OG Final Fantasy 11 (2003-2005) was the best time I have ever had in my life. I was brand new to the MMO community and I was only 15 yrs old. Once I started playing 11, I lost track of time and was engulfed into that world 24/7. I use to skip going to school just to play. Man it was such an experience I will never forget, for the rest of my life. All the friendships I made and lost. You really had to be there from the start to fully understand how special Final Fantasy 11 was to people and how it forced you to play with other people, making you create bonds and friendships.
It's wild how much the mmo genre has changed. FF11 was designed to create real relationships and bonds, WoW is basically the opposite now days, you sit in a lobby and queue for content everyone rushes and nobody says a word to each other. To think mmos would actually become anti social. The genre has lost so much. You should check out the private sever Horizon XI. It's perma 2005 era ff11 with a great team behind it, and they will rework future expansions to be more in line with lvl 75 era.
The same happened with me, got into FFXI durin 2004 and yeah definitely lived a similar experience. At the time I was in high school and somehow I became addicted to it (literally or rather patologically lmao), always had this urge to log in and live life in Vana'diel. Farming for silk threads or Tree cuttings, checking my stonks (at the AH), crafting: I was one of the few crazy people that got into goldsmithing which was insanely expensive to skill up, even got the apron and spectacles and could cut beads although never got an HQ... got a moderate in-game fortune by selling HQ Lv. 16 DEX and STR rings (also fun fact, in my server was the richest character who also did goldsmithing, was a elf by the name of sagaxxxxxx), NM hunting, mining... man the list went on and you NEVER ran out of things to do. Community was really a fundamental part of the game, I still remember super dearly how when I had to go for my AF weapon (Lv40 quest) I had to ask on different linkshells for help and people would be willing to help out of nowhere without charging or anything, and you had a really interesting party setup of late Lv30s, Lv40s, mid Lv60s and there was always that one Lv75 gigachad who basically solo'd the NM, it was so fun. Another thing I love of FFXI design is how equipment didn't get obsolete immediately, like you had Lv75 dudes doing literal endgame with Lv9 Leaping boots (+3 DEX was god-like), and of course competition on Leaping lizzy was fierce (they went for at least 300k gil, so basically a party of 6 could get away with 50k each in a couple hours which at the time was a small fortune...) I was super nervous on NM hunting so I decided to just skill up my crafts and buy the NM items I required instead and did pay off quite well... The game had the perfect depth IMO. Well I could go on and on and would never stop talking about it, sorry for the wall-text, I always get too excited when talking about FFXI back in the day.
I still play XI today, and now that I'm older I appreciate the more solo-friendly version of the game because I can play at my own place and still accomplish stuff. But XI back in the day was a totally unique experience that I'm glad I got to be a part of. Doing CoP missions when they had the level caps was incredibly intense, and I think the huge difficulty of trying to clear those missions is part of the reason why that story is so special to a lot of players. I still remember beating the airship fight almost 20 years later.
That airship fight! I had a few friends that quit over that. They couldn't clear it and were locked out of all the sea shenanigans. CoP was definitely not for the faint of heart.
I hear so many stories from how brutal CoP was. To be perfectly honest, it amazes me to talk to someone who beat it in the 75 era. It sounded so intense.
@@vicenarian340 here i am, i'm a 75 era EU ex player. During my adventure in FF11 i met a cool group of singapore players (Okada/Satien/Supernova/Babytaru and Winetaru) and we managed to clear CoP together. it took weeks of preparation, level up with the recommened job, make enough gil to be able to get all the food/items needed for the fight. took us several tries but hell, we all managed to get Sea access together as a group of friends. best memories and i'll be always grateful for this game. Branko from Seraph server.
I’m not sure you noticed but FF11 has THE best implementation of the Job System of any FF, including 14 and Tactics. You say you found FF11 to be quite tactical compared to other FFs… man… you have no idea what it was like in the golden era; it was much more back then… the amount of tactics and organisation it was required to do stuff like dynamis, HNMs of sky and sea, Wyrm-fights… it was there, in those epic large-scale battles with dozens of players where you could see people pushing their jobs to the limit. Although I love FF14’s story, I find its battle system extremely frustrating, because those job rotations are exhaustively repetitive, whereas in FF11 you can achieve your goals by adopting an impressive amount of different strategies. There’s no such thing as a “fixed rotation” of spells and abilities, unless you are going for a zerg-strategy (kill as quickly as you can) with a full party or alliance of (real) players. Also, this game was SO PUNISHING back in the days that, when someone brags about how difficult Souls-games are, I cant help but think to myself: “you wouldn’t last a month in 2005’s Vana’Diel”
Yes! This is what I really am missing in 14. The job system becomes more shallow each expansion. There was so much diversity of jobs and possible playstyles. And pet jobs were plentiful. 14 developers make it very clear that they can't make a good pet job and dislike any job that is not homogenous
@@DB-zj7wv But it's not like FFXIV's job system was really good either though. It was only 1.0's version of the job system(before it was watered down in the versions of 1.x that followed the introductions of the actual jobs) that can be considered good compared to the rest of the franchise. (the rest of this comment is about why FFXIV's current job system is the way it is, but TL;DR: it's not just the devs' fault, it's also the players'.) The problem isn't just the devs though. It's the fact that most games(mostly competitive multiplayer ones) nowadays have to be balanced to have a healthy amount of players playing it because either they just optimize the fun out of it, or they just stop playing/start complaining because it's too "difficult". Couple that with most of the feedback taken from players being in few places(usually the official forums) where there's not much diverging point of views, the fact that it's the current number 1 MMORPG in the market, that it's made to appeal to a wide audience and not just FF fans, then you have the state of the game's job system nowadays, where Black Mage is arguably the only unique job among 19 of those usable in every content the game offers, while the ones that aren't(aka Blue Mage and soon in next expansion's Beastmaster) are outside of the scope of said content because of their uniqueness.
The issue with stuff like this is when you play the game seriously other things get pushed to the wayside, it wouldn't work in 14 because they want all jobs to be viable. I disagree personally because I like the sentiment of being able to play what you want, rather than forced into an optimal thing. The rotations may get repetitive, but the fights really don't and there's so many jobs that conceivably mastering each optimal rotation, of which there are multiple, can take you a while. Let's say you mastered every job in a day, now do it while running an ultimate blind. Personally, after doing thousands of hours of content, there's still jobs I have yet to play perfectly on in every situation. That's the reason I can't wholeheartedly say it's repetitive. Maybe at level 15 but definitely not at 90.
@@Grimnoire I know this videos about 11, but man do I find this narrative that 14 jobs are homogenized to be dishonest. I have found that most people(if not every person) I've encountered that complains about job homogenization in 14 suspiciously does NOT play every job at a decent level. They generally only stick to one archetype that might actually be somewhat homogenized in order to keep them all viable like healer(or to a lesser extent tank but I think even that's a stretch) and maybe play like one phys ranged dps or something. And I most definitely don't see anyone hypothetically mastering every job in a day if anything most people I see are just passable or maybe even bad at their MAIN job lol. But let's say you main dancer and can play it well enough to clear any content with a dps check, that in no way makes you now suddenly able to play dragoon well enough to even do green numbers. The same goes for jobs in the same archetype, like playing summoner well enough to clear any content in the game does not suddenly make you even decent at black mage its like night and day.
The poor souls who never experienced FFXI from 2003-2012 will never know just what they missed out on. It wasn't a game, or even the best FF title, it was a way of life.
@@StevenWoolf-eb5xy private servers I take it? Yeah tend to be rather toxic. It wasn't fun to fight people for claims during sky. People who praise classic never got far or they were among the top lonkshells 🤷♀️
I played FFXI for maybe a month back in 2003 or 2004, definitely wasn't for me back when I was younger. Even more recently, as someone who enjoys most MMOs to a reasonable degree for both thed gameplay and the social aspects, I didn't think FFXI was for me despite a nagging desire to go back and try it again. I could not have been more wrong. The past three days I've spent playing it have been some of the most fun I've had in not just an MMO, but in RPGs as a whole, in years. This video is what inspired me to try it and I can't thank you enough.
I did something similar but not in 2004. I think for me it was more 2008 or 09, had the game on xbox 360 for a bit. think I played only a month and for some reason I just got bored of it and stopped playing. I think at the time the game just wasnt super clear on how I could play it so i didn't understand anything and didn't have a computer to look up guides online either. at the time i don't remember if smart phones were out but if they were i did not have one anyway. Ended up jumping ship to phantasy star universe for a bit. I also think the issue of losing experience and basically not being able to do basic overworld type content solo was something that made me lose interest in the game back then. These days i'm more tolerable of the exp loss and the trust system basically makes it so you can solo just about everything anyway so it's definitely a bit easier to play, however I find it difficult to get into the game because I feel a lack of community, even when I manage to get in a link shell often rarely anyone ever socializes so it ends up feeling like i'm just playing a singleplayer game that requires a sub. I definitely plan to go back to it at some point because I do want to play through all it's quests and storyline if I can, I just hope I can manage to get around to it before they shut the servers down. I've heard they vowed they will never shut the servers down so long as people are playing but imo once the costs become unjustifiable i know the servers will get shut down without a doubt. I just hope they release the game in a state that makes it playable offline if they ever do that.
This motivated me to return home to San d'Oria and finish the story. Left off in Abyssea era. Made a lot of amazing friends in this world and still close to some to this day. This game really felt like being in a real and different world, and no other game has done that for me. Vanargand from Valefore, Dragoon Extraordinaire will be Super Jumping back soon!
Me and my FF14 friends are big fans of the series as a whole, I have been considering checking out FF11 for a while, now with the new Alliance Raid in Dawntrail being announced to be based on FF11 me and my friends have decided to take the dive and give it a proper try! Great video, I am very excited to dive into this world soon! :) Funnily enough, listening to Distant Worlds and hearing "Answers" and "Dragonsong" was a big motivator for me to check out FF14. Since then I have also been listening to "Memoro De La Stono" for years and I can't wait to get a new context to this song!
best damn game ever made from 2002-2008 def . once they broke the game with lvl cap to 100 it was the end .... i saw ppl duo Fafnir ..... what a shame ...... bring back 1k ppl in Dragon's Aery and lets wait 3 hours for some Epic fights
I always get a chuckle when someone says, "I was so addicted to . I have over 500 hours played!" MMO players, and especially us FFXI vets measure our playtime in days, not mere hours lol.
Always wanted to play 11 but I can't justify paying a sub for both 11 and 14 for a few months, wish they'd just consolidate that at this point if you have both games but idk. Great video though makes me want to play even more
Private servers are free if you are still interested in ffxi. I started the game back in January and it is easily one of the best games ive ever played :)
I’m so happy I took the time to sit down during the summer of 2022 and go through all the main expansion stories (haven’t really done Abyssea, Shantotto, or Moogle Coup d’etat, but I have started chapter three of The Voracious Resurgence recently) Definitely has become one of my fave FF titles, and I can’t wait for the Echoes of Vana’diel (like deal, not dee-ehl btw 😉) raid in FFXIV.
Awesome to see a fellow new player. I'll be honest, almost every time I record, I try to go with the proper pronunciation. When I go to edit, I find that I've swapped pronunciations a dozen times lol. So I have to stick with my own bootlegged way of saying the word. Thanks for the correction though! What was your favorite expansion?
I enjoyed FFXI when it launched on PS2. Bought all the expansions on physical that were available, and a few after that which became digital. Played on Fenrir server until lvl 90 cap and raked in more than 365 days of gameplay on my play timer, easily pushing over 9000 hours. Right before PS2 compatibility shut down, I hopped on just to see the game, and it was almost unplayable due to be severely outdated hardware. I don't have the free time to commit to playing on it on pc. It was a unique and enjoyable experience that can't be replicated by any other mmorpg.
Great video. I'm one of those long lost FFXI players from the golden era, but it's a game that has been on my mind since the day I last logged off. Every year I always think I should come back and just replay the story at least, and videos like this is a huge push in that direction. Maybe not right now as time is tight, but one day I'd love to come back and play this game once more.
buddy you and me both. 8th and 9th grade for me was FFXI golden era. WHT/BLK and NIN/WAR i played THOUSANDS of hours and i really miss the immersive community. i havnt played a game like it since. and i miss it. ive bounced around from FF14, WOW, and other MMO's looking for something and im just not getting it.. id love to take the leap into FFXI and see what happens....
I knooooow what you mean omg... I started in 2003, stopped in 2008.... I've missed it every day... and I miss it even more these days... I just need a computer again ....
It's different now of course, but Vana'diel still exists. For me, it's worth the $15/month--setting my own goals, challenges, and just to remain connected to it. So few things can channel the kind of peace this game can.
