is ff11 going to have subscription fee reduced...?Follow

Worst part about XIV dungeons are queues as DPS, really. Yes, boss fights are difficult if you don't know the mechanics or have bad/lacking party members, but that's pretty much a universal MMO constant. Once you know them, though, it's just a matter of paying attention, be it getting out of the red, killing a specific add, or doing something with the environment like shooting a canon at a dragon or eating a morbol fruit to counteract a stacking poison. Of course, this understanding requires execution, which takes us back to some players being more reactive and free-thinking than others.

Just because, I'll explain the bosses to Wanderer's Palace, the "entry level" 50 dungeon.

First boss is a goobuue named Keeper of Halidom. Nice little XI reference, right? Anyway, he's pretty basic. Tank holds him and occasionally he'll turn and a big red cone will indicate a draw-in. Soon after, he will use a short-range attack. If you're drawn in, you simply have to move away quickly to avoid the damage. Eventually he'll start doing small AoE lobs to people, also indicated by a red circle. Just move out of the way. The tank will get hit with a poison from time to time, but this is a pretty easy boss.

Second boss is a Pudding/Flan. Tank and spank until he pops a wave of 3 pudding adds initially. You'll want to kill them. Short time after he'll target a specific party member with a reticule and they'll want to keep their distance. Landing a snare here is handy. After 10-12s he'll do a short-range AoE that'll kill most likely anyone not the tank. Then it's back to normal until the next wave, this time 4. In terms of add kills, you want to prioritize blue (it heals the boss), purple (it can paralyze people), and then the others don't really matter. One of those can snare you, though, which make the reticule phase tough if you got hit by it. Really, killing the adds before he goes after someone is the hardest part here. Derpy short-ranged DPS not backing off a bit has also led to some deaths when it does the AoE.

Last boss is the Tonberry King. Tank him in the middle. Throughout the fight weak tonberries will spawn, walking toward the center. Left untouched, they'll probably aggro the tank once there. You'll wanted to dedicated one DPS, ideally range-type, to kill the doinkers one at a time. That can't be stressed enough. Each time a tonberry dies, the king will get a buff to Everyone's Grudge for 1k apiece. Tank I ran it with had a little over 5k HP, so likely wise to never kill more than 5 before the king EGs and resets his rancor. Come 25%, larger tonberries will spawn along the arena's perimeter and periodically step closer. You'll have seen these throughout the dungeon, as you want to avoid them because they'll do throat stab for big damage. The smaller tonberries will stop spawning, so you'll want to carefully finish them off and simply focus on killing the king before all the stalkers get close. To be honest, the pudding is a harder boss due to the spawning adds almost always going for the healer.


I could talk about a few other bosses from the preceding dungeons or even Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda, but they're not too bad. Really, closest thing XI has to a lot of these fights is the Diabolos fight.

Until you realise that's all that's worth doing. Queue for dungeon, wait 30-60 mins, queue for same dungeon, wait 30-60 mins, repeat for 3-4 months till they add new dungeons with new gear that replaces the old one you spend months grinding.

Madden: Get a ball across a line.
NBA Live: Throw a ball into a metal hoop.
FIFA: Kick a ball into a net.
Call of Duty: Kill enemy soldiers.
GTA: Steal cars. Kill people.
Tetris: Line up falling blocks.
Mass Effect: Save the universe. Bang aliens.
Final Fantasy XI: Kill monsters. Get loot.

Going by those descriptions none of those sound like much fun really, but then there's more to them than such a description would have you believe.

Hey, no one can deny the staying power of Tetris.

All this talk of XIV made me interested in logging in for a few and tooling around. But no service account.

Not willing to pay 10+ bucks at the moment to test the waters to see if I like the game enough. Maybe in a bit. I can afford to wait with all the levels I already have on my character.

Except Square Enix.

I crunched some numbers and I'm guessing ARR cost them about a hundred million to make. They're off the hook for 1.0's debt per the CEO of Square Enix last spring. Assuming they can sustain their goal of 500K players for two years, they'll recoup the cost and start making a profit.

If the subscriber numbers drop significantly below that in under two years, only then will they examine other methods of revenue.