Final Fantasy XI Nostalgia

[Vahzl]

Figured in amongst all the whine on this forum, we should have a few fun threads too, so I thought (based on recent posts in other threads) a bit of nostalgia over our experiences in FFXI.

For me, the most memorable moments were:

Promyvions - I hit level 30 and still had little clue what was going on in this game. My Pc could barely handle anything outside of my Mog House, so I tended to ignore cutscenes, minimizing the game while they played out, due to them crashing my PC. I was dragged up to this point in CoP with no clue what was going on, and then all of a sudden I was in an 18 man alliance, standing at the dem crystal. We entered, and the music got all emo, and I realised that I might have underestimated this game so far. Wipes, lost people, abusive language and tears followed, leading up to a 3 hour slog through the place, and ending with 8 of us left at the top. I even remember it was thundering outside my window and it was about 6:00am before we all logged out after giving up. Went back with my LS and we finally got them done the next day though. Stepping into Lufaise Meadows for the first time really got me. I was stunned. I think that was the point where I first felt the games tug and got me into it.

40+ hour grind parties - We would spend 1-3 hours standing in Jeuno (yup, no Aht Uhrgan at this point) shouting for members for Bibiki Bay and Moon parties, get to the camps after about 20 mins of travelling, and start slaughtering the landscape. After 6 hours, I would say {I'm sorry} {I'm sleepy}, pull in my replacement, and log for the night. Waking up the next morning and logging in, the same party is still there, with the odd new member, and the party is still rolling! Joining in, and continuing on over a weekend, epic.

Temple of Uggalepih - No place in FF matched this zone, for it's horrific array of aggro types. Sight, sound, magic, being a taru, you name it, it was there, and of course, the Tonberries. I remember resetting my rancor for the first time and thinking, "meh, won't have to do this again for a long time"... WRONG! Probably visited that NPC at least 250 times in my total career of FF playing.

Ru'Aun Gardens - A very good friend of mine (Segg on Seraph) used to be here all the time while I was in the lower levels, and told me all about what happened up here. I never looked on the wikis etc for pictures, as I loved the surprise, but I always imagined this wonderful lush garden full of weird creatures and gods lolloping about, with some awesome music playing. When I finally got up there, I must say I wasn't disappointed, not exactly what I imagined but fantastic nonetheless. So many hours whittled away up here wiping over and over on gods, as we learned how to defeat them.

Al'Taieu - We were amongst the first people on Seraph to gain access to sea, and as such, got very quickly acquainted with the new variations on aggro types. After exploring, we returned to the spawn point for players completing the airship fight, sat down and waited. So many people zoning in and getting glomped by the UFO hovering there. We would of course RIII them, but not until they experienced their first few encounters in this wonderful zone.

Levelling Summoner - For anyone in FFXI, Summoner and Beastmaster were labors of love. You did not get these 2 jobs to 75 on a whim. You had to work your arse off. Finding goblins and bombs at your level to solo was half the battle, as if you did it right, you would be netting faster exp than groups, but this came with hefty risks of being alone in the back of the most deserted dungeons in the game. Hours spent running backwards and forwards inside the Cape Terrigan tunnel (can't recall it's name right now, but it was the one with Bune in it) waiting for goblins to explode, and also climbing to the peak of that big snowy mountain (grah memory fails today) to get to the bombs up top. Taking the extra moment to breathe when you set your /seacom as "DD {You can have this} - {Healing Magic} {I don't have anything to give you}, slog out to the mountains, and then get that whisper that you are needed to party, only to find once you arrive you are expected to heal (which most of the time I would leave, but somedays I would just bit the bullet and do it, I was a fantastic healer, but I didn't command giant avatars just to play nurse).

Camping the kings/21-24 hour spawns - Why so serious? I would always joke about while camping these things, /em points at NM name and such, people would always respond with such venom. I would waddle about in between windows trying to start dance off's and games of hide and seek, but so many people were so up themselves, they couldn't come down off their clouds to play with the widdle taru - The feeling of seeing that Yinyang Robe/Ridill/Kraken Club drop you have been working on for months finally pop up in your loot pool, and the excitement that would follow on vent/teamspeak, don't really get the same feelings in FFXIV yet.

Will add in more as I think of them. How about you guys? Any stories to share around this text based campfire?

