What was FFXI like when that first launched?

I played FFXI about 4-5 years after launched. (Loved that game.)

There's a lot of heat about how rubbish FFXIV is at the moment, although I don't think it's that bad.

Just out of interest for FFXI veterans - How was FFXI when that first launched? Was it really bad?

Looking back at WOW when that first launched, it wasn't that good. It had so many problems... but look at that game now.

Hopefully FFXIV will be like that in a few years time.

I've wondered that myself, sorry I can't answer your question because I haven't played XI. But I don't remember hearing great things about it when it came out O.o which might be why I didn't play it. I also like XIV, and even though many people hate it, I think it's pretty fun (for the most part..)

I'm sure XIV will be as beastly as all the others in a year or two..Me and my friends, who also like XIV, keep reminding ourselves it's still a young MMO, and it sucks that everyone else seems to think that it's supposed to be a grand masterpiece right off the bat :/

FFXI was garbage >.> NA/EU got to see it with the first expansion, but there was not nearly as much to it prior to that.

Yea, nothing is a total masterpiece right at release, not even every single player games.

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Originally Posted by Reika

FFXI was garbage >.> NA/EU got to see it with the first expansion, but there was not nearly as much to it prior to that.

Yea, nothing is a total masterpiece right at release, not even every single player games.

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This is when I started playing FFXIV, a couple of months before the second expansion came out. If the first expansion to FFXIV brings it up to that level (literally and figuratively) then I'll be happy.

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Originally Posted by Reika

FFXI was garbage >.> NA/EU got to see it with the first expansion, but there was not nearly as much to it prior to that.

Yea, nothing is a total masterpiece right at release, not even every single player games.

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Problem is FFXI, when first released in 2002, was only in Japan. NA/EU got it when the "beta test" ended and if I remember right that was in 2004. The game still had massive amounts of problems but it was still widely appealing.

FFXIV released worldwide, with a bigger gaming market, a much bigger campaign advertisement, and most of all as a successor to FFXI. A lot of the mistakes in FFXIV has happened in FFXI as well, but XIV barely had anything at all upon release. Most of all the game was virtually unplayable due to a terrible laggy UI and the Market Wards not having a search function, and all you could basically do is grind to rank 50 and hang up the game.

FFXI may have been garbage but FFXIV was a complete train wreck and all the passengers died on board.

FF XI was a total nightmare aqnd basically everything done wrong. SE got many things fixed before the NA and windows versions were released, but it was an unbelievable mess. Worse than XIV.
Remembering this gave me more hope than anything else. Hehe, I still remember stuff wich may seem funny from today's perspective, but were not back then ... like being aggroed on chocobos, mobs always being your rank, the AH getting shut down due to duping bugs, etc.

But also, history repeats itself, like the server load issues, etc. ... SE still seems to be a bunch of developers who consider themselves being system administrators and infrastructure architects, but without a real clue here.

I found a nice link on the update history ... http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html
Some things may be interesting to read, some even funny, some painful because it simply happens again to us.

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Originally Posted by Tanaya

Problem is FFXI, when first released in 2002, was only in Japan. NA/EU got it when the "beta test" ended and if I remember right that was in 2004. The game still had massive amounts of problems but it was still widely appealing.

FFXIV released worldwide, with a bigger gaming market, a much bigger campaign advertisement, and most of all as a successor to FFXI. A lot of the mistakes in FFXIV has happened in FFXI as well, but XIV barely had anything at all upon release. Most of all the game was virtually unplayable due to a terrible laggy UI and the Market Wards not having a search function, and all you could basically do is grind to rank 50 and hang up the game.

FFXI may have been garbage but FFXIV was a complete train wreck and all the passengers died on board.

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Actually that link up there says Actual beta ended in April 2002, went live a month later, and saw NA release in October 2003, a years and 5 months later. And it wasn't all the bomb after that, especially because of the requirement to group for EVERYTHING past level 12.

And I wouldnt say FFXIV was totally worse than XI's launch. I've been playing FFXIV since October, and my UI was never laggy beyond the obvious server-side UI crap that they still have going on today, and the Market wards lack of search function just made it take an extremely long time to find anything, but they didnt make it unplayable.

