a lucky drop.

Hmm...as a WHM it may that BCNM might be hard, I kind of forgot how dependent some BCNMs are on job. That particular one has 3 enemies including a powerful one that is usually kited by a RDM while your buddies take out the weaker mobs.
(I'm a RDM) But there are probably other BCNMs you can do that pay out roughly similar on average.

Also you may be able to see back to the fishing guild for more than the AH, not sure.

I'm not sure what the market is like post-correction, but I managed to make some money or worst case break even doing alchemy up to level 70-something back in the day (before and during the hyper-inflation).  Hard to compete with the lv100+ alchemists, but still some good money in basic consumables.

You do need some cash to get started, which is definitely the hard part.  Until them farming ingredients is a way to trade time for gil.

Actually one way to pick up some decent spending cash is just to level some jobs from 1-10 (the range at which soloing is not that horrible) -- the crystal drops alone can be some decent cash if you're fighting things that drop the more useful/valuable crystals and materials like beehive chips and so on are somewhat valuable once stacked (or useful for crafting).

- Q

Plus doing level 1-10 in a subjob is a great way to pick up lots of beastman seals for BCNM's as well.

I sold stacks of fire and wind crystals in Jueno.  Many times you could just buy a stack in Sand (fire) and Wind (wind) and resell in Jueno at 2x the price.  Fishing at the guild in Wind is the spot until you get your skill up and you can make a few bucks but I still think gardening is the way to a good solid income.  After a couple of good harvests you are on your way.

I don't remember if the bcnm fight at your level is that group of bunnies or the orc.  If it is the bunnies, you are going to need help.  To this day my eye twitches every time I see a rabbit.

Hey Margalis and Reg.

Heya Tige. You thinking of reactivating for a while too? If I remember right I'm just at the point where I have to start thinking about doing that horrible quest before I can level my whm job any more. :)

Thinking about it after hellgate London runs its' course.  I'm close to that fight to level past 70 as well if my character is still around.

After that run we made at the NA release I was broken when it came to mmos.  It would be cool to go back and check out all the new stuff.  Tempting.

edit:  I went and checked out the ffxi playonline site.  Looks like they banned upwards of 9k accounts today for gil farming
        http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics/ff11us/detail/2447/detail.html

Stuff like that makes it even more tempting to see if my character is still there.   

Well I checked out the Return to Vanadiel thing and since it's only been 2 years since I last reactivated I'm pretty sure my guys will still be there. The Return to Vanadiel program is going on until next April anyway. They seem to have it all automated at this point. I don't know why they don't just make it a permanent thing.

It'd be fun if we could get a few of the old Watershellers back together there for a month or two.

I think as soon as some of the shiney wears off of hgll I'll see if I can get my old character up and running.  If so I'll resub and do some fishing and gardening until I get familiar with stuff again to go face Matt.  If I can get through that without slinging my laptop out the window I'll probably stick around for at least a few months.  If Matt hands me my ass on a platter a half a dozen times I'll burn my ffxi dvds.

Numtini - you game?

Maat?

What server were you guys on? I've been playing FFXI on and off since release and I just hit level 50...I've barely made a dent in COP and I'm on mission 4-3 still..ha.

That's him.  If my pld is still there I think he is around lvl 67/68.

We were on Valefor.  I thought you were with us for awhile, must be mistaken. 

If you decide to return, two things:

1. Sign up near the beginning of a month, not the end.  I hear that Square is still doing that retarded 'we bill you for the whole month regardless of whether you sign up on the 1st or the 30th' thing.  I have yet to be billed by them, my trial ended on the 15th, so I'm expecting to be billed for two months come November 1st.

2. Use the 'return home' thing if possible, you'll get an anniversary ring that casts a spell that doubles your experience gain for what amounts to 30,000 free experience.  The experience rings in game only give a 50% experience boost for 7,000 experience, so that anniversary ring is a very very nice toy.


And if any old-timers are from Midgard, I will totally pay for your first month back in exchange for a few hundred thou of your giant piles of inflation money.  I'll be damned before I give money to cheaters, botters, and sweatshop goldfarmers, but I'm not at all above handing an honest player some cash to spare myself a few weeks of being a teleport whore to get the money to start on the tradeskills.

In related news, Square just banned 8,000 people for botting today, an act that fills my hateful heart with dark joy.  I haven't yet encountered anyone that seemed to be a bot or cheating in any way, nor has anyone approached me with offers to sell gil, which is a fair sight better than in WoW, but I've heard the stories about how bad it was back in the day and am glad that steps are being taken.

I don't think I ever had more than about 150k at any given time.  Maybe 200k once or twice but that was in between selling stuff off to upgrade stuff.  Once I got the class armor things went a bit more smooth as I didn't need to continually keep upgrading armor.  That is until you forget and sell off your stuff for your subjob. 

Damn, it's tempting to go back and check it out.  Not to grind but spend some time with the rest of the game.  That pokemon thingy looks kinda fun but I'm sure thats not cheap either.  I have to return a pair of wireless headphones to circuit city, wonder what I'll do if I see that $20.00 kit on the shelf.