[Demacia]

-First real party I had at like lv9-10 or something in Konschtat (Near the crag of dem on quadavs). Guy taught me how to write a provoke macro and because of it I had <call2> in my voke macro for like a year and a half.

-After a party in dunes some of the party members were going on about a dragon being the first boss in the game. I hadn't even started my rank missions so I didn't know you had to be on 2-3 to fight the dragon (Neither did the other two eager nubs in the party) so after that we decided to take a trip to windurst to fight it. None of us had been to windurst before, one died on the boat (thanks Sea Horror) and another got chopped by a goblin in Buburimu. Made it to Windurst for the first time by myself and it was actually pretty awesome since it's completely different from Bastok. I then spent hours fishing moat carps there to save up for a 6k fire sword... for my WAR.

-Finally hitting 30 and being able to do the SAM quest. Now I'm sure everyone remembers how fucking hard this quest is for a lv30. Shouted a bit in Jeuno and had this pimp full AF DRG (This was when full AF was amazing and only for serious players/JP) show me the way. So we knock out the bomb in konschtat highlands and then he takes me to Sanctuary of Zi'tah. Saw a goobbue for the first time and thought it was ridiculous, then like every FFXI player I couldn't get over how awesome Zi'tah was. Definitely one of the more memorable zones in the game.

-First time fighting the shadow lord on my 55 SAM. Was too busy shitting myself to enjoy the amazing boss music and for a bunch of scrubby lv50-60's that fight is pretty hard. As with nearly every milestone in FFXI, I met a couple friends that I would talk to for years (one of which I even met again in XIV after losing contact with him years before).

-Summerfest. Yukatas. Goldfishing. Exploring high level dungeons as a lv1. Aw yeeeeh.

-Ballista royale, so many moments. Royale rules = score petras 3 at a time, 60 cap, no subjobs, no repeating jobs, teams of 6. I went on my (pre-seigan/hasso) SAM and damn was this a close match. Enemy WAR uses mighty strikes + TP wing and I third eye'd his raging rush then later on I practically zoned out their entire team by pelting them with sleep arrows. Our team ended up winning it for the server but we lost to Leviathan or some shit.

-Like OP, I too had a crazy experience with my first promy. This was when CoP first came out and nobody knew what the fuck they were doing so we took a full alliance of 18, most of whom died on the way, up to the top floor. Did we have those debilitating items you NEED to defeat the bosses? Fuck no. Wiped like bitches. Later on I beat it with the typical anti-promy build of WAR RNG RNG SMN SMN SMN. Don't even care because that shit was hard.

-Then I realized Promies are bitch shit when I did the airship battle in CoP. Took 12 tries and I have to say you're a hairy chested manbeast if you can successfully tank pre-nerf Omega on NIN. I believe the time limit was 35 minutes-45 minutes or something but we only had about 30 seconds to spare on our winning run.

-Being locked out of CN for 3 hours because one guy had to train the entire zone. Same deal with Garlaige. Being stuck in Selbina thanks to all the GOB2ZONE dudes. Good times.

-Got spook to drop traveler's mantle twice in a row and blew the cash on smithing to join the padded cap craze that everyone was milking. SE nerfed it and I lost 60k

-Camped Mee Deggi with a THF friend and finally got O.kotes drop (500k at the time). My legs were shaking the entire chocobo ride back to Jeuno and I blew my 250k cut on like 3 items.

-Cheating my Divine Might win by going as BLM x17 SAMx1. I was the SAM and the ONLY person with a pop item. I redid the fight the old fashioned way because I needed the challenge and that fight is amazing.

-Dismemberment Brigade BCNM60. Back when spectacles/assault earring were good money this was a worthwhile and pretty difficult BCNM. Required a balanced party with some form of AoE sleep and ACTUAL STRATEGY OMG. I never got a good drop but damn was that fight fun. I made a ton of gil off Wild Wild Whiskers though since it was an easy 3-man with like an 80% drop rate for an item worth 600k that people somehow did not know about.

-Sky. Love the zone, love the music, love the lore behind it, love fighting gods, HATE farming god pop items. Suicidal thoughts every time my LS would string the words "farm" and "water" in the same sentence.

-Swift belts. Fuck that shit. Hands down the most annoying group effort I've ever had to endure in XI.

I could honestly go on forever with stuff like this.

