FFXI: May 16th, 2002.

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05.16.2012 8:40pm

Thread Creator

Zubis
Registered Member

Today is the 10th anniversary of the (Japanese) release. I still have the original PlayOnline pre-registration email from 12 years ago.

How do you think of the game now, a decade later? Good memories? Bad?

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05.16.2012 8:49pm

Onyx
Butts
Administrator

Mostly terrible. Played for a year and I want that time of my life back. Especially after playing games like World of Warcraft that taught me that MMORPG's can actually be fun and not a complete chore.

Doesn't help that most of the people I played the game with turned into miserable, horrible assholes.

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05.16.2012 8:53pm

reido
(\/)(o,,,o)(\/)

Love the world, love the aesthetic, love the classes.

Hate the gameplay. Hate it a lot.

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05.16.2012 9:37pm

(Edited on 05.17.2012 at 8:45am)

Enkidoh
Time Travelling White Mage

Thing is Onyx, I found WoW to be utterly dull and boring - it just didn't excite me in the same way that FFXI did. Not to mention the player base was mostly horrid. Or maybe I just had a bad experience.

In any event, I can't believe I've now been playing FFXI for seven years virtually unbroken (give or take a few weeks out of the game due to technical issues etc). If I remember rightly, the last time I checked my play time in game I was at 277 days of play time. That's nearly a complete year of my life spent in Vana'diel (although, to be fair, quite a few hours I spent logged in but I wasn't actually at my computer). And I must admit, I have mostly happy memories in that time. Probably some of my favourites;

Seeing the opening movie for the first time.
Finally gaining the courage to step outside my Mog House.
Meeting Veers in-game and getting tutored on the finer points of gameplay.
My first Dunes party. ;)
Making it to Jeuno as a lvl 20 WHM on foot by myself
The Rank 2.3 Dragon battle
Getting my first piece of AF (WHM)
Out-tanking and out-damaging a NIN tank in a Garliage exp party as 37 WAR//18 MNK (pre-lvl-sync days)
Beating Maat as WAR on my first try!
Fighting and beating Shadowlord for the first time!
Reaching 75 for the first time and being able to start meriting.
Gaining Sky access!
Gaining Rank 10 in Windurst (I was so proud to get that flag)

There are plenty of other memories, but these are the ones which truely stand out. I wonder if the game will still be around for it's twentieth anniversary.

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05.17.2012 2:59am

Aquila
Usually lurking
Administrator

Mostly good memories minus a few LS dramas here and there and NM campings that didn't yield. Would totally start over again if I have friends to play with. Really hoping they'd release an offline version when the service is over.

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05.17.2012 3:47am

Free Spirit
Zetta Member

Hah, no memories at all except utter disappointment that it was an MMO, and thus an FF game I would never, ever play.

Coincidentally, I happened to receive my FFXI Ultimania in the mail today(among others). Kinda weird how it worked out like that.

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05.17.2012 10:24am

Enkidoh
Time Travelling White Mage

Well, it should go without saying that the game has changed and evolved greatly in the 10 years it's been active. Yes, it hasn't always been an easy ride for the game, but it lasted this long, despite the doomsayers - so many other MMOs have launched in that time and crashed and burned spectacularly soon after, so SE must have done something right.

On a slightly different topic, naturally SE is doing a special event in game as part of the anniversary, with new event equipment available to players via quests, which are a gentle nod to the early days of the game by helping 'Aspiring Adventurer' NPCs - one of the quests involved finding 'old copies of the Vana'diel Tribune' for instance (remember that?).

For me the jury is still out though on the appearence of the 10th Anniversary event gear though, but I'll let you be the judge:

Somehow I prefer last year's Novennial gear myself, but that's just me. :D

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05.17.2012 4:04pm

Aquila
Usually lurking
Administrator

Is there a site that you can view all the equipments? Some of the latest designs are pretty cool. Wish I still have access to Altanaviewer...

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05.17.2012 5:29pm

Thread Creator

Zubis
Registered Member

Free Spirit said:

Hah, no memories at all except utter disappointment that it was an MMO, and thus an FF game I would never, ever play.

Coincidentally, I happened to receive my FFXI Ultimania in the mail today(among others). Kinda weird how it worked out like that.

Sad (though understandable) that most people think that really. I've said it many times but FFXI has the deepest lore of any FF game and it's definitely up there as having one of the greatest storylines in the series.

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05.17.2012 5:57pm

Enkidoh
Time Travelling White Mage

Aquila, the only site I really know of that features equipment images would be FFXIcyclopedia (https://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), but they tend to mostly use images from Altana Viewer, which doesn't help for the newest gear as DAT listing updates for AV are sporadic at best.

Allakhazam used to post equip images too in their equipment database,but recently that site has been on a slow and tortorous decline sadly, and now mostly just steals images and info directly from FFXIcyclopedia.

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05.17.2012 6:05pm

Kellios
Yikes and away!

Mostly good memories save for linkshell issues that basically made me go, "Fuck this shit" which is too bad - I adore the world and ever so often would love to revisit it again.

Zuby, always fun playing with you <3

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05.17.2012 6:23pm

Onyx
Butts
Administrator

Surprised ZAM doesn't have a database for FFXI like they do with Wowhead and Torhead

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05.17.2012 6:32pm

Thread Creator

Zubis
Registered Member

Aww, likewise Kel :3

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05.17.2012 7:02pm

Spidey
So Sigh Ety

Zubis said:

Sad (though understandable) that most people think that really. I've said it many times but FFXI has the deepest lore of any FF game and it's definitely up there as having one of the greatest storylines in the series.

Same memory I have of it. Im not knocking the game and have no issues with it but thats not a genre of game Im interested in. Some people dont like fightinf games, some people dont like racing games, some people dont lile dating sims. I dont like Mmorpgs. So i was bummed at the time 10 years ago but I got over it pretty fast, realizing it doesnt really matter what it is since theres plenty for me to enjoy out there.

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05.17.2012 7:47pm

Ashilyn
Career GM

I definitely have fond memories of the game from when I played it. I dunno if I could still play it again, having now play much, much better made MMOs (...then again, I am currently playing FFXIV every now and then so anything is possible). For me the biggest issue with FFXI wasn't actually anything on the game's end (Well, that's not true. How impossibly hard it was to get groups before Level Sync was always a big sticking point with me). Rather it was how Square, with zero knowledge of the MMO market and how to make your game accessible to the masses, made it so hard for me to actually pay for the game, because in high school and college I didn't have a credit card and there were no game time cards, despite living in an era were CoH, WoW, EQ, and pretty much every other major MMO had them, so I basically had to go month by month and hope their archaic payment system would take the prepaid visa I had, something which didn't always happen.

But when I did get to play the game, I loved it, particularly with the few FFO linkshell buddies that I could actually level with. I never hit max level, or did much of the late game content, but I loved the world, the lore, even a lot of the gameplay. If Square had worked out the payment kinks, I probably would've played it for much longer.

Hell, if I had a good crew to play it with, I'd probably consider picking it back up. The people you play with can make any game a blast if it's the right group.

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