And the train wreck was only really bad to those who thot MMO's launched with flawless victories 100% of the time. I survived it because I knew it was a new MMO and what to expect from new MMO's.

Maybe people would feel a whole lot better if they just released it in Japan in September, then made NA/EU wait a year and 5 months to play it with a possible first expansion again? I sure as hell am glad they didn't do that again. And it's not like we are paying anything right now, SE is just keeping the servers open while they make fixes and additions and prepare for a re-release ^^

FFXI was probably almost as bad as FFXIV when it first launched in Japan. By the time it was released in the US about a year later it was a solid game.

Its nice to hear that both XI and WoW needed a lot fine tuning. Having only played XI, and XIV for any appreciable length of time I hadn't really though of all MMO needing fine tuning at launch. I like XIV overall, and my biggest concern has been will SE find it necessary to pull the plug. If this sort of post launch fix-up is par for the course for MMO then I would bet on SE making this into something good. Their creative staff is pretty good, and when you look at the graphics and character models its clear they have artists who really care about their craft. Truth is I saw MMO that launched 7 years after XI did, and they had poor graphics compared to XI, and we were already in the 'next gen' graphics era at that point.

@Reika: I was going straight from memory, so my years got jumbled. Oh well though.

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Originally Posted by Reika

And the train wreck was only really bad to those who thot MMO's launched with flawless victories 100% of the time. I survived it because I knew it was a new MMO and what to expect from new MMO's.

Maybe people would feel a whole lot better if they just released it in Japan in September, then made NA/EU wait a year and 5 months to play it with a possible first expansion again? I sure as hell am glad they didn't do that again. And it's not like we are paying anything right now, SE is just keeping the servers open while they make fixes and additions and prepare for a re-release ^^

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I don't necessarily believe MMOs at launch are 100% perfect, but they're certainly better than what XIV given out, just on content alone. And like I said before, this game was heavily advertised and had a simultaneous release worldwide, and is a successor to XI, an MMO that has been out for 9 years. A lot of these mistakes shouldn't have happened and the game was no different at release when played on Beta. In fact it was the exact same game.

It seems like their experiences from XI didn't carry over at all. The fact they even had to make it free to even keep a sufficient amount of players on servers is about as drastic as I've ever seen anyone do with an MMO. XIV had a much bigger mantle to carry than XI and that's why it bombed harder.

That update history link seem to tell me that FFXI was a much more fun and casual (if buggy) game before the developer decides they need to "fine tuned" it after the players have accomplished all of the content and ask for more.

Then instead of adding a lot of contents, they just decides to make the old content harder and a few new content that takes forever so they can say "There is nothing to do? Have you got all job at 75? no? then go grind some more!".

To me it seem that FFXI was a game with good and fun foundation that SE decides they can't be bother to make many new content for, so they enlarge the time sink and make doing anything and everything take as long as possible. That design philosophy culminated into FFXIV, where doing anything and everything is a time sink. Want to craft? Please play a repetitive and boring mini game. Want to gather item? Please play a boring and repetitive mini game. Want to buy items? Please search for your items, run to several wards, look from north to south of each ward to find the bazaar you are looking for, buy, repeat.

What they "fixed" early on in FFXI is to make everything harder and take longer to do, what they want to fix here is to add fun to the game. I like the current development team, they are making the game much less frustrating to play, but the game has not become enjoyable.

The first days of ffxi were nightmarish at best... btu the game WAS FUN.

FFXIV, decided to scrap all the good things ffxi and restart a train wreck...

Ffxiv is like being the dude with the vision of the catastrophe thats coming in Final Destination movies. Meaning that if you had stopped to WATCH you could have avoided all the messes.

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Originally Posted by Tanaya

@Reika: I was going straight from memory, so my years got jumbled. Oh well though.


I don't necessarily believe MMOs at launch are 100% perfect, but they're certainly better than what XIV given out, just on content alone.

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Really? What MMOs did you play at launch that makes you state such bold things?

Specific examples are better support for an opinion than just a statement of opinion.