I tried to go back several times because of the same feeling.... First days are amazing, just getting emotional with the music, the world, everything...But then I start to miss the people. Yes, I can do almost everything by myself, and in a way, is a great thing.... but in the other it's not. Idk how to explain this, I'm not trying to convince you to not playing it, I actually would love that everyone would come back, but the fact of really needing other people was for me the real cherry on the top. Of course I cannot lie myself telling me that those 3hr waiting for a party is somenthing that I really miss... Yeah my brain tells me that was "part of the beauty" but I know that today I wouldn't want that because, in fact, was even bad for my real life. But man, having a schedule to do Dynamis with my ls (which was from eeuu and i'm form spain cuz I landed in a EEUU majority server and I never wanted to change, so imagine me starting Dynamys at 12 in the night having to attend to school next day ), asking for help and helping others killing that NM for literally hundreds of times to get the item... Now I find difficult to fight a mob for the 78 time to get an item when I am the only one there. I love nostalgia but this game gives me too much, it's honestly painfull. I start to feel like the child who doesn't want to grow up (in the bad way). Idk how to let FFXI in the past with love. It's like I want my now imposible relationship back, and ironically it's imposible because of me. It was one of the greatest thing in my life, and everytime I go back, I feel that I diminish that honour. I would have loved that the world stopped right there, but it didn't, and I don't know who to go back with it and me "just being friends"... I cannot. I would love to, I really would.
@@Barikinfi I understand 100% The beauty of the game was the 3 hour wait times for HNMs, the reason it worked is because of the people. Back in the day, FFXI was our social media. The game as a whole was the cherry on top. But I still loved the game too, there will never be another game like it, both because the times have changed, but mostly because I have changed too, as you said if a game made me wait around for 3 hours for a boss I have a 5% chance of even fighting, for a 1% chance for the main drop, I'd probably look at it then never play lol.
I came across Vicenarian's videos about two weeks ago which led me to buying it even though I never played it before. At the start I was overwhelmed with everything new thrown at you . Once you get the hang of the Menus and basic mechanics along with the Records of Emminence, the Records actually helped start guide me as to what I should be doing. So far I have been enjoying the game at my own pace with no rush to get to the endgame. I must say I have been thoroughly enjoying the game, combat becomes more enjoyable once you start getting more skills, the story is really enjoyable and the music is amazing. I never expected to bump into you while doing Side Quests in Windurst! I just want to say thank you for your videos, which helped me make my decision to play it.
Hey, It's good to hear from you again! Don't be surprised if your character name pops up in the chat log in my RoV review lol. Like I mentioned before, it was really nice to meet you, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for watching!
I wonder if his take would be different had he played back during the early days. Remember when we didn't have level sync and needed a full party of elite players to get to 75? I used to sit 4-6+ hours to just find an endgame party. I used to tackle my backlog of games while waiting for a party lol. Kids these days will never know the pain and accomplishments we experienced during those early days.
Cool video, thanks for making it! I'll be too busy these coming months to start playing this game now, but I definitely want to give it a try when things slow down a bit! :)
I played 11 back in my college years in the early 2000s and story was definitely not what people played it for. You had to pray that other players around your level were around and available to help you through a dungeon or just level up against the mobs in the environment. Every mob hit as hard as an A Rank from FFXIV and getting a level or two a day was considered a miracle. It took a very long time to level and dying would lose all your progress. What hurt most is that it was hard to gear up, as all the gear on the market would be insanely overpriced so you couldn't get your gear appropriate for your level and people won't bring you with them into the next dungeon for that level range. Old FF11 was rough. Shadowlord was also considered the end game and there was nothing past that when I played.
I started XI back on PS2 (we had dial-up out in the country and it's all that would work, but I loved it anyway). Didn't get much further than unlocking Redmage because I simply didn't have the time, but I'd fall asleep playing it many nights after getting off work and getting home at 3AM. Now, I'm trying my hand at XIV after canceling my pre-order of its original launch back in 2010. 😂
Singing praise where its due! Thanks for all these videos. As an old school player who returned after a number of years away, I'm always hopeful more people will get to experience the wonderful world of Vana'diel.
I wish you could have played the game back in its original state. Sure there was zones full of dangerous enemies and dying had a stiff penalty to your EXP. But the sense of community was unrivaled. The bonds formed with people over this game were so strong. So many memories... Those first times grouping up in the dunes.. The mass panic and dash for the zone exit when someone would bring a train of goblins to your exp party XD I could go on and on... I was a black mage main for my first job. It was so rewarding to build good exp parties with a skill chain i could magic burst. Being among the first english players to reach Sky and start the endgame on our server at the time was so amazing. Just the sense of accomplishment and pride. You have no idea. If you ever find a time machine- give it a go!~
I played FFXI during the golden age, where the cap was 75 and dynamis, sea and sky were the endgame. I miss those days. This game was just a masterpiece. The world felt so….meaningful. Everything you did felt deliberate. Such a refreshing change of pace from the modern day MMO with its lobby-based content and DPS rotations. So boring. The world doesn’t feel “real,” if that makes sense. Modern MMO worlds feel secondary to gameplay where in old school MMOs such as FFXI, the world WAS part of gameplay. Or at least it drove the minute-to-minute gameplay loop.
I played 11 at the NA launch, and played it for 12 years. It was quite the struggle to do anything without a group of friends unless you were a beast master. It forced us to make friends and work as a team. I started a linkshell on the now absorbed Titan server, and it grew to over 100 members. I became good friends with several, and traveled across the U.S. and even parts of Canada to visit them in person... even went to a couple weddings of my officers. When they made the game more solo friendly the bonds between players weakened and eventually we all slipped away. I sunk so much time into this game in those days that I can't get into games that have huge time sinks like this one did. Too much nostalgia to go back.
This video makes me want to re-sub. FFXI had the best system with its sub-jobs and main jobs. Mixing and matching to find out what works well was always fun. As a WHM there was nothing quite like seeing blink tank duos.
Jobs like RDM where you needed crazy numbers of subs to “do it right” were amazing. RDM/WHM (Convert, DS, Cure III, who needs to rest?) RDM/BLM (Eseal and Warp) RDM/NIN (Solo anything as long as your bladder holds out) RDM/BRD (Ballad and Refresh!) RDM/SMN (autofresh, carby pull) RDM/PLD (the flashy autofresh) RDM/DRK (Chainspell Stun) I’m probably forgetting one. RDM/WAR was a fool’s crusade, Phalanx just wasn’t good enough.
just started to play ff11 on a private server that goes by Eden. its a private server dedicated to the 2007 vanilla version of the game. im already a lvl 6 blackmage human. its fun af
I purchased this game at release, I was so excited😂 I was young, and I learned a hard lesson about graphics cards and such that day when the game couldn't even load the start screen😭 still haven't played it
Hey! I remember watching your video about FFXI right after I started it myself. I've really enjoyed your content since I found your channel too. It's awesome to see you here, and I look forward to your next upload!
Oh, hey! I appreciate that. I hope to have another video out in the next week or two, it’ll be on a different FF game coincidentally. I’m glad I found your channel, too! Subbed and gonna work through your other FF11 content :)
Well. You finally convinced me to try it again. Played it ages ago when it first came out in the West, but had to stop for financial reasons. Got into XIV during 1.0 and have loved it ever sense. But I've always considered going back to experience what I missed
2006-07 I LIVED in Vana'diel. Never was good at it, nor did I get to the really in-depth end game content (it was so complicated/time-consuming to progress) but oh the memories 🥲
I started playing for my first time today! I absolutely love the before wow feel and the way you truly party up! I can't believe more mmos don't have their own version of the search or comment feature! finding someone in the same area by searching levels and than fighting together was an amazing experience and im only level 3!
I'm glad you're enjoying it! As I've mentioned before, the game has a brutal learning curve. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here in the comments or on the FFXI sub reddit. Welcome to the game, and thanks for reaching out!
Thanks for the nostalgia trip. I’ll never forget the endless nights of clearing out Dynamis, how powerful I felt as a red mage being one of the few classes that could solo some difficult content… Discovering sky and sea for the first time, chilling out with friends in the realms of gods, farming merit points while trying to get Despot to spawn… Stumbling across a giant group of Japanese players attempting to beat Absolute Virtue, going to bed, and waking up to see them STILL fighting him… My only gripe with the game was how we poured SO much time into it, week after week, all for gear that would provide single-digit percentage boosts to one of our abilities. Everything had such niche uses, I remember my macro bars being full of specialized gear swap + spell combos to maximize my enhancement or enfeebling. I’ll admit it was nice to see my Sleepga land more consistently than Sleepga 2 from our Dynamis group’s BLMs 😅
Di discovered you yesterday (well about 20 hours ago) and watched all your videos and now you have a new one up :D. Thank you so much for the great entertainement.
FFXI is the greatest Final Fantasy ever made. I love all FF but nothing will ever match what 11 did. The best combat system, the socialization, the depth of the game and mechanics. Fantastic story. The economy was great. It truly was a jewel among video games. I love it so much and miss the days of losing time with friends in FFXI. I played FFXIV and it was ok. It wasn't the great(specially when compared to FFXI). The community for both games have been wonderful, but nothing compares to FFXI. Great video and I am so glad you got into it and gave it a try. I tell everyone that plays or has played MMO's that they need to try FFXI or that if they don't they really missed the best MMO ever made. I played it from day one in the US. I played MMOs before FFXI and after, and none have had the same impact or kept me enthralled as long as FFXI. Everything about it is truly magical.
i agree wholeheartedly. i'm also a series fan and so glad i was receptive to FFXI being an MMO and trying it 20 years ago. it did take me some time to realise or admit that it was my fave final fantasy, but i truly love it and hope more people get to experience it together
I know that FFXI certainly won't be everyone's favorite in the series. But, to the extent that any other FF game is worth playing, XI most certainly is too. And it's unfortunate that many pretend otherwise. As for me, I never expected to love FFXI this much, but here I am, 2 years into the game and 9 videos about it later lol.
I can't wait to finally play it, I have 10k hours in XIV but I've always loved how everything in XI looks (especially the racial design, the best out of all FF games imo) thx for the amazing video!
I played this game day one of its release in 2003 up to 2007. It is no longer what itvwas, what made the game was you had to team up and meet other players in order to get ahead. The story telling was shared with said team of players and the game wqs so hard to get ahead that players you teamed up with became your friends in battle. That was the special part of yhis game back then.
I last played FF11 sometime in the late 2000s and I never got to experience much of the story stuff, even though I played it a ton. I had no idea it was made completely soloable now. I'll have to find the time to go back and experience it.
After I finished school i sunk a whole year playing FF11 and I never got half way past the main story of the base game or maxed out a job. Cant believe it held my attention everyday. Glad to hear they upgraded the progression system and be able to play solo. I had so much fun on the grind with my linkshell community. I sometimes wonder what they are doing in life.
Crazy to think this game is soloable now. I remember party finding being a huge part. Made a ton of friends that way on the server I was on. CoP was impossible to solo when it released.
Now, it's faster to blazed through the content at lvl. 99 with NPCs than to find people to help you with it. I know this can be a huge negative for some, but it was a big positive for me.
I was a taru black mage.....I lived in port jeuno waiting for invites and then asked if I would backup heal, ugggh. Game has changed and for the better overall but def miss some of those days.
@@vicenarian340 It's such a huge negative to the entire experience, though if you never experienced the social aspect when it was a thing in Retail, you will never know it.
@@networknomad5600 I'm talking particularly about the main story. tVR is still brutally difficult, and requires other people's help. A ton of the 'mid game' and endgame harshly incentivize partying up too. I've spent a ton of time with some of the Linkshells I've been a part of. It isn't as social as it once was, but it's still an incredibly social experience.
@@curlydolltv i can't think of any mmorpg that had that terrifying run to the party areas when you hit the appropriate level, sure there are difficult MMORPGs but none really captured the terror of that run
@@Pyrrhonian Agreed, and even leveling up with a group contained degrees of tension. A moment of bad luck or a distraction could result in the end of the party. Everyone was required to optimize their attention and performance. It forced us to really get to know who people were.
Great video! I'm glad you that you got to experience this fantastic game. This game was too hard for me back in the early days, but once they made the game single player friendly I got back into it. Along the way I made many friends and was doing end game content. I quit the game about a year ago after I defeated the end boss in the Voracious Resurgance missions. That to me was closing the book on the game. I may come back for nostalgia reasons because I miss the zones, but I'm happy by what I accomplished and I will always remember this as the most hardcore MMO ever made.
