[[ Why do we miss the old FFXI community ]] What made it special ??

I played FFXI for 11 years, it made me laugh so hard sometimes tears would roll down my face, it made me so frustrated that I threatened to leave and never come back, it made me rage so hard I threw my controller (once or twice), yet I have never loved a game more nor met so many wonderful people, it will always be, to me, the best mmorpg ever made. And every so often, even though the servers don't have that many people and most of my friends long gone, I roam around Vana'diel and savor the memories.

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Originally Posted by Scamperoo

I played FFXI for 11 years, it made me laugh so hard sometimes tears would roll down my face, it made me so frustrated that I threatened to leave and never come back, it made me rage so hard I threw my controller (once or twice), yet I have never loved a game more nor met so many wonderful people, it will always be, to me, the best mmorpg ever made. And every so often, even though the servers don't have that many people and most of my friends long gone, I roam around Vana'diel and savor the memories.

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Well said Sacrificial Chamber tarutaru

I don't think the FFXI community was any more special then any other gaming community, it's just that it's special to the people that were able form friendships within those communities.

The reason the community seemed controlled or toned down or friendly was because the population was a mix of languages, especially Japanese. When it was released for NA, there was already a year old Japanese community settled on the server. NA players tried to blend in with the back-then legacy players so it seemed friendly. However, that's just a fog, a mask, to the natural attitude that are from NA players. Given the natural evolution that is a fresh game, fresh server, you would see the same crap you see now. So don't fool yourself about how the game itself affected the community. It didn't. It was the already established community that affected the rest going forward.

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Originally Posted by Orsnoire

LOL...what?

People were doing all those things in 2004. I don't know what game you were playing, but run throughs and having a WHM healer outside of the party happened WAY back at NA release.

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Um... That's what I was saying.

I don't see what the problem is a lot of the old FFXIV community is still here, most of the people I knew from 1.29 are still here. There are just many new players =)

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Originally Posted by Bizniztyme

Allakhazam rarely has any drama, if you look at the ARR forums, it's nowhere near as toxic as these forums.

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Might be true, but that forum pretty much mirrored my experience with the game.

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Originally Posted by Rumpelstiltzkin

I don't mind that this game is different from XI, there are good and bad points with that. I won't be playing it anymore though, but I think the biggest issue I have is that there are no alternatives, every game is like XIV ARR is and those of us who enjoy something different can only go play 10+ year old games.

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kinda like smartphones, new ones come out really quick and get old really quick too. Dime a dozen.

Another community-lacking and elitist-promoting design of XIV is the raids. Even within FCs, people are forced to group up with a small circle of "friends" cos they need to statically do raids in a group. So you end up having several circles within an FC. New players joining the FC would also have to wait for 7 other new FC members to get together and form their own static. Which may or may not suck. (a basket full of "lesser" apples will just decay faster compared to a basket of juicy apples plus one or two lesser ones)

FFXI allowed all LS members to contribute, whether be it switching in and out, or team to clear adds and stuff. No one is shunned from participating. This is community building. Having an arbitrary FC but in fact there's 5 independent coil groups within it doing their own stuff is not.

An LS member was asking for a tank for WP yesterday in LS. A tank raises hand, and the person forming was asking if he/she can speed run. Tank said probably not, then there was silence. Then the person forming the party resorted to finding a tank through DF.

ffxi > ffxiv mainly because of the community and also if you were a jerk you were known throughout the server.

What made FF11 community special was the fact that server populations wasn't much larger than a small town. Which meant that if you acted like an idiot it wouldn't take long before you were blisted by the entire server. Once that happened...well you couldn't level, do any of the storylines, or get endgame gear. Thus you had to make an entirely new character and do everything again. Which can take up to a year.

So basically both the game mechanics and the players enforced good behavior. Now...well leveling is so easy in both games that you can just hit level cap in a few days. So there's no consequences for when you act like a complete jerk.

Less complaining, less entitlement, less selfishness, people had to work together to accomplish anything past level 15, people where helpful because of that, people wanted to put in time to accomplish things in the game instead of how people in this game want to get everything now, now, now.

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Originally Posted by PwinkLogical

ffxi > ffxiv mainly because of the community and also if you were a jerk you were known throughout the server.