I was sitting on 2.5 million after a successfuly BCNM run, but I just started buying the level 51 HQ elemental staves so now I'm basically broke again.

You sound like you're just a couple levels ahead of my guy Margalis. 50 is where you have to do the first quest to allow advancement to 50+ right? And I remember I was pricing those staves too and being all traumatized over it heh.

Does FFXI have server transfers yet?

I think it does have server transfers.

Yeah, I'm level 50. I have one of the three items needed to advance, a random player helped me get it in return for me helping him open the banishing gate. I have a couple of friends who will help me get the other two when they get a chance, in the meantime levelling subjobs.

It has server transfers, think it's $25 for a move.
 
I'm so weak.  Circuit City had the all-in-one dvd.  It was silver and so very, very shiney.

I didn't have all the required information to complete the online restart.  Called playonline, within minutes they had me up and running.  I wouldn't have had to buy a new dvd if I had my old ones but no worries as they give you a registration exemption on your account once everything is verified.  Installed the dvd, logged in, attached the latest expansion pack to my account and poof, good to go.



What server are you on Margalis?

I'm on Ramuh - thinking of moving?

If they got rid of the death penalty or instituted a XP debt system (Any future XP earned applies to debt, if you are logged off your debt slowly works itself off), I would soooo be all over this game.

Meh.  It's a shame because the game does a lot of things right.

How often do you die? I haven't died in party play in months. One thing is that the general strategy now is to kill more weaker mobs instead of fewer tougher mobs, so it tends to be safer.

I don't consider the exp loss to be that terrible of an issue in the long run.  The bulk of a character's power is determined by their skill ranks, and you don't lose skills for any reason.  I've been in some parties that blew through a level in an hour, leaving my skills fairly atrophied, and a couple of deaths to slow down the exp flood and let my skills catch up a bit was something of a back-handed blessing.

WoW, on the other hand, can completely fuck a player, leaving them with useless equipment and no cash to repair it, and without the equipment they can't go out and earn the cash.  People hold up WoW as a shining example of player-friendly penalty-free death, but it can be absolutely merciless when it comes time to repair high-end equipment.

Ohh come on man, that's complete horseshit, especially now.  :pedobear:

Too bad this game doesn't have a WoW like solo path to the end game.  Seems like a lot of cool shit to do.  Group optimal doesn't work well for me. I absolutely loved the atmosphere for the little I played.

That's what it comes down to really. They've lightened up a lot from the early days but it's still very much a game for groups.

You dare invoke pedobear for your house of lies?  I've raided in WoW and seen the exorbitant repair bills suffered by the tanks afterwards.  And they didn't even die, that was just from a successful day's fighting.  At least FFXI doesn't shaft you with steady item degradation.


I soloed too much in WoW, in my opinion.  It's like I was playing a single-player game 90% of the time.  I could have taken steps to party more often, but all too often a PUG was full of imbeciles who had no idea how to work in a party.  (True story: As a paladin in the Deadmines, I was using the Seal of Justice to keep low-health mobs from fleeing and aggroing everyone around them.  I kept seeing the floating skull animation appear over their heads, and it was confusing the hell out of me as to why they would be displaying a fear effect.  Eventually I turned to the party warlock and asked, "Uh, you aren't fearing these guys, are you?"  And it turns out he was.  If I hadn't been keeping the seal on them, that idiot would've sent them running to reinforcements.)  Unfortunately FFXI is too far in the other direction; while everyone's a decent party player from having to be in parties to advance, soloing isn't much of an option when you don't feel like taking the time to find a party.

(white mage) OLD SCHOOL.  :nintendo: Sup Tige, et al.

Loved my time in FFXI, until the grind ate me alive.  Played me some WoW, enjoyed that until I realized I wasn't having fun anymore.  Haven't touched an MMO since.

I have exactly zero interest in getting back into FFXI, but I still have fond memories of playing (and dying).

Heyas Lantien

I completely understand about the lack of mmo playing after ffxi.  I tried a couple but never made it more than a month or so.  Having said that I did just resub to ffxi to look around.  So far I've just been sorting out my stuff and haven't even set up my macros, let alone join a group.  I have been getting alot of invites, so much so I went invisible so I can get re-acquainted with stuff.  For the foreseeable future I'll be traveling around, fishing and gardening with grouping a distant third.  It is still the best looking game, I went out to one of the beaches included in one of the exp packs to clam and fish, it was most excellent.  They've added additional texture options which run very smooth. 

It was nice to see the XP/level has been cut dramatically.  Total of only 27k from lvl 66-67.  I think before I left it was around 40k+ to level.

Watershell unite!

Howdy all.  Fun to see a lot of names from the past.  Just need Tortolia to show up.

No, I'm not starting FFXI again.

I wonder what became of Tortolia? He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.

Hey Dren!  Don't think about too much or you very well might find yourself back in ffxi.  :)

Reg, I haven't seen Tort either.  He did get Lu Shung's fishing rod though.  That could explain things.  I might not have anything to do with the internet at all once I got it.  I hung out with Kemm and Grimm a time or two in one game or another but not for several months now.

I've got my mog house set up, now all I need is some seeds, clippings and crystals to get a crop going.  Once that's done it's off to explore the new zones with a fishing rod.  I may consider a server move if I can't find a decent linkshell on Valefor. 

