Could Any Game Be As EPIC As Old FFXI..

The days where RDM solo/duo were challenging, and in some cases, highly profitable were glorious as well though. It was these instances that were the most fun for me. Still remember a time I was duoing Suzaku with a friend, and he screamed down the mic "Get it the *** off me!!" or something of that nature.

If XI was your first MMO, odds are nothing will ever quite be the same especially in an environment where you might be looking for specific outmoded forms of play.

Barring a return to the roots of MMOs, you'll be unlikely to find something as hardcore as old XI.

FFXI was my first mmo so no game will ever compete. I literally was scared just trying to get to Jueno and not dying. I played when it was release on xbox and had no friends and no computer help. The world's were so huge and at every turn was a new MOB that might just attack me and force me to lvl 2 hours just to get the Xp back.

I remember Xp in bastok on the hill and seeing a NIN the fact he was dual wielding made my head explode. I just starred at him with my bronze dagger on thief and tried to get him to tell me how I can be as cool as him. Just unlocking a sub job was the best day ever.

fast forward 2 now the things they implement just pass me off. Not because they are bad but because they should have had these things from the beginning. All the new warps and different ways to lvl.

I would have enjoyed the game so much more if when we killed the NM we camped hours 4 gave everyone there own loot, even if it was a low chance at gear.

I have always been a solo player so I am still having fun I can't quit and every new game I try just makes me realize how it's not as good as ffxi.

Ultima Online was my first MMO. Everquest was my first Home and FFXI is the only one that ever felt like home after EQ.

The only thing I truly miss about old FFXI though is the partying, I dont care if it took hours to get a spot in the dunes or jungles with my MNK, I got into an amazing LS and made great friends that lasted for years because of those times.

Also, No Despawn/MPKing was hilarious. I will never forget my first encounter with the mighty Goblin Smithy camping all of us newbs at the entrance of Yuhtunga Jungles until some high level(s) dealt with it.

EPIC AND COOL DO NOT SHARE THE SAME MEANING

I just miss EXP parties where you would actually interact with the other members and gain friends. Now it seems everything typed falls on blind eyes. Won't lie, games pretty lonely without that friend making process for me.

I remember staying up until 4am when I had to work at 8 am the next day, waiting for the leet people of my ls to help me with Airship, a fight I had been struggling with. Oh that feeling when I finally beat it. It was worth the lack of sleep.

Also I don't think any other soundtrack will bring me to tears the way the soundtrack of FFXI does.

At this point in my life, I wouldn't want to play another game that is as much of a time sink as FFXI used to be, but I don't regret a second of the time I "wasted" on XI.

old xp parties were amazing. no level sync. you knew who was good to pt in your level range cause you all had multiple parties together. mages learned haste orders. merits were badges of honor and not everyone had them capped, or even near it.


hnms were awesome if you claimed them. if your ls had a monopoly on sw/di and claimed the kings on a regular basis... yeah. awesome.

Final Fantasy XI was epic, for its day.

Trudging through a volcano with hungry bombs and giant fking scorpions around the bend, climbing an icy mountain with snow blowing in your face and demons prowling about, spelunking through subterranean caverns connecting two continents, exploring flying ruins created by angels or avoiding the deathtraps in an ancient temple dedicated to hatred. Tonberries are so cute when they want to stick knives in your back.

Just the scale of zones and the world of Vana'diel were enough to convince the player they weren't on Earth anymore. La Theine Plateau feels larger than entire regions of other games and don't get me started on the 'kill me now' Beaucedine Glacier. Walking to Fei'yin feels longer than the entire Oregon Trail.

Hoofing it from a starter city to Jeuno felt like a journey complete with a (generally) subtle change in climes between regions. A wasteland like Gustaberg gives way to the rolling hills of Konschtat which leads to a swampy marshland which then gives way to beautiful green plains as Jeuno looked on in the distance. All this while giant tentacle monsters and beastmen are trying to introduce players to the ground.

