FFXI: 2002-2021: 18.5 Years And Still Going Strong

I dunno, it was kind of annoying not being able to enter Crawlers nest for over an hour.

I don't miss that at all, it was awful and completely shutdown zones for like a half hour at least.

let's be a *** and overall downer on people wanting to reminisce about a game they played during their formative years

People can talk about the same things 500 times if they want to, if you don't like it skip over.

Every post you make is more of the same negative ***. If you hate the game so much, why post here? It's like fonewear is back, but with a free side of undeserved arrogance.

A thread about how FFXI is 18.5 years old seems like the perfect place to be nostalgic, to be honest.

Look at what this community is. We're a tight-knit group of folks from all around the world still playing a game that's old enough to graduate high school. Its lack of popularity and funding means the stuff we have to look forward to is sparse, so it's easier to look back.

There's only so much conversation you can have about which piece is the best-in-slot body for Ninja if they only get 30% Haste against a high-evasion target. There's only so much conversation you can have about what cool new updates a job should get, or whether or not the game should receive a remake. So our conversations are going to inevitably turn to stories about the "good old days". It's just human nature.

Final Fantasy XI was a notoriously brutal game back in the day. There are endless stories about overcoming obstacles that were way too hard, or failures from trying to best those obstacles too early. Does/did that make it good? I dunno. Does it make for hilarious, nostalgic stories? Heck yes!

SE said no more hospitalizations on their watch.

Honestly, if I had been a part of that shell, I would have just logged out. It’s crazy what some HNMLSes expected of their members, like it was an actual job or something.

Yo, such and such spanwed, ditch your family and log on to come fight it or we’re kicking you. I would say that is an extreme case, but it kind of wasn’t.

not to speak out of turn about the people involved, but i'm pretty sure they all had abundant time on their hands back then.

like, i'm certain people took time off to do events and ***because that was just the hardcore raiding mindset. people do the same with other MMO-like games. XIV, destiny2 (19hrs), wtv. It's just more of a spectacle now that we have streaming.

I don't disagree though - I never got into HNM/EGLS because the idea that "if you're not here for every event you're out" or "you need to participate for [x amnt of time] to be considered for drops (and being last priority until other people get said drop)" or "all currency goes to the LS leader :)" was incredibly unappealing.

I eventually did get into events, but that was with a small group of friends that made it tolerable and the LS itself had good people.

and yet you spend time to constructing this post on said pages.
Looking at you post history, I really wonder if this is how you work in real life. Going up to strangers in a public place telling them what they can or cannot debate...

I could just be classy AF and take this thread to its ultimate conclusion with a single sentence:

Discuss how SE needs to create a level 75 cap server.

lulz

Remember getting your first AF set?

Awesome satire.

Yes!! I remember it was on my Taru White Mage. I remember being thoroughly confused as to how to acquire the Tavnazian Bell for one of the quests lol

Remember doing Saturday night Dynamis and being the only DRG and being so hyped when body and later head dropped. Took like 2 years of doing it to see it but then felt like a boss walking around in something very few people had.

People that never did it, never really understood why it was so addictive and fun.

Very often camping with a lot of your people was boring, the good stuff was when a few from your shell got a claim on a contested NM in the middle of the night or something and you knew they would fail if not for you getting there.

That rush of adrenaline when you knew you were the difference makers and they were desperate for you to arrive as their MP pool was whittled down was really addictive, the smack talk aspect from other shells really magnified it too. So many Tiamat or Khim camps were like that, the mad rush to get to these far off camps and save your claim duo/trio.

I remember getting Crimson Pants from my shell and being really happy about getting them because they looked badass. The following week I heard on the shell that they claimed Tiamat with 2 people and I got on RDM and ran there as fast as I could. This was a long run too since it was before any fast travel options, it was basically tele-mea and run to Tiamat. When I got there I saw the PLD and WHM were really low on MP and were near wipe stage, there were 3 other shells there with enough to kill it, there was a add on the pld. I was invited, I refreshed them both, threw out some debuffs, some backup cures while the WHM recovered some MP and slept the add. I kept them going till the rest arrived 5-6 minutes later and I felt awesome because I knew how big an impact my presence was to them, and I kept wanting to feel like that and so kept doing HNM for many years.