I'm a final fantasy fan, I must say. there is no game that will ever beat the fun i had in the lvl 75 cap era of ff11. Man... I made friend with people all over the world, even gamed with Japanese people wo do not speak English and we all enjoyed each other’s company. The game felt like a real live world where everyone needed each other to progress. Never had such communion with diverse people all over the world. This is how diversity is supposed to be, it was there all along, not the forced modern kind. I haven’t even started about the game mechanics and the story… o boy I truly mis the old ff11 times. Even after 20 years when I hear the music, I think about valkurum dunes, the pain of lvling down after lvling up. The moments of sacrifice for the party , the hard punishments that I loved. It brought out true danger that you did not face alone that no game ever managed to generate. Games now are a shadow of ff11 back then. I played ff14, but it does not have what 11 has. So going back to 11 to check it out. I did not know it was still up. The warning that you should not to forget the people in your real live, when you started the game, was really needed haha. It really hit a true spot there.
If your a big fan of that lvl 75 era i highly reccomend you check out a private server. People always say there toxic but as a completely new player that started in January of this year Ive never experienced toxicity once on Eden.
Huge FF Fan and I played FFXI since release. I loved what it was then and what it has become today. Nothing will beat the Final Fantasy Immersion feeling of making it to Valkrum Dunes and playing in my first party. The most difficult and punishing thing about this game was PlayOnline and the largest deterrent of players experiencing this Masterpiece.
I played FFXI from 2004-2010, and it really created good memories. It's a game with a special place in my heart. I tried coming back a couple of times, but finally came back like in 2022, along with my brother. First, for the pleasure of visiting old places, enjoy the music and the landscapes. Second, to try and see the changes and how one could solo or duo content. I even was able to finally finish WoTG and fully play (and enjoy) SoA. Unfortunately, we ended up in the same loop as before we left. We managed to get our Empyreal armor and do some of the reforging, but to reforge some to +1 is very hard, and +2 is impossible if you don't have a party or a LS to help with the more advanced content. We got stuck on doing ambuscades daily, farming job points, and do some leveling. I finished Rhapsodies with much problem, had to solo last boss with trusts (bc my brother still had to finish yet WoTG) and took me tons of tries and trust setups. Sooooo it was a matter of time we got bored, and stopped playing again. I think the party factor is very different to how it was 20 years ago, when one could talk to ppl easily, help others with ease (and get helped), and that way we met lots of ppl and made new friends. Now nobody talks, nobody replies for help, and it's really difficult to get a LS to get help to get past the newer content. I would like to come back, overcome the problem of not being able to progress with gearing and doing different content.
As an FFXI Veteran (first played 2005) i can add something about this "FFXI got worse than in the early days" matter. I can clearly say: FFXI is best MMO i played so far. An i played many of them. The thing with MMOs from the "after WoW" Era is that most of them tried to copy things WoW did to get a part of the MMO Player base. WoW defined the formular of "success" that is redefined from every MMO until today. Accessability, simplicity and the monthly, weekly or even daily treadmills the player is send to over and over again. From the beginning WoW felt more like a single player reward machine where you are able to play with others from time to time then an MMO. FFXI was special. with its strong focus on social activities as a way to success and its pure difficuilty it was focusing on a complete different audience. The mechanics had an incredible effect... The players where much more friendly, polite and at last serious about there investment of time into the game. As a result i logged into the game just to chat with my friends i met in there and not to grab my next reward. Now to the point. The changes that where made to the game later took this very important spirit off the game. You are able to progress much faster now when you just level and quest by yourself. The mandatory EXP Parties are things of the past. That was a key feature to socialize for further activities. Many of the old Content now is rediciulously easy when you summon your NPCs. Some of this lend me to the best memories i had in my whole gaming time in the past. I think this are two reasons why older FFXI Players find that FFXI was best in its lvl 75 cap Era. And btw. thats why many of the so called private Servers try to recreate this magic by setting there servers to variations of that time.
I cannot speak to the actual golden era of the game you played back in the day, my first experience with XI was just a few years ago...the prospect of being able to play the game by myself sounded good at first, but did not feel very fulfilling in practice...and seeing all the people advertise merc services in the cities really turned me off from publicly asking for help in the sea of adverts. Since then I moved over to one of those 75 era private servers, no Trusts, no Mounts, questing takes some serious time, and despite the sheer time sink this game is I fell in love with it. For awhile I would try my damnedest to do as much stuff solo as possible but always ran into a wall. I would find help from actual players who do not expect anything in return for the assistance, and find myself wanting to return that kindness to others by helping them where I could. Since then I joined active linkshells, talk to people, and engross myself in the kindness of the community both as someone who receives it and who gives it. While I'm sure this is not the same exact experience you got from the golden era of FFXI I really feel my own version of it from this server. I have since attempted to play on the retail servers again with a expanded knowledge of the game and the kind of experiences it could and should offer but just don't get the same feeling. I may give retail another try someday if nothing else to experience the expansion content not implemented on the private server but for the time being I found a version of the game I really enjoy.
thanks a lot for the vidéo, we can feel your strong love for the game. I tryed the private server but stop due to the gap between old players and me and the time to adapt to the difficulty but after your vid i want to play official and do the story. You great ;)
Thank you! Private servers definitely have their place, but retail allows you to play through FFXI more like you would any other FF. It's systems are still far more opaque, but once you're accustomed, retail is a phenomenal experience!
I only managed to experience FFXI for the first time last month and I already have so many moments burned into my mind. Getting to grips with the combat system outside of Bastok, traveling to the other two cities by boat , that one bizarre quest in Jeuno where you help a kid who thinks his sister is possessed, fighting your way to the Shadow Lord, getting the WAR relic and feeling bad for my boy Naji getting so much flack, the desolation of Tavnazia and all the little side quests going on there. And there is still so much I still haven't even explored yet and sadly probably won't till the end of the year due to IRL issues. On a side note, I honestly find it really interesting how much the Xenoblade franchise has in common with this. Both have expansive semi-open worlds with a proper sense of scale, the slow paced combat, and the sort of skill-chain system present in Xenoblade 2. I haven't done any research into it, but I wonder how much, if any, of FFXI inspired Monolith Soft when they started work on the Xenoblade games.
FF14 1.0 was actually a lot like FF11.. which was unpopular for the more casual players and players who came into mmos through WOW.. but I, a ff11 fan, loved 1.0.. now its just WOW with FF Lore/Skin..
tbf the big reason why 1.0 tanked is that everything system wise was just a massive mass of bugs piling on each other, which coupled with the lack of QoL or ergonomy just made it painful to play. Not to mention the fact the game was forced to release far too early and so the content drought was real. The bad just far outweighed the good, and if not for these issues, I think people would have been more willing to overlook the less casual aims of the game.
My personal experience about XI, 20 years ago as a teenie was great game and pretty accurate on what you said. I skipped story because english is not my native language, but gotta admit, XI made a big deal making me learn english. I can proudly say to my friends that a lot of my english vocabulary was learnt through the years playing XI and will be always gratefull about it. I still play XIV, resubed XI and made a new character from scratch because of the nostalgia, and with trusts was able to redo base game, Zilart and CoP, watching and reading the entire story and understanding way much better than back in the day.
Amazing review. I just started playing again 2 days ago. I've been loving watching / listening to videos like these while i'm working. Gets me so excited to get home and play. I never beat FFXI yet, but am WAY more excited for the story. I agree with you that the music is top notch. I really love Windurst music so much i always play MIthra or Taru because of it! my first character ever was a Taru from Sandy though. Sandy music also really good
I'm "newish" XIV player (playing about a year now, but very casually) and it was my real first experience with FF. It made me fall in love with the series, it's deep story and lore (like reading lore books!). I think XI more slower phased gameplay will really work for me well now, because like you said it's a bit daunting to keep up with XIV new updates especially when I haven't reach the point where most of the players are. Any ways thank you very much for the video - I'm downloading the free trial now! I will be defiantly checking those tip videos too.
That's awesome to hear! FFXI's learning curve is absolutely brutal, so if you have any questions during your first couple hours, don't hesitate to ask!
As a FF fan playing XI back in 04-06 and being very interested in the story, it was very frustrating how hard it was to find people to do some of the fights, especially for those that didn't have endgame content locked behind. But also, it was so satisfying beating those fights. Endgame content is interesting and fun nowadays, but it has moved away from alliance content, so that's not particularly good for linkshells, but it's easier to find 5 other people to fill a party.
The story is so important to this game, especially before they made it solo friendly. The difficulty and shared feeling of achievement with your friends/linkshell was unmatched. Thank Altana for 75 cap community servers!
Loved all of this video! The narrator mentioned mostly playing as a damage dealer, so I wanted to add a plug for FFXI's White Mage class. The opportunity for skill expression is orders of magnitude higher than for any of the dozen or so MMORPGs I've played as a healer. The ~2 second global lock down on casting spells makes decision making far more complex (and rewarding when you're good at it).
I played this game to death back when level 75 was the level cap. I got to the point where I was working on job #4 (BLM, WHM, RDM, and then BRD) and eventually with the HNMs taking all day it just felt like a job. Had a great time building all the RDM subs, the early game with even a halfway competent party was amazing. There was also a great zen of the RDM buffing cycle that I really miss. I mean, I was totally /that/ BLM that would see the enemy at 20% health, blink, stone skin, and absolutely dump damage on it until it died, rotating blink and stone skin to tank as needed at the end. Don’t forget the echo drops! Good memories, but just way too much of a time sink.
I had attempted to play FFXI as my first MMO, in 2004, but my discs were messed up during the installation process, or the process was corrupted in some way, and I couldn't install the game. It was already going to be hard for me to play cause my mom wasn't sold on paying a monthly subscription for a game I was playing. I ended up playing WOW towards the end of 2005. But I really wanted to play FFXI back in 2004. I remember buying the official strategy guide and studying up on all the classes and jobs and the beginning zones in the base game and first expansion. I believe that was how the game was initially released to the US, the base game and the first expansion. I enjoyed WOW, but I am a life long FF fan, and would have loved to play FFXI at the beginning of its first few years of release.
Black Mage gets to cast meteor (I finally levelled Black Mage despite being mostly Melee and Pet job person) and Its awesome with more people. So is comet, like I love BLM because of FFXI and BLU and RDM .. all the jobs really shined. Play the story too.. Holy hell play the story with 2 friends in Windurst, one red mage one white mage one black mage and you'll enter horototo ruins.. Its a neat door to open, that is all. Edit: Back in my day a lot of kids used to use FFXI as a social hub more so than an online game to play a story with friends. My friends from Emerald Dream and later on NotED and Later on Blue Gartr (some left some stayed) all met up in Vegas to actually meet, its something people did man.
I started playing around 2006 when I was 14. The grind was there but with new enemies, music, scenery, and friends at every turn. Racked up days of playtime in high school and stopped regularly playing, but the sub is going strong for 6 months. Would love a reboot, XIV doesn't hit the same. Was Nerevar on Hades, now Ordinator on Asura ✌️ Guess I'll catch up on some things
I had such a great time with this game in the early 2000s. LAN parties. Weekend leveling binges. Waiting for party invites. Made so many friends, and apparently also so many memories. I dont remember why or when i quit, I just know it was after ToAU release. Anyway, I just randomly bought this game again the other day and starting fresh again and these days playing the game just makes me feel sad inside because a world that used to be so vibrant and filled with life is now just empty and quiet. Ironic that the whole time I used to play, I would always wish I could solo most of the game, and now that I can, all I wish for is to have the people back. Almost every zone I enter brings back memories of fun times, bad groups, good groups, lucky drops, random crap lol. Go back to these exact same spots and now there's just nothing. Something just feels... wrong... about loading into Jeuno and it being completely deserted and no chat spam or lag. I really need a new NEW MMO I can get in on from the start again. There's never been anything that's scratched the itch the same way 11 did, not even 14. I actually was originally going to redownload 14 again and start over on that game but the thought of having to dredge though the whole MSQ line again up to current content was a deal breaker, so 11 it was.
When it first came out I wanted to try it but I was only in elementary/Middle school and the idea of a game subscription didn't sit well with my parents. All these years that went by I contemplated starting it but was never motivated. Steam today notified me that FFXI Ultimate Edition went on sale below $10 so I feel extremely incentivized to start playing. I'm sure most of the player base is gone, but from all the things I heard, I hope I'll enjoy the story even if it may be a more solo experience.
I really wish they would do official FFXI classic servers. 11 is the only FF I've never played/finished but the solo-version appeals to me much less than the way the game was before (WoW [Classic] is my fave game of all time)... But I might still try the solo version anyway since I don't really want a private server
Your best bet will likely be HorizonXI then, and thankfully, it's free. What this server is doing is absolutely amazing, and if you're looking for a really old-school experience, Horizon seems to be in a class of it's own. I will say though, end game stuff requires parties of other people. It's about impossible to make a lot of meaningful progress solo unless you've already geared well (which requires other players anyway). I don't have any experience with WOW classic, but I believe modern FFXI might be more similar to classic WOW than classic FFXI.
