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

[Alyko]

FFXI had an extremely toxic endgame community back in the day. A browse over at bluegartrls.com XI Drama (click at the top) shows how it was.

Wind back to 2004. People were in 4k/hour EXP parties. That meant, at level 60+ where 30,000 EXP requirements were the norm, it took a minimum of EIGHT HOURS to get a single level. Naturally people gravitated towards the jobs that could dish out the most damage, which meant rangers, rangers, and more rangers. Jobs with 2-handed weapons - DRKs and DRGs especially - were dead last when it came to who got invited. And woe betide those who didn't have extremely expensive accuracy equipment.

Mission battlefields tended to excaberate this. When Chains of Promathia was released, the promyvion bosses - even WITH anima - were almost impossible with a conventional setup. Climbing the Promyvions was sort of like climbing Mount Everest - if someone dies, you can't go back to revive them because that would endanger the rest of the group. So an alliance would get to the top with half their party missing. If you were the wrong job - usually a melee DPS - sorry, you wasted your time. The conventional wisdom of the day was "throw SMNs or RNGs at it".

Then there were the three kings. Good Moggle Mog on a stick, those three mobs were responsible for some of the most bitter drama in FFXI, especially Fafnir/Nidhogg. People would stand on Fafnir's tail and cure the tank to get hate, forcing him to use an AOE attack that hit the other 300+ people standing there waiting to claim it. Or how about binding a darter in the middle of Nidhogg's model, forcing it to spin around and cause a flail? Maybe spamming fireworks next to a party to lag them out? JPs would literally hold the mob for 8 hours to keep its spawn window in JP time. To think, it took SIX YEARS to finally fix that mess of an endgame model, to make those 3 forced spawn.

But wait, there's more! Dynamis was designed around the idea that one lucky idiot would get all the currency while the plebians would lot for the 5-6 artifact armors that dropped that run. Nothing to stop the currency holder from selling the currency and splitting with the gil while the rest of us got nothing. And this activity demanded 3 hours a week, twice a week, all so one person could get rich.

FFXIV has come MILES ahead of FFXI, so far ahead that I'm convinced anyone who has good memories of FFXI's endgame community has stockholm syndrome... Maybe it varied by the server.

[HaplessHermit]

FFXI had an extremely toxic endgame community back in the day. A browse over at bluegartrls.com XI Drama (click at the top) shows how it was.

Actually, it was still really bad at the XIV 2.0 launchtime. I've been playing XI since NA PC release and the endgame was always bad. Best (recent) example would be Tojil. Tojil was ridiculous. All the drama surrounding that fight, in a dead game, in 2013. It's impressive, really, people aren't even competing and they still hate each other.

As a stun Scholar and Oats Monk, I never had issues farming Tojil for plasm, with my linkshell. But man, you wouldn't believe some of the things I saw while joining PUGs. Scholars missing their stuns (should have used animation stunning!) getting reduced to tears because someone spends five minutes bitching them out and telling them they failed the run, was a common occurence. Then the people who yelled at them shout for four hours the next day (Tojil 17/18 SCH) and wonder why they aren't getting any bites.

I'm so glad to leave XI behind.

[Kasumuni]

FFXIV has come MILES ahead of FFXI, so far ahead that I'm convinced anyone who has good memories of FFXI's endgame community has stockholm syndrome... Maybe it varied by the server.

[Raven19x]

Everything you just said

Nailed it. Anyone who really "enjoyed" that game has some stockholm syndrome/masochist issues. I was upset at how long it took me to quit that game (middle of Aht Urghan period).

[SynMaris]

/thread.

We can all go home now, this person wins.