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Ah, the greatest MYTH the FFXI community ever told itself, that this kind of thing EVER happened. You might have become "notorious" to a handful of link shells, but an equal number would think your "jerk" was Rick-freakin'-Astley.

Like for instance, I became "notorious" to a linkshell "for being a jerk". Later I partied with one of their members and they told me how I was blacklisted by the majority of their linkshell because I had been mean to one if their members who was just "joking around". Well, I told them HOW their buddy was "just joking around". He was making rascit/homophobic jokes to the Japanese member of our party and I finally told them to shut up, and that his behavior was intolerable. Needless to say this cane as a huge surprise to this linkshell mate, as his buddy had conviently left that part out of his story about how I was mean to him.

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Originally Posted by SynMaris

The biggest Myth in MMO History: XI's "Kick Ass" Community.

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I have taken the liberty of quoting the most honest post in this thread!

Yeah, I totally do not remember the community itself being special. Only the people in your LS who you worked hard to accomplish things with were special.

And that is mainly due to the fact that you worked so long and hard with the same group of people to accomplish said goals.

Of course there were the random Pugs where everyone was trying to accomplish a goal, but everyone there was filling a personal need not so much as helping for others sake.

There are always a few humble individuals who pass the time by helping others, those were rare in FFXI and even more so with the game design of FFXIV.

In short ffxi community never that special, FFXIV community never going to be special.

In my opinion it's mostly nostalgia. Yes the community was cool sometimes and I do still remember lots of moments. But I also had lots of situations where relying on others simply sucked. Like person X going afk and the whole group had to wait or at least got slowed down. Or people force disconnecting after they got their drop. Or the competition between groups on certain NMs. One thing that comes into my mind here is yinyang robe. You bring at least 2 people everytime to claim an invisible NM that pops every 72? hours. This was a total bitch fight between people in that zone. Again I had lots of good moments also. Yes I did meet lots of helpful people. But I can't forget the downsides of FFXI. The community changed with the introduction of abyssea too. The moment the game started on easy mode alot of selfish people started to pop up in the game.

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Originally Posted by LoLo

Less complaining, less entitlement, less selfishness,

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Tell that to the multiple jobs that were excluded from EXP parties.

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What made FF11 community special was the fact that server populations wasn't much larger than a small town. Which meant that if you acted like an idiot it wouldn't take long before you were blisted by the entire server.

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Thats not really true. There was lots of jerks and idiots completing everything, including the best endgame gear. Even if they get blisted by some people, they just reagrupped on other HNMLs.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

You can play FFXI, the game still running ya know.

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The FFXI I mentioned and love is not still running. It died a long time ago.

I did also say I love ARR :)

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Originally Posted by Husband

The FFXI I mentioned and love is not still running. It died a long time ago.

I did also say I love ARR :)

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I'm curious, what killed FFXI for you? I quit around about the time A Moogle Kupo D'etat was released, I couldn't believe I had paid good money for that, and by then I was sick to death of waiting for WotG to finish. I briefly contemplated a return when I heard about Abyssea, but didn't. It makes me sad now to think that a BST can solo farm coins in Dynamis.

Funny thing is, I don't really miss the game, but I do miss my linkshell.

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Originally Posted by realmreborn

I think because most of the players back then were old players they had something called patience, i remember my first party to valkrum dunes was fun even though we died alot of times from gobs and linking, no off us got mad at other players if they sucked at healing or had bad dps gear and most of the time we laughed at how tarutaru die facing the ground and galkas tea bagging them it was all about having fun

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Valkurm Dunes = Sastasha, and I don't see a lot of toxic behaviour there, Relic content, meaning Dynamis and Primals/Tomes-SRs I see a LOT of similarity, jerk-wise.

Or, say ToAU 'bird camps' showed as much if not more ass-hattery than XIV's SR jerks; oh, and MPKing in XI was rife end-game, as was HNM camp jerkery.

FFXI was NOT the Nirvana you think it was. At the levels of the game where the XIV toxic community makes itself known, the same was true in XI.

