Been a while...Follow

I'm also going to have an tl;dr/walloftext post, so I already warned ahead of time.

I like all the expansions for FFXI. CoP had the best story, but I think ToA had nice content (new continent with new things like Besieged). Despite that fact, I play FFXI mostly for the story and because of that, I want to do every single quest and mission someday. For WoG, so far I have gotten to mission 3 or 4 and while I'm disappointed that there has only been one update so far, I'm having fun seeing the story of some of the NPCs I see from missions in the past. Campaign is also a nice way to level when I don't feel like partying, and there's kind of a nostalgia playing in those zones that you stopped going to once you become high level (Gustaberg, starter towns). I started in 2004 on Midgardsormr in Bastok before coming to Siren in 2006 in Sandoria, so it was nice to see both of them in the past.

I can understand why you quit though. After doing CoP with you guys last year, I got bored and quit playing for half a year and came back in December to play a month to try the new expansion. It may not have a lot or "great" content, but I really enjoyed coming back seeing the story and just playing again. I'm not saying that you should come back; if you leave and don't need/want to come back, that's great that you've moved on. It's not healthy to want to play MMOs more than do things with friends/family in real life. Even if you are playing another MMO instead, if you're having fun at least and not putting the game first in life, then there's no problem.

I think the reason I am able to come back and have fun is that when you have one good friend that you can always play a game with and not worry about things like end game or having 133t gear, then you will be able to quit when you want and come back without worry. I hate making parties and partying with people due to the fact that pick up parties are generally unreliable, so my boyfriend Tengaar (yes I'm not a man like everyone thinks everyone on the internet is) and I level by ourselves often (ex. he soloed his ninja up to 60) and duo all the missions and quests possible in this game. We've duoed up to ZM13 (farther if it wasn't for that we want to do Divine Might), Bastok Rank 1-10 ourselves (yes you can duo Zeid) etc.. For me, it feels like an accomplishment to get these things done, and as long as this game is still fun to us, we will be coming back and trying more of these challenges. If not, we'll probably move on to another MMO (right now we are playing Mabinogi since it's free (solo grinding is possible too) and we don't have much time to play FFXI since it's so time consuming during college).

I guess this post didn't have much to do with WoG and more of why I continue to play this game but I kinda felt like saying all of this. Anyways, even though I don't party or level with others much, one of the funnest experiences I had in FFXI was in BatallionOne doing Assault and CoP. Even though we dealt with a lot of stupid things, I think our static had some really smart, cool, and dedicated people, so I'm thankful I saw you make that post on Alla to recruit members for your LS two years ago. Thanks for the LS and good luck with WoW or LOTRO (which I can never play because both are too ugly D:)

Good luck and (maybe) see you around someday (not necessarily FFXI lol),
~Shia

Wings of the Goddess is definitly the weakest expansion in my opinion. The thing i enjoy most about FF is the missions and if the key to a good story is a strong beginning to grab your interest, Wings has more then failed. Its almost as if they threw Cait Sith into the first cut scenes to play on your nastalgia (doubt i spelled that right) to cover up the stories apparant weakness. But then again ToAU missions were quite lacking too until about the mid 30's or so and it really built some steam and ended strong so i still intend on giving Wings the benefit of the doubt.

As for the new jobs Dancer has filled the role of the flavor of the month more then sufficiently quite like BLU did before it fell back to reality. Scholar on the other hand seems like total fluff. Maybe i havent seen a Scholar who has a great understanding for the job, or maybe its just a weak job. I'm still waiting to see a PUP perform well. I believe they can, but i just havent come across one yet on either job.

But SE has perfected their slight of hand tactics with overflowing your senses with enough fluff, items and gear and job abilities and such, to take your mind off of the expansions major short comings. And why the big overly-hyped and under-delivered MArch update did not contain the next batch of Wings missions still baffles me. Its been by far a disappointing 2008 for FF thus far.

Campaign is, lacking in my opinion. Its just another Dynamis or Besieged type event. Lots of random people vs. lots of random monsters in an all out un-organized gank-fest. The only reason it is met with widespread love is the simple fact that it is a significant source of EXP without the annoyingness of PT's. If you lost EXP for dieing in Campaign...it would never take off. Its just the same ol' idea but played out on a different landscape. Even the majority of rewards you can get from Campaign are absolutely terrible. Its just a simple 10 minutes of work for 600-1000+ EXP...who would pass that up.

