An Englishman in Vena'DielFollow

I have been waiting for this game for a very long time, myself being a great fan of MMORPGs and the Final Fantasy series for an exceptionally long time. Finally the anticiption became too much to wait for an english release and taking matters into my own hands I have recently ordered an import from those good people in the USA. Now I am slightly worried and perhaps it would have been better judgement to hang on a little longer.
Please, can anyone set my mind to rest.

Will I be able to play on an american server?

Are there any servers which support Europe?

Will I be able to switch my character to a european server when FFXI is released in Europe?

If you are able to answer any of the above I would be very much grateful. I await any response with held breath...

There are no country specific servers. All the servers are based in Japan and are international :)

... or to the the extent of my knowledge that is.

Edited, Thu Jan 29 18:44:35 2004 by Lithe

The PS2 will probably bring more younger players than the PC version simply because it will cost less than upgrading a PC.

Cheers. <-- this is right, isn't it?

I can't speak for the PS2 American release, but right now the game seems pretty quiet in regards to annoying youngins. The public channel, shout isn't really used much at the lower levels, in fact you can go an entire session and not see anything in the shout log. There isn't an auction channel like EQ, most trades are done via the Auction Hall, which is a 100000% improvement to EQ's auction/super-spam channel. The only thing I would like to see changed in this regard is some form of a search mechanism, and maybe more counters spread out to avoid the laggy sardine packing.

This makes the pre-party levels (1-10) pretty lonely, if you have friends in game maybe dou with them, the great thing is if they have an established character they can switch jobs at will and level up with you. I haven't meet anyone I would classify as the l33t h4x0r type, but there are some rude and stupid people about.

Another nice thing is there isn't much for twinking, so don't worry that you are starting so late and there are lots of 50+'s, you gear will not be that far under any of thier lower jobs and that it just means more intellegent people about to help you in the troublesome teens, just don't annoy them =p. If you ask politely and give thank you's most high levels will probably answer your questions, and may even offer additional advice/help.

Oh and additionally before I forget to ask... I was planning on being a thief of some kind, and so would be interested to know which race and starting "faction" would be best. I'd prefer it not to be one of those cat women.. although they are obviously remarkable thieves, I dont like the wrong ideas playing as a women plants in other people's heads when I am of course male in real life. I dont REALLY understand why single sex races are neccessary, it's all a bit limiting. Could SQUARE ENIX not be bothered to do the artwork...

Click here for information on the Role Players Guild! ^^

Race does make a difference in the end, but that can be compensated for and balanced if need be. As a thief if you don't wanna go Mithra (the cat girls), TaruTaru have good agi, and if you don't like little people go Hume. Galka and Elvaan are the lowest primary stat wise, but have other advantages like good str and vit. The thieves main role later will be to control aggro by using trick attack to pin his major damage attack's on the warrior.

Consider also what other jobs you may want to play, if you like damaging melee, you may also want to look into shadowknight later, in which case any race can be good.

If you aren't sure what job to play, definantly look into hume, they are wide balanced and I suspect they do any job pretty well.

Picking your nation isn't a diffult decision, picking the home city of your race will get you a decent ring for the first 15-20 levels, but the area layout here is pretty standard between nations, so you won't find the problem where you are trapped or can't find a good place to hunt. Windurst might be slightly harded since not many people stick around that area after 15, but once you need to leave to find people, it won't be that much of a problem. You can always switch to another nation, there are penalties, but it isn't to bad. There are a few quests that might sway you, Windurst has a really funny multi-quest with lots of character integrated animation sequences involving a gang of kids and the cat burglar, there is also an abundance of so-cute-you'll-puke characters. Bastok has alot of interesting quests involving the stressed galka/hume relationship. San d'Oria has some interesting quests with dramatic sequences and really creepy church people, I am not sure how the PS2 works, but unless you have a powerful computer, you may wanna stay away from San d'Oria, the forest can give horrible fps rates.

On roleplaying I don't think people will get annoyed unless you take role playing to the extreme and start talking like Shakespere, or refuse to play with someone because they aren't playing their role or spam them with inane messages about the might and power of whatever nation.

There aren't any 'official' roleplaying servers, but there are role-playing linkshells (guilds) about. I saw one post and I think Seraph server has alot of rolplayers and a big roleplay linkshell, maybe look into finding a World Pass there, if you can find the post, contact the guy and I am sure he will hook you up or you can just make/delete chars until you hit seraph (if you have two char slots, just spam make a char with default options until you hit the server, then leave it on there and use the second slot to make your real char and he will automatically go to that server, world pass is easier).

Like I said, the PS2 American release may change things, but there aren't that many l33t h4x0rs in game, most people chat normally as though in a civil internet chatroom, you know, typos and no capitals (even on sentence starts and names, heh)

PS. I just noticed after posting you fould the RP guild I was talking about...

Edited, Thu Jan 29 20:02:39 2004 by Ralluwen