[Ruri]

The COP missions really did it for me in 11. I was so addicted to trying to get good parties together and complete the tough missions. Some of them I went 1/9, 1/8 etc but when you finally pull it off it was such a great feeling. You really had to have a good party together with people knowing their roles to complete the missions which was also awesome. I'm waiting for FF14's version of epic missions that actually require strategy and are somewhat difficult.

[Shikaree]

I finished the Chains of Promathia missions up to Sea right before they lifted the level limits on the areas. It was all amazing, the burning circle fights, Diabolos, going to Promy-Vahzl. It's now dated content, but being able to go through it back during the cap days was amazing and it was one of my greatest accomplishment feelings right next to getting rank 10 for Bastok.

Kuftal Tunnel. Guivre. Yes I became his snack one day when he sneak attacked me. I went walking into the middle where the path opened up on the south side of the zone and I suddenly notice the screen shaking. Never experienced it before, was just wondering what was going on, Guivre says sup and 2 shots me. Ironically I was there for dragoon AF that day.

[Ruri]

Kuftal Tunnel. Guivre. Yes I became his snack one day when he sneak attacked me. I went walking into the middle where the path opened up on the south side of the zone and I suddenly notice the screen shaking. Never experienced it before, was just wondering what was going on, Guivre says sup and 2 shots me. Ironically I was there for dragoon AF that day.

Ahh yes Guivre. Always came outta nowhere and annihilates 2-3 parties killing crabs. Good times.

[Ruri]

As for the bad memories, my top 5:
1) Seeking thf in Jeuno for 8 hours on a Saturday then finally getting a party only to disband when you get to camp because the 6th member pulled out.
2) Being constantly poor as a new player, stranded in the Yuhtunga Jungle with not enough gil for an airship ride.
3) Making almost all battle missions require a party sucked. Had to grab people who already finished it from your LS to help you most of the time, thanks to those willing to help.
4) Having to rely on white mages to teleport for the most part sucked. 20-30 minutes shouting for a teleport-vhazl was not fun.
5) NM's drop rate was horrible for the length of time it took for them to pop, sometimes took a week to get a piece of low lvl NM equipment fighting for claims and finally getting the drop. Now in 14 the pop is ridiculously quick but the drop rate still sucks, at least its all rare/ex so not many botters bother with it.

[danny52844]

what a downer
i loved CoP i read that story from chapter 1 and it was amazing even for a mmorpg i loved it
i always loved making my own pt idk y ppl always complain about having to wait for a pt id always do a /sea all ??-?? inv
and make a pt in minutes every time
loved the first time i did dynamis and my ls let me go rdm/nin >.> and meele att the ppl (i still was a refresh whore)
i loved when i camped all the little nm's like leaping lizzy and went literally like 1/50 but it was so amazing the time i finally got the drop ya the wait sucked but omg worth it!
best part about final fatnasy 11 though was the community everyone was nice and wow people just helped people
funniest part about final fantasy 11 is went npc companions came out people litterly made a LINE! FFS a line XD! on a game just to wait that was rly funny.
forgot one: first time kuftal tunnel we had to time freeze perfectly to our weapon skill then get to watch the blm run around trying not to die when the tank gets agro back

[Ruri]

i always loved making my own pt idk y ppl always complain about having to wait for a pt id always do a /sea all ??-?? inv
and make a pt in minutes every time

Well on my server at least "Kujata" around lvl 56-60 you would do a /sea 55-60 invite all (or whatever the command was) and see 3 thfs and a bst pop up. RARELY you would find a whm, rdm, tank, or anything useful. So making a party was pretty tough at least around though lvls. This was YEARS ago though so I'm sure its easier in the past few years (before TOAU).

[danny52844]

tbh i loved having 3 thfs in a pt idk y ppl dont? get the pup to go /war sata the tank sata the pup sata the tank and its almsot dead ._. people are always to picky this stuff owns expecially on colibri for later game i actually had a 5 thf 1 rdm pt at lv 30 ish at garliage citidal and later crawlers nest it was awesome

[Demacia]

funniest part about final fantasy 11 is went npc companions came out people litterly made a LINE! FFS a line XD! on a game just to wait that was rly funny.

ONLY in fucking FFXI. New feature that requires people to go through a battle field where only one person can participate at a time and niggas form an organized line so everyone has to wait for their turn. It was also funny to see everyone freak when the one or two assholes that skipped the line came. Probably has to do with the fact that your reputation actually mattered in FFXI.