Even though I believe this topic has been answered correctly, I will put my input in and say that FFXI was definitely nothing special when it first launched. When the RoZ expansion was added it definitely added more for people to work with, but before that the game was really slow. Prices on everything were outrageous. The leveling, crafting, etc took forever and people hardly wanted to bother with it and pretty much gave up on things after a while. Don't even get me started about those who went to play FFXI on the PS2 back then. It was so much of a hassle it was unbelievable and the phone support sucked. One of the worst aspects of FFXI has always been and still is the PlayOnline phone support. Lastly, in the beginning of FFXI major 5 - 12 hour updates went off every other week, which seriously turned players off. I'm going to go right along by saying no MMORPG is 100% perfect when they first launch. In every major MMORPG, if you take note of it, you'll notice they're constantly changing how things are done and adding new features to attract more members.

FFXIV is simply new and needs more time to flourish. I'm absolutely certain things will start really moving once a few kinks are taken care of. Honestly one of the major things that bothered me about the game, as silly as it may sound, was the inability to change the walk buttons to the number pad and having to look around with the mouse all the time. Things like this you wouldn't think effects how people would perceive the game, but they really do. A simple little fix like that and tons of people would be ecstatic, no joke. The other thing bothering people is the payment method, one option is shady as hell and the other requires you to purchase more "Crysta" then necessary. While you could save the extra and put it towards payment in the next month, some people simply don't enjoy the idea of that because they don't wanna throw down $20 all at once. Why am I rambling on about these things? Because I feel like people should know why this game is seeing so many bad reviews, since the poster wanted to know if FFXI started like this. It did, but the problems weren't all that alike. I've only named a few of the points which have given this game horrid reviews, but no matter how shallow they seem, they're major aspects as to what keeps gamers from playing.

I remember it not having anything interesting, and being very difficult to play. No one had a clue what to do, level cap was 50, endgame content did not exist, many of todays zones weren't there, only 6 classes, no transport options.... does this sound familiar to you? And look at how awesome FFXI is now :)

True, but the reason why people are up in arms is that they were hoping SE would've learned from XI vanilla launch mistakes, not repeat them in some of the same categories.

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Originally Posted by Teknoman

True, but the reason why people are up in arms is that they were hoping SE would've learned from XI vanilla launch mistakes, not repeat them in some of the same categories.

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I think alot of the frustration comes from this point, logically the game should not have had so many design flaws on launch....mind you i think there was alot of weight from the higher ups to push the game out way before it was ready. Which is why we have this unpolished diamond in our hands.

Hopefully with some time and elbow grease they will polish it up to be something worth delving hours of your life into ^^;

It is obvious why it was released when it was. They wanted to compete with Rift, and hit a Christmas release. All those players wavering with their WoW accounts, it would be like plucking corn from a ripe harvest.

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Originally Posted by Neffie

I think alot of the frustration comes from this point, logically the game should not have had so many design flaws on launch....mind you i think there was alot of weight from the higher ups to push the game out way before it was ready. Which is why we have this unpolished diamond in our hands.

Hopefully with some time and elbow grease they will polish it up to be something worth delving hours of your life into ^^;

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Yeah you've got a point there. I think once the new system is implemented, they should be able to roll out content at a decent pace.

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Originally Posted by Irana

The first days of ffxi were nightmarish at best... btu the game WAS FUN.

FFXIV, decided to scrap all the good things ffxi and restart a train wreck...

Ffxiv is like being the dude with the vision of the catastrophe thats coming in Final Destination movies. Meaning that if you had stopped to WATCH you could have avoided all the messes.

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However, crafting in FFXIV started WAY better than FFXI started. I didnt even bother with it in ffxi when I played it. There were SOME improvements over FFXI.

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Originally Posted by Teknoman

True, but the reason why people are up in arms is that they were hoping SE would've learned from XI vanilla launch mistakes, not repeat them in some of the same categories.

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This right here. Annoying part is people will straight up attack you for suggesting that FFXIV take/learn from FFXI's features, but they'll be the first to say "IT'S OKAY THAT THIS GAME'S LAUNCH IS TERRIBLE JUST LOOK AT FFXI'S JP LAUNCH 9 YEARS AGO".