I'm not leaving at least until I get my own Santa Hat.  Always wanted one of those.

I've hit 37 on my white mage and have begun some teleport whorage, but have mostly been busy in tying up tons of loose ends.  I got the pass to Aht Urhgan, went over there and did the quests to get my mog locker, then unlocked blue mage.  Since then I've been doing the clay tablet quests, teleporting all over the damn world.  I'm hopeful that by the time this weekend hits I'll have made enough gil to get my tradeskills high enough to refine ores and spend some time in the mines trying to make my fortune.

I ran across my first party idiot the other day, a red mage who was pretty thoroughly stupid.  When a pull went bad and brought in a link, she ran over and tried to poke it with her sword rather than put the thing to sleep, and the party promptly wiped.  Later, while the party was healing up from the rezzing (thank goodness for reraise, I'm glad I forked over the cash for that one) she blew her mana on casting cure spells on people who were already healing 60 HP a tick.

To be fair, it wasn't her fault that there was an add on the pull; as long as things were going smoothly she wasn't causing any problems.  She wasn't casting half as many debuffs as she could've been, but it wasn't anything that was endangering the party.  But once the shit hit the fan, she failed hard.  That was the first tiime in FFXI that I've found another player who seemed completely inadequate to the task, after six weeks of constant grouping with random people.

I still haven't done anything in Aht Urhgan. I went there once then immediately talked to the NPC who warped me away without setting my homepoint first. (oops)

Yesterday I was in the Dunes with a bunch of people who had no idea what they were doing. The Paladin didn't want to tank or cure himself and at level 17/18 was using level 10 equipment - and he was the best of the bunch.

A bunch of party members died a bunch of times but I wasn't one of them.  :awesome_for_real:

In FFXI I find I spend the majority of my time doing quests/missions, when I do spend time levelling it is pretty quick. I just finished mission 4-3 and got my Airship pass, now I'm working on the level 50 limit break, AF gear, etc.

Hey Kitsune, now that you're doing Teleports - you know that you can do the quests to get those teleport spells solo right? There's no need to buy them. With Sneak and Invisibility most of them are pretty easy to do.

Oh hell yes I'm doing them solo.  Unfortunately two of them require monster drops and are pretty much out of the picture, but I have Holla, Mea, and Dea and will be grabbing Altep once I hit 38 and can cast it.

So I just started a red mage, but I have no idea of what to do. I went out and killed small creatures and hit level 2, but that's about all I've done. Also how do I get new abilities/spells? Do I just automatically learn them when I hit the requisite job level?

You just wander around killing bunnies until you hit level 10. Collect all of the things they drop and sell them at the AH. That should easily buy you armour and spells. Somewhere in your main city there's a spell vendor where you can get upgrades. It's worth finding him because if you're lazy and buy them on the AH you'll end up spending a lot more money.

What server are you on? One of the servers mentioned in this thread hopefully. It's nice to at least have someone to chat with even if the level difference is too big to group with them plus maybe they can put in a word to get you into a guild.

Nobody learns magic automatically, I'm afraid.  Spells must be purchased, given as quest rewards, or earned in some other fashion.  The first few levels are pretty magic-bare for red mages, however; your next spell is Cure at level 3, so you haven't missed out on anything yet.

Go here: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Red_Mage to read about red mages, the wiki bears much helpful info.

Learn to make and use macros.  http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Macros

1. People in town will give you quests.

2. The guard at the gates of town will give you missions. Missions are part of the in-game story.

3. Gate guards can cast signet on you, which has many benefits - resting does not lose TP, enemies will drop crystals, weaker enemies are easier to beat, etc etc.

4. Gate guards can also give you an Empress Ring for conquest points that you earn for killing enemies. Get one, it's free XP. You can recharge it by trading it to the guard that sells it.

5. Once you start getting into groups the main thing Red Mage excels at is enfeebling. You will be using Dia, Blind, Paralyze and Slow to weaken enemies.

Oh, and buy a cheap shield ASAP.  The sooner you start raising your shield skill the better.  A red mage'll never be a tank in medium armor, but at least you won't drop like a sissy if the monster takes a few whacks at you.

For equipment this is what you want:

Soloing:
 Up to date weapon, either sword or dagger.
 Up-to-date armor for head, body, feet, legs and shield
 Something for neck, back and waist. (Justice Badge, some crappy cloak, the belt that gives +mnd and +def

Once you get into a party remember that MND affects white magic enfeebles and INT affects black magic enfeebles and nukes. So you'll want:
 A wand that gives +MND and +INT (Yew wand is the first IIRC)
 A +MP headpiece
 Saintly and/or Eremite's rings

Basically in a party you won't be getting hit very much, so you want more +MND/INT/MP gear and worry less about defense and offense.

As a Red Mage you can stick with your sword and dagger. As you level that will lose effectiveness in party play and stop being worth it after a while, but at low levels Red Mage can put out decent damage. Tee big problem is that switching weapons loses TP, so if you are going to melee you should forget about the wand.

