What's your history with Final Fantasy?

[kazaran]

I played others on and off. Enjoying some earlier. FF XI Online changed that later and I began to support square Enix more. When XI was planning to go beta. I was actually invited by a friend to the Japanese beta for the PS2. THe problem was I had to buy the hard drive and have it shipped prior. The discs were mailed to you.

To be honest at first, I did not really like XI. It was early on. In the beta, there was little content. Even when we moved to launch, it was not the game it became until much later, and was pretty danrn buggy. Yet had fun factors. My partner played it religiously from the start. I simply frowned eventually giving up. Explains why one of us was the first to receive the server side matt cap, and I well, didn't until years later.

When the expansions rolled out, and I finally got sick of hearing "it's great, they added, this is ruff, wow" over and over and over again. I gave it a try.

The difference, content, story, and challenge changed my view of the game and even the series. Wow was now a hard contender, but XI pulled me away from wow. The story and content just felt so much better and immersive. Wow and other mmo's fell to second place ad XI became my favorite.

Then I spread the addition to a long time friend when the xbox beta started. She said "I hate this game, so frustrating" at first. weeks later "I gotta do this run, get this get that, get online now!". She found her bon bon's replacement.

We became xi addicts. at times taking breaks to play wow are something we viewed as simplier and a filler, then back to xi.

Then the community was better. Even when for a time on Fairy with the notorious Poof issues. The community was still better. As bad of a rep Poof got on the server, she is actually an angel compared to some emerging on XIV that are quickly building bad reps.

At the early beta of XIV 1.0. I tried so hard to like it. Yet it didn't feel like Final Fantasy. It got better with Yoshida, but we all knew, a change was to happen.

2.0 first day alpha. It started feeling right. as it progressed through alpha into beta. Better and finally like Final Fantasy again. IT a much better game. The story appeal back. It's early like XI was early on with more content even if it was a re-write.

So I look forward to it. However. The community is depressing. Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of great players who care about the community established so long ago. New gamers or other gamers may not understand because they are used to people being so selfish.

Rather then asking "Hey can you help me" or "hey I can help you" they adapt a poor self asorbed attitude due to the feeling they have to defend themselves and there is no need for it.