To those who played FF11...

[Koti]

During 1.0, I would have said almost everything, BUT, how it handled the leveling side.

Now in 2.0, I miss FF11's sense of adventure. The fact you could go about anywhere if you were willing to risk it and that sense of danger that came with it.
I really dislike how exploration is locked behind MSQ, it bugs me to no end, but really-- That is my only problem and I can look past it for the greater enjoyment with friends.

[Liralara]

Everyone's experience is going to be completely different than what everyone else's were, but comparing FFXIV in its CURRENT state, is a bit unfair when FFXI wasn't even close to the same game now as it was when it started. Judging a game still in its relative youth against a game that is well seasoned and has gone through many facelifts over the years is pointless.

MMO's are like marriages: you put in a lot of time and love into it, for better or worse. Comparing how much better your ex did things than your current spouse is only ever going to leave you unhappy or unable to enjoy what you have now. There's no respect there. And frankly, if your ex was that great, you wouldn't be currently married to this one, now would you? Nostalgia can be a two-edged sword here.

Just my 2 cents...

[Seig345]

I'm actually not so sure I agree with this. Because progress was slower, and itemization was horizontal, it was quite difficult to actually be truly left behind. I know I took regular breaks from my end-game LS for months at a time, but when I popped back in, guess what? They were doing the same runs as before - just with different people needing the loot. I always found it quite easy to slip back into things, particularly since FFXI offered far more flexible group sizes.

[...]

I emphasized you mentioning your "end-game LS" because my own post was referencing my experience from level 1 to about 35 before I ultimately fell off the game, far from end-game. Naturally, no one can leave you behind at <insert level cap here> because, well, it was the level cap. Sure, people could acquire better gear than you, but and as you said, people would still naturally be going after different things the game had to offer, but you were at the end of the level progression. You never lost your gear from dying in FFXI, only XP. Given FFXI's horizontal progression, that end-game pool of players probably had a much lower drop-off rate due to people having much more to do at level cap compared to FFXIV.

It's entirely possible my experience was totally anecdotal and I was in the minority, I didn't mean for my post to come across as painting a universal experience for everyone who played, only that the game inevitably left some people sitting around for hours from time to time.

I'm not trying to put FFXI down, I believe I pointed out that FFXI had much more depth, meaningful progression, etc, because of how making progress was an actual struggle, and if you were the type of player who had the time and enjoyed putting that time into the kind of game FFXI was, it was very enjoyable. I was just always doomed to be a low level plebe because I did not have the determination and the will power to sit around either LFG or sitting in one spot killing the same group of mobs over and over until I leveled up enough to move to the next spot and the next group of mobs. There was certainly great content you were rewarded with for making it through that struggle, I just had too many other games I preferred to play to put up with it.

On the flipside, while I've easily put more time into FFXIV in any given year than I put into FFXI overall, I'm painfully aware how the world is so much more shallow compared to Vana'diel. The easy teleports make the world feel smaller, you don't truly feel like you've entered another country with its own culture because we simply zip here and there without a second thought and it's more like you've stepped from Wild West World into Tomorrow Land in a theme park. But I enjoy the MSQ thread enough to stick with it, and the game elements enough to hang around, admittedly with breaks in between (because I still like to play other games from time to time).

Both games have their pros and cons, but ultimately I feel like they are two completely different sub-genres of MMORPG that cater in large part to two different demographics.

[Tanathya]

Everyone's experience is going to be completely different than what everyone else's were, but comparing FFXIV in its CURRENT state, is a bit unfair when FFXI wasn't even close to the same game now as it was when it started. Judging a game still in its relative youth against a game that is well seasoned and has gone through many facelifts over the years is pointless.

MMO's are like marriages: you put in a lot of time and love into it, for better or worse. Comparing how much better your ex did things than your current spouse is only ever going to leave you unhappy or unable to enjoy what you have now. There's no respect there. And frankly, if your ex was that great, you wouldn't be currently married to this one, now would you? Nostalgia can be a two-edged sword here.

Just my 2 cents...

I can compare FFXI when it was 4-5 years old to FFXIV now, and it was a better game anyway. The game itself is better, it's a better RPG, and that is it. FFXIV has had the same formula since 2.0, and it hasn't changed. Moreover, they stated it wouldn't change.

Don't be so naive as to think FFXIV is young, because it reminds me of Robin William's "Jack", a kid who's aging badly, fast.

And why is it that whenever someone likes FFXI, someone who doesn't bring up the nostalgia goggles? Just face it, FFXI is a piece of art and there are people who just love it. It's fine if you don't.

[Luluna]

Atmosphere FFXI had so much more. I have had a play while it has been free to play and the world and music just leave XIV lacking.

