Why was FFXI so great?

[weeble]

1. probably cause it was my first mmo and it was a ff title and i played it like a offline rpg but with lots of people. aka i did quests and read storylines and did everything without it being a race or competition.

2. party play party play party play. from the zone to zone leveling. to endgame. dunes to bibiki bay packed with parties all killing mobs together. 24/7 always players to play with and have a good time.

3. endgame was huge, 64man dynamisis 32limbus, full ls runs sky (that you can do 7days a week 24.7 if wanted) sea, lots and lots of NM's lots and lots of HNM's , lots of 6man battles (BS) course eventually 6man endgame like assaults/salvage and nyzle was cool too.

4. storyline with cutsceens, it made it feel like a rpg(ffxiv has this too) most mmo's don't have this. they have mobs that all can be killed the same from rank 1 to max for most part. they have 0 storyline in the game that is with cutsceens other then the start of game 5seconds. this really put the bar up for me on what i conside a mmoRPG. i want a video game that is online ...not blocks of text and solo play.

it's kinda hard to explain why that game truely put that much of a impact, everything in that game combined just made you care about your character, your gear, your friends and community. the small stuff made it great, like when people could be dying by the dozens from mpk mobs at entrances of zones like garleigh citedel. but zone to zone every 5-10levels you felt like you were progressing, you got to see new zones, new spells and moves step by step to learn and they mattered. every 5-10lvs there were speed bumbs and challenges to get threw (ship passes, spell quests, boss fights to level up past what you hit) it wasn't empty zones till expansions like cop and beyond came out that pushed everyone to those areas only. and you had to get to each zone without being ported by a friend, usually didn't have a map till after you get there too, and it made exploring awesome and fun. it took me a day to find rabao lol><

but as for what made it suck after abyseas i quit probably 6months prior to it coming out. but i can tell you this i would of been furious if i didn't quit. all that stuff to do would of been for void. and the game would of been like a new game, simply with one zone instead of 4expansions of things to do. it's like what ffxiv is doign right now to people, it took the first group of players a year to hit all 50's and now it takes 2weeks. but worse in ffxi cause there was stuff to do, they just made them pointless, witch is far worse then a game just not having anything to do. it's like being rich and then going bankrupt all in one day.

tl;dr i quess simply put it had so much stuff in it that felt like the big moments in offline rpg's but it was with 6man or more things.

[Payadopa]

I really miss the challenge in XIV. Everything is too easy. Some fights only require me to cast two spells and I'm done fighting. That's laughably bad. Though, I must say, I really like the middle ground XIV is starting to create here. I don't have time to grind for hours on end, nor do I consider it fun.

XI:
Also, I remember my first trip to Jeuno (XI's Ishgard, probably). I was like level 20 BLM, sneaking my way through Jugner Forest, always knowing, that a single aggro would kill me in an instant. I only heard of this place from fellow adventurers and stumbled through the area for like 30 minutes (back then I thought everything would aggro me, so I ran away even from funguars constantly lol). In the end it was SO rewarding to finally reach there. Even "just walking" was fun that way. Behind many corners there was something to see.

A few hours later (after the jaw-dropping by watching these giant bridges Jeuno was built upon) I finally got my chocobo license, which too, felt like a real accomplishment.
I was so poor I didn't even have enough Gil to buy enough Gysahl Greens from the AH lol.

After that I would sit at Port Jeuno, watching airships fly by, daydreaming about my own airship pass (which involved a series of long missions I couldn't do on my own by that time, tied into the main story arc). And when the Duke of Jeuno finally handed me my pass, I really felt honored.

XIV:
I logged in and within a few hours I had reached all city states with no effort (aside from one deadly ant attack). I could have even ported there by asking other people. Where is the adventure in that? And the zones feel sooo empty in comparison. I'm already at the point where I don't want to explore anymore. It's always the same. How sad for an adventure game is that?

Though, I'm happy that I don't need an alliance for many quests anymore.

[Heaven]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVYhcXmXSB0

[bobbygunz]

And the zones feel sooo empty in comparison. I'm already at the point where I don't want to explore anymore. It's always the same.

I agree with everything you said except this what I quoted above. I think just from the graphics and lighting effect alone, FFXIV areas are constantly interesting. I often end up in places I've been before multiple times, but when they're cast in different light, or else even in the same light, they're still amazing and find renewed interest. But of course FFXI had something which FFXIV lacks and that's a sense of progression through the world, and obviously more diversity.

[Payadopa]

I must admit, I thought about it differently in the beginning. But now, every time I see a slope that I've seen like 5 times before in the last few minutes, it just makes me [insert emotion here]. Changing weather effects (that only look pretty at the moment) don't cut it anymore.

[bobbygunz]

I must admit, I thought about it differently in the beginning. But now, every time I see a slope that I've seen like 5 times before in the last few minutes, it just makes me [insert emotion here]. Changing weather effects (that only look pretty at the moment) don't cut it anymore.

It was much easier to get bored of the scenery in FFXI than in FFXIV.