How much you melee is very dependent on what you are fighting, party composition, etc. You'll need to heal between fights to gain back MP, and that used to always lose TP, but now that it doesn't meleeing is more viable.

Okay thanks. I'm on Midgardsormr which is where most of the SA goons are apparently. Character name Chenghiz, say hi if you see me.    :hello_thar:

What? WHAT?!  When did they make signet prevent TP loss while resting? Luxury!

- Q

Yep, signet prevents TP loss, gives you a boost to evasion when auto-attacking a monster, and increases your experience when in a 2-5 person group.  It's an all-around dandy thing to have.

Yeah it's nice. I just was in a party with me (Drk), a Blu and a Rdm, in Quifim fighting works, getting insane XP. (Of course at those levels Blu is crazy powerful, but still) We were slicing through worms like butter, 20 second fights for 200+ XP.

TP loss while resting was really a killer for Red Mages and also for anyone soloing. Also with Signet you heal back HP and MP faster while resting.

One busy weekend later and I hit 40, as well as got my tradeskills high enough to start some full-scale mining efforts.  The teleport whoring is going nicely too, with the completion of the quest to gain the teleport spell to Altepa Desert.  My plans are finally getting off the ground and will hopefully be leading to my having a big pile of money, which I will promptly spend on the quests to upgrade my inventory and mog safe size.

Inventory management sucks in FFXI, forcing the player to manually tell the game to sort items into stacks rather than automatically stacking things as they're looted.  Everyone also gets an entirely insufficient 30 inventory spaces to start out with, which includes items equipped on the character, so that's basically ten slots taken right off the bat.  Through quests the inventory can be upgraded in five-slot increments up to sixty, allowing much more breathing room, and apparently the expansion this month allows one to upgrade to seventy.  The safe in one's home starts at fifty slots and can be upgraded to eighty, and an additional storage locker can be rented with thirty to seventy slots.

And yet, most every player I've ever met still has a mule character on the server for storing their excess stuff.


Anyhow, more expansion info came out this weekend, the second of the upcoming new jobs is the Scholar, a white/black magic caster who really looks like they'll be putting red mages right out of a job.  Nobody really seems to give a damn about the red mages as far as their melee ability goes, and the scholars seem to be much better at spellcasting.  We'll see how it turns out.

But now in WoW you can run out and pick up 100g in repair bills in a few hours with daily quests. Equipment too damaged to fight monsters? Fine, play Simon for 8 rounds and go repair with the 9.5 gold it gives. Fly the bombing mission for another 12gold. Daily missions have completely changed the end game in WoW imo.

The discussion here is making me think about trying FFIX but I have no old char to return to, and it doesn't sound to newbie friendly. I could use a good grouping game as I miss them.

I finally created a mule character the other day. The problem is that I have to save some level 40 equipment for a BCNM I do, save some level 30 equipment for COP, save equipment for a couple of subjobs, etc. Plus random half-stacks of items, coffer and treasure keys, etc etc.

Think there's any chance of them being able to recover a 4 year old account?  It's been awhile since I've touched FFXI, but I'm getting that itch to go pick up a trial of it and see what has changed.  I've heard it said that the upcoming expansion WotG is supposed to have solo-leveling content in it?  Not sure how much I believe it, but if it's true, I'll go pick it up in a heartbeat.

I'm pretty sure you can run the "Return to Vanadiel" stuff without actually committing to reopening your account. I believe there's a link to it earlier in this thread.

It's tempting, as I liked FFXI even when it was at its full car-door-to-crotch nut-busting potential.  Despite being an EQ clone, somehow its console-hobbled interface made it feel like a different game, and then the SquareSoft production values took over for a scenario of pure win.  In the end, I had to drop FFXI primarily because the game sucked far too much time.  Here, this thread says it backed off on that considerably.  Yet, I've way too much on my plate right now between Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London.

I've poked at the Return To Vana'diel page but they require you either know your registration code or playonline key.  Seeing as I played for 5-6 months as soon as it was released almost 5 years ago, and lost all my discs/manual on my move from S.Korea to here, there's no way I'll be able to dig up either of those.  I even scoured my email archives for some sort of email from Square that might have had either of them, but to no avail.  Either I'll have to call them and pray they can dig it up by credit card info (because I don't remember my street address or phone # from Korea) or I start fresh and begin as a level 1 nublet. 

Either way I'm getting one of those cheap trial discs to try it out again.  While I wish I could try it with ye olde level 50something BLM/WHM, I'm somewhat willing to chalk him up as a loss.  Poor little Tarutaru...

I've heard of people with as little info as you successfully getting back on. Not sure if your character would still be around though. You might have quit back in the day when "We erase your character after six months" was more than an idle threat.

Do they do support via webchat? That might be easier than phoning them.

Delias,

It's worth giving playonline a call if you want to see if your avatar is still there.  When I called the first thing they asked was for an id or code, neither of which I had.  No old CD codes, playonline ID etc etc.  They can confirm your account a couple of different ways and get you set back up with an registration exemption.  Worth a shot if you want to go back.  I was in the same boat you are and I was good to go in about 5 minutes.