As someone who played for the story, I am right there with you. The story of this game leaves me laughing, crying, and at times raging at the twists and turns it takes! I took a long break around 2015, and then played on and off. But I was lost at where I was in the story. So I started a new character (I also do this to gauge the new player experience), and now I am doing story, and having so much fun! I'm leveling and gearing up at my own pace. The AH is pretty expensive, so I made myself a challenge to try and get as much gear and spells from monsters and npcs as I could. Which also makes it a fun road trip, as it takes me all over Vana'diel to older areas. I would often tell people that this game taught me patience.
Wow .. what an excellent video. You brought back so many memories for me. I played when the game first came out and up to the TOAU expansion. I play for many years and had more than 1 year of actually gameplay time. So so so many great people I played with and many many great memories I had with this game. Thanks again for this video.
I’m currently going through all the FF games from the beginning, and I just started FFIV today. I was initially thinking of skipping this one since I was wary of how dull the story/gameplay could be, especially with its age and it being an MMO. Typically, you do get dozens or even hundreds of hours of story content in an MMO, but a lot of it tends to be shallow. But this video has convinced me to give FFXI a go once I’ve played up to it :)
This game is still my favorite. I had to take a few breaks from the game, but I'm redownloading it again tonight. The grind got to me a few times. This game still has some of my best memories playing video games. The comradery that you felt doing NM's and just leveling made the game so addicting. I spent a lot of time playing this game and Square Enix made a masterpiece with this game.
This game actually grew up with me, I bought it when it was new on PS2 and went thru all the way to the first "last expansion" SoA. Life kind of happened and I have completed abyssea but have not finished. Some of the scenes shown warmed my heart as I experienced them when they were brand new and floods of memories such as running a merc summoner ls to do fights for people, everyone I met along the way... This was my teenage years and it's great to see even new players enjoying it. I might come back soon since i have missed Vana'diel.
I joined the FFXI community in 2003-2009 and to this day FFXI is still my favorite MMO game, I was online 24x7 at that time. In order to participate in linkshell activities, I joined the union organizations of NA and JP respectively!
I'm glad to hear it! FFXI has a BRUTAL learning curve. But if you stick with it, you'll be able to experience all I've talked about. Thanks for the feedback! If you have any questions while you're getting acclimated, feel free to reach out.
100% facts, i do like the fact that they now have Trust to fight with you cause even fighting a "easy prey" was a pain in the ass solo, or simple changes like giving us a key item to open Banishing gates solo, field guide pages to complete for exp, leveling was a feat in it's self back in the day, spamming (looking for party) for hours, taking 20min to get everyone to the location, fighting with other parties for pulls to keep chain exp rolling, but when you had a great partying that was rolling thru mobs no one wanted to leave and you made friends, I'm currently back playing for my third time and I'm loving it, think the community has only gotten better over the years cause a lot of us are older now and we played it on release, any newer players are ff fans so it's a good crowd in general, not like wow where the people only get worse, min max'ing, weird gate keeping, fill out a job app to join my guild what a hell hole lol, this is like fine whine it only gets better with time, And Maat is still living rent free in my head, you old sob how many times i had you down to a 1 shot on my rdm then you smash me for a full bar of hp ( ^_>^) / ~~~~~ I---------I " (*
I really interested that I've seen someone who recommend playing FFXI online in 2024, while I think the retail version won't last forever I'm still impressed how long it takes live especially when they release FFXIV, I suspected that it will shutdown FFXI soon after that, but it still online 😍, I really hope they will preserve ffxi online and make it remaster to release it again as single player experience (I know there was a plan of remastering the game but it got canceled), The team is working on how to preserve the game before shutting down, so that makes me happy and I hope they'll make it real. I prefer playing FFXI using private server like Nocturnal Souls since they have quality of life improvemets and I'm interested just for story and exploring the world and all the reason you said in the video.
First dunes party, ill never forget, miss the days of "Goblin chains" in dunes/Yutunga jungle. First linkpearl i was given (had no clue what it was, it sat in my bags for 6 months before i learned what to do with it lol). Absolutely demolishing lvl 1-10 in a couple hours when i unlocked Dragoon as compared to days it took warrior when i first started. Big accomplishments in game like Soloing mission 2-3. They day they nerfed RMT NM's, Trying and failing ALOT on CoP missions, Unlocking Capitalism by leveling my first craft, cooking.
I remember blowing days and weeks of time playing this during the NA release. So many great memories, but i ultimately moved on to WoW. I tried it about 8 years back, and it didn't hold my attention, because i remembered the grinds. I remembered spending 24hrs straight in a stupid cave, trying to get my RSE to drop. It was a nightmare, but it loved it. Years after, WoW got terrible, and i moved into XIV. XIV absolutely blows my mind every time i play it, i'm reminded of how much of XI carried/got adapted into XIV, while improving upon the systems that WoW used to become so massively popular. But, there are things in XI that i miss: Bastok music, the boat, and mass-murdering quadavs to farm up mats and money. Not only that, but the sound of the zones - i've yet to feel as immersed into a game as i did with XI.
BLU was my favorite job, main SAM for endgame before game went 75+ lvl cap. I tried playing it again through a private server as a WHM. The nostalgia was great, but I was also reminded just how much time I don't have to play a game during those era now that I'm married with kids. I would play the retail, but I don't wanna go through the download process of Playonline, the true boss.
I wish everyone who love mmorpgs, experienced FFXI when it was not modernized. Yes it was punishing, yes it was time consuming, yes it forced you to find other players, but that was what made it special. I have played a lot of mmos. And i mean a lot as that is a genre i enjoy. None .... And i absolutely mean none, come close to the golden eras of FFXI. There are private servers that mimic the golden eras, sadly i never liked playing private servers. I played a lot of the content back when i was younger, and i wish i stuck around longer before the changes. Damn I'm sad now lol. FFXIV is nice and all, but it's a huge step back from FFXI. At least for me.
I still play FFXI off and on to this day in various forms. I feel like every generation should have the kind of struggle that forces cooperation like the old version did but I still find new things to fawn over in every iteration of XI more so than any other so far with how unique it is and how much passion is put behind it. Unfortunately I doubt we'll get another final expansion, but like you mentioned we get to have an MMO experience with an endpoint in mind which is about as unique as the rest of the game has been over the years I've been at it, even if I missed a significant part of it's golden era. The community around it certainly has no intent to let it die any time soon, that's for sure. It's a mainline FF like all the rest from start to end, even if the coat of format on it makes it a little harder to digest than some others and definitely think everyone should try it... ideally with a friend since it takes a minute to really set it's story hooks.
God. I will never forget playing it for the first time on Ps2 around the time of the first expansion (1st in the US 2nd in Japan) people have a hard time imagining what I mean when explaining that the opening cities didn’t have NPC guards at the gates, nor did mobs de spawn after chasing someone. They stayed right there at the front gate and PLAYERS self imposed guard duty. Like, how amazing is that?
I've absolutely fallen in love with FF11 this year. brand new player. i think the point you made about 11 fans not crossing over into the rest of the FF games causing the references to be lost upon us is a caviot. it makes 11's world the most authentic FF world i can imagine! even if idk when a reference is made im aware of what its referencing, almost line an older sibling making jokes about their past and while you don't understand it fully you have your own experience with that siblings and hearing their stories❤ ❤❤
11 is my favorite game, it unfortunately is a victim of time. As time went on, more people left, they had to. Not everyone has the time 11 requires to play, it was not an instant gratification game. Most of the memorable moments were the interaction and friends you made along the way that made all these other things so much better. Older content wasn’t soloable, you NEEDED to do it with people which admittedly was a downside but it felt that much more rewarding when you did finish content. That’s why i’ve been playing on the Horizon XI Server to replay the game in the best way possible.
I don't personally have the time to get too much done on Horizon, but I love what they are doing with that project. It's great to hear from a Horizon player!
I still remember logging in the PlayerOnline client for the 1st time when it launched. For some reason it always felt like going to another world. Back then it was very community centric. To get anything or go anywhere you had to enlist help or pay for fast travel teleport from white mages. I was a white mage and that's how I made gil. If there was an asshole in the game, they basically got nothing done because no one would help. Also there were no guides to hold your hand or map points to point you anywhere. Was so challenging but rewarding back then. Skill chainlink and magic burst combat system needs to come back into new games.
I won't lie, I was completely thrown off because I use the exact same Rolanberry Fields remix that you used in the intro for my BRB screen while I'm streaming. I thought I was live for a second LMAO Great video though, I especially love that you also mentioned that FFXI has had three moments in the game's history where the dev team and director(s) themselves have said they would never make any more FFXI content... and then come back to make more FFXI content. I'll 100% be sending this video to everyone I know. My friends and followers know me very well as a gal who's just OBSESED with Final Fantasy XI, and I have been since August 5th, 2005! Keep up the amazing work
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! I actually just finished a series of retrospectives for all of the major expansions in FFXI's main story. If you're interested in more FFXI content, I might have a couple of videos you'll find interesting.
I play XIV now but I was on XI back in the day. Don't think I could go back. It wouldn't be the same. My years on XI were by far my favorite times of gaming. Met two friends back then that I play games with to this day.
I started when the game first released on Pandy (Pandemonium) server to this day that game will always hold a special place in my ❤, I remember sleepless days to sit and wait for a world spawn. That was some crazy times, no game ever compared to it.
I have fond memories of this game from levels 1-25 or so. And nightmares of how restrictive it was after that. I finally got frustrated and solo'd myself to 50 with BST as a main job because it was the only way to avoid relying on groups you often had to wait hours for and then sometimes watch them fall apart in a fraction of the time you waited to get it together. Most of my other jobs never got to 40. I went back once after they changed things and had fun briefly before running into bots everywhere and deciding it just wasn't worth it.
Still love FFXI to this day... in many ways it feels perfectly in place with the PS2 era FF games, and has enough content to always keep you exploring and busy.
Hearing that Zi'tah music reminds me of when I was noob and trying to discover the zones, asking friends and linkshell.. 'Where is Li'telor?' and no one knew. We all found it, eventually.
OG Final Fantasy 11 (2003-2005) was the best time I have ever had in my life. I was brand new to the MMO community and I was only 15 yrs old. Once I started playing 11, I lost track of time and was engulfed into that world 24/7. I use to skip going to school just to play. Man it was such an experience I will never forget, for the rest of my life. All the friendships I made and lost. You really had to be there from the start to fully understand how special Final Fantasy 11 was to people and how it forced you to play with other people, making you create bonds and friendships.
Couldn't have said this any better.
It's wild how much the mmo genre has changed. FF11 was designed to create real relationships and bonds, WoW is basically the opposite now days, you sit in a lobby and queue for content everyone rushes and nobody says a word to each other. To think mmos would actually become anti social. The genre has lost so much.
You should check out the private sever Horizon XI. It's perma 2005 era ff11 with a great team behind it, and they will rework future expansions to be more in line with lvl 75 era.
The same happened with me, got into FFXI durin 2004 and yeah definitely lived a similar experience. At the time I was in high school and somehow I became addicted to it (literally or rather patologically lmao), always had this urge to log in and live life in Vana'diel.
Farming for silk threads or Tree cuttings, checking my stonks (at the AH), crafting: I was one of the few crazy people that got into goldsmithing which was insanely expensive to skill up, even got the apron and spectacles and could cut beads although never got an HQ... got a moderate in-game fortune by selling HQ Lv. 16 DEX and STR rings (also fun fact, in my server was the richest character who also did goldsmithing, was a elf by the name of sagaxxxxxx), NM hunting, mining... man the list went on and you NEVER ran out of things to do.
Community was really a fundamental part of the game, I still remember super dearly how when I had to go for my AF weapon (Lv40 quest) I had to ask on different linkshells for help and people would be willing to help out of nowhere without charging or anything, and you had a really interesting party setup of late Lv30s, Lv40s, mid Lv60s and there was always that one Lv75 gigachad who basically solo'd the NM, it was so fun.
Another thing I love of FFXI design is how equipment didn't get obsolete immediately, like you had Lv75 dudes doing literal endgame with Lv9 Leaping boots (+3 DEX was god-like), and of course competition on Leaping lizzy was fierce (they went for at least 300k gil, so basically a party of 6 could get away with 50k each in a couple hours which at the time was a small fortune...) I was super nervous on NM hunting so I decided to just skill up my crafts and buy the NM items I required instead and did pay off quite well... The game had the perfect depth IMO.
Well I could go on and on and would never stop talking about it, sorry for the wall-text, I always get too excited when talking about FFXI back in the day.
