Final Fantasy XI - Worth sticking with?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve played a few different MMORPGs now

Everquest II - my computer couldn’t really cope and everything appeared to be made of plastic.

EVE online - was doing quite well until the first time I left the beginners area whereupon I was instantly swatted like a bug by another player, it became apparent that it would takes months of play before this would become less likely to happen.

City of heroes - Ok I guess, it just seemed a bit too simplistic for me.

WOW - I really enjoyed this and got my character up to lvl 60 whereupon the lack of high lvl content has caused me to back off for a bit (I intend to go back to this in a few more patches/ after the add on pack)

I’ve just started my trial period for FFXI and so far I’ve not been too impressed, I have a few main concerns.

    • Slow progress, I’ve started off as a thief and it’s starting to look like I’ll have to play for weeks before I’ll actually get any useful thief abilitys, I’m informed that pretty much no group will take me until I do. I’m at lvl 9 right now but lvling progress has already slowed to a crawl.
    • Economy, It’s painfully evident that a spot of inflation has occured since the game started, I can’t afford to buy anything that isn’t sold in the shops and even that seems to be ridiculously expensive, I have identified a few ways I think I CAN make money but they all seem boring and repetitive, you don’t seem to be able to make decent money just by doing the quests like you can in WOW, in fact I’ve yet to find a quest in which the reward seemed to be worth the effort. In addition the high price of everything seems to preclude any chance of working on the craft skills given that the raw materials cost much more than the finished products.
    • Repetition, I’m spending a lot of time killing the same 5 enemy types and getting the same 5 items, all of the areas I’ve been to seem pretty similar as well.
    • players/grouping, I haven’t actually had much interaction with other players yet but the fact that I’m having to start resting between easy kills in some areas suggests I’m going to have to and a lot of the stuff I’ve read about the game suggests that I’m going to need to have the absolute optimal kit/ class combination etc if I want to group with others.

I know some of these games start to pickup after a slow start, so I’m interested in knowing whether it’s worth sticking with the game for much longer or retiring gracefully after a month and returning to WOW

2

The game has three major phases: Early soloing (lv 1-10; takes a few days to a few weeks), levellling in parties (lv 10-75, takes months or even a couple of years), and endgame (lv 75 years of stuff to do). I’m in the middle phase.

  1. Partying generally starts at about level 10; when you’re new to it, it’s really, really fun.

  2. Inflation has really messed up the economy on most servers. It takes a while to figure out how to make money; I can’t really tell you how, because once word gets out on any one way, dozens of people start doing it until the profit margin shrinks to nearly nothing. If you want to try making money crafting, research some recipes on the internet (http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/ has an up-to-date database); you may have the best luck with recipes whose ingredients can be bought from npcs. Bronze ingots generally have a good profit margin for a low-level synth (and nearly everything made from them is a loss synth). If you don’t want to go to all that trouble yet, killing monsters for crystals is generally the best way for a brand-new character to make money; their value has risen in proportion to everything else.

  3. There really isn’t a lot of variety in monster types. Until they get to the really, really, high levels, players spend a lot of time fighting goblins and crabs with the exact same sprite; just different names and stats. It’s a major strike against the game, IMO.

  4. Some classes are expected to have certain items by certain levels in order to do their job well, but it’ll be a while before this happens to you (especially if you plan on staying with Thief as your main job). By the time it’s an issue, you’ll have a better feel for whether you want to stick with the game.
    I suggest you stick with it for at least a little while. Once you start partying, you’ll get a taste of the next phase of the game and whether it’s fun for you.