 

What they said.  If the automated tool doesn't work for you, you can call their support number and talk to a live person, and they can restore accounts off of things like names and credit card numbers.  I didn't bother with it myself, my old character was like level 5 and my new character was close to 20 by the time the promotion started, but someone with a 50 would get a lot more value out of having their character restored.

I did Besieged for the first time yesterday and again today, it's a lot of fun. Although I think I need more RAM...a zone with 300 people and a whole bunch of NPCs and enemies means I can only see about 10 feet in any direction.

For those not familiar with it, enemies attack the Al-Zhabi part of Ahrt Urghan and actually come into town where you try to repel them.

We did level 8 today, which is currently the highest level. Our alliance had the main Troll Notorious Monster down to half health when they retreated. Since I'm only level 50 or so I just ran around healing, raising, and hasting people.

You get XP for doing it and you don't lose XP when you die. Also casting spells on friendly NPCs gives you the same sorts of skillups you normally get casting against enemies, which means if you cast a bunch of haste/protect/shell you can skillup enhancing magic very quickly.

Why can't they make this apply to the rest of the game? I'd resub in an instant if they removed the permanent XP death penalty.

Does anyone have a buddy pass to FFXI?

Already gave mine away, sorry.  But the one-month trial disks are two bucks at Gamestop right now, IIRC.  And when I got my first charge from Square on my bank account, I was pleasantly surprised to see my first 'month' of service was prorated down to only have billed me for the fifteen days I'd played, so apparently they've stopped doing that 'we bill you for a whole month even if you start on the 29th' thing.

When can you start doing Beseiged?

I don't think there is any level limit. For a melee job you want to be 60+ or else you can't really do anything, for a mage job if you can cast Cure 3 you are probably ok although 50+ is better if you want to live.

I've finally gotten something of a handle on my finances; mining in Bastok has given me the materials to get my smithing skill to 20 and goldsmithing to 16, and the resulting stacks of ingots brought in enough cash to fully upgrade my inventory to 60 slots.  Yay on that.  Now I'm working on increasing my house's inventory space.

I've also begun leveling Summoner.  That required a whole new expenditure of effort to raise my reputations in every town for access to the quests to obtain the various avatars.  With my main job at 40 I'm in no shape to actually fight the avatars, but several people in my linkshell are going through the avatar fights themselves and have generously offered to let me tag along and basically leech the fights by hiding in a corner while they do the killing.  Ironically, I'm not even going through this to get the avatars that they're fighting, I'm doing this to get Fenrir, an avatar that you can only get by fighting the other avatars.  The basic six avatars can be had through a level 20 solo fight, and that's how I mean to get them, but Fenrir can only be had by fighting the level 70 fights, and I really don't care to level White Mage that high just to get a pokemon to use on my level 10 Summoner.

The level 20 avatar fights are great fun.

Helpful hint: To use an astral flow ability you need MP. (2x + 4, where X is your level) I didn't realize that the first couple times I did them. Also they are very hit or miss, mostly based on when the avatar uses it's astral flow. I beat a few on the first try and on or two others took me a bunch because I kept getting unlucky with the astral flow abilities raping me.

Edit: Just finished a max-level besieged. We killed the standard troll leader NM (Gurfulur, the big troll that is immune to magic) as well as the max-level super NM Cere. (The cerebus type mob) When you kill the NMs you get an XP bonus, I got 2390 XP. Not bad for an hour of very fun fighting. I just make sure my party is refreshed, hasted and do a whole bunch of healing since at level 54 I can't really do any damage. (I did melee for a bit and managed to hit a guy twice in about 2 minutes before I gave up)

There is a bunch of expansion info coming out now on various sites including Alla. I almost wonder if there is just *too* much stuff to do in this game. I'm finishing content at a lower rate than they are adding it. (I have to finish the *original* set of missions, forget Zilart, COP or TOAU) I did ding level 55 though. Leveliing in the low 50s is a real pain because you need a lot more XP and the enemies are tougher, but then in the mid 50s you can level in TOAU areas and it gets easier again.

The addition of the new 'back in time' versions of the original zones will hopefully smooth out the leveling speed somewhat by providing more intermediate zones.

It would be really cool if they spent some time making the newbie experience not suck total ass. Mark quests or direct me to them somehow, have a con system for quests, give me some fucking direction when I spawn and see the opening cutscene and ask myself what the hell I'm supposed to do. Let me see something other than rabbits and bats, and for fuck's sake fix the interface. Every time I start playing it feels like I'm fighting the UI.

Basically the same complaints everyone has I guess. It's hard to enjoy this game when WoW is better in every regard that matters to a starting player.

Except WoW's world is boring, its classes are boring and leveling is WoW is boring if you've been playing these games as long and as much as I have?

For real they both suck, WoW just makes me feel like its going faster.   I'm amazed that at a "mature" site I hear so much fucking crying about both the linear shittastic design principals that have become the norm AND the fact that nobody is holding our dicks while we take a piss...

This isn't directed at you Chenghiz, just something that has been bugging me for awhile.  It just seems like such a have cake and eat it whine that I have to read too often.

I don't remember that much about FFXI but I distinctly remember the signet giving guys pretty much telling you what to do next, the quest chains being hard as balls at times but leading you from zone to zone and the ui being pretty average fare.  The big issue was it had too much console-style menu stuff going on, because it was obviously designed with a controler in mind at times.