*And this is being relived on the ff11 Horizon Server. Its free. And has a good amount of old schools.*
come back! join Horizon FF11. its a private server! been playing it for 1 year and ahalf and its amazing
I still play XI today, and now that I'm older I appreciate the more solo-friendly version of the game because I can play at my own place and still accomplish stuff. But XI back in the day was a totally unique experience that I'm glad I got to be a part of. Doing CoP missions when they had the level caps was incredibly intense, and I think the huge difficulty of trying to clear those missions is part of the reason why that story is so special to a lot of players. I still remember beating the airship fight almost 20 years later.
That airship fight! I had a few friends that quit over that. They couldn't clear it and were locked out of all the sea shenanigans. CoP was definitely not for the faint of heart.
I hear so many stories from how brutal CoP was. To be perfectly honest, it amazes me to talk to someone who beat it in the 75 era. It sounded so intense.
@@vicenarian340 here i am, i'm a 75 era EU ex player. During my adventure in FF11 i met a cool group of singapore players (Okada/Satien/Supernova/Babytaru and Winetaru) and we managed to clear CoP together. it took weeks of preparation, level up with the recommened job, make enough gil to be able to get all the food/items needed for the fight. took us several tries but hell, we all managed to get Sea access together as a group of friends. best memories and i'll be always grateful for this game.
Branko from Seraph server.
damn, im so jealous, i wish i never deleted my character for the lvl75 days. I wish I could go back! So many great memories
How do you play it today?
I’m not sure you noticed but FF11 has THE best implementation of the Job System of any FF, including 14 and Tactics. You say you found FF11 to be quite tactical compared to other FFs… man… you have no idea what it was like in the golden era; it was much more back then… the amount of tactics and organisation it was required to do stuff like dynamis, HNMs of sky and sea, Wyrm-fights… it was there, in those epic large-scale battles with dozens of players where you could see people pushing their jobs to the limit. Although I love FF14’s story, I find its battle system extremely frustrating, because those job rotations are exhaustively repetitive, whereas in FF11 you can achieve your goals by adopting an impressive amount of different strategies. There’s no such thing as a “fixed rotation” of spells and abilities, unless you are going for a zerg-strategy (kill as quickly as you can) with a full party or alliance of (real) players. Also, this game was SO PUNISHING back in the days that, when someone brags about how difficult Souls-games are, I cant help but think to myself: “you wouldn’t last a month in 2005’s Vana’Diel”
Yes! This is what I really am missing in 14. The job system becomes more shallow each expansion. There was so much diversity of jobs and possible playstyles. And pet jobs were plentiful. 14 developers make it very clear that they can't make a good pet job and dislike any job that is not homogenous
@@DB-zj7wv But it's not like FFXIV's job system was really good either though. It was only 1.0's version of the job system(before it was watered down in the versions of 1.x that followed the introductions of the actual jobs) that can be considered good compared to the rest of the franchise.
(the rest of this comment is about why FFXIV's current job system is the way it is, but TL;DR: it's not just the devs' fault, it's also the players'.)
The problem isn't just the devs though. It's the fact that most games(mostly competitive multiplayer ones) nowadays have to be balanced to have a healthy amount of players playing it because either they just optimize the fun out of it, or they just stop playing/start complaining because it's too "difficult".
Couple that with most of the feedback taken from players being in few places(usually the official forums) where there's not much diverging point of views, the fact that it's the current number 1 MMORPG in the market, that it's made to appeal to a wide audience and not just FF fans, then you have the state of the game's job system nowadays, where Black Mage is arguably the only unique job among 19 of those usable in every content the game offers, while the ones that aren't(aka Blue Mage and soon in next expansion's Beastmaster) are outside of the scope of said content because of their uniqueness.
Thanks for sharing! The combat in this game is easily among my favorite in the series, I cannot imagine what it must have been like back then!
The issue with stuff like this is when you play the game seriously other things get pushed to the wayside, it wouldn't work in 14 because they want all jobs to be viable.
I disagree personally because I like the sentiment of being able to play what you want, rather than forced into an optimal thing.
The rotations may get repetitive, but the fights really don't and there's so many jobs that conceivably mastering each optimal rotation, of which there are multiple, can take you a while.
Let's say you mastered every job in a day, now do it while running an ultimate blind.
Personally, after doing thousands of hours of content, there's still jobs I have yet to play perfectly on in every situation.
That's the reason I can't wholeheartedly say it's repetitive. Maybe at level 15 but definitely not at 90.
@@Grimnoire I know this videos about 11, but man do I find this narrative that 14 jobs are homogenized to be dishonest. I have found that most people(if not every person) I've encountered that complains about job homogenization in 14 suspiciously does NOT play every job at a decent level. They generally only stick to one archetype that might actually be somewhat homogenized in order to keep them all viable like healer(or to a lesser extent tank but I think even that's a stretch) and maybe play like one phys ranged dps or something.
And I most definitely don't see anyone hypothetically mastering every job in a day if anything most people I see are just passable or maybe even bad at their MAIN job lol. But let's say you main dancer and can play it well enough to clear any content with a dps check, that in no way makes you now suddenly able to play dragoon well enough to even do green numbers. The same goes for jobs in the same archetype, like playing summoner well enough to clear any content in the game does not suddenly make you even decent at black mage its like night and day.
The poor souls who never experienced FFXI from 2003-2012 will never know just what they missed out on. It wasn't a game, or even the best FF title, it was a way of life.
Was fun back then but to be honest I like that the game evolve. Retail is still fun and give plenty to do.
tbh that was basically every early MMO, a second life for many.
@@StevenWoolf-eb5xy private servers I take it? Yeah tend to be rather toxic. It wasn't fun to fight people for claims during sky. People who praise classic never got far or they were among the top lonkshells 🤷♀️
@@StevenWoolf-eb5xythere were some toxic people but other people were cool in the game
@@Pulptenks - Public servers!
I played FFXI for maybe a month back in 2003 or 2004, definitely wasn't for me back when I was younger. Even more recently, as someone who enjoys most MMOs to a reasonable degree for both thed gameplay and the social aspects, I didn't think FFXI was for me despite a nagging desire to go back and try it again. I could not have been more wrong. The past three days I've spent playing it have been some of the most fun I've had in not just an MMO, but in RPGs as a whole, in years. This video is what inspired me to try it and I can't thank you enough.
best online game ever made
I did something similar but not in 2004. I think for me it was more 2008 or 09, had the game on xbox 360 for a bit. think I played only a month and for some reason I just got bored of it and stopped playing. I think at the time the game just wasnt super clear on how I could play it so i didn't understand anything and didn't have a computer to look up guides online either. at the time i don't remember if smart phones were out but if they were i did not have one anyway. Ended up jumping ship to phantasy star universe for a bit. I also think the issue of losing experience and basically not being able to do basic overworld type content solo was something that made me lose interest in the game back then. These days i'm more tolerable of the exp loss and the trust system basically makes it so you can solo just about everything anyway so it's definitely a bit easier to play, however I find it difficult to get into the game because I feel a lack of community, even when I manage to get in a link shell often rarely anyone ever socializes so it ends up feeling like i'm just playing a singleplayer game that requires a sub. I definitely plan to go back to it at some point because I do want to play through all it's quests and storyline if I can, I just hope I can manage to get around to it before they shut the servers down. I've heard they vowed they will never shut the servers down so long as people are playing but imo once the costs become unjustifiable i know the servers will get shut down without a doubt. I just hope they release the game in a state that makes it playable offline if they ever do that.
This motivated me to return home to San d'Oria and finish the story. Left off in Abyssea era.
Made a lot of amazing friends in this world and still close to some to this day.
This game really felt like being in a real and different world, and no other game has done that for me.
Vanargand from Valefore, Dragoon Extraordinaire will be Super Jumping back soon!
My dog! I was also Valefor! I started in mid CoP and finished in the Abyssea era as well. There's a chance we played together lol
Me and my FF14 friends are big fans of the series as a whole, I have been considering checking out FF11 for a while, now with the new Alliance Raid in Dawntrail being announced to be based on FF11 me and my friends have decided to take the dive and give it a proper try! Great video, I am very excited to dive into this world soon! :)
Funnily enough, listening to Distant Worlds and hearing "Answers" and "Dragonsong" was a big motivator for me to check out FF14. Since then I have also been listening to "Memoro De La Stono" for years and I can't wait to get a new context to this song!
Thank you for mentioning Naoshi Mizuta. Love his work. He really took into account the lore of the zones, the style and location to compose his work.
I have been preaching this to people every since I started it at North American release.
It is my favorite game of all time for damned good reason.
It really is a piece of art, and I hope that people are convinced to try the game from these videos.
best damn game ever made from 2002-2008 def . once they broke the game with lvl cap to 100 it was the end .... i saw ppl duo Fafnir ..... what a shame ...... bring back 1k ppl in Dragon's Aery and lets wait 3 hours for some Epic fights
Fribaud from Quetzalcoatl circa 2004
This game is the most addictive experience of my life, and I still love it to this day. MNK/WAR forever
You're an OG! It's great to hear from veteran players, thanks for taking the time to reach out.
I always get a chuckle when someone says, "I was so addicted to . I have over 500 hours played!" MMO players, and especially us FFXI vets measure our playtime in days, not mere hours lol.
Manical from Hades circa 2005
Of all the games I have played, this one stands out the most (I mean my nickname kind of gives that away lol).
Tomb XP run?
My favorite RDM grind. Rampageburn felt cheesy.
Always wanted to play 11 but I can't justify paying a sub for both 11 and 14 for a few months, wish they'd just consolidate that at this point if you have both games but idk. Great video though makes me want to play even more
There's no problem with that at all. FF14 is an incredible game as you know. FF11 will still be around for whenever you're ready to take that plunge.
Private servers are free if you are still interested in ffxi. I started the game back in January and it is easily one of the best games ive ever played :)
I’m so happy I took the time to sit down during the summer of 2022 and go through all the main expansion stories (haven’t really done Abyssea, Shantotto, or Moogle Coup d’etat, but I have started chapter three of The Voracious Resurgence recently)
Definitely has become one of my fave FF titles, and I can’t wait for the Echoes of Vana’diel (like deal, not dee-ehl btw 😉) raid in FFXIV.
Awesome to see a fellow new player. I'll be honest, almost every time I record, I try to go with the proper pronunciation. When I go to edit, I find that I've swapped pronunciations a dozen times lol. So I have to stick with my own bootlegged way of saying the word.
Thanks for the correction though! What was your favorite expansion?
Definitely do Abyssea!
"Moogle Coup d’etat." OK, *_now_* I'm listening......
@@erikhendrickson59 it's actually "Kupo d'Etat"
I enjoyed FFXI when it launched on PS2. Bought all the expansions on physical that were available, and a few after that which became digital. Played on Fenrir server until lvl 90 cap and raked in more than 365 days of gameplay on my play timer, easily pushing over 9000 hours.
Right before PS2 compatibility shut down, I hopped on just to see the game, and it was almost unplayable due to be severely outdated hardware. I don't have the free time to commit to playing on it on pc. It was a unique and enjoyable experience that can't be replicated by any other mmorpg.
Great video.
I'm one of those long lost FFXI players from the golden era, but it's a game that has been on my mind since the day I last logged off.
Every year I always think I should come back and just replay the story at least, and videos like this is a huge push in that direction.
Maybe not right now as time is tight, but one day I'd love to come back and play this game once more.
buddy you and me both. 8th and 9th grade for me was FFXI golden era. WHT/BLK and NIN/WAR i played THOUSANDS of hours and i really miss the immersive community.
i havnt played a game like it since. and i miss it. ive bounced around from FF14, WOW, and other MMO's looking for something and im just not getting it..
id love to take the leap into FFXI and see what happens....
I knooooow what you mean omg... I started in 2003, stopped in 2008.... I've missed it every day... and I miss it even more these days... I just need a computer again ....
It's different now of course, but Vana'diel still exists. For me, it's worth the $15/month--setting my own goals, challenges, and just to remain connected to it. So few things can channel the kind of peace this game can.