Even the DD got in on this too because HNM would rage after a certain amount of time and if it was a late night camp, everyone knew it could go into rage time because it was low man and often being held for 20-30 mins. Having your really well geared DD team login (that you spent months or years helping to gear) and say I'm on my way now was awesome. We had a really pimped Taru BLM in my shell that was an extreme min maxer type of player, and we were really getting close to rage on Nid and to see him say "I'm on my way now" was such a relief because we just were not doing enough dmg (we had a 3rd job blm there). When he got in the party and the sam set up the skillchains he wanted, he melted that last 20% down so hard when the leader told him to get it dead now. We were all cheering on his massive magic bursts and shouting out the numbers because we were so close to rage and he was saving us from a wipe. Leader was shouting to keep him alive too so the healer and rdm were throwing cures on him, the DD were TA the PLDs, the tanks were going all out and covering etc. He still died, but we got him up and he still finished it off weakened. That ***was so exciting and I still remember it like it was yesterday.

As much as I hated HNM because of the cheating it was frigging crazy how many awesome moments we had doing it like that, and near every shell has stuff like this. That's why we did stupid stuff like 6 hour camps and staying up late or logging in.

While you are correct, thats also the very thing that caused so many ruined marriages. Though it’s the fault of design. It’s hard to take games in moderation when you design it to be otherwise.

Duelist's Chapeau
Kirin's Osode
Byakko Haidate

The amount of drama these pieces caused.. Good times.

Was just talking to someone about that the other day. I remember our first one going to a Bard. That sure was heated...

Takin break played since 2005 last time my break was 2012-2015..will see if I have motivation to play once again..anyways I wish u all good times with FFXI..

Rarest item in the game was Hecatomb pants back in the day I think.

Rarest item in the game was the last piece you needed to unlock your subjob, usually the Magicked Skull.

The rarest item were the friends we made along the way.

Pity all of mine left the game years ago and I got stuck needing to move servers to Asura just to play with other English speakers. Then (now) every shell I'm in is basically dead silent or sprinkled with a several people that have played together for a long time and it's impossible to get to know anyone or make friends the way we used to (multiple hours at exp camps or random people you grouped up with for missions). Edit: OR people are playing on alts/multiboxing OR people zone too much to carry on any kind of conversation due to quick travel all the time. Constant zoning kills this game's chat and it really needed to be fixed decades ago.

Thank God for trusts, but all they really do is turn it into a truly "solo" MMORPG (aka just a solo RPG with an auction house).

I would welcome anything that would breath life back into FFXI, but honestly without the friends from back in the day, the game just feels like... the emptiness won.

That might just be a side-effect of moving to a server like Asura. I've taken mules there to shop multiple times, mostly becausethe server seems VERY commerce driven.

Cerberus is one of the least (if not THE least) populated servers, and the discord channel for my linkshell routinely has 15+ people logged in on any given evening. Many of them I've been playing with for years now, but there are just as many, if not more, of them that have been regulars for less than a year.

Friends are out there, you might just be looking in the wrong place.

It's honestly not that hard to make friends on FFXI, if you have a forward personality. The problem is, most of us are set in our ways and don't actually want to do stuff with other people at this point. A lot of people just stay silent and think the world will come to them, it's not going to. You have to talk to people if you want that, you have to put yourself out there and ask if anyone wants to do anything or wants help.

Logon, do a /yell and make a E or N Ambuscade group or an Omen group or something else fairly easy and stress free. Talk to people, have fun, be nice. Casual players that would join this kind of group are often more than willing to talk away from my experience. I have more fun doing casual stuff than doing harder clears, because it tends to be more social.

If you're on a shell with a lot of people, say stuff. Ask what people are doing, ask if anyone needs help.

Honestly I like FFXI for what it is these days, and the reason is because I quit the game years ago and tried to play a lot of other MMORPGS and different kinds of games and either I straight up hated them,m they became stale in a year or so or they did not have enough content to keep me invested long term (warframe). The only two MMORPG games I've liked were Tera for the combat and art style and WoW, but neither really grabbed me as FFXI did.

Ultimately I value what FFXI offers me now so much because I've seen everything else there is and it's a barren wasteland outside of spending $70 every couple of weeks on new games.

While everything you said is true, it can vary from server to server. Some servers have the luxury of having folks available at most any given time to do something. While others, you have to catch the right times.

This game just seems to give bigger senses of satisfaction due to how much more difficult, complicated (whatever word you wanna use) to describe obtaining certain things. I've obtained legendaries in WoW and that did not give me the feeling of accomplishment that obtaining a rema does. However, I'm a singleboxer and don't cheat, so I understand others may not share my feelings.

Sometimes, I do feel like going through spurts of spending money on new games (mostly console) so games like this do not become stale.