Merc Service

Holy ***at the personal attack because you don't agree with my pov about afterglow. I've never ask for anyone to "worship" me in this game("worship", serious? I'm extremely casual and I'm not even anywhere close to accomplished player in FFXI compare with many other players in this game), and I have zero issues if other player outparse/play better than me or w/e. In fact I often spend my damn time to give gear/play style advice to other players so they can parse higher. If I really care about "be better than everyone else" so much I'd never give any advice to anyone else in this game so I can be better than everyone else.

Since you completely misunderstood my post about afterglow, I'll summarize it for you here: SE should have make mythic easy to make like today since ToAU's out, instead of make it omgwtf an *** to make AND THEN change the requirement years later. Same applies to afterglow. Tons of ppl spent the damn time to grind them, only to find you need 1/3 of effort 3 years later. If they had known SE would do that many won't even make that decision to do AG/mythics. They either make it hard to obtain from beginning to the end of service, or easy from the get go, but not change the requirement after a few years and screw ppl's time.

But for some reason you just have to twist my pov into "Afania wants to beat everyone else!", wtf.



Do you realize that what you're doing in this thread(personal attack others, claiming abj+1 and AG is just "ego", implying others have no life) is exactly the same? It seems that everything you do on the forum is either calling others "too much ego" or "no life".


I'm well aware the prices are absurd, and I do agree that the prices are absurd, but what else can I do? Jump on the forum and personal attack others like you do? Send a pm to all the merc and beg them to lower prices? Sorry but none of this would change anything because that's how things work.

I'm going to say it in a very blunt way: Basically what I'm seeing here is tons of personal attack from ppl who act as if they're "better" than others because they offer help for free, then talk ***of other ppl for asking for compensation for their time. You're trying too hard to force your opinion toward video game on others, but not everyone has the same opinion.

If you like to help for free, go ahead and do it.I'm pretty sure everyone would be grateful if you yell "free T3 gear do you need it" in town. But there's no need to personal attack others and spread negativity if they refuse to help for free. Not everyone have the same opinion as you toward time spend in a video game.

As roundabout and as frustrating as it might be for you to admit it, that is the baseline of expectations in all online interactions in games at this point.

Anyone here Merc forum posts? WTB /tell in game with what you consider absurd pricing.

Video game or not, it's ppl that's behind the keyboard that's playing the game. Asking everyone to help for free like Alfy and Ryan just too much. Resort to personal attack and blame game if they refuse help for free? God so negative :(

I try not to spend too much time caring about what other people are doing on the internet. A lot less of my life is wasted trying to rationalize or reason with people anymore lol.

I should have do that too, :( Tried to hard to reason with unreasonable ppl who just personal attack on forum 24/7 :(

U know very well the quality u get in most pug's

Yeah I came back to the game and back to the forum after a 2 year break. Had to get a cold reminder of how illogical and argumentative people were on this forum.

And that's not to say it's a bad thing really. I'm pretty much just past wasting my time trying to reason online with people. Just play the game and enjoy your time however you see fit is my MO.

Asura is a crazy populated server. Lot's of people coming back and wanting stuff. Guy can charge whatever he wants.

Sometimes you can meet people of a similar mindset and make new friends and conversation though. It's not always a horrible crash and burn. Sometimes you come out with more than you went in for.

But there I go reasoning again lol.

Granted that person is a human being behind that keyboard many do not have that kind of altruism in real life or online. The online persona has only a small baring on your own real life one so in reality one could be a selfish, neglecting *** and act the exact opposite online or vice versa in a more toxic online community.

Personally, I agree, but as Afania stated already, actions speak louder than words. While this "merc" business has practically vanished on some other servers, it thrives on Asura, in part because of the size of its English-speaking population and also because the community as a whole has allowed it to persist. It's fine that you don't like it, just as it's fine others do, but if you want to show people they can obtain that gear or those wins without paying ridiculous prices then the community is going to have to do more than show disgust on a forum thread.

I see players on that server show no reservations about charging even their own LS mates for drops/wins. Trying to convince those people they can achieve their goals without paying exorbitant prices is like trying to convince a trust fund baby there's more to life than expensive toys and paid help.


That's a telling statement.

Nothing worth doing/having in life comes easy is more like it. Paying someone or accepting millions for a drop/win is just that, easy. I've been around the game since early 2004 and taken part in more than my fair share of in-game sales. 500K here, 100M there... Know where those sales rank in my list of fond FFXI memories? Nowhere near as high as listening to a grown man bust out singing the Pokemon theme song during an LS event, that's for sure. ;)

I'm just damn dumb to defend for Draylo/Swordwiz's pov I guess. Why am　I even doing that and got myself a bad name for being some sort of super elitist *** lol.


