Final Fantasy XI : Woot!

[Guest]

Simply awesome, breathtaking!

Magic, combat, all well done. Whats even more impressive is the interface... first PC MMPOG where the mouse is not used! Its keyboard interface baby!

I left Dark Age of Camelot because the archery had been nerfed to high heaven and had become a pure joke.. now in FFXI its so good, so fluid thats its almost realistic. Hot Dog!

Highly reccomend this game. But fair warning: Its got an Anime 'background', so dont complain about hamtaro-like looking characters and NPC's or some of the quests and storylines being somewhat... odd. But for anime lovers like me, ITS HEAVEN.

Even the installation of the game is cool.

[Commander Elio Jason]

oh i'd been waiting for an opinion. FINALLY!

Penny Arcade said this so i was a bit sceptical

[Guest]

Thats partly true. Here's the catch:

Whereas every other mmpog out there allows people to choose their server, thus causing the usual empty server vs superpopulatedsuperlaggy server issue, FFXI will automatically balance the populations between the servers by assigning players to them.

And yes, if you have friends and want to play with them, you need to be about lev 6 (attainable in 2 hours of play) to afford it and give the uniquely generated world-pass to your friend.

I got into FFXI because one of my friends I played with in SWG told me a lot about the game... he gave me a world pass and all. He's level 20, im just level 8 now.. and the difference aint that big really... especially since he is twinking me and helping me level up fast. we're both having loads of fun.

[Kalshion]

Yea I Know, I have this game and I find it pretty fun to

The only thing i hate is that you can loss a level =( thats what drove me away from EQ (and into DAoC)

Problem is, a world pass COST's Gil (the money used in FF XI) My sister is planing on joining so im building up some GIL to buy a world pass

[Commander Elio Jason]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tac:

Thats partly true. Here's the catch:

Whereas every other mmpog out there allows people to choose their server, thus causing the usual empty server vs superpopulatedsuperlaggy server issue, FFXI will automatically balance the populations between the servers by assigning players to them.

And yes, if you have friends and want to play with them, you need to be about lev 6 (attainable in 2 hours of play) to afford it and give the uniquely generated world-pass to your friend.

I got into FFXI because one of my friends I played with in SWG told me a lot about the game... he gave me a world pass and all. He's level 20, im just level 8 now.. and the difference aint that big really... especially since he is twinking me and helping me level up fast. we're both having loads of fun.

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ok thanks for the clarification. i'll be putting this one on the holiday shopping list

[Guest]

Update:

The game is a masterpiece.

There are only 4 things that Id say give this game its only 'black' marks:

1) Chore : Most games have this, but in FFXI its kind of extreme. You have to spend hours, if not days, midlessly killing little things so you can get money to buy your higher end gear. To put it in perspective, it took me 5 days of doing that to get money to buy just one good weapon.

2) High level & grouping: This is perhaps THE biggest gameplay issue FFXI has. Once you reach level 40 you can no longer group with friends or be lenient in your party class makeup... many times people wait for hours just to find a group. This is because the things you have to kill for xp at those levels are very hard and unless you have certain group composition you wont survive. This makes it very very very hard for 'non-vital' classes (aka anyone not a healer or tank).

3) Confusing quests: Perhaps its a failure from whoever translated the game from original japanese to english. When you start the important quests, you are shown cutscenes which are really well done as far as storytelling..but you are left with a sense of 'k..that was nice but wtf am i supposed to do to finish the quest?' some are so vague you need to have a strategy guide to make any sense of what you need to do and why.

4) Finally, the 4th black mark on this game comes not from the game itself, but rather the company that Square Enix chose to use to carry their game: PlayOnline.

PlayOnline has this policy that if you cancel your account, you can reactivate it within 3 months. Past 3 months they will DELETE your character.

in short, leave the game for 3 months and the company does not want you back as a customer.

Ive been playing star wars galaxies for the past 4 months (I cancelled FFXI 5 months ago)..got tired of it, wanted to go back to FFXI since they had made a patch that made my favourite class (summoner) much better... and lo and behold, after speaking with costumer service both online and on the phone they literally dont want me back as a costumer. They deleted the character that took me 7 months to get to mid-level (yes the game takes TIME).

[Wolferz]

sounds like all the other mmorpg's out there.

Not worth my time.

[DeepFreeze]

Maybe this is just me, but does anyone else out there not understand how these kinds of games are fun? I mean, where is the merit in running up to random monsters, pressing A and watching attack animations until something dies? It would be one thing to pay $50 for that game, but to pay $50 just for the ability to open the box and then another (at least) $10 per month just to play? Hah! I might consider delving into this genre eventually if they ever make a real skill-based MMORPG, but... are there any on the horizon?

[Guest]

what do you mean deepfreeze?

real skill-based MMORPG?

Theres 2 types of MMORPG's out there right now: the 'classic' type where combat is decided largely on points your character has (aka combat skills, character stats, etc) and the 1st person shooter on an online rpg (or rpg-like) world.

Classic types include Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies.

1st person shooter types include World War 2 Online.

If you looking for games where its the PLAYER that determines who wins a fight... then World War 2 Online is for you..that game rules. You MUST work with other players in a persistent world to achieve something or even survive for more than 5 mins. And your character has no skillpoints or whatever, its all YOU aiming the rifle, driving the tank, etc etc. If you get owned its because you screwed up, not because the other guy had better skillpoints or stuff.

If you mean skill-based as in the classic sense, then the games i mentioned each have a different approach to skill-based combat.

Everquest: EQ's combat system is very simplistic.. your character auto-attacks unless you tell your toon to do a special attack..and you can do as many special attacks as long as your 'action' bar allows it.

Problem: Its the old 'spam-high damage attack until you win' you mention in your post.

Dark Age of Camelot: DAOC's approach to combat was very well thought.. they use the EQ system, except they added counter-attacks special abilities that could be blended with the special attacks. In essence, they put the player in command of the fight by allowing a weaker character (skill and level wise) to..well, literally OWN a higher level character who has lots more combat skills just because the human in control of the lower level character used his special attacks and counter-attacks.

Problem: while the system is perfect imo, the problems in this game come from it being very unbalanced..some character classes could just own any other class no matter what. Last I checked they were still making character more and more powerful trying to balance stuff out.. which of course dont work.

Final Fantasy XI: FFXI uses a variation of Everquest's system... except it doesnt have an 'action' bar where you can spam attacks with no end.. instead it has a bar that must be raised to 100% or more to perform a special..and you increase your bar by hitting the enemy with auto-swings. Now this may seem a bit less appealing than EQ's system, but in FFXI it works real good because it removes the spam-attack playstyle.. and the special attacks avaliable to players are *very* powerful. Whereas the most powerful EQ or DAOC 'special' attack did 2 or 3 times the damage of an autoswing, an ffxi special can go from 20X to 100X the damage. Combat in that game is very tactical, requires you to THINK what you're doing.

Star Wars Galaxies: Uses the same combat system as EQ. Rumors have it that a huge patch will change it from being EQ-style to being a merge between DAOC and FFXI.

Of all the systems I enjoyed DAOC's the most... theres nothing more fun than getting jumped by someone 5 levels higher who began to spam his highest damage attack.. and you proceeded to give him the most humiliating death all because YOU played smarter than he did