Things had weight and consequences for ineptitude.
Fall down a trap floor? Enjoy your death by monster-in-a-box.

Fail to chart a proper course through the local fauna? Enjoy being dismembered by the friendly wildlife.

Climb your local mountain range and got too close to the dragon occupying the summit? Welp, that's the end of your adventuring.

What about that pool of animated liquid over there? Should we touch it? Nope, nope we shouldn't. ***, now we're eating unreasonable amounts of AOE.

That's what made XI epic. The overwhelming odds against you and the triumph that came in beating the odds. Felt pretty cool to make it into the walls of Jeuno after all that ***.

P.S - *** you Bostaunieux Oubliette. What kind of sick NPC lets a lowbie drop down into a lvl50+ dungeon with agrroing slimes and no way back out? I probably should have looked up what an Oubliette was....

I still remember hitting 75 when it was the cap. Probably the best time I had playing the game. Staying up late to level up with Japanese people. And everything was new and exciting.


Also HNM much as it sucked camping I thought was very fun.

i never had issues with that. it wasnt random. however after 10 years i learned ppl just didnt pay attention, get frustrated and/or necessary dont care to go to event on time for whatever selfish.
Still happens to day with delve.


i agree, however at same time you have to include some nm)s) made sense in relation to the tiered content (ground hnms, serket etc and nidhogg etc. while others didnt.


i never really felt the game was a timesink. if i didnt have time, i didnt have time. if i had time i made sure the manage it well.
i keep myself busy no matter how much time i played.


this is one thing i can never agree with. this is not bad game design. stop blaming s.e for allowing a linkshell( leaders) take advantage of you. the example you gave is of bad people manipulating members and no putting in real effort to gear their linkshell members for thier efforts.

dont get me wrong as a linkshell leader i know how bad members can be. during that time most players would just get their ***and bounce after they have finished thier goal(s). etc etc.

at the end of the day it was the players and its not s.e to inforce morals in to its playerbase.

so FFXI compares to the vast epic expanse of space and the oceans?


and back on topic, if you like long games try playing NA RPGs, they tend to be like FFXI in many aspects, and imply restrictions on your playstyle to make them more challenging

No, it really was bad game design. Players adapted to that bad game design and over the course of two accounts and at least three sky LSs, I saw the exact same pattern repeated over and over. I actually don't blame the players who did this (well, I do find the Rangers arguing about DEX increasing their crit rate to be pure loot-whoring) because the system was so poorly designed that only a masochist or an idiot would endure the process without growing disgusted.

At issue is how one popped Byakko (or any of the other shijin, to be fair). Collecting two NM drops, one from a timed spawn which was eventually made a forced-pop (that often took as long or longer to farm up) and the other from a lottery spawn, necessarily wasted a lot of time. And since you were potentially competing with a considerable number of other players, it meant that it was entirely possible to spend a 5-hour farm day accomplishing literally nothing. It's amazing that SE didn't make Gems and Stones less than a 100% drop rate, given the entire game was designed around horrendous timesink runaround like this. When it was entirely possible to invest a 20-hour week into popping maybe two NMs (because every LS I've been in tried to cater to all of its members by attempting to feed their interest in Wyrmal Abjuration: Legs, too), I can't blame the players for eventually burning out, getting their ***, and disappearing before the door can slam shut again.

To those who are going to immediately disagree, please don't regale me with tales of how your LS was more efficient or luckier or had some sadsacks who could farm Diorite 24/7 so the people with real jobs didn't waste their time. I know I was on the unlucky side of the curve, but I also know that I was neither unique in that respect nor does it justify the punishingly bad game design that prompts players to take a self-centered approach.

I look at FFXI with nostalgia glasses on too. I've tried other MMOs since leaving (Terra, FFXIV) and was unable to get into them. FFXI was my first, and the olden golden days of it will probably remain my favorite.