The music in XIV is nice but sometimes its like elevator music...its too overpowering. I want to hear the wind hear the ocean the streams..i have always felt XIV lacked in this department.

Also in POTD the music should be better suited ...i feel on some floors it does not fit the mood at all.

[Tsukino]

In a lot of ways, FFXI was in the right place at the right time, and benefited from combining two different styles of game in a very effective way.

MMOs were still being defined at the time (not that they ever had a chance to properly mature as a genre, but that's another story) and a lot of what FFXI took on that side was from the EverQuest formula, because it was king before World of Warcraft came along. This is where the game got a lot of its mechanics that people liked. Although it might not be so successful today, things like a reliance on other people, unforgiving penalties for failure, and just the general harshness of the environment all came from EverQuest and the general idea for MMOs at the time, and they all lent to people's sense of accomplishment and ties to the game. Personally, I still hold accomplishments like getting Fenrir or earning a Nyzul Isle weaponskill higher than anything I've done in XIV. The idea that an MMO should be a living world first and an accessible game second also comes from this style - people ended up really feeling like Vana'diel was alive and functioning without them specifically.

It's obvious that XIV did similar things when they restructured for 2.0 - looked to the biggest MMO around, WoW, and copied a lot of what they did there. This results in a much lower barrier to entry, smoother adjustment time between updates, and all kinds of quality benefits. But in exchange for those benefits, you get the same failings nearly every other post-WoW MMO has. Unless you devote all your time to it, progression other than levels is meaningless because it all gets reset constantly, and anything other than "extreme" level raiding is easy enough for most people to get through without a lot of dedication, and thus not a large sense of accomplishment. It's also largely at fault for the fairly pointless open world - it's used for leveling up but once you're done the game almost becomes one big chat lobby for going in and playing the "real game" with 3-23 other people.

Other than the MMO mechanics taken from EQ though, FFXI also took a lot story- and character-wise from being a main-series Final Fantasy game. From the job change and support job systems to an actual structured story with cutscenes (particularly from Zilart on), a lot of these aspects set XI apart from other MMOs of the time. Although there are and were a ton of MMOs that attempt to cash in on people's love for another game (or non-game) franchise, FFXI really went the extra mile to make it a serious game in its series with the types of characters and plot twists and all fans expected from any other game in it. Of particular note is the idea of "finding the truth of the world," which is often at the core of FF stories, and XI managed to pull off in an MMO just fine.

XIV, in the world and story department, also draws on the series' roots, but sometimes it's difficult to take it as seriously. Every MMO out there does try to do the story thing now, but XIV probably does it better than all of them at least. Unfortunately it also relies heavily on direct references to other FF games. It can be neat sometimes, when you recognize a boss, area, or musical theme that you're nostalgic for, but in the long run they work to make it feel a bit lacking in its own identity. References in XI were much more subtle, and took a backseat to its own world-building and lore. From the creation of the Five Races and the beastmen, to the Zilart, to cermet engineering, most of the major themes in XI were its own rather than belonging to a better game that came before it.

The combination of MMO and FF at the time made FFXI one of the greatest games I've ever played, and it would be difficult to impossible to create that kind of perfect storm again. And it's not to say that XIV doesn't do a ton of things better than XI too, especially considering the climate it's in today, but that's not what the OP asked, so I'll just leave it at that.

[MonteCristo]

I never took breaks in my many years of playing ffxi. If 11 gets remastered id likely never look back at xiv....ijs

Sincerely, a ffxi OG

[Jonnycbad]

-Job traits that gradually improve your class and make it specialize in certain things instead of stat dump boosts that traits have MOSTLY become
-Interesting equipment that boost various aspects of your job or enhance certain skills (hard to balance tho)
-Unscripted battles. Mobs had "phases" in FFXI, whereby below certain HP% they used more deadly attacks, but they were rarely scripted in a specific order like they are in XIV. This might because in XI the attacks were unavoidable but easy to mitigate with buffs. Since buffs are weaker in XIV they have to be made avoidable, thus scripted.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I made it to lvl 15 or 18 or something, I was in the dunes. Couldn't get parties to stick long enough to level, never unlocked subjobs, no one in the LS's i was invited to were very helpful. Soured my opinion on XI greatly. So yeah, IMO, XI was terrible.

[MonteCristo]

I made it to lvl 15 or 18 or something, I was in the dunes. Couldn't get parties to stick long enough to level, never unlocked subjobs, no one in the LS's i was invited to were very helpful. Soured my opinion on XI greatly. So yeah, IMO, XI was terrible.

To base ffxi's overall on bad luck in the dunes is pretty weak.....Im sorry but u are literal reason why mmos hold peoples hands now...no shade jus bein bluntly honest