
Originally Posted by
Enkidoh
After the crap that FFXI suffered from with this, I'm going to have to say a big resounding NO. Getting good gear from NMs was nice, buuuut, the really useful ones were either dropped by a NM with such a ridiculously low spawn rate (*cough* Roc and the Healing Staff *cough cough*), the item's drop rate was stupidly low (Mee Deggi and his stupid O Kote), heavily camped by bots, RMT and legitimate players (Charbdydis and the Joyuese), or, all of the above.
Case in point - Shikigami Weapon and the YingYang Robe, which on the old Midgardsormr server actually had a player linkshell set up exclusively to farm that one NM and they kept the NM's spawn window a closely guarded secret (they even named their ls after the NM, and boasted to anyone who would listen that they "guaranteed a YingYang Robe for all SMNs who join").
Anyone who wasn't in that ls who tried to camp the NM themselves would usually be MPKd by the members of that ls, and the GMs were powerless to act, explaining that legally they hadn't actually done anything wrong (keeping a spawn time secret is not a ToS violation, and the other players were so slippery, the ways they did their mpking were always just one step within the ToS).
The only time their evil monopoly was broken was when Midgardsormr was merged into Quetzalcoatl in 2010 - they tried to keep up their evil little cartel, but luckily Quetzalcoatl players didn't tolerate that kind of nonsense, and turned the tables back on them). But it's forever tainted FFXI for me and is a perfect example of why campable NMs which drop gear just doesn't work, and especially won't in FFXIV.