It goes without saying FF has long since peaked and has been on the steady decline for quite some time now. Servers are losing players faster then ever and i'm sure a merger of servers is not far off. Theres only so many ways you can dress up the same ol' junk before it becomes a dead horse...Wings of the Goddess is definitly the beating of a dead horse.

Not to say the game still does not have its fine points...but it seems to be you have to rely too much on a good LS more then ever before to have a solid experience in the game. End Game LS's have passed well into the realm of shadiness. Theres so many LS's and their leaders proven of corruption these days. Between obvious favoritism and stealing from the "LS Bank" to fund the leaders elite gear, amongst other things. Its almost like you have more of a chance of winning the lottery then finding a uncorrupted linkshell.

But on a major plus side the economy is better then ever. Prices have dropped so low the average player has a significant chance of obtaining items that in the past were just unreasonable. Gear through major events remains almost a futile endeavor but things that are AH-able are attainable to the masses which to me is a good thing. The crazy-good End Game gear should be hard to get, but the AH-able stuff should be excessable to every type of player.

But FF has seen better days and like all MMO's has peaked and will die...its just a matter of how long the downward spiral is stretched out...and you can definitly see the sense of desperation as SE has finally ripped off a popular detail of WoW which is emote Dancing...what i think is the first of many WoW rip-offs to come in final attempts to prolong the game as much as possible.

If SE is in fact working on a new game, i will definitly be looking forward to that. I think through the many mistakes they've made in their first attempt at an MMO will come into play in alot of their decision making for their next MMO which i am sure will be FAR better as a whole. I just refuse to believe a company responsible for some of the greatest console games ever, that FF is the best they can do in the MMO market.

No offense bro but it seems you're still well holding on to the adolescent resentments yourself. You had to figure bringing up WoW in a FF forum was going to get at least one attack at you, be it from an old enemy or not...Why not just walk into Yankee Stadium with a Red Sox jersey on while you're at it.

But FF was never a community. It was always cliques and little groups and segregations. Thats just the natural order of all things. Everyone gets put into their class until they can either rise to a new one or fall to a lower one...you have your place in the grand scheme of things. Its a video game, you dont have to be appreciative, or loyal, or anything. Its just simply about who can get you to that next plateau and until your usefulness is used up...They'll let you hang around.

Theres alot of lonely guys trying to be all "knight in shining armor" for alot of lonely girls who are fighting and competing for attentions they're not getting outside of the game and vice versa. Those kinds of odd little groups are inevitable and will always cause problems. Some people are just...like that.

Theres always going to be single guys that hit on every female character they come across. Girlfriends/Boyfriends who come on the game and flirt and such to get things they want out of "lonely" people dumb enough to think their actions in FF are worth much of anything. Hell, i know a married girl who spends hours upon hours a day running around with this one guy who is so brainwashed, she says jump and he says how high...and in his mind he thinks hes being a "good friend" and that shes a "victim of a neglectful husband." And why, because she knows how to play that role well. I pity her husband...that he has no knowledge of the fact that his wife basically whores herself out on FF for her own character advancement.

But these "things" have always been in the game. People can try to sugarcoat it all they want and argue that its a community till they're blue in the face. The only difference in FF now and when you left...is probably that the amount of people in each server has dwindled so much that...all these things are much more obvious now. And the corruption that goes on in all of End Game has grown so out of proportion it just cant be hidden from the average persons eyes anymore.

Linkshells that were once regarded as reputable and fair were forced to show their true colors...and its in all game events. You cant get away from it, no matter how many LS's you change to. And its in every LS, big and small, social and event shells. I'm not going to start naming names because i know quite a few of them post on here but...alot of the names took me by surprise. But its always been there and nobody is immune to it, and we're all guilty of it because its human nature to play favorites. You can try to lie all you want that you were never like that or you never condoned such things...but you did...regardless of what you may or may not try to tell yourself.

There are no victims in this game. And any problems you have had with the game or with people in the game are just as much you're doing as thiers, which you did seem to admit if i read correctly. And as i can see, you havent really changed a bit, which is ok. You are who you are and anyone who doesnt like you can go to hell. But to think you'd post something like you did and be surprised to get attacked...thats just insanely gullable.People can only mask their true intentions for so long. Their human nature always eventually comes through.

And i know people dont like to ever hear this but...If you're in the game enough to be so well known or what not...Obviously you're a hermit with no life outside of FF, and you're going to take what happens in FF to heart because it is your life. At least the people i've found to be guilty of the least amount of dumb sh*t mentioned above and more...are the people who barely play the game. Because it is a game, and only a game. Anyone who says its any more then that...and that goes for any MMO out there, well they just need to step away for a while and re-evaluate things.