But you have to remember, it's just the nostalgia glasses! I have come back, and logged in a few times, and no, I don't like it as much as I remember liking it. I left for several reasons and all those reasons are still there and still strong. Nostalgia is always better than the real thing actually was. Even when I was playing, I'd get nostalgia glasses going. I'd camp something for days, an NM perhaps, or try over and over for something, and be frustrated and annoyed every minute of it. But as soon as I reached my goal, I felt that I'd been happy all that time. I wanted to do it again!

But no. I didn't want to do it again. I'd quickly forget the frustrating parts in favor of the brief rewards. For years this pattern continued, until I finally realized what was happening. After I paid attention to it for awhile, I realized that the rewards weren't really worth it. They weren't worth the frustration and irritation and time wasted-- especially not when a bigger, better reward would soon be available for less time, less effort, less frustration.

Now when I look back on my time in FFXI, it's not the gear, it's not the NM fights and BCNMs that I remember fondly. It's sitting in my mog house talking to friends. It's running around on a level 10 job in beautiful areas, listening to the game music that I loved so much. It's running all the way out to the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah just to afk there for the music there. It's sitting my arse outside of Windurst in the past to afk and read a book while listening to that music. Music that I can now listen to without even having to log in.

The things that I was really nostalgic for are none of the things that people actually DO in the game. It's not actually playing the game. It's exploring. It's looking at the scenery. It's listening to the game music. It's chatting up my pals. It was never events that I loved. And that's why no other game can match up. They are never going to have the same gorgeous looks, the same moving songs, the same friends waiting there for me.

No other game can ever match up because it was never the game itself that I loved.

That doesn't make FFXI the coolest, the most epic, the best MMO. Not by a long shot. It just means that FFXI was the one that I got attached to and devoted my time to, the one I made friends in, and the one that I knew.

Huh... you know, I will say that I'm one of the (apparently unusual?) types who actually does nostalgize gameplay rather than the socialization. If I just wanted to talk to people, I tended to have their IM or e-mail address, so I completely disregarded socializing in game when categorizing memories since it was just another option.

But, yeah, I like recounting the stories of Charybdis fights. I enjoy remembering how I got my Retaliators and Vali's Bow. I have fond memories of leading my crew through Chains of Promathia. I certainly like the game. But when I take one second to remember that, for instance, I spent the best part of a week in Fei'Yin to get those Retaliators (and, ironically, they dropped after a server maintenance so all the camping was for naught), the joy sort of drains away.

I think WoW has been a lot better to me. If I wanted to pursue some goal like, say, collecting a vanity set or getting a cool-looking mount, the signal-to-noise ratio on time investment was considerably better. Bottlenecks might have forced me to spend two or three weeks waiting before I could get my Netherwing Drake mount, but those bottlenecks also meant that I only spent ~30 minutes a day on it and could do other things if I wanted. There was nothing worse than camping an NM in FFXI while solo and realizing that you need to use the bathroom or walk the dog or make dinner because the game made it very clear that your time was not your own.

This is what I see.

Camping NM/competition/LS centered endgame is not "Good" game design nor bad. I see this as some sort of resource competition, the human interaction involved somewhat made the game feel more like rl and less like a game.

It's just that majority of gamers won't appreciate it, so MMOs been moving away from it. It doesn't mean it's "bad" if your goal is to play an MMO that's more like a virtual world and less like a game. Games nowadays feel a lot less like a world IMO. IRL if you're on an island with limited food, you'd see ppl take self-centered approach/team up then back stabbing each other too. That being said, I wouldn't put myself on an island with limited food just so that I can experience life, so it's nice to have an MMO offering such opportunity.

I play games to experience something I don't get a chance to experience irl. I don't really feel the time I spent on FFXI is "wasted" because I got what I want to experience in this game. I spent around 8700 hours in FFXI, which I feel like I "lived" for 8700 hours in another world.