FFXI required party play from a very early level. It required parties not only to finish quests and missions, but just to level your character. Through that process you were able to meet a lot of people. Most people were average and then some you hated and some you really like. However, by the sheer volume of people you were forced to interact with, most people found a community within the game that they could belong to. In games where leveling and questing do not require a party (or many parties) until end game, communities form around players having similar end game goals, not players with similar interests and personalities like in FFXI. Thus the sense of "community" is completely different. Games where leveling is easier, in my opinion, create very goal oriented communities, while games like FFXI and the original Everquest create experience and personality oriented communities

This thread is hilarious. Here is what I remember from FF11, as a MNK before MNK was popular:

1.) Being invited to groups as a last resort because 80% of the leveling experience was crabs and EVERYONE wanted Distortion SC for easy kills.
2.) RDM, BLM and BRD got pushed to the front of the line for any and all content. Because bosses like Kirin were lvl 90 when the cap was still 75 and had ridiculous amounts of defense and evasion. Burst damage was the way to go(LOL@Chi Blasting in full MND).
3.) NIN was a blink tank. Why? Because the NA community followed JP methods like they were gospel and god forbid WHMs actually have to do their jobs.
4.) RDMs, BLMs and BLUs acting like divas because they could form their own burn parties if conventional groups didn't want to conform to their preferred methods of efficiency.
5.) Pack sniffers, everywhere. HNMs spawning purple(claimed)as a result and giving way to attempts at MPKing the claimers because everyone rages when they don't win.
6.) Being expected to "return" raid gear that you participated in obtaining if you decided to retire from an LS for whatever reason. There's a difference between being loaned something that was there before you arrived and giving back something you put in the hours to acquire.

FF11 was FULL of class prejudices that remained strong from Zilart all the way up to Aht Urghan(when I left). I don't know if it got better in WotG but considering how many FF14 players are former 11 players, I somehow doubt it. There's also the prevailing issue I see where NA players idolize the JP/KR method of doing things and so they go at each other like know-it-alls despite the fact that none of them choose to figure out anything for themselves. I don't know what version of FF11 some of you were playing, but someone should have told me it came in 2 variations like Pokemon cause I guess I got the wrong one.

and no doubt, it's everything this community is slowly becoming when I watch diva bardtards here defend their arrogant behavior and absolute need for 100% success rates in any and all groups they're apart of. If anything, it stands to become worse here as people AREN'T forced to depend on each other as much so the incentive to be on one's best behavior has been removed. So much for hoping FFXIV would bring in new blood instead of the same exact people I got tired of dealing with in 11.

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Originally Posted by Sinth

XI's community was great simply because the content of the game was so impossible to do on your own and forming a group to complete said content typically took hours on its own. This resulted in people being much more helpful and tolerant as they couldn't quickly leave and find another group immediately.

The content and features of the game forced the community to work together. Sure it had its bad apples, but they were much fewer and farther between simply due to the fact that if they acted out and ruined a party, they weren't just wasting everyone else's time, but a significant amount of their own as well.

Also, you could /slap people who got out of line. :)

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This times 100!!!

ff11'S Old school gameplay would definetly work in this generation, mainly because its much different and will give players back the sense of adventure and accomplishment, somthing that we have been missing out on, over the past 7 years.

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Originally Posted by Peprika

ff11'S Old school gameplay would definetly work in this generation, mainly because its much different and will give players back the sense of adventure and accomplishment, somthing that we have been missing out on, over the past 7 years.

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Rose-colored nostalgia at its finest.

I miss kicking the loldrg from the party because a warrior is LFP

I miss trash talking DDs because they don't have a SH/Haub

I miss losing claims to RMT bots

I miss going entire nights without getting an exp party

I miss having to level certain jobs to progress (CoP) because some jobs weren't viable.

I miss SE showing class balance by overnerfing (rng) or overbuffing (2-handers)

I miss having to solo on BLM after ToAU came out because no one would invite one.

I miss barrens chat in Jeuno...oh wait we still have that!

I miss parties not being formed because there was no rdm or brd.

I miss it taking 30-45 minutes to get ppl together to do anything, "hang on I need to go to my MH"

I mean tbh I loved the game but I don't have rose-colored hypno-goggles like some ppl

I'll add a little bit of spice to this thread.