I left...thats exciting. Aola, Leux, Fiore, and Valice are still my heroes. BTW, if you still have my password, grab anything you want. Give Apoc the E-bow and Hellfire +1. See you all in the next go round.

If you have something to hash out with me, please use the PM system.

Ya...and I could walk into a room full of people playing Monopoly, bring up the latest edition of Trivial Pursuit and find myself doused with soda and pelted with Doritos. Because...you know...it's really that big of a deal.



For the first three months or so after the NA release, FFXI did have a strong community. It was a JP who happily guided me through Ranguemont Pass to Beaucedine so that I could experience a snowstorm for my SMN quest, and a JP who took me through the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah for the treant fight to complete the SAM quest. It was a JP Paladin who took on the BCNM Wyvern for my DRG quest and all of them...without exception...did it happily, without question of payment, examination of gear, or e-peen stroking comments about how great they were and how much we sucked.

Then the rift started to open and I'd come here to Alla to find links to translated JP sites where they would lament our miserable attitudes. Not just nub mistakes around game mechanics like botching skillchains or not using food, but going afk without notice, dropping party midway while only occasionally doing them the "courtesy" of replacing ourselves with nub replacements.

I agree...it's teh wyld wyld intartoobs and when push comes to shove, nobody really gives a sh*t whose neck they bruise on their way up to where they want to be. Friends good, yes? Until they can't get you where you want to go anymore and then it's on to the next clan of patsies until you top out or bottom out and what's left is a dead game. Oh, the joys of farming triggers for Kirin's guardians, watching the high-value AH drops go to the "LS bank" to fund cursed gear for the abjurations people were getting while I'm on a job that can't use any of the gear...and then being denied the roll on the gear I could use so someone higher up on the social pecking order could bank some tidy god-gear for their level 42 monk. I remember that kind of stuff. Drove me nuts.

Or my personal favorite...the, "Hey guys...please don't go out and xp without me. We're buds. We're friends. PUGs suck. Wait for me and we'll go xp together but if you go without me and get a level or two my xp is going to suck so just wait, ok?"

And then two days later, having waited through scheduling conflicts as asked (because you're buds, and that's what buds do, right?), your "bud" logs on a level and a half above you. "Oh, ya...so-and-so invited me to a group and it was too good to pass up."

Pffffft.



I was never in a position to be like that. I didn't like the politics and scheming. I was on the receiving end of it too many times. In WoW, getting a place in an end-game guild is a more neutral and formalized procedure. FFXI and WoW end-game shells/guilds both have (had?) websites where you would go and post an application, but with FFXI it was always more a case of who you knew in the shell and whether or not they'd vouch for you. In WoW, it certainly helps to know a person or two, but they're more interested in whether or not you have the gear that will allow you to contribute (so that they don't have to go back and rehash old content any more than they have to in order to get you up and running.)

I remember back long before I started playing WoW and I too held a bias against the game. Here I was grinding my ass off for hours in FFXI. It didn't matter what I was trying to do. Make some gil? Grind your ass off. Get some xp/merits? Grind your ass off. Get into some "end-game" action? Grind/camp your ass off. Then along comes these bastid upstarts at Blizzard releasing a game where you can (gasp) solo your way to max level? WTF?!?! You can join a group and enter an instance and fight all manner of bosses that drop all manner of chewy lewts and you...don't have to compete with every other group your level for them? OMFG!! WoW has "world bosses"...meaning boss mobs that exist outside of instances that also drop some fairly decent loot but they're tuned in such a way that hardly anyone ever fights them. It takes too many people, and nobody outside of all but the largest of end-game raiding guilds wants to throw themselves in with 39+ other strangers to go rack up a giant repair bill on the off chance that something they can use drops and doesn't go to one of the other 8 people rolling on it.

Regardless of how much sense it made for a game to be a game instead of a vocation, we all had to defend our reasons for playing FFXI. It was more of a "challenge" we would say. We had to "earn" our rewards, we would say. If you want to play a game where you can solo to max level, buy Oblivion and run an IM client in the background and save yourself the monthly subscription, we would say.

The loot whoring that exists in FFXI simply doesn't exist in WoW. You still get the occasional ninja who rolls on something for profit at the expense of someone who can use it, and the community comes down on them like hellfire. It's not such an enormous challenge to get anything done in WoW that you need to screw people over to feel that the time you invested produced a justifiable reward.