There are many other MMOs I spent way less time than FFXI, something like 100~500 hours, and all I do is kill ***, hit lv cap and get point for items in those MMOs. I feel my time's wasted in those games even though I spent less time, after I log off none of the item/character level stay with me from other MMOs. I got ***so fast and gain level so fast in other MMOs, but they just made no impact in my life that in the end my time's wasted.

But 8700 hours I lived in the world of FFXI stayed with me as part of my life experience after I log off. That is the difference. Even though I may get items slower than other games, get ***done slower, it doesn't matter. The point is to live another life in another world.

Oh and btw, FFXI isn't my first MMORPG, but I played FFXI before EQ so it's technically my first community based MMORPG. By the time I start EQ, EQ's difficulty already dumb down a whole lot.

I use to think XI was the hardest pve mmo ever due to the time constraints on content, the preparation to do stuff, long boss fights, and the sheer amount of teamwork and and effort to do simple things. Now the game almost seems like a joke with how simple it is. Only hard part now is just finding some competent people to do content or having enough money to multibox and do everything yourself.

kinda miss that old XI nostalgia feel tho

It's a video game. It's honestly not even very immersive (your character is not the hero of the story, it is consistently the NPCs who get top billing). I really don't get where this "other life" interpretation comes from. I play to play a video game with other people, not mimic the worst parts of real life and pretend that resource scarcity contributes to my sense of fun.

Live another life that is what alcohol is for. MMOs tend to attract the worst type of video game players. The ultra competitive in your face bros. That you try to avoid in real life.

23680 here! Though 2/3 of it is probably afk time.



wonder how much money that translates to in terms of electricity

There were a couple years that I left my games on all the time due to bazaaring dynamis stuff but most of the time, I turn the game off at night or while I'm at work and I still have an excessive amount of play time...

My definition of immersion, and please contradict if you disagree, is either to feel that I am a part of the world or that I am playing the role of the character. MMOs obviously don't have the latter because of their structure, so I'd need to find some way to feel a part of the world. I just don't get that with Vana'diel. Literally nothing I do seems to have an impact. Whether I've slaughtered 40,000 bunnies or slain the gods themselves, that guy outside the Leatherworking guild is still waiting for me to bring him some rabbit skins. About the closest FFXI comes is to call you a loser if you turn in enough Moat Carp to get Lu Shang's Rod. Thanks, SE!

WoW has done immersion a lot better. Canonically, all the big stuff is still done by NPCs, but there were occasional announcements when someone would slay Onyxia. More recently, though, they've made multi-phased zones where you basically walk into the middle of a warzone (or possibly turn it into one by your very presence) and the quests you complete slowly change the appearance of the place, up to and including completely altering what NPCs and mobs are accessible and where they are placed. It's just a shame that it is still being done via text logs instead of voice acting because that would really up the ante.

Time spent doing something doesn't seem immersive to me. I'm a complete loser who loves the Dragon Quest games and a big part of why I love them is because they're grind-tastic. I can settle in to leveling up classes or whatever while watching a movie or listening to NPR. I'm spending a helluva lot of time with the game, but I'm actually immersed in the movie or news report or whatever.

Its like an 11 year old game. What do you expect lol?

Given using 600 watts(since I would guess your machine(s) through the years would probably not be maxing your PSU) and only paying 9 cents a kwh it'd be 1,278.72. So not as bad as I'd expect but it'd greatly depend on your machine and how much of the total wattage it actually pulls while playing/idle.

Fair point. I wasn't saying that it should do X or Y (I'm assuming this is in relation to my comment on voice acting?), just that it would be a bonus if it did.

i will have to say how about back in 04' and lvling drk like you were ment to and unknowningly lvling great sword and scythe every cap keeping them capped awaiting lvl 40-60 after 3 months of lfg you finally get guilliotine and all the near death / deaths cause the tank couldnt figure out to cover and heavy heal the drk to get the hate off

or how about going from 66 drk to 75 in less then a week cause of the almighty spinning slash ah 04 was good times too bad we dont exp in sky anymore