*controller?  For real?  that looks retarded to me, god I'm tired.

Even if FFXI's classes are interesting (and the job system is one of the super major reason I wanted to play) and the world is super awesome (In terms of graphic quality it really pales in comparison to WoW), that doesn't matter at all if I have to endure a bunch of mindless shit getting there. WoW's classes are diverse enough for me, and I'd contest that they are really not that boring at all, but that's a matter of subjectivity. (What makes a class boring, anyway?) If I wanted a world that was engaging and deep (again, WoW's world isn't that boring) I'd play any number of the single player RPGs that do a much better job of storytelling, anyway.

After the opening bit I'm told to talk to someone in a location. There's no record that I can find in my UI of whose name that is, and no marker on the map to help me find him/her. I find NPCs at the location I think I remember the guy mentioning but none of them are the right one. For a directed quest experience this is dogshit, and so is the UI. Why couldn't they put a PC interface on the PC version? I could probably design a better UI in a week or two, and in a world where we have people who do nothing but research usability and design interfaces it's pathetic. And again, it's not like it just released. It'll have its fourth expansion out soon. I even set up my USB-adapted Dualshock to use with it, and it still played like shit.

As for linearity, it's clearly possible to have both a directed experience and allow for freeform player activity. In a roleplaying-y sense I don't mind having to talk to a ton of unmarked NPCs to see who has quests. But when I finally find some and then find out that I can't do them until later because I'm too low level, but only after I try to do them and lose XP dying like an idiot... that's just shitty and not fun.

Definitely controller driven. Back in the days I even bought a very cheap adapter to play it with the PS2 controller, and it suddenly became more fun.
Until the mandatory group cockblock, which was bad because for the most part I couldn't find one, nor a guild fitting my low expectations.

P.S: Never had any problem with finding my way in MMOs, plus colour me jaded but I love to explore such worlds without too much tutoring. I can use exhaustive tooltips but that's basically it. Asking around and sharing knowledge is part of the fun.

The "quest log" stuff in FFXI is very poor, it can be easy to forget what to do, what part of the quest you are on, etc. And the quests give really shitty rewards that are totally out of line with the work required. It's really not a quest-driven game, the only reason to do quests is for a couple key ones (spell-related mostly, like the teleports and drain/aspir) and to raise fame, but there are easy shortcuts to raising fame.

I guess i am kinda late here, and yeah im sorry for flaming you without reading your whole reply...

What you refer to are what we ffxi end gamers call, "Kings". Kings drop ABJ items (E Body) and epic weapons such as ridell. I dont do kings anymore, because they are exactly what you said (a pissing contest were the team with the most claim bots win)... but certain jobs have gear in other places, for example why on earth would a mage want Dalmatica when they can get a morgans robe from salvage? A lot of ABJ can now drops in Einjar (hope i am spelling that correctly, to lazy to check) and then you got stuff like Aries body which for me (A DRK) blows E Body away... also i wouldnt use the other purple items over Homams legs,hands and feet (haste > all) so i have no reason at all to venture into Dragons Array (cause i got a kraken club and a bah scythe so i i dont need a ridell). So i can i get my main armor from limbus and salvage, i can get my other stuff from sea and my back piece from dynamis (gah, if i could find a shell that does dream lands)...

bottom line is, i dont camp jack shit.

huh? you think thats bad? try telling your RL friends that you cant go clubbin on saturday because your expect a full moon for your ore harvest... and then you get nuttin but crap in your pots... (the sappling rate having a failure rate, along with the ore loto methods is why i dont garden no more)

doing ENM's and getting a cloud evokers is a big money maker, then you donate it to a oryuu pop and you will get all of the non rare/ex items he drops (can make a good mil off that).

The econ tho, is so dry that now the best thing is actually farming quest repeatables or just stuff you NPC... there is a certain Quadarv that drops a maul... you can fill up on and sell... if your a good DD you can probably make ???? 30k an hour?

Thats the biggest problem with ffxi atm, making gil is not possible... the whole econ is broken, the crafting system is broken... its all fucked up. SE needs to blow up crafting as we know it and make it more like Vanguards crafting system. Add new items into the game that people will need... do something because i just cant even bare myself farming at 30k an hour...

Never thought I'd hear someone say that a game needed to be more like Vanguard.

The economy is not that bad, making gil is hard but so is spending it. Making gil used to be easier, but then again things cost 5-20x as much.

Crafting certainly has problems in that the finite demand for many items is close to exhaustion and the perishable goods have heavy competition.

I think the biggest problem now is that many end-game activities take money and the cost has not adjusted to match overall deflation. The prices on NPC end-game items and activities needs to come down to be in line with the changing value of currency.

The crafting system in FFXI has been broken since day one. I have been an artisan level crafter in every mmo i have ever played but FFXI which i have now played as long as EQLive.... When i make something I am in the red by 80% of every synth, thats broken. IMO EQ2 and Vanguard have the two best crafting systems among the fantasy mmo scope. SE needs to add more items, create more farming grounds...

a RR2 neck piece costs 40k? a limbus run 30k ... some bison steak, another 10k a pop, aside for making my own corrupt sky or dynamis shell (lol, a conversation for another thread) how on earth is a nucka suppose to get hes game on!?

