CuriousFollow

Hello,

Some years ago I played FFXI (maybe 3 years ago?), but I wandered away due to it's slowness compared to the amount of time I had to invest. I don't believe I made it much beyond 20 in a single job; in fact if I recall correct I had only just gotten the subjob ability.

Anyway, every so often a bit of nostalgia takes hold of me. I am not quite sure what it is about FFXI. Probably the ability to change jobs all the time, and also I like the open world where I got a lot of help from random strangers and also helped others in need when I saw they needed it.

What turned me off most was probably that I really never saw any grouping going on. That is what mostly contributed to the very slow pace I experienced.

The most recent census though shows that there are still a ton of ppl in Vana'diel! I'm tempting to pick the game back up, so I thought I'm stop by the forums here and get a quick idea:

Is it still very difficult to find a group? Especially low level. If I'm honest I don't even remember which world my character was on and there's a good chance I'd be starting from scratch here.

Also, I am not sure what kind of time I'll have to invest. Probably just a few hours on the weekends is what I'm guessing, since I am back in college and working full time as well. That has historically been a problem for me with MMOs in general, that I just can't keep up with any regular group of players due to my time constraints.

So, what do you think? Is it feasible for to play maybe 5-10 hours a week and be able to find decent groups to play with?

Thanks in advance for advice/feedback/suggestions. I miss my little taru despite his snail-like crawl forward. I remember having a lot of fun just crafting stuff, and walking around the areas outside of town helping strangers. I'd like to do that again.

Or, on the flip side, does the community think FFXIV 2.0 will have a big impact on FFXI? It's still just so darn popular, for the life of me I can't imagine why they wouldn't have just put all those resources into FFXI and make it 1000x better than try to make a whole new game that is so similar.

^ This.
However, talking in the LS last night about VoidWatch. If you level and play one of the "wanted" (them being BLM and BRD) jobs, you might be ale to squeeze some end game in, but 5-10 hours a week isn't much. I don't do much in my evenings, and that gives me 10-15 (2-3 hours a night) and a little more on the weekend if nothing is going on.