I’m Zeriel, a lv75 Galka Dragoon and Paladin on Diabolos server. I’m aligned with the Republic of Bastok in both Modern Day and the Great War era.
I’m posting this thread mostly to see what the doper interest is in FFXI lately–I just found it again after a bit of a hiatus, and I’ve got in with a very good team that’s doing quite a few runs in some of the endgame–I just got my first piece of Homam gear on Monday, for those of you who DO play. (We’ve figured out how to easily 9-man proto-omega)
The other reason I’m posting this is that I can answer questions if anyone IS interested in the game but not sure, especially since the September update will be adding the ability (similar to City of Heroes) for higher-level players to drop temporarily to lower levels to help out their friends gain XP and gear.
Me, I love FFXI because it’s got a lot more variety of things to do and scenarios than many other MMOs–there’s still a serious “fight stuff, get xp, repeat” element, but you can do anything from serious missions to treasure hunting and digging to time-traveling to the Great War in the past and helping NPC troops fight off the beastman scourge.
Yeah, I know. I got sick of City of Heroes around lv37-40ish, it just wasn’t dragging me in, I didn’t have the sweeping sense that I was a real hero getting stuff accomplished the same way I do in FFXI–well, except the clockwork king arc.
When City of Heroes lets you complete plot arcs you accidentally level out of I’ll probably come back.
It has for as long as I’ve played (since December last year). When you’re in a story arc, the contact has a little book icon next to it and will keep giving you story missions until it’s finished.
I don’t mean to turn this into a CoH hijack, it was just a little teasing. Exemplaring will be a useful tool for FFXI, definitely.
If I go back to CoH, when I’m already playing EVE and FFXI…is there some kinda anti-sleep pill you got tucked away while you’re giving me things I want?
I used to play but my gaming group never really did achieve any kind of critical mass. There were too few of us and we were spread across too many time zones to get anything accomplished.
It’s really a shame too, I loved the game. I’m one of those crazy people who enjoyed playing a white mage.
I just read down a bit in that blog, and came accross this gem:
irony!
Anyway, I played a bit 2 or 3 years ago- got to 53ish on my black mage. Quit because most of my friends stopped playing, and the level cap quests kind of blew.
I played for nearly 3 years. I met a lot of great friends as well as my SO there. I was on 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was the heroin to my gutter-sitting junkie.
I stopped playing when several factors came to a head at once. My SO quit again (it was a love-hate relationship), several members had end-game aspirations and started eyeing end-game linkshells, my PS2 died, I hated the expansion areas, many crappy parties, there was LS drama, and on and on.
By choice I hit 75BLM in Besieged. I hated expansion-area parties because I’d basically be playing them as a gimped WHM. No one wanted nukers anymore. I hated the competition for camps and mobs to kill. After awhile even crafting lost its shine. I got Woodworking to 80 and ran out of gil and found it hard to make more. Eventually, my only remaining pleasure was in soloing and camping NMs.
I came back briefly this past year to solo various subjobs to 37 to be my BLU subs, but without my SO and good friends playing, I lost everything that distracted me from the grind. It just felt like work.
I miss a lot about the game, but I don’t think I’ll pick it up again. Some of my LS friends play WoW now. It’s not as captivating as FFXI was, but I think we all accept that nothing will ever be as good or addictive as your first MMO.
Let me just say one phrase: “Manaburn merit parties.” My wife’s 75BLM, and there are a lot of people finding lately that you can score serious xp with 5xBLM, 1xBRD now fighting the magic-vulnerable monsters like the evil pudding things up on the mountain.
Yeah, I couldn’t get into WoW at all, even when a lot of my friends left for it.
These days I play FFXI with my buddies and when I solo it’s usually Campaign–like Besieged, only actually fun, the latest expansion lets you time-travel into the past and fight running zone-control battles all over the freakin’ place in the Great War. What makes it more fun are entire NPC armies who appear as needed and available (keeping them alive means they fight more often) and everything but the boss monsters of any given Campaign battle can be soloed with a decent solo job (like my PLD/NIN) or duoed-trioed with ease even with pickup groups.
I’ll probably come back.
Exemplaring will be a useful tool for FFXI, definitely.