See...there I go again with the comparisons. Really, that's not what this is about but it's good discussion fodder (barring twigs up asses) so I'll just leave it there.



To be quite honest, I was a bit surprised. Not that people would take issue with a post containing things outside the realm of Vana'diel, but by the venom some people still seem to be carrying around. I look back at some of the most memorable and tragic blow-outs I had in FFXI and while I'm more clearly able to see my part, I also stand in the notion that the people I was at odds with were just as @#%^ed in the head as I was. My circumstances made it easy for them to shift the focus on to me while they played their little social and political games. I still remember people on these forums nursing resentments towards me for months...sometimes years after I called them on snivelling about an injustice that was created more by their lack of skill than anything else.

NM camping...wow...crazy stuff. You know, I probably logged over 50 hours in South Gustaberg waiting for Leaping Lizzy. Maybe half that in Valkurm waiting for VE. Probably about the same in Konschtat exterminating sheep trying to coax out Stray Mary. I put in the time, leveled the jobs, practiced the skills and enjoyed a certain amount of success in my camping endeavors. Then I'd hear some QQ scrubmuffin bitching about RMT dominating a wide-area spawn NM and cursing SE and China and Comcast all to hell for making it so horrible difficult to compete. Meanwhile, I stroll into those same camps and unless there are 3+ people competing for the claim, I'm running usually a 50/50 split (and miserable luck for drops).

CoP was a tragedy as well. Similar circumstances, too. I started out with the Promyvions and one PUG after another going in without Animas, pots, etc. and losing half a level worth of xp before they'd call it quits. Lots of them showed up on forums like this bitching up a storm that they were too hard. They needed a nerf. What a stupid expansion. What a waste of time.

The best argument...so worth a laugh...was that it took too much time to farm Recollections. It took too much time to farm the gil to buy the pots. They'd rather go back in unprepared again and again and again and lose than invest what would have been a fraction of the time to work with what the game was offering instead of trying to force their own ideas into some half-assed plan of action that relied on 99% luck. Meanwhile, I assembled a rag-tag band of reluctant adventurers, promised them success if they followed the instructions they were given, and marched one group after another through each of the Promyvions with dramatic successes every time. No NIN/WAR, 4 x RNG or SMN, WHM/SMN crap. WAR/MNK tanks. THF/WARs. RDM healers. MNKs. DRAGOONS ffs. I listened to the bitching when I'd drag them around the crags to farm Recollections. "Let's just go fight the boss," they'd say. "This is stupid," they'd say.

But SE listened to the relentless snivelling. They nerfed the hell out of CoP to keep the masses happy...but the masses still bitched. Make no mistake, I was happy with what ToAU brought to the merit grind. I just wasn't happy with the e-peen stroking elitism that followed shortly thereafter. From 3-4k merit points/hour in your average Sky party to 8-9k with a good ToAU party...and then all of a sudden you couldn't get a healer to save your life because none of them would stay in a group that wasn't pulling down 14k+/hour.

Oh...and let's not forget what happened to RNG on account of the CoP snivelling. SMN didn't get nerfed to oblivion because you actually had to put the time in to get the avatars that allowed you to contribute. RNG/NIN rolled in with excellent spike damage right out of the box, so to speak...and great survivability to boot on account of being able to stay out of most AoE ranges with Utsusemi from /NIN as a last barrier of protection. Because the community insisted on jamming square pegs into round holes and refusing any DD volunteer that wasn't toting a ranged weapon and a pouch full of shihei, SE took steps to rebalance the class representation in CoP...which meant the job I spent a year and a half grinding to 75 suddenly became the red-headed stepchild of Vana'diel, barely one seat ahead of DRG on the short yellow bus.

And we could say that this is just the MMO thing. I'd say that it's just the FFXI thing. That's why I was curious about WotG. Would they take the grind reduction of ToAU, expand it so that everyone could get a piece of the action, and wrap a CoP-like story around it?

FFXI was a brilliant game when it first arrived in North America. I can't blame SE for trying to keep the largest segment of their subscriber base happy. They gave the players what the players wanted. It's just too bad they didn't realize that they were trying to please the unpleasable (no, that's probably not a real word but you get the meaning).



Towards the end of my time in FFXI, I found that I had the opposite problem. I didn't have time to invest hours upon hours every day maintaining the ties that would keep me happily occupied in-game. End-game shells weren't taking people who couldn't spend 3 hours mid-day getting pop timers on HNMs...and even if they could, they were so demoralized by the botting and RMT nonsense that the lewt whoring had reached a fevered pitch.

