Just played Final Fantasy XI

[Delily]

I heard they are coming out with a vanilla server for FFXI. When that comes out you can bet that I am going to be going back. I played for 8 years and the only thing that is keeping me from playing it now is abyssia. It was a fun expansion when it first came out but the speed at which it allowed you to level and the way they made it very solo friendly changed the structure too much for me.

Tarutaru SMN for LIFE!!!

Also, I miss having to work together with other crafters. Everyone being able to be an Omni-crafter and easily mind you, really ruins the whole system. Plus since gear is far more linear it makes for a restricted system compared to what FF11 had.

You heard wrong, that would be an immense waste of time and money on Square's part. They have 2 developers, 1 tester, and less than 20,000 active players.

[Truefaith87]

I have said it many times, and still believe it to be so. FFXI is, was, and always will be a great MMO, one i enjoyed very much. The mistake they made was Abyssea. It made everything and anything else so trivial, they ruined the whole game by adding it. Went from complex fights and parties actually grouping together to suddenly "throw dps at it until it dies." Removed the risk of death with proper Atmas, and left other classes completely in the dust because of it. Was a massive mistake to add into a world as expansive and diverse as it is.

[ShinMetsu]

I miss FFXI so very much too.

Like many others, it was my first MMO and i was still very young when i started.
I have so many fond memories of it, from the moment i started to till many many years later.

Personally, what i miss the most is the adventuring and exploration. It just felt so genuine in FFXI.
There were so many places that I really just wanted to explore.

In FFXIV i get a quest, a pointer on a map and simply follow it.
Whereas in FFXI I feel like it's more of " Find your own path and follow it ".
Quests weren't really big, and you weren't held at your hand. It was actually fun to do quests.
And players would share a lot of information, because many things were not as obvious.


When finding a party to level, you'd actually communicate with other people.
You'd meet up, prepare, set off towards your destination together. Because the world was actually dangerous.


In FFXIV i rarely move away from my house.
Occasionally queue for a dungeon and if i'm lucky i get a "hi" and "bye". :|

I could probably ramble on for hours about how much i love and miss old school ffxi, but gonna just leave it at that v_v

[KokoChibata]

While FFXI is still a great game its a shell of its former self the best days were pre abyssea when lvl cap was 75 and you didnt have helper npcs. Things were tough and you needed people around to help.

[Skivvy]

While FFXI is still a great game its a shell of its former self the best days were pre abyssea when lvl cap was 75 and you didnt have helper npcs. Things were tough and you needed people around to help.

Current end-game most definitely requires a group and can be quite challenging.

Leveling is a breeze and simple, as is a lot of the original content, but you would be wrong to imply there is no challenge left in the game. It is defintiely there - just not in the events you ran back in the day.

[Kannwar]

FFXI (and all the other FF games for that matter) holds a very special place in my heart. I've spent several years playing it and had over 1000 days in playtime, a lot of it AFK selling stuff in Bazaar of course lol. From beginning and W. Ronfaure, Dunes and leveling to HNM endgame, Dynamis, Sky, Sea, Zeni NM, Einherjar, Salvage, Limbus etc...it was filled with excitement, fun, exploration, death followed by massive laughs on Vent/TS, friendships made and server wide drama. It was fun, it required group effort, you never knew what was going to kick your ass around the next corner, and trust me, you got your ass handed to you a lot lol

LS I was in had events every day, point system, attendance...we were pretty serious about it, we got things done, but we all also had fun doing it. I cannot describe the feeling when I finally got my Sheikh Manteel or Kirin's Osode for my BRD or when we finally downed Odin after weeks of getting key items and preparations. When you claim Nidhogg or Tiamat in front of the whole endgame part of the server and beat it like it owes you money (or they beat you lol)...it was a group effort and everyone cheered because things like that made the whole group better. It's where I met my wife, we played together for quite a while before meeting, getting married in game, moving across continents and getting married in RL...7 years now. I will never forget friendships that i forged in that game, I still talk to some people I played with on social media etc...sadly I cannot say that for XIV.

