Solutions To STEAM Problems For New And Returning PlayersFollow

Hello, I have some useful information. This can be very frustrating so I think it would be very helpful to keep it there, I wasted hours researching and trying different things when I first came back a few months ago and I recently re-installed only to have the same problems, so anyone download from steam will benefit.

If you download FFXI from STEAM, there are 2 things you MUST do to get it to play. I have gone through this process twice now, so Ive got it down.
1) Assuming youre using Vista/7, which is probably the majority of people, you MUST go on the Playonline website, downloads section and download the Playonline directly from the website.
Here is the link, but it may change in the future if they put a new version up:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/download/media/vista01.html?pageID=media
The version of playonline Steam gives you is no good.
**Make sure you go under computer->Program files->Steam->steamapps->common->ffxi and DELETE the Playonline viewer/Tetra Master folders BEFORE you download and install the new Playonline from the website.


2) BOTH TIMES i downloaded FFXI from steam they were seriously messed up, the first time when I cast the spell dia it would take my characters weapons out among a bunch of other crazy things and the second time I did this ffxi just crashed on me 10 seconds after getting in the game.
To fix this, you must check the files under playonline, both times there was 500-1000+ corrupt files to be fixed.
REMEMBER, this confused me the first time: When you click Fix Files you must individually check/fix the Playonline AND FFXI files, its easy to miss this if you rush. It will be set to check Playonline first by default, so let that run just in case and it should be fine if you did step one, but then, and this wasted a hour of my time before I noticed, you have to click the little arrow down next to Playonline and it well change to FFXI so you can check those files. This will take much longer and, as I mentioned before, both time I had TONS of corrupt files that needed repairing.

Thats all, I just thought it would be very useful to share, but it would be great if a moderator could put this somewhere easier to notice so people who are returning to XI or switching from ps2/xbox to PC wont have to make another thread wondering why their game isnt working when they download it from Steam.

Edited, Jan 19th 2013 4:21am by aadrenry

Edit: Thankyou Proffessor Shock for making this a sticky, I hope this helps some of you new and returning players!

Furthermore, I will be sending a similar copy of this post and explanation in an email to Square Enix in hopes that they think about fixing this problem as I do think there must be some serious problems with the steam version if you have to redownload and fix so many different files which show up as corrupt. I dont know if they'll get to fixing it but its worth an email.


Edited, Jan 26th 2013 2:01pm by aadrenry

I downloaded the broken steam version and it wouldn't even stay connected to update the prep for update. So i deleted it as explained above, and then downloaded the portal from the website and it still is getting stuck updating the version update prep. It boots me after about 5-8 mins every time. I have tried having computer hooked up with a cord and wifi and it still disconnects me with a pol error 0250 ; no response from server.
After fighting with this for two days I think I'm just going to have to give up. I had this exact same problem with my ps2. It wouldn't connect and do the update. So I get a brand new laptop for christmas and it wont work either! Maybe my account is fudged. I got nothing.