[Xatsh]

What made XI great:
- Team Work throughout the whole game.
- Extremely Strong Community, people remembered you. Even those not in your linkshells.
- Extremely Rewarding when you accomplish you goal. It actually felt meaningful, people actually cheered in RL and where happy for weeks from a single drop, because it involved real work and planning to accomplish.
- A unbelievable amount of relevant content. 4 Expansions of content that was still worth doing, no other mmo had this and it made it where you had something different to do every day. You could litteraly play over 20,000 hours of game time and not finish it all 100%.
- Very Little Negation of gear. Everything was situational. So you never ran out of things to accomplish.
- Extremely long goals for the hardcore players (relics, Mythics), and casual elements for those with less time.
- Requirement for a guild. A mmo is about the bonds of players it is what separates it from another genres. XI you where forced to rely on your guild to advance at endgame, and it built friendships that last long after you leave the game.

Abyea is hated by many because of the following reasons:
-Negated over 20,000 hours worth of content
-Was purely focused on casuals removing any long term goals
-Destroyed linkshells because 4-8 man statics where optimal over 20-40man linkshells
-Extremely high drop rates made the new content short lived so people ran out of thing to do.
-Emp. Weapons could be got in 1-2 weeks, and more or less negated relics which took 1-2yrs.

XI is always talked about as a game that was bad or had low subs, but at its launch it was one of the highest populated mmos on earth, even years after WoW it was in the top 3 sub count wise. MMOs where a different beast then and 100k subs was considered massively successful for most. XI with >500k was a WoW of its time.

What Bliz and WoW did was not necessarily make a better mmo in every way... most mmos do better things then them. They made a mmo that the majority of gamers would enjoy, gamers are like a bell curve between ultra casual and ultra hardcore. Blizzard focused on the biggest majority (middle) and not the far end. They litteraly changed the genre which was consider "Hardcore only" and made it where casuals had the focus. And thus open the market up to around 20million more people.

XIV needs to strike a balance between the 2 mmo concepts. They need to recapture the feeling of Pre-WoW mmos and not push casuals out. Because more then anything those who support XI are sick of Shallow/Hollow games, we want that special feeling again from playing something that is much more then just a game.

[Biggs]

I am one of the very few players on this game, that have never properly played Final Fantasy XI. But I see so many people proclaiming how wonderful and great the game was.
So I want to know, so's I can try and compare it to FFXI, what were the best things about FFXI, and what made it so amazing? And also, why did Abyssea (if that's how you spell it) "ruin the game" as some people have said?
Please, i'm very interested to read about how great the game was.
Try not to write essays, if you can :P

These pages are not long enough to go into detail about all the reasons I loved it but heres one of my favorite things about it that this game is still lacking: 3 starting cites, each city had its own theme as XIV does, but unlike XIV, the ability to teleport from your city to an outpost was determined by which country was in control of the area you want to teleport to for the week. If your country wasn't in control of the place you wanted to go to, you couldnt do the quest that allowed for instant teleportation until it was. At the end of each week, a tally was taken in each zone in the game to determine which country's players had killed the most mobs (and gotten xp for the kills) in that particular zone that week. Diligent parties could find friends from their country, and if they worked hard enough, kill enough mobs in the outposts outside a rival city and gain control of the ones outside a rivals city gates for the week, hence unlocking the ability to use that OP to teleport to for the rest of the game. This system was the backbone for quick travel for the first few years of the game, and really created a sense of national pride and a rivalry between cities that just doesnt exist in this game yet.

Oh, and you could accumulate points for you city that could be used to buy gear specific only to members of you nation, sort of like the GC gear is now.

[Payadopa]

and really created a sense of national pride and a rivalry between cities that just doesnt exist in this game yet.

Another thing I'm missing. It doesn't have to be PvP competetive, but the tally every Sunday was awesome because we could call Bastok Lastok.

The only rivalry I can see between the three city states now is in text.

[Reve]

There were lots of good qualities in FFXI. A lot of the accomplishments were mentioned. There were just certain things to look forward to. At 18 you worked on getting your subjob, at 20 you got your chocobo, at 30 you worked on the Rank 3 missions, 30 also gave you the chance to work on advanced job quests, 40 had AF weapon, 50-60 had AF armor and more missions.

Gear also meant something. It seems in FFXIV you can get by with less than adequate gear right up to Lv.50 in the span of 3 days. It's almost like there is no point in upgrading gear until you hit 50. In FFXI you camped or saved for different sets of gear as you leveled. You really noticed the gear upgrades. My favorite was working on the RSE gear quests. You had to travel to different mid-level zones and open chests to get your RSE Pattern to give to the Goblin in Jeuno. It's just another example of how it seemed that each set of levels had a task you wanted to complete.
The zones were also unique in FFXI. Most zones had a distinct feel. The zones in FFXIV just seem like a never-ending dungeon generator. There is little to explore and very little flavor.

The biggest difference between FFXIV and FFXI I noticed, besides the bland FFXIV zones, was the NPC quality. FFXI NPC had a great deal of personality. If you had ten minutes to make a list of FFXI and FFXIV NPC the FFXI would be at least double. There were many memorable NPCs in FFXI. Each city had a host of characters you either loved or loved to hate. Even NPCs that weren't part of the main storylines were memorable. You did quests for Shantotto, The Star Onion Brigade, Nanaa Mihgo the Mithra Thief and her lackies, Cardians, Ministry Leaders, The Star Sybil and her guard Semih Lafihna. Those are just a few NPCs from Windurst. FFXI did an excellent job of creating a world filled with NPCs you were interested in.