I know times change, games like XI (before all the solo friendly changes) would have a hard time these days. I remember when I was in college and working at the same time...it still feels like I had more time to play than I do now (how the hell is that even possible?!). People change too, instant gratification and entitlement is a thing now...people complain if they don't get what they want right away, anything that requires effort is not worth doing for them.

I think what made it really fun is that you had different end game things to do at any given time, especially when 75 was lvl cap for a long time and content was added, there were a lot of pieces of gear from different events that you or someone else needed. We could do something else every day and not get burned out. Compared to XIV where you do your raids, cap tomestones, and if you have your jobs level'd you're pretty much done.

XI and my wife are also responsible for my...I guess you could call it loyalty to FF franchise. It's what kept me playing XIV 1.0 since first wave of alpha invites (with breaks), paying for it even though it was garbage lol but I somehow felt good about it, it was our game, especially after getting our name put in the credits. Whenever I take a break from XIV or XI...there's always that feeling that something is missing...

I enjoy XIV very much, not as much as I enjoyed XI...but XI feels like a lifetime ago at this point.

Sorry for the long post, I feel emotional whenever XI comes up

[loreleidiangelo]

Never played FFXI much myself, but there's an MMO coming out in a year or two called Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen whose entire aim is supposed to be replicating that kind of "old school, community-focused" MMO appeal. I'm really curious to see how it will do amidst the sea of instant gratification low-commitment MMOs that flood the market now. Do people really prefer the older, grind-oriented style of adventure with minimal direction and slower combat? Or do they like an unobstructed, idyllic stroll towards arbitrary gear rewards that they can pick up and put down at their leisure?

[Ill_Matic]

This happens with any first MMO you play. Nothing will beat what you experienced when you started playing. It's like crack, you keep chasing that high you've first experienced.

[SilverObi]

Do people really prefer the older, grind-oriented style of adventure with minimal direction and slower combat? Or do they like an unobstructed, idyllic stroll towards arbitrary gear rewards that they can pick up and put down at their leisure?

I'm not a teenager anymore sadly and my time for playing games has become a lot more limited so it's kind of a six of one, half dozen of the other kind of feeling. I still enjoy the slower pace of FFXI and games of that type with their insane depth and demanding gameplay but I also don't have six or more hours to sink into accomplishing one task (if I'm lucky!). I hop on XI when I'm bored and got some spare time to chill and just take in the quiet feeling as opposed to XIV's comparable rocket speeds. Would a revamped version of old school MMOs really succeed? Honestly I don't think so in this day and age, and that's okay because they had their time and plenty of them are still around to play.

I'm intrigued to see how the style they're borrowing from XI works out in Eureka when it goes live but I know it'll never be the same.

[AnimaAnimus]

The mistake they made was Abyssea.

My thoughts on Abyssea are this...

It was released around the same time as ffxiv v1. It allowed you to max out jobs fast and breeze through content at a pace not seen before in XI. That and the dismantling of content like dyna all made me come to the conclusion they were trying to rush ppl thru xi and hopefully get them into xiv. Then v1 went down in a firey rampage of smoke and criticism they scrambled to give it more life via Adoulin, which at release was obviously rushed, to keep ppl thinking about ff until xiv could be reborn.

But then they watered xiv down so badly that the people they didn't loose with abyssea either stayed in xi or moved on to other games. I know very few ppl who came here from there and stayed for any reasonable amount of time. Out of my giant ls easily having 50+ ppl on at any given time and enough regular endgame raiders to fill multiple pts, 1 person came over and lasted longer than 1-2 updates, other than myself. XIV is the polar opposite of XI when it comes to UI, skill and endgame, in the fact that XI took skill, had bad UI and intense, fun endgame where xiv takes no skill, has decent UI and lackluster endgame that is more "why even bother?" than "It's raid night! woohoo!"

I think a lot of the old XI players will show up again in either Ashes of Creation or Pantheon Rise of the Fallen, from the way they sound. As it is XIV isn't as much an mmo as it is a mobile game on console/pc.