With most all aspects of the zones explored since its release, and with "Scars of Abyssea" less than a month away, I thought now was the best time to give my impressions on "Vision of Abyssea", the first of three add-on battlefields allowing access to the lands of Abyssea, a world lying parallel to Vana'diel.

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Please note that this is my personal opinion of Vision of Abyssea and should not be considered the viewpoints of Zam.com

 This is an expansion done right.

 This seems to be the general concensus amongst the player base in regards to "Vision of Abyssea", the first of three add-on battlefield events scheduled to be released this year for Final Fantasy XI. In the days following the announcement of its release, I was skeptical about its success, since the Abyssea add-ons seemed to be geared more towards combat and battles rather than story-telling, which was an integral part of what makes Final Fantasy...well, Final Fantasy. Once I got my hands on it though, I realized that my apprehension wasn't well-founded, for while the story surrounding Abyssea is presently not very deep, what it offers as far as experience gaining and notorious monster battles more than makes up for it. Though I wouldn't go so far as to say that "Vision of Abyssea" is perfect, Square Enix did many things right in its creation.

 With the introduction of Abyssea, the conventional six-man experience party, and by extension the entire conventional way of gaining experience, was altered. In recent years, parties were divided based on jobs, whereupon melee jobs would be party amongst themselves in what was dubbed a "tp burn" or "melee burn" party, whereas mage jobs (specifically black mages) would find themselves segregated from such parties. Instead, they would have to make due with far slower experience gaining "manaburn" parties, or worse yet, solo their experience points. In Abyssea experience parties though, one of the keys to success is the building of "azure light" by delivering killshots on mobs with magic. Over time, this increases the chance of blue treasure chests, known as a sturdy pyxis, to spawn after the mob dies, and these blue chests can contain time extensions. It's not uncommon for organized Abyssea groups to stay in a zone for several hours beyond the normal time limits and rack up unmatched amounts of experience and limit points. So for this level of exp gain to be available to both melee and mage jobs is a big step in the right direction.

 Another change to appear in Abyssea is in the field of Notorious Monsters. Since the addition of "Zeni Notorious Monsters", or "ZNMs" for short, Square Enix has been adjusting end game content to be more low-man friendly as well as allow players to obtain good weapons and gear without camping a certain mob for several hours at a time or worse, resort to using illegal third party programs to "bot claim". In Abyssea, all Notorious Monsters are either popped by using items or time pops with very short respawn times. This allows players to go in and get more immediate results with the limited amount of time they have rather than spending hours and days on end hoping to be lucky enough for a certain monster to spawn. The items for those force popped NMs are easy to obtain, coming from nearby monsters in the area or from golden sturdy pyxides, and can be bought or sold on the Auction House, allowing those that can't spend the time to farm the pops to just purchase them.

 Visions of Abyssea isn't without its faults though, and while these faults are few, their impact is too significant to ignore.

 Some major crafting skills took a crippling blow with the introduction of Visions of Abyssea, most notably Woodworking and Bonecraft. Several of the new Notorious Monsters in Abyssea areas drop synthesis materials that were originally quite scarce, which lead equipment crafted with them to be highly profitable. With the market flooded with these synthesis materials, the prices for them have plummeted, which in turn has severely decreased the synthed item's overall worth. What once was a rare and highly coveted item is now something cheap enough that could be bought on an impulse. Alongside the recent trend of Synergy being Square Enix's craft of focus, this has left most all of the "older" crafters with a reduced income

 Another major issue that's come out of Abyssea revolves around the same players coming in at extremely low levels and "leeching" experience points to level up, in some cases staying useful by being a designated pyxis opener, but in others doing absolutely nothing to benefit the group he or she is in. This results in a player reaching level eighty with little to no actual knowledge of how to play their job, grossly uncapped skills, and no idea how to properly gear themselves. Though this behavior has been going on since before Abyssea was added with Level Syncing and the infamous "Astral Burns", its addition brought it to a new level, because it is now open to a larger group to take advantage of it. This leads to another aspect of why leeching in Abyssea is more harmful than its worth; it requires the rest of the alliance to pick up the slack of the one "leecher". This isn't so bad if the player has taken the time to stock up on Forbidden Keys to open up pyxides, because at least they're doing something to benefit the other members of the alliance, but when it's players that are contributing absolutely nothing, then it becomes an issue. It's common to remove someone from a party when they're not doing anything but leeching experience, so there's no reason why it should be acceptable in an alliance just because there's more people. That spot could be filled by another damage dealing or nuking job, which could allow for faster kills and more experience points for the group.

 In closing, though Vision of Abyssea isn't perfect, it has made significant steps towards improving the way Final Fantasy XI is played. Should the next two Abyssea add-ons prove to be as game-breaking, then the days ahead for Vana'diel are truly bright.