I agree, I've been puging a lot ever since I start this game because I'm kind of player that likes to do stuff whenever I can, instead of wait for things to happen and rely on others. It's very interesting to meet many players with various goals/desire/personality, it's also extremely challenging to put those individual with different goals together, inspire them, and have the entire team work as a whole and make everyone happy with the result. It's even more challenging than getting the best gear and kill the hardest boss most of the time, IMO. When it doesn't work well, it's extremely frustrating. But when it does, the experience is incredible.

Unfortunately most of the ppl that needs T1~3/vagary/delve clear and gears in this game would rather just solo farm gil, pay for merc instead of step out and play with others. I've talked to a lot of them, gave them pt advice, and sometimes they still refuse to play with others even with tons of advice. The reason why ppl wants to pay for clear, is really not because everyone is a selfish *** that refuse to help others, but because they refuse to make their own pt.

For those who needs win/gears, instead of expecting everyone to offer free help and get angry when others ask for compensation, I highly encourage you to start your own pt. It may seem hard at start but eventually you'll develop enough leadership/communication/coordination skill to kill things more efficiently, and those skills can be used irl as well. Those skills that I've developed in FFXI actually changed my career path irl.

I don't think you get that I say since you used "guy getting mugged in the alley" as an example then, that's completely different scenario from organize a T3 pt and getting others free T3 gears in FFXI.

This thread turned out exactly how I expected !

FFXI hasn't changed in 10 plus years !

As far as pug I have done a lot of escha content with pick up groups I haven't had any real terrible times with it.

Not sure where this is coming from. Every clear/win/drop that I have so far (no Reisen T3s or WoC yet, but most other stuff) I got in pugs and I can't say I ran into any major issues. Hell, made some friends even as an added bonus.

Free hugs to everyone! *hugs everyone* :D (Willing to merc hugs)(price: free)

Depends on who's forming the PUG. You get into two types, the first is when a small group of experienced people invite each other and then shout for whatever is missing and are very careful who they grab. The second is when a single person is shouting and they don't have a good grasp of the mechanics involved. The former tends to be extremely successful, the later tends to fail but can be successful if they happen to invite people who are usually in the former but just don't have their people on.

Asura is a big enough server that there are lots of experienced players who join a PUG just to get something when their group of people aren't online. The smaller servers have largely already segmented themselves and anyone not already in a good group is left out in the cold with the people who weren't good enough to be invited into those exclusive groups.

Exactly. sadly bahamut has started to wane as well. What used to be one of the big three along with asura and Odin is now just asura and everyone else.

Bahamut has / had the problem of a few extremely toxic groups monopolizing most end game content via sucking up all the good support people from the local population. Eventually everyone who's not "lucky" enough to be in those super groups just migrated to Asura which only further limited the available population.

That is why large super linkshells are bad for a server. They tend to only accept support jobs that are in high demand, and then those support players are no longer available to the general population and instead are being horded. All PUG activity starts to shut down as people can't get the necessary support to do stuff, and the current support just sit in those super LS's waiting to "do events" with cliques that form.

If FFXI had some sort of cross-server "raid finder / auto-grouper" then it wouldn't be an issue, but since everything is local to a server, without enough available support players everything else dies out.

I wasn't a fan of WoW's or FFXIV's cross server auto-grouping, it's like taking a sledge hammer to the community's knees for the sake of expedited personal gain. That's the kind of thinking that put the MMORPG genre as a whole in the rut it's currently in.

200k an item or win?

What you are talking about O.o

Yet without it was see the complete disaster that is FFXI. The community was never good, not since 2003 when I started playing and it's only gotten worse. There are plenty of people to do stuff, but because they are scattered across the servers they can't get anything done and eventually just quit.

Yea lotta people hanging to this game by a thread here. I can see some people in shell that can or might quit soon.

Bahamut has one elite NA shell and they usually just wait to get together to do things. And looks like they done now and go on hiatus with whoever sticking around working on solo things. However there are a few good shells below that tier that's accomplishing things. i don't think I see any of them joining PUGs. There's still good players who are not in those shells that I rounded up to do things. But that damn T3 needs scholar and everything which I'm currently working on JP(450) is a roadblock for me. I can't even bring a few master blue mages to melee them down.

Sorry for topic change but seems like topic is all over the place here.

People play this game differently. Some people form bonds, either LS's or friendships, and help each other. Some people farm gil and pay mercs. Some people farm alex to sell. Some people buy alex to make mythics. Can't everyone just do what they wanna do?

The people making all the commotion are not even the ones who want to buy stuff. You're all just people who read a thread and flipped out. Relax.

If I go to grocery store A and the food is too expensive, I can try going to B and see what sales they have. It would be nonsense for me to yell at the manager saying he needs to give me food for free because I need to eat.

Anyone who's angry at the OP, you're that guy screaming at the store manager for free food.