The early WoW community (during vanilla) was a better community as well. Maybe not on par with how the FFXI community is described here (due to the heavy emphasis on grouping to even level in FFXI at that time). But, I think there is wisdom to garner from comparing those two games in their respective 'golden ages' in terms of community. I think we could discover what game mechanics and design decicions has the biggest impact, in terms of encouraging and enforcing a good community.

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Originally Posted by Argent_Wings

This thread is hilarious. Here is what I remember from FF11, as a MNK before MNK was popular:


3.) NIN was a blink tank. Why? Because the NA community followed JP methods like they were gospel and god forbid WHMs actually have to do their jobs.

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Nin was a blink tank because it was amazing at performing that role. Ended up being my favorite class to play, pushing it to its limits in tanking stuff that "NINs can't tank" and setting up to be a fantastic merit point DD, only beaten by Ridill wars and BB monks. I *loved* playing nin.

You know you've done it.

http://up.q8bbm.com/bb/ca6113492076131.jpg

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Originally Posted by Peprika

ff11'S Old school gameplay would definitely work in this generation, mainly because its much different and will give players back the sense of adventure and accomplishment, something that we have been missing out on, over the past 7 years.

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It depends on what definition of "works"/success you use. Back then (years before WoW) there was less "saturation" (competition) so a lot was new. The newness can keep people playing through the grind until they learn enough about the world to stay interested.

Nowadays, releasing an FFXI-style grinder would be like putting a plate of vegetable snacks next to a bowl of candy at Halloween. Everyone else's MMO is offering quick-to-endgame and mega fights (free candy!). There would be very few to eat the veggies. That veggie plate MMO would probably have to be able to succeed with only a few hundred thousand players worldwide, like EVE and (now) FFXI. Maybe they would be better community, tho (OCD pedants vs ADHD sugar junkies ;))

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Originally Posted by Andrien

You know you've done it.

http://up.q8bbm.com/bb/ca6113492076131.jpg

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Guilty as charged.

I'm noticing an odd trend in this thread.

The people who type clearly, and politely, and with good grammar generally seem to have fond memories of FFXI's community.

The people who are snippy, sarcastic, rude, or just say "lol rose colored nostalgia glasses, ffxi was tehsuck" seem to have negative memories of FFXI's community.

Could it be that people with these negative experiences were perhaps deserving of the treatment they got?

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Originally Posted by Kazamoto

I'm noticing an odd trend in this thread.

The people who type clearly, and politely, and with good grammar generally seem to have fond memories of FFXI's community.

The people who are snippy, sarcastic, rude, or just say "lol rose colored nostalgia glasses, ffxi was tehsuck" seem to have negative memories of FFXI's community.

Could it be that people with these negative experiences were perhaps deserving of the treatment they got?

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Wow did you really just post that? Sure let's take one post and just assume people are jerks all the time. Did you miss the part where I said I enjoyed the game? I realize that doesn't fit into your narrative so you probably skipped it.

Arguing things on their merits is fine, debasing people on the other side of the argument because you don't agree with it is not.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

When talking about a community, one must also consider how an individual relates to that community.

If a person has 8 failed marriages, is the issue with the people they marry, or perhaps with the person themselves?

I intentionally did not quote ANYONE in this thread, but if you look back on this thread, and compared the way people typed, to their stance on the issue, i think statistically, my observation would hold true.

Are you suggesting it is impossible for the people who are being rude in this thread, to be received negatively into a community, and have a negative response?

The substance of this argument, is the communities of these games. Some view the FFXI community as mostly welcoming and helpful. Others view the community as closed and elitist.

A community is made of of individuals, and the truest answer is the FFXI community had individuals that were helpful, and it had individuals who were toxic.

My point, is that the people who seem to have had negative experiences, speak in a manner, that would suggest they are of the latter rather than the former.

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Originally Posted by Kazamoto

*snip*

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I dunno bro, back in my days as a top dog in XI, I loved the community, but I was a complete asshole.

But I can already tell, a charming asshole. :)

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Originally Posted by Kazamoto

When talking about a community, one must also consider how an individual relates to that community.

If a person has 8 failed marriages, is the issue with the people they marry, or perhaps with the person themselves?


I intentionally did not quote ANYONE in this thread, but if you look back on this thread, and compared the way people typed, to their stance on the issue, i think statistically, my observation would hold true.