My beef is i love crafting but i can't. Only way to make real money is to garden but here is the problem "EVERYONE IS DOING IT".

The idea that the econ is now normal, thats not true. the first run of inflation (on Remora and valefor), the sniper ring went up to 250K. at the height of inflation on my server, the sniper was around 600k... granted when it was 600k i made a lot of gil... now the sniper is around 300k... so in reality this shit is not "normal", it never was... What we are seeing, is the healing from over 2+ years of fish botters, that the fish botters (rusty caps) ruined this econ to the point where people dont even know wtf "normal" is... So SE did what they wanted, in trying to bleed money out of the game, but there initial vision of gil being something hard to obtain is broken when we are very much still, in an inflation period... of course the idea is that this will sort itself out... on its own (something that SE is known for doing lol) but imo, im not exactly excited about the current system and imo, it should be changed.

I think a merc mission system (like agent missions in EvE) would be a good idea for gil making. and the crafting changes (just blow it up) would be a start... how the fuck am i going to pay 4 mil for aries body lol when i finally get the pieces... i could make the gil if i grinded/farmed it... but would i rather bleed my eyes, or play Call of Duty 4 lol?????? i think im going to play my new xbox games TYVM.


p.s.

if you havent already get the new windower, i run it at max resolution and the game looks AMAZING (best looking mmo on the market)

I got my summoner to level 22, and over the last three days I fought and beat the six avatars in the solo fights to make them my bitches.  Those were easily the most stressful, challenging, and exhilarating fights I've had in the game, every victory was a moment of pride for me.  That being said, the summoner job aims repeated punches squarely at your balls, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone without a high-level job.  Making it through the first 20 levels with no avatars but Carbuncle quite frankly sucks, hard.  Your little pokemon avatar has a whopping two powers at that level: an attack that does mediocre damage and a heal that heals mediocre health.  He's useful for pulling monsters and distracting any adds that spawn next to the party in the middle of a fight, but not much else.  So, in short, a low-level summoner without the other avatars has almost nothing to offer a party, and it's basically an act of charity to be invited into a party.  I had white mage as a support job, of course, so I was spending my time healing instead of actually using the avatar just to make myself vaguely useful.

But now, at long last, I have seven avatars at my disposal, and the new ones have a fair bit more oomph to their powers than Carbuncle does, so I'm looking forward to having much a much less pathetic role in the parties I join.  [PROTIP: Parties still want the summoners just to heal.  These parties will be sad when a summoner joins and actually summons anything, but that's their tough shit because I worked my ass off for those avatars.]

Even with all the avatars Summoner is pretty useless at low levels. The job is not really designed very well, at the lower levels the damage spells are not cost-effective and the buffs in general cost way too much for their utility. For example Ice Spikes, which covers everyone but is only useful for the tank yet costs a ton.

In general it is a lot of healing. Tail Whip and Burning Punch are the first two avatar attacks actually worth using, and Aerial Armor with non-ninjas is the only buff worth using for a while.

I solo'd my way to 27 or so. (Worms in Karraloaka tunnel)

I had my first exposure to skillchains this weekend, at least as an active participant.  While I was leveling as a white mage I was only in one party that actually skillchained, and that was in forty-two levels.  As a summoner, however, I had every level one and two skillchain at my disposal along with every element, so when I started up a party in Qufim I figured it was high time to get things kicked off.  It took a minute of polling the party samurai to find out what their best weapon skills were, and some consulting with a chart, but once we had the plan down things started rolling smoothly, with the two samurai doing an ice/water skillchain and me following with a magic burst from Shiva's ice magic.  We were getting off a skillchain/MB on nearly every fight, things were dropping like flies, everyone was happy.

Eventually one of the samurai had to go and was replaced by a ninja, who sadly wasn't nearly as on the ball with her weapon skills.  We were still managing to do the skillchains, but it was only once every 3-4 fights at that point.  To be fair to the ninja, the samurai were clearly set up for quick TP gain; some of the holdup was the simple fact of her taking longer to reach 100%, but the samurai had macros set up with party tells and delay timers for their weapon skills and were well-prepared for skillchaining.  I have to say, it made the party combat much more entertaining, and it was very satisfying to have my avatar nuke the crap out of a monster with the extra burst damage.  I also preferred it to EQII's 'match the arbitrary icon' skillchain system; we picked a set series of attacks and spells that would work best for the sitation and just had to stick with the plan.

What's the word on the new Campaign feature?

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/update/ff11us/20071120jegm22/detail.html

It seems pretty interesting. I'm cautious, however, based on its use of various terms or descriptions. The campaign-ops; the supply chains or reinforcements; the tactical assessments. How are these things in practice (or more importantly, how literal are they)? What sort of player voting does the assessment entail? How dynamic is the territory control, the taking of keeps by monsters, etc? Is it mostly just grinding with just nice decoration and buzzwords or does it really offer a decent new PvE 'war effort' of sorts?

