Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Maeka]

WOW. Was FFXI seriously that intense? Holy crap, that sounds like heaven for me, lol!!!

It was ..... very slow and boring.

You had to walk miles to get anywhere, and the only kind of fast travel you had for the longest period of time, was you could take a chocobo from a town. Once you got off said chocobo, it was on foot the whole way. No teleports, no return spell, unless you were a black mage or you were high enough to sub black mage, or you spent valuable conquest points on warp scrolls (which you could only hold one of at any given time). Later on they added more ways to get around, but way back when?

It was ridiculous.

To GET to the place I mentioned? You started out in a town called Kazham. You went into the Jungle, and the map... the map was barely useful at all because of how it was drawn, hopefully you knew exactly how to get to the correct entrance to Ifrit's Cauldron (a volcano). Once there, you had to use Sneak Oils/Invisible Powders which were not cheap to avoid getting attacked by enemies. At max level, they rated Very Tough to Incredibly Tough and you had exactly 0% chance of defeating one solo unless you were one of a couple jobs that could do it (and even then it'd probably take you 10 minutes+ to do).

Anyhow, the place was a maze, hopefully you know where you're going, and at random spots, there's these fire geysers that shoot fire and block your path but for 30 seconds every 5 minutes or so, the fire dies down and you can pass... or you can use an ice cluster on it, but to do so you had to drop the invisible status and there were always bombs near them. Well, once you do all that and get to the tunnels where Mining Points actually come out? Well, you can't SEE them just by looking at them, you had to keep mashing the Tab key to find and target one. Go up to it, trade a pickaxe to it.

40% of the time? "You mined nothing."
Another 40% of the time? "Your pickaxe breaks."
15% of the time? "You mined a ...." (pebble, copper ore, tin ore, iron ore, etc cheap crap you can find anywhere)
5% of the time, you MIGHT get something halfway valuable like Darksteel, Silver, etc.
0.1% of the time you MIGHT get an Adaman Ore.

You'd get 3-4 whacks out of 1 node then it disappears and..... who the heck knows where another spawned. So you gotta go up and down the mazy corridors looking for another.

Oh, and your item inventory was only 80 slots, INCLUDING your 16 slot inventory window (which took up space in your regular inventory too), and Ore did *NOT* stack.

EDIT: And if you did manage to get 4 Adaman Ores, you could make an Adaman Ingot! Yaaaay! But... you always had 10% chance of failing any synthesis, regardless of your level vs its level to start with. Yes, if you were a maxed out Blacksmith making a Bronze Ingot, 10% of the time you'd blow it and lose the materials. So... yeah. It took you hours and hours to get 4 Ores to make that Adaman Ingot. Wanna roll the dice to see if you fail the synth and lose 3-4 ore that took you 50 hours to get? And then, if you did make the ingot, you probably wanted to use it to make something else, right? There are a few weapons that can be made from it. So, you go to make THAT and it's ANOTHER 10% chance to fail and lose the materials. Gee, wouldn't that just suck if you blew THAT attempt only to see "Adaman Ingot was lost" come up in the chat window.