Are you suggesting it is impossible for the people who are being rude in this thread, to be received negatively into a community, and have a negative response?

The substance of this argument, is the communities of these games. Some view the FFXI community as mostly welcoming and helpful. Others view the community as closed and elitist.

A community is made of of individuals, and the truest answer is the FFXI community had individuals that were helpful, and it had individuals who were toxic.

My point, is that the people who seem to have had negative experiences, speak in a manner, that would suggest they are of the latter rather than the former.

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Oh the sweet, sweet irony. A person making ad hominem as their primary modus of arugmentation claiming "They must have just been jerks to think that the community was bad."

Let's turn that around, shall we? Passive-agressive people lacking in logic and argumentation skills are more likely to have thought that FF XI had a good community.

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Originally Posted by Kazamoto

I'm noticing an odd trend in this thread.

The people who type clearly, and politely, and with good grammar generally seem to have fond memories of FFXI's community.

The people who are snippy, sarcastic, rude, or just say "lol rose colored nostalgia glasses, ffxi was tehsuck" seem to have negative memories of FFXI's community.

Could it be that people with these negative experiences were perhaps deserving of the treatment they got?

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LOL no. As I mentioned in my post, I stayed all the way up to Aht Urghan, which was about 2 1/2 to 3 years of FFXI during which I never once considered it's competitor World of Warcraft. My job with my school district left me with entire summers off to play and play I did. It was a great game for it's time and despite the exp grind, I had little complaints about the game design. It was the community and the fact that class elitism, MPKing and gilbuying were socially acceptable(though most people would still never admit to the last one)and anyone who claims such things didn't exist was likely among those who had friends in high places and never had to be on the receiving end. Either that or they played FFXI after they increased the cap, leveling became easier and people could solo Dynamis and most HNMs.

The long spawn windows and even longer respawn times made entire groups of players rabid to claim mobs over others and there was almost always drama on loot distribution afterwards. WHMs were abused for not having Erase when they were supposed to, despite every non-WHM charging 300k+ for it, many people wouldn't accept anything less than a Raise III because of the death penalty and on the other side of the coin, having to heal for anything other than the most unavoidable circumstances made all but the most brutally geared Paladins a less-than-optimal choice for tank in a majority of relevant encounters.

Pay attention to most threads concerning Binding Coil of Bahamut and you will see a lot of the same things going on here. Some classes through no fault of their own are already struggling to advance without their static raid groups because people discriminate based on what they think they know about someone else.

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Originally Posted by Orsnoire

Oh the sweet, sweet irony. A person making ad hominem as their primary modus of arugmentation claiming "They must have just been jerks to think that the community was bad."

Also, let's turn that around, shall we? People who are passive-agressive people lacking in logic and argumentation skills are more likely to have thought that FF XI had a good community.

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The sweet irony my good man, is that while misusing the term ad hominem, you simultaneously support my argument.

If I were to stay people who did not like FFXI's community are wrong because they smell bad and kill puppies. It would be ad hominem because their odor and puppy killing tendencies do not relate to how they would interact with a community.

If I state perhaps a community has less patience for rude or illiterate people and might have seemed more closed to them. That relates to the issue of how a community is viewed.

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Originally Posted by Kazamoto

The sweet irony my good man, is that while misusing the term ad hominem, you simultaneously support my argument.

If I were to stay people who did not like FFXI's community are wrong because they smell bad and kill puppies. It would be ad hominem because their odor and puppy killing tendencies do not relate to how they would interact with a community.

If I state perhaps a community has less patience for rude or illiterate people and might have seemed more closed to them. That relates to the issue of how a community is viewed.

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LOL "rude or illiterate" "Perhaps they deserved this treatment" plus more than suggesting that anyone that disagrees with you is toxic. It's funny. The fact that you don't think that's ad hominem betrays your own passive-aggressive approach. And really shows that you were one of the problems within the XI community that we're talking about. You pretend to be civil and nice on the outside, but you clearly are a complete doucher.

So, right back atcha. You prove exactly what we've been saying. The XI community had MANY people who put on a pretentious, self-righteous, "civil" exterior while being truly nasty towards those whom you don't particularly like, and an elitist ass to those whom you felt didn't deserve your attention.