I tried to go back several times because of the same feeling.... First days are amazing, just getting emotional with the music, the world, everything...But then I start to miss the people. Yes, I can do almost everything by myself, and in a way, is a great thing.... but in the other it's not. Idk how to explain this, I'm not trying to convince you to not playing it, I actually would love that everyone would come back, but the fact of really needing other people was for me the real cherry on the top. Of course I cannot lie myself telling me that those 3hr waiting for a party is somenthing that I really miss... Yeah my brain tells me that was "part of the beauty" but I know that today I wouldn't want that because, in fact, was even bad for my real life. But man, having a schedule to do Dynamis with my ls (which was from eeuu and i'm form spain cuz I landed in a EEUU majority server and I never wanted to change, so imagine me starting Dynamys at 12 in the night having to attend to school next day ), asking for help and helping others killing that NM for literally hundreds of times to get the item... Now I find difficult to fight a mob for the 78 time to get an item when I am the only one there. I love nostalgia but this game gives me too much, it's honestly painfull. I start to feel like the child who doesn't want to grow up (in the bad way). Idk how to let FFXI in the past with love. It's like I want my now imposible relationship back, and ironically it's imposible because of me. It was one of the greatest thing in my life, and everytime I go back, I feel that I diminish that honour. I would have loved that the world stopped right there, but it didn't, and I don't know who to go back with it and me "just being friends"... I cannot. I would love to, I really would.
@@Barikinfi I understand 100%
The beauty of the game was the 3 hour wait times for HNMs, the reason it worked is because of the people. Back in the day, FFXI was our social media.
The game as a whole was the cherry on top.
But I still loved the game too, there will never be another game like it, both because the times have changed, but mostly because I have changed too, as you said if a game made me wait around for 3 hours for a boss I have a 5% chance of even fighting, for a 1% chance for the main drop, I'd probably look at it then never play lol.
Good to see the love of my life still getting attention. Thanks for the video!
Sincerely,
Jakuta
Sylph Server (2002-2021)
It will steal your heart forever. 20+ years and counting. I still pay for it every month.
I came across Vicenarian's videos about two weeks ago which led me to buying it even though I never played it before. At the start I was overwhelmed with everything new thrown at you . Once you get the hang of the Menus and basic mechanics along with the Records of Emminence, the Records actually helped start guide me as to what I should be doing. So far I have been enjoying the game at my own pace with no rush to get to the endgame. I must say I have been thoroughly enjoying the game, combat becomes more enjoyable once you start getting more skills, the story is really enjoyable and the music is amazing.
I never expected to bump into you while doing Side Quests in Windurst! I just want to say thank you for your videos, which helped me make my decision to play it.
Hey, It's good to hear from you again! Don't be surprised if your character name pops up in the chat log in my RoV review lol.
Like I mentioned before, it was really nice to meet you, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for watching!
I wonder if his take would be different had he played back during the early days. Remember when we didn't have level sync and needed a full party of elite players to get to 75? I used to sit 4-6+ hours to just find an endgame party. I used to tackle my backlog of games while waiting for a party lol. Kids these days will never know the pain and accomplishments we experienced during those early days.
Best music of the entire franchise
Naoshi Mizuta the unsung hero of FF OST's.
Cool video, thanks for making it! I'll be too busy these coming months to start playing this game now, but I definitely want to give it a try when things slow down a bit! :)
Keep up the XI videos! More people need to play and videos like yours are bringing them in. Thank you
That's what I'm hoping for! This has become one of my favorite games, and more people need to experience it.
I played 11 back in my college years in the early 2000s and story was definitely not what people played it for. You had to pray that other players around your level were around and available to help you through a dungeon or just level up against the mobs in the environment. Every mob hit as hard as an A Rank from FFXIV and getting a level or two a day was considered a miracle. It took a very long time to level and dying would lose all your progress.
What hurt most is that it was hard to gear up, as all the gear on the market would be insanely overpriced so you couldn't get your gear appropriate for your level and people won't bring you with them into the next dungeon for that level range. Old FF11 was rough. Shadowlord was also considered the end game and there was nothing past that when I played.
I started XI back on PS2 (we had dial-up out in the country and it's all that would work, but I loved it anyway).
Didn't get much further than unlocking Redmage because I simply didn't have the time, but I'd fall asleep playing it many nights after getting off work and getting home at 3AM.
Now, I'm trying my hand at XIV after canceling my pre-order of its original launch back in 2010. 😂
Singing praise where its due! Thanks for all these videos. As an old school player who returned after a number of years away, I'm always hopeful more people will get to experience the wonderful world of Vana'diel.
Thank you! I'm really hoping for more new players too, and I hope these videos help.
Im so blessed to have been apart of the golden era of FFXI. When HorizonXI dropped 2 years ago last year, I played it NONSTOP reliving old 75 cap
I wish you could have played the game back in its original state. Sure there was zones full of dangerous enemies and dying had a stiff penalty to your EXP. But the sense of community was unrivaled. The bonds formed with people over this game were so strong. So many memories... Those first times grouping up in the dunes.. The mass panic and dash for the zone exit when someone would bring a train of goblins to your exp party XD I could go on and on...
I was a black mage main for my first job. It was so rewarding to build good exp parties with a skill chain i could magic burst. Being among the first english players to reach Sky and start the endgame on our server at the time was so amazing. Just the sense of accomplishment and pride. You have no idea. If you ever find a time machine- give it a go!~
I played FFXI during the golden age, where the cap was 75 and dynamis, sea and sky were the endgame.
I miss those days. This game was just a masterpiece. The world felt so….meaningful. Everything you did felt deliberate. Such a refreshing change of pace from the modern day MMO with its lobby-based content and DPS rotations. So boring. The world doesn’t feel “real,” if that makes sense. Modern MMO worlds feel secondary to gameplay where in old school MMOs such as FFXI, the world WAS part of gameplay. Or at least it drove the minute-to-minute gameplay loop.
I played 11 at the NA launch, and played it for 12 years. It was quite the struggle to do anything without a group of friends unless you were a beast master. It forced us to make friends and work as a team. I started a linkshell on the now absorbed Titan server, and it grew to over 100 members. I became good friends with several, and traveled across the U.S. and even parts of Canada to visit them in person... even went to a couple weddings of my officers. When they made the game more solo friendly the bonds between players weakened and eventually we all slipped away. I sunk so much time into this game in those days that I can't get into games that have huge time sinks like this one did. Too much nostalgia to go back.
This video makes me want to re-sub. FFXI had the best system with its sub-jobs and main jobs. Mixing and matching to find out what works well was always fun. As a WHM there was nothing quite like seeing blink tank duos.
Jobs like RDM where you needed crazy numbers of subs to “do it right” were amazing.
RDM/WHM (Convert, DS, Cure III, who needs to rest?)
RDM/BLM (Eseal and Warp)
RDM/NIN (Solo anything as long as your bladder holds out)
RDM/BRD (Ballad and Refresh!)
RDM/SMN (autofresh, carby pull)
RDM/PLD (the flashy autofresh)
RDM/DRK (Chainspell Stun)
I’m probably forgetting one. RDM/WAR was a fool’s crusade, Phalanx just wasn’t good enough.
just started to play ff11 on a private server that goes by Eden. its a private server dedicated to the 2007 vanilla version of the game. im already a lvl 6 blackmage human. its fun af
I purchased this game at release, I was so excited😂 I was young, and I learned a hard lesson about graphics cards and such that day when the game couldn't even load the start screen😭 still haven't played it
I'm glad to see toher folks out there singing FF11's praises and encouraging folks to play. Great video!
Hey! I remember watching your video about FFXI right after I started it myself. I've really enjoyed your content since I found your channel too. It's awesome to see you here, and I look forward to your next upload!
Oh, hey! I appreciate that. I hope to have another video out in the next week or two, it’ll be on a different FF game coincidentally. I’m glad I found your channel, too! Subbed and gonna work through your other FF11 content :)
@@TheCrawl Being the big FF fan that I am, I'm looking forward to that!
Well. You finally convinced me to try it again. Played it ages ago when it first came out in the West, but had to stop for financial reasons. Got into XIV during 1.0 and have loved it ever sense. But I've always considered going back to experience what I missed
2006-07 I LIVED in Vana'diel. Never was good at it, nor did I get to the really in-depth end game content (it was so complicated/time-consuming to progress) but oh the memories 🥲
I played for 8 years from when it came out I will always love this game played again for like 6 months might go back again soon
I started playing for my first time today! I absolutely love the before wow feel and the way you truly party up! I can't believe more mmos don't have their own version of the search or comment feature! finding someone in the same area by searching levels and than fighting together was an amazing experience and im only level 3!
I'm glad you're enjoying it! As I've mentioned before, the game has a brutal learning curve. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here in the comments or on the FFXI sub reddit. Welcome to the game, and thanks for reaching out!
Thanks for the nostalgia trip. I’ll never forget the endless nights of clearing out Dynamis, how powerful I felt as a red mage being one of the few classes that could solo some difficult content… Discovering sky and sea for the first time, chilling out with friends in the realms of gods, farming merit points while trying to get Despot to spawn… Stumbling across a giant group of Japanese players attempting to beat Absolute Virtue, going to bed, and waking up to see them STILL fighting him…
My only gripe with the game was how we poured SO much time into it, week after week, all for gear that would provide single-digit percentage boosts to one of our abilities. Everything had such niche uses, I remember my macro bars being full of specialized gear swap + spell combos to maximize my enhancement or enfeebling. I’ll admit it was nice to see my Sleepga land more consistently than Sleepga 2 from our Dynamis group’s BLMs 😅
Di discovered you yesterday (well about 20 hours ago) and watched all your videos and now you have a new one up :D. Thank you so much for the great entertainement.
Thank you for watching my videos and reaching out!
FFXI is the greatest Final Fantasy ever made. I love all FF but nothing will ever match what 11 did. The best combat system, the socialization, the depth of the game and mechanics. Fantastic story. The economy was great. It truly was a jewel among video games. I love it so much and miss the days of losing time with friends in FFXI. I played FFXIV and it was ok. It wasn't the great(specially when compared to FFXI). The community for both games have been wonderful, but nothing compares to FFXI. Great video and I am so glad you got into it and gave it a try. I tell everyone that plays or has played MMO's that they need to try FFXI or that if they don't they really missed the best MMO ever made. I played it from day one in the US. I played MMOs before FFXI and after, and none have had the same impact or kept me enthralled as long as FFXI. Everything about it is truly magical.
i agree wholeheartedly.
i'm also a series fan and so glad i was receptive to FFXI being an MMO and trying it 20 years ago. it did take me some time to realise or admit that it was my fave final fantasy, but i truly love it and hope more people get to experience it together
I know that FFXI certainly won't be everyone's favorite in the series. But, to the extent that any other FF game is worth playing, XI most certainly is too. And it's unfortunate that many pretend otherwise.
As for me, I never expected to love FFXI this much, but here I am, 2 years into the game and 9 videos about it later lol.
I can't wait to finally play it, I have 10k hours in XIV but I've always loved how everything in XI looks (especially the racial design, the best out of all FF games imo) thx for the amazing video!
I played this game day one of its release in 2003 up to 2007. It is no longer what itvwas, what made the game was you had to team up and meet other players in order to get ahead. The story telling was shared with said team of players and the game wqs so hard to get ahead that players you teamed up with became your friends in battle. That was the special part of yhis game back then.
I last played FF11 sometime in the late 2000s and I never got to experience much of the story stuff, even though I played it a ton. I had no idea it was made completely soloable now. I'll have to find the time to go back and experience it.
After I finished school i sunk a whole year playing FF11 and I never got half way past the main story of the base game or maxed out a job. Cant believe it held my attention everyday. Glad to hear they upgraded the progression system and be able to play solo. I had so much fun on the grind with my linkshell community. I sometimes wonder what they are doing in life.
Thanks for sharing! The game is vastly different now, you can finish the entire main story in a couple months now days. And that story is awesome.
Thank you for this. I played XI day and night between 2004 and 2010 and I treasure those memories to this day.
Thank you for watching. This game is quickly becoming one of my favorites too!
Crazy to think this game is soloable now. I remember party finding being a huge part. Made a ton of friends that way on the server I was on. CoP was impossible to solo when it released.
Now, it's faster to blazed through the content at lvl. 99 with NPCs than to find people to help you with it. I know this can be a huge negative for some, but it was a big positive for me.
I was a taru black mage.....I lived in port jeuno waiting for invites and then asked if I would backup heal, ugggh. Game has changed and for the better overall but def miss some of those days.
@@vicenarian340 It's such a huge negative to the entire experience, though if you never experienced the social aspect when it was a thing in Retail, you will never know it.
@@networknomad5600 I'm talking particularly about the main story. tVR is still brutally difficult, and requires other people's help. A ton of the 'mid game' and endgame harshly incentivize partying up too. I've spent a ton of time with some of the Linkshells I've been a part of.
It isn't as social as it once was, but it's still an incredibly social experience.
Music was a good call, I find myself humming songs often and listening the music brings on so much nostalgia.
FF11 might be the only mmorpg where the world felt dangerous and meeting people and creating an adventuring party was required.
u must have only ever played one mmorpg
@@curlydolltv how about listing one mmorpg instead of being condescending.