Also, I notice you get no XP/items with the main Campaign--what about the campaign-ops? It mentioned that they work as low as Lv10, and that intrigued me as a possible new way to level up from scratch (why else start offering it at Lv10). The expansion is basically Vana'diel's classic lands in the past during this way, right? Does it offer Lv1-70 content?

At the moment, Campaign is frankly balls.  You can fight at level 10 and get rewards, but in order to actually get to the past and survive for more than ten seconds you need to be in the higher levels.  Once you reach the past, you have to go on foot through several zones of level 60+ monsters to reach a city and sign up with one of the nations' armies.  (If you do go back to the past, be sure to go through EVERY time portal you see; the only way to use a portal from the present is to have used it in the past.)  So once you've waded through zones of instant death and opened the portals in some zones, you can use the portals to pop back in time and fight during the Crystal War.  The zones by the cities (Sarutabaruta, Gustaberg, Ronfaure) are mostly level 15-ish monsters, so they're more or less safe for low-level characters, except for the level 60+ beastmen randomly wandering around.

Once you get involved in a campaign battle, you get experience and tickets that can be exchanged for items.  Only problem being that the items suck.  Hard.  After looking over each and every one, there wasn't a single one that I actually wanted.  Perhaps in the future the items will be improved, or there will be some crafting recipes to make upgraded versions, but as it stands right now, they aren't worth it at all.

If you don't care about crappy rewards, the campaign fights themselves can be fun, like Besieged on a much bigger scale.

I like campaign. Unlocking the maws is a pain in the ass, but once done they provide another handy travel option with your home-city teleporters.

Campaign itself is basically a series of smaller besieged happening 24/7. On my server we took all the territory from the beastmen almost immediately and have not lost any land since then. I imagine that similar to Besieged they will make it harder over time, doesn't make sense to make it difficult right out of the gate.

I'm not really sure what the deal is with the stuff like the voting and missions. The missions give you some crap XP (like 100-200) and some Allied Notes. I did one assessment and got a higher rank. To get a higher rank I'm not sure if you need to do missions, fight in battles or both. Some of the missions have tangible effects on the world, like increasing the resources at a stronghold or hurting an enemy fortification. It is also very random which missions are available, maybe it depends on your nation's current strategies.

I don't really understand the strategies at all. It's too new at this point.

Basically you warp to a battlefield, fight some monsters, get some XP and notes, repeat. If you can melee you get pretty decent XP, if you can only hang back and heal you don't. So it's isn't appropriate for level 10.

It is pretty fun if you have a couple of hours or are looking for group. The XP rater of return is much better than Beseiged. At this point it's more of a fun thing than a hardcore XP thing but you can get pretty good XP if you can melee without dying constantly. (60+)
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In other news, yesterday I beat the Shadow Lord. Yay. One nice thing about this game, it does have cool plot, music, cutscenes, etc. It kind of made me sad a little.

I pretty much killed this game for myself with Summoners.  I don't have a high-level job, I think my highest is a 30 Red Mage, and basically burned my entire fortune on the solo avatar fights.  I think I recovered 3 or 4 of them before a chain of yaguto drink burning failures caused me to throw my hands up in despair.  I'm not sure if those avatar fights have become any easier since then or not.

One of these days I'd like to return to FFXI, but I get the feeling it'll be hard on the long returning player.  (Besides, it sucks time to an irrational degree... but then, so do most MMORPGs.)

And God knows you don't have a seemingly inexhaustible amount of free time on your hands or anything.

The solo avatar fights hinge a lot on your species.  Taru have the worst time of it; their low HP is crippling when it's pretty inevitable that the avatar will whack you a few times during the fight.  Other folks don't have much of an issue.  As long as you're not a Taru and walk in with a boiled crayfish (+30% defense), some buffs put on you by a sympathetic higher-level mage, a hi-potion or two, some mulsum, and a yagudo drink, and you fight the avatar on the day that it's weak to, the fight should go okay.  Having macros set up for everything is a ++good idea, too.  My G15 keyboard is a huge help for fighting with my summoner; I can summon any avatar and use any bloodpact with the press of a button.

the greatest version of FFXIV was CoP. once the cap was increased and that texas abortion of an expansion treasures,
the moment you remove player interdependence you loose what makes mmorpgs great experiences. i was one of those players that worked hes ass off to get through CoP, it took many hours and many favors called in for the final fight (i had to have that ring).......

THE FUCKING IDEA. THAT SOME SPED, GETTING OFF FROM A HARD DAYS WORK OF COLLECTING GLASS,  CAN NOW SOLO THAT.... MAKES MY FUCKING SKIN CRAWL.

I polish my armor with your tears.

Some sympathy here. This man is obviously having a stroke.

A necro of a post 14 years dead, and I am instantly entertained.

your breath, smells of piss and shit.

Pretty sure he means FFXI, not XIV; right thread, just wrong number mentioned in the post. None of the XIV expansions have CoP as an acronym.

Hence why I assumed he had a stroke. CoP is Chains of Promathia which was about the point I left FFXI - along with Treasures of Aht Urhgan in FFXI. I thought autocorrect but tried reading the rest and then noticed the poster.

you know wtf i am talkin bout!