My time in FFXI ended not so differently from the way it always was. I had a small group of people that tolerated my demanding nature and I appreciated their contribution to the group. We set some goals, we worked together to achieve them, and when the final goal became less tangible, I grew indifferent. Then I found the WoW free trial download and that was that.

Just kind of sad that well over a year after the fact, the venom is still there. I wish I could say I take issue with the FFXI community at large, but I don't. If I did, I wouldn't care if WotG was an improvement over ToAU. I wouldn't care if the game still had life left in it. There are some good folks who play FFXI and I hope they're still enjoying it. It's just kind of interesting to post here and have the same resentmonkeys jumping all over me now as they were a year and a half ago. Life's too short to be little...unless, of course, you're a Taru.

:P

In Campaign's defense, it brought to the game exactly what some people wanted: an opportunity to be productive when they aren't able to join a group activity, or when they, like myself, simply bemoaned the lack of things you can do in this game that doesn't involve 5 other people. I have nothing against playing with other people, but when I want to play RDM the way I want to, without some pretentious party leader breathing down my neck, nothing is better than Campaign.

I wonder why some people experience the irritability involved with this game. Hate endgame? Here's a shocker. Don't do it. Quite frankly, I don't know why people continue to do activities they are so dissatisfied with (this does not apply to those of you, however, who actually like endgame). I've managed to play the game for 5 years without ever concerning myself with events that simply aren't for me.

As for people who have become born-again WoW players or whatever, I say they drop their FFXI nostalgia and stick to talking to WoWers. Because, inevitably, when they come back to talk with FFXI players, they will try to win converts over. It's a story that never fails. It's a story that never succeeds either, for that matter. Maybe most people just care about the gameplay, where I cannot vouch for either simply because I haven't played WoW, but I have seen it in action, and in the end, I'd rather play a game that doesn't look like it was made with an amateur RPG maker.

Oh c'mon. That's really the only thing besides FFXI information that FFXI forums are good for.

WoTG has some really cool stuff about it, although its not released in full as of yet so can't really speak to those ends.

I played WoW, Never made it to level 70 because it was just too boring for me. People are not friendly in the game at all (in my experience) , Everyone has a solo attitude and grouping with people just isn't the same as FFXI. I even tried WoW Part 2 "The Lord of the Rings Online". If you Like WoW and like Lord of the Rings, then you'll love the online game.. Because its Exactly the same thing as WoW Except a different story.

Hated both of those games for 1 very big reason. I Absolutely HATE storyline, I hate quests. I like to go in and party up and kill stuff. Endgame or XP parties whatever. Get me doing something fun and im all set. I have static'd CoP, ZM, ToAU with friends for the purpose of getting some gear and more importantly help THEM get gear because a few of these storyline offer me nothing useful. But I mash the cut scenes to no end. I'm sure some people find them interesting and care what happens to these NPC's and the Fate of the World. I do not.

Problem is, in WoW and LoTR, you can either XP by killing stuff which takes ages, Or you can do quests and help people find apples and stupid junk like that which gives excellent xp. But its just too damn boring to me.

All games have their nuances, I just find less headache in FFXI.

omg aurelius, how the heck are ya buddy!? =D

The one thing I loved about FFXI is the people i played with. Thats one of the big differences between WoW and FFXI, you actally remember the ppl you grouped with or were in a LS with. Thats were i had the most fun with in ffxi, doing quests and missions with others that needed them as well. Getting to know other ppl while you were spending hours with them just grinding out mobs to get xp. I played WoW for 3 years now and its totally not the same. I've spend countless hours doing quests and soloing all the way to 70 on several characters. And after all that i must say that it was a boring and monotonous. At least in FFXI, you could do all that with others and plus make tons of friends playing ffxi.

Saying all that, i just wanted to say i remember doing a few things on Siren with you Aurelius. I remember when you where in the LS Darkred, with the 2 guys that were the leaders of that LS. I remember you were unsatisified with the LS and you left because of them and so did I a short while after lol. I was Kronomir and my RL bud Divinitus was in there. I think this had to be like 3 or 4 yrs ago :D

Ya, I heard something about that. Seems that rather than just respectfully strip Aurelius of his valuable possessions and bury him with some dignity, the account was sold to gold farmers. I could be mistaken...just third party information. If it's true, that's a damn shame.