@@curlydolltv i can't think of any mmorpg that had that terrifying run to the party areas when you hit the appropriate level, sure there are difficult MMORPGs but none really captured the terror of that run
@@Pyrrhonian Agreed, and even leveling up with a group contained degrees of tension. A moment of bad luck or a distraction could result in the end of the party. Everyone was required to optimize their attention and performance. It forced us to really get to know who people were.
@@aksh7811Vanilla WoW, OS Runescape, GW1, Everquest
Great video! I'm glad you that you got to experience this fantastic game. This game was too hard for me back in the early days, but once they made the game single player friendly I got back into it. Along the way I made many friends and was doing end game content. I quit the game about a year ago after I defeated the end boss in the Voracious Resurgance missions. That to me was closing the book on the game. I may come back for nostalgia reasons because I miss the zones, but I'm happy by what I accomplished and I will always remember this as the most hardcore MMO ever made.
I'm a final fantasy fan, I must say. there is no game that will ever beat the fun i had in the lvl 75 cap era of ff11. Man... I made friend with people all over the world, even gamed with Japanese people wo do not speak English and we all enjoyed each other’s company. The game felt like a real live world where everyone needed each other to progress. Never had such communion with diverse people all over the world. This is how diversity is supposed to be, it was there all along, not the forced modern kind. I haven’t even started about the game mechanics and the story… o boy I truly mis the old ff11 times.
Even after 20 years when I hear the music, I think about valkurum dunes, the pain of lvling down after lvling up. The moments of sacrifice for the party , the hard punishments that I loved. It brought out true danger that you did not face alone that no game ever managed to generate. Games now are a shadow of ff11 back then. I played ff14, but it does not have what 11 has. So going back to 11 to check it out. I did not know it was still up.
The warning that you should not to forget the people in your real live, when you started the game, was really needed haha. It really hit a true spot there.
If your a big fan of that lvl 75 era i highly reccomend you check out a private server. People always say there toxic but as a completely new player that started in January of this year Ive never experienced toxicity once on Eden.
Huge FF Fan and I played FFXI since release. I loved what it was then and what it has become today. Nothing will beat the Final Fantasy Immersion feeling of making it to Valkrum Dunes and playing in my first party. The most difficult and punishing thing about this game was PlayOnline and the largest deterrent of players experiencing this Masterpiece.
I played FFXI from 2004-2010, and it really created good memories. It's a game with a special place in my heart.
I tried coming back a couple of times, but finally came back like in 2022, along with my brother. First, for the pleasure of visiting old places, enjoy the music and the landscapes. Second, to try and see the changes and how one could solo or duo content. I even was able to finally finish WoTG and fully play (and enjoy) SoA.
Unfortunately, we ended up in the same loop as before we left. We managed to get our Empyreal armor and do some of the reforging, but to reforge some to +1 is very hard, and +2 is impossible if you don't have a party or a LS to help with the more advanced content. We got stuck on doing ambuscades daily, farming job points, and do some leveling. I finished Rhapsodies with much problem, had to solo last boss with trusts (bc my brother still had to finish yet WoTG) and took me tons of tries and trust setups. Sooooo it was a matter of time we got bored, and stopped playing again.
I think the party factor is very different to how it was 20 years ago, when one could talk to ppl easily, help others with ease (and get helped), and that way we met lots of ppl and made new friends. Now nobody talks, nobody replies for help, and it's really difficult to get a LS to get help to get past the newer content.
I would like to come back, overcome the problem of not being able to progress with gearing and doing different content.
As an FFXI Veteran (first played 2005) i can add something about this "FFXI got worse than in the early days" matter.
I can clearly say: FFXI is best MMO i played so far. An i played many of them.
The thing with MMOs from the "after WoW" Era is that most of them tried to copy things WoW did to get a part of the MMO Player base.
WoW defined the formular of "success" that is redefined from every MMO until today.
Accessability, simplicity and the monthly, weekly or even daily treadmills the player is send to over and over again.
From the beginning WoW felt more like a single player reward machine where you are able to play with others from time to time then an MMO.
FFXI was special. with its strong focus on social activities as a way to success and its pure difficuilty it was focusing on a complete different audience.
The mechanics had an incredible effect... The players where much more friendly, polite and at last serious about there investment of time into the game.
As a result i logged into the game just to chat with my friends i met in there and not to grab my next reward.
Now to the point.
The changes that where made to the game later took this very important spirit off the game. You are able to progress much faster now when you just level and quest by yourself.
The mandatory EXP Parties are things of the past. That was a key feature to socialize for further activities.
Many of the old Content now is rediciulously easy when you summon your NPCs. Some of this lend me to the best memories i had in my whole gaming time in the past.
I think this are two reasons why older FFXI Players find that FFXI was best in its lvl 75 cap Era. And btw. thats why many of the so called private Servers try to recreate this magic by setting there servers to variations of that time.
I cannot speak to the actual golden era of the game you played back in the day, my first experience with XI was just a few years ago...the prospect of being able to play the game by myself sounded good at first, but did not feel very fulfilling in practice...and seeing all the people advertise merc services in the cities really turned me off from publicly asking for help in the sea of adverts.
Since then I moved over to one of those 75 era private servers, no Trusts, no Mounts, questing takes some serious time, and despite the sheer time sink this game is I fell in love with it. For awhile I would try my damnedest to do as much stuff solo as possible but always ran into a wall. I would find help from actual players who do not expect anything in return for the assistance, and find myself wanting to return that kindness to others by helping them where I could. Since then I joined active linkshells, talk to people, and engross myself in the kindness of the community both as someone who receives it and who gives it.
While I'm sure this is not the same exact experience you got from the golden era of FFXI I really feel my own version of it from this server. I have since attempted to play on the retail servers again with a expanded knowledge of the game and the kind of experiences it could and should offer but just don't get the same feeling. I may give retail another try someday if nothing else to experience the expansion content not implemented on the private server but for the time being I found a version of the game I really enjoy.
thanks a lot for the vidéo, we can feel your strong love for the game.
I tryed the private server but stop due to the gap between old players and me and the time to adapt to the difficulty but after your vid i want to play official and do the story. You great ;)
Thank you!
Private servers definitely have their place, but retail allows you to play through FFXI more like you would any other FF. It's systems are still far more opaque, but once you're accustomed, retail is a phenomenal experience!
I only managed to experience FFXI for the first time last month and I already have so many moments burned into my mind. Getting to grips with the combat system outside of Bastok, traveling to the other two cities by boat , that one bizarre quest in Jeuno where you help a kid who thinks his sister is possessed, fighting your way to the Shadow Lord, getting the WAR relic and feeling bad for my boy Naji getting so much flack, the desolation of Tavnazia and all the little side quests going on there. And there is still so much I still haven't even explored yet and sadly probably won't till the end of the year due to IRL issues.
On a side note, I honestly find it really interesting how much the Xenoblade franchise has in common with this. Both have expansive semi-open worlds with a proper sense of scale, the slow paced combat, and the sort of skill-chain system present in Xenoblade 2. I haven't done any research into it, but I wonder how much, if any, of FFXI inspired Monolith Soft when they started work on the Xenoblade games.
xeno blade is single player garbage why the fuck would you GRIND like u are in an mmo, FOR A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. lmao yikes
FF14 1.0 was actually a lot like FF11.. which was unpopular for the more casual players and players who came into mmos through WOW.. but I, a ff11 fan, loved 1.0.. now its just WOW with FF Lore/Skin..
tbf the big reason why 1.0 tanked is that everything system wise was just a massive mass of bugs piling on each other, which coupled with the lack of QoL or ergonomy just made it painful to play. Not to mention the fact the game was forced to release far too early and so the content drought was real.
The bad just far outweighed the good, and if not for these issues, I think people would have been more willing to overlook the less casual aims of the game.
My personal experience about XI, 20 years ago as a teenie was great game and pretty accurate on what you said. I skipped story because english is not my native language, but gotta admit, XI made a big deal making me learn english. I can proudly say to my friends that a lot of my english vocabulary was learnt through the years playing XI and will be always gratefull about it. I still play XIV, resubed XI and made a new character from scratch because of the nostalgia, and with trusts was able to redo base game, Zilart and CoP, watching and reading the entire story and understanding way much better than back in the day.
Amazing review. I just started playing again 2 days ago. I've been loving watching / listening to videos like these while i'm working. Gets me so excited to get home and play. I never beat FFXI yet, but am WAY more excited for the story. I agree with you that the music is top notch. I really love Windurst music so much i always play MIthra or Taru because of it!
my first character ever was a Taru from Sandy though. Sandy music also really good
I'm "newish" XIV player (playing about a year now, but very casually) and it was my real first experience with FF. It made me fall in love with the series, it's deep story and lore (like reading lore books!).
I think XI more slower phased gameplay will really work for me well now, because like you said it's a bit daunting to keep up with XIV new updates especially when I haven't reach the point where most of the players are.
Any ways thank you very much for the video - I'm downloading the free trial now! I will be defiantly checking those tip videos too.
That's awesome to hear! FFXI's learning curve is absolutely brutal, so if you have any questions during your first couple hours, don't hesitate to ask!
@@vicenarian340 Thanks, I really appreciate it!
14 combat is literally dumbed down shitter slow paced wow gargbage its SLOW AF
As a FF fan playing XI back in 04-06 and being very interested in the story, it was very frustrating how hard it was to find people to do some of the fights, especially for those that didn't have endgame content locked behind. But also, it was so satisfying beating those fights.
Endgame content is interesting and fun nowadays, but it has moved away from alliance content, so that's not particularly good for linkshells, but it's easier to find 5 other people to fill a party.
The story is so important to this game, especially before they made it solo friendly. The difficulty and shared feeling of achievement with your friends/linkshell was unmatched. Thank Altana for 75 cap community servers!
Loved all of this video!
The narrator mentioned mostly playing as a damage dealer, so I wanted to add a plug for FFXI's White Mage class. The opportunity for skill expression is orders of magnitude higher than for any of the dozen or so MMORPGs I've played as a healer.
The ~2 second global lock down on casting spells makes decision making far more complex (and rewarding when you're good at it).
WHMs that don’t cast Flash don’t know how to WHM.
Also, keep up that Haste on your NIN. Always, always.
I played this game to death back when level 75 was the level cap. I got to the point where I was working on job #4 (BLM, WHM, RDM, and then BRD) and eventually with the HNMs taking all day it just felt like a job.
Had a great time building all the RDM subs, the early game with even a halfway competent party was amazing. There was also a great zen of the RDM buffing cycle that I really miss.
I mean, I was totally /that/ BLM that would see the enemy at 20% health, blink, stone skin, and absolutely dump damage on it until it died, rotating blink and stone skin to tank as needed at the end.
Don’t forget the echo drops!
Good memories, but just way too much of a time sink.
I had attempted to play FFXI as my first MMO, in 2004, but my discs were messed up during the installation process, or the process was corrupted in some way, and I couldn't install the game. It was already going to be hard for me to play cause my mom wasn't sold on paying a monthly subscription for a game I was playing.
I ended up playing WOW towards the end of 2005.
But I really wanted to play FFXI back in 2004. I remember buying the official strategy guide and studying up on all the classes and jobs and the beginning zones in the base game and first expansion. I believe that was how the game was initially released to the US, the base game and the first expansion.
I enjoyed WOW, but I am a life long FF fan, and would have loved to play FFXI at the beginning of its first few years of release.
Black Mage gets to cast meteor (I finally levelled Black Mage despite being mostly Melee and Pet job person) and Its awesome with more people. So is comet, like I love BLM because of FFXI and BLU and RDM .. all the jobs really shined.
Play the story too.. Holy hell play the story with 2 friends in Windurst, one red mage one white mage one black mage and you'll enter horototo ruins.. Its a neat door to open, that is all.
Edit: Back in my day a lot of kids used to use FFXI as a social hub more so than an online game to play a story with friends. My friends from Emerald Dream and later on NotED and Later on Blue Gartr (some left some stayed) all met up in Vegas to actually meet, its something people did man.
That's awesome to hear about, thanks for sharing that!
I started playing around 2006 when I was 14. The grind was there but with new enemies, music, scenery, and friends at every turn. Racked up days of playtime in high school and stopped regularly playing, but the sub is going strong for 6 months.
Would love a reboot, XIV doesn't hit the same.
Was Nerevar on Hades, now Ordinator on Asura ✌️
Guess I'll catch up on some things
I had such a great time with this game in the early 2000s. LAN parties. Weekend leveling binges. Waiting for party invites. Made so many friends, and apparently also so many memories. I dont remember why or when i quit, I just know it was after ToAU release. Anyway, I just randomly bought this game again the other day and starting fresh again and these days playing the game just makes me feel sad inside because a world that used to be so vibrant and filled with life is now just empty and quiet. Ironic that the whole time I used to play, I would always wish I could solo most of the game, and now that I can, all I wish for is to have the people back. Almost every zone I enter brings back memories of fun times, bad groups, good groups, lucky drops, random crap lol. Go back to these exact same spots and now there's just nothing. Something just feels... wrong... about loading into Jeuno and it being completely deserted and no chat spam or lag. I really need a new NEW MMO I can get in on from the start again. There's never been anything that's scratched the itch the same way 11 did, not even 14. I actually was originally going to redownload 14 again and start over on that game but the thought of having to dredge though the whole MSQ line again up to current content was a deal breaker, so 11 it was.
When it first came out I wanted to try it but I was only in elementary/Middle school and the idea of a game subscription didn't sit well with my parents. All these years that went by I contemplated starting it but was never motivated. Steam today notified me that FFXI Ultimate Edition went on sale below $10 so I feel extremely incentivized to start playing. I'm sure most of the player base is gone, but from all the things I heard, I hope I'll enjoy the story even if it may be a more solo experience.
I really wish they would do official FFXI classic servers. 11 is the only FF I've never played/finished but the solo-version appeals to me much less than the way the game was before (WoW [Classic] is my fave game of all time)... But I might still try the solo version anyway since I don't really want a private server
Your best bet will likely be HorizonXI then, and thankfully, it's free. What this server is doing is absolutely amazing, and if you're looking for a really old-school experience, Horizon seems to be in a class of it's own.
I will say though, end game stuff requires parties of other people. It's about impossible to make a lot of meaningful progress solo unless you've already geared well (which requires other players anyway). I don't have any experience with WOW classic, but I believe modern FFXI might be more similar to classic WOW than classic FFXI.
As someone who played for the story, I am right there with you. The story of this game leaves me laughing, crying, and at times raging at the twists and turns it takes!
I took a long break around 2015, and then played on and off. But I was lost at where I was in the story.
So I started a new character (I also do this to gauge the new player experience), and now I am doing story, and having so much fun! I'm leveling and gearing up at my own pace. The AH is pretty expensive, so I made myself a challenge to try and get as much gear and spells from monsters and npcs as I could. Which also makes it a fun road trip, as it takes me all over Vana'diel to older areas.
I would often tell people that this game taught me patience.
XI was my first MMO, and man I had some great times. Would kill for a remake/remaster
Wow .. what an excellent video. You brought back so many memories for me. I played when the game first came out and up to the TOAU expansion. I play for many years and had more than 1 year of actually gameplay time. So so so many great people I played with and many many great memories I had with this game. Thanks again for this video.
I’m currently going through all the FF games from the beginning, and I just started FFIV today. I was initially thinking of skipping this one since I was wary of how dull the story/gameplay could be, especially with its age and it being an MMO. Typically, you do get dozens or even hundreds of hours of story content in an MMO, but a lot of it tends to be shallow. But this video has convinced me to give FFXI a go once I’ve played up to it :)
OG XI up to the WotG expansion might've been one of the greatest gaming experiences ever conceived, it brought players together like no other game.
This game is still my favorite. I had to take a few breaks from the game, but I'm redownloading it again tonight. The grind got to me a few times. This game still has some of my best memories playing video games. The comradery that you felt doing NM's and just leveling made the game so addicting. I spent a lot of time playing this game and Square Enix made a masterpiece with this game.
This game actually grew up with me, I bought it when it was new on PS2 and went thru all the way to the first "last expansion" SoA. Life kind of happened and I have completed abyssea but have not finished. Some of the scenes shown warmed my heart as I experienced them when they were brand new and floods of memories such as running a merc summoner ls to do fights for people, everyone I met along the way... This was my teenage years and it's great to see even new players enjoying it. I might come back soon since i have missed Vana'diel.
I joined the FFXI community in 2003-2009 and to this day FFXI is still my favorite MMO game, I was online 24x7 at that time. In order to participate in linkshell activities, I joined the union organizations of NA and JP respectively!
THanks for the video! It was so relaxing to watch! and now i finally made up my mind to play FFXI
I'm glad to hear it! FFXI has a BRUTAL learning curve. But if you stick with it, you'll be able to experience all I've talked about.
Thanks for the feedback! If you have any questions while you're getting acclimated, feel free to reach out.
100% facts, i do like the fact that they now have Trust to fight with you cause even fighting a "easy prey" was a pain in the ass solo, or simple changes like giving us a key item to open Banishing gates solo, field guide pages to complete for exp, leveling was a feat in it's self back in the day, spamming (looking for party) for hours, taking 20min to get everyone to the location, fighting with other parties for pulls to keep chain exp rolling, but when you had a great partying that was rolling thru mobs no one wanted to leave and you made friends, I'm currently back playing for my third time and I'm loving it, think the community has only gotten better over the years cause a lot of us are older now and we played it on release, any newer players are ff fans so it's a good crowd in general, not like wow where the people only get worse, min max'ing, weird gate keeping, fill out a job app to join my guild what a hell hole lol, this is like fine whine it only gets better with time, And Maat is still living rent free in my head, you old sob how many times i had you down to a 1 shot on my rdm then you smash me for a full bar of hp ( ^_>^) / ~~~~~ I---------I " (*
I really interested that I've seen someone who recommend playing FFXI online in 2024, while I think the retail version won't last forever I'm still impressed how long it takes live especially when they release FFXIV, I suspected that it will shutdown FFXI soon after that, but it still online 😍, I really hope they will preserve ffxi online and make it remaster to release it again as single player experience (I know there was a plan of remastering the game but it got canceled),
The team is working on how to preserve the game before shutting down, so that makes me happy and I hope they'll make it real.
I prefer playing FFXI using private server like Nocturnal Souls since they have quality of life improvemets and I'm interested just for story and exploring the world and all the reason you said in the video.
First dunes party, ill never forget, miss the days of "Goblin chains" in dunes/Yutunga jungle. First linkpearl i was given (had no clue what it was, it sat in my bags for 6 months before i learned what to do with it lol). Absolutely demolishing lvl 1-10 in a couple hours when i unlocked Dragoon as compared to days it took warrior when i first started. Big accomplishments in game like Soloing mission 2-3. They day they nerfed RMT NM's, Trying and failing ALOT on CoP missions, Unlocking Capitalism by leveling my first craft, cooking.
I played 11 for 10 years till 14 came out, and I've gone back many times over the last 10 years its definitely the best mmo I've ever played
I played during the early days of FFXI and what you said is completely true back then. Thanks for the video.
I remember blowing days and weeks of time playing this during the NA release. So many great memories, but i ultimately moved on to WoW. I tried it about 8 years back, and it didn't hold my attention, because i remembered the grinds. I remembered spending 24hrs straight in a stupid cave, trying to get my RSE to drop. It was a nightmare, but it loved it. Years after, WoW got terrible, and i moved into XIV. XIV absolutely blows my mind every time i play it, i'm reminded of how much of XI carried/got adapted into XIV, while improving upon the systems that WoW used to become so massively popular. But, there are things in XI that i miss: Bastok music, the boat, and mass-murdering quadavs to farm up mats and money. Not only that, but the sound of the zones - i've yet to feel as immersed into a game as i did with XI.
BLU was my favorite job, main SAM for endgame before game went 75+ lvl cap. I tried playing it again through a private server as a WHM. The nostalgia was great, but I was also reminded just how much time I don't have to play a game during those era now that I'm married with kids. I would play the retail, but I don't wanna go through the download process of Playonline, the true boss.
Finally someone is talking about this expansion!!
Thank you for watching!
I wish everyone who love mmorpgs, experienced FFXI when it was not modernized. Yes it was punishing, yes it was time consuming, yes it forced you to find other players, but that was what made it special. I have played a lot of mmos. And i mean a lot as that is a genre i enjoy. None .... And i absolutely mean none, come close to the golden eras of FFXI. There are private servers that mimic the golden eras, sadly i never liked playing private servers. I played a lot of the content back when i was younger, and i wish i stuck around longer before the changes. Damn I'm sad now lol. FFXIV is nice and all, but it's a huge step back from FFXI. At least for me.
I still play FFXI off and on to this day in various forms. I feel like every generation should have the kind of struggle that forces cooperation like the old version did but I still find new things to fawn over in every iteration of XI more so than any other so far with how unique it is and how much passion is put behind it. Unfortunately I doubt we'll get another final expansion, but like you mentioned we get to have an MMO experience with an endpoint in mind which is about as unique as the rest of the game has been over the years I've been at it, even if I missed a significant part of it's golden era. The community around it certainly has no intent to let it die any time soon, that's for sure. It's a mainline FF like all the rest from start to end, even if the coat of format on it makes it a little harder to digest than some others and definitely think everyone should try it... ideally with a friend since it takes a minute to really set it's story hooks.
I'd love to see a Pixel Remaster of both 14 and 11 as single player games
God. I will never forget playing it for the first time on Ps2 around the time of the first expansion (1st in the US 2nd in Japan) people have a hard time imagining what I mean when explaining that the opening cities didn’t have NPC guards at the gates, nor did mobs de spawn after chasing someone. They stayed right there at the front gate and PLAYERS self imposed guard duty. Like, how amazing is that?
I've absolutely fallen in love with FF11 this year. brand new player. i think the point you made about 11 fans not crossing over into the rest of the FF games causing the references to be lost upon us is a caviot. it makes 11's world the most authentic FF world i can imagine! even if idk when a reference is made im aware of what its referencing, almost line an older sibling making jokes about their past and while you don't understand it fully you have your own experience with that siblings and hearing their stories❤ ❤❤
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying your time with the game! It's an absolute gem in the FF series, and I hope more people come back to try it.
I would go back if this is available on PS! I loved this game
11 is my favorite game, it unfortunately is a victim of time. As time went on, more people left, they had to. Not everyone has the time 11 requires to play, it was not an instant gratification game. Most of the memorable moments were the interaction and friends you made along the way that made all these other things so much better.
Older content wasn’t soloable, you NEEDED to do it with people which admittedly was a downside but it felt that much more rewarding when you did finish content.
That’s why i’ve been playing on the Horizon XI Server to replay the game in the best way possible.
I don't personally have the time to get too much done on Horizon, but I love what they are doing with that project. It's great to hear from a Horizon player!
I still remember logging in the PlayerOnline client for the 1st time when it launched. For some reason it always felt like going to another world. Back then it was very community centric. To get anything or go anywhere you had to enlist help or pay for fast travel teleport from white mages. I was a white mage and that's how I made gil.
If there was an asshole in the game, they basically got nothing done because no one would help. Also there were no guides to hold your hand or map points to point you anywhere. Was so challenging but rewarding back then. Skill chainlink and magic burst combat system needs to come back into new games.
I won't lie, I was completely thrown off because I use the exact same Rolanberry Fields remix that you used in the intro for my BRB screen while I'm streaming. I thought I was live for a second LMAO
Great video though, I especially love that you also mentioned that FFXI has had three moments in the game's history where the dev team and director(s) themselves have said they would never make any more FFXI content... and then come back to make more FFXI content. I'll 100% be sending this video to everyone I know. My friends and followers know me very well as a gal who's just OBSESED with Final Fantasy XI, and I have been since August 5th, 2005! Keep up the amazing work
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! I actually just finished a series of retrospectives for all of the major expansions in FFXI's main story. If you're interested in more FFXI content, I might have a couple of videos you'll find interesting.
I play XIV now but I was on XI back in the day. Don't think I could go back. It wouldn't be the same. My years on XI were by far my favorite times of gaming. Met two friends back then that I play games with to this day.
Also there was soooooo much walking that you had to do back then
I started when the game first released on Pandy (Pandemonium) server to this day that game will always hold a special place in my ❤, I remember sleepless days to sit and wait for a world spawn. That was some crazy times, no game ever compared to it.
Were you part of the Kupo linkshell?
I honestly can’t remember which engage one I was in but we constantly worried about Kupo poaching players.
I have fond memories of this game from levels 1-25 or so. And nightmares of how restrictive it was after that. I finally got frustrated and solo'd myself to 50 with BST as a main job because it was the only way to avoid relying on groups you often had to wait hours for and then sometimes watch them fall apart in a fraction of the time you waited to get it together. Most of my other jobs never got to 40. I went back once after they changed things and had fun briefly before running into bots everywhere and deciding it just wasn't worth it.
Still love FFXI to this day... in many ways it feels perfectly in place with the PS2 era FF games, and has enough content to always keep you exploring and busy.
Hearing that Zi'tah music reminds me of when I was noob and trying to discover the zones, asking friends and linkshell.. 'Where is Li'telor?' and no one knew. We all found it, eventually.