Wondering about FFXI...

A-fucking-men to the gil-seller part. As for the Japanese issue, well, that’s highly contentious. While the 2 year headstart was ridiculous, many JP players on Alexander were friendly and helpful. If you spoke a bit of broken Japanese, I’d say turn that many into ‘most.’ I hear the JP issue varied from server to server.

QFT.

My server, Titan, was about 70-75% Japanese. I picked up some rudimentary Japanese in the game, and yes, it helped, but the majority of JP would not deal with you if you had that ‘E’ by your name.

Further musings:

Holy crap, I played that game longer than I realized! December 2003-February 2010.

On the difference between WoW and FFXI:

I think the major distinction is the fact that WoW is an american game, and FFXI is a Japanese game. They represent two different cultural attitudes. In WoW, as I understand it, you are self-sufficient and don’t really team up much until you get to endgame. There is also a strong competitive edge between players - the built-in Alliance/Horde conflict, and lots and lots of PvP.

In FFXI, pretty much everything is designed to be done cooperatively, as a team effort. There is also very little PvP, and what there is is portrayed as a team sport, with goals and scheduled matches and suchlike. The net result of all this is that there is a much higher penalty in FFXI for being a jerk - if you alienate everyone else on the server, you aren’t going to be able to get anything done. On the other hand, the need to find a team to do just about everything means that it’s less casual - you need to take the time to find a group, and once you’re in it you’ve pretty much committed a couple of hours at least to that group.

I believe that FFXI also skews somewhat older, or at least has fewer teens/immature adults playing it. The lack of instant gratification means that if you’re just looking for a quick reward, you’re going to be really frustrated. We don’t have anything like the cesspool that I’ve heard “Barrens Chat” (sp?) is supposed to be.

Like I said, it’s a really awesome game. If I were still playing, I’d invite you to my server and help you get started. But really…just wait for FF14.

Going with what Maggie said, the biggest complaint I’ve heard about this game is that it forces you to team up too much and there is hardly any meaningful soloing. The game is rightly Japanese, and if you know anything about their more communal society, you’ll realize that it’s not a knock on the game, it simply reflects it’s maker.

That’s why I said that you should get it if you have some friends who play. Plenty of people start over, make a new character, level a different race even at this late stage. I know scores of people who were either banned or decided to level up a completely different character in the last year. Now you’ll hardly notice that they’re essentially new players. Sure, they don’t have hundreds of quests and missions done, but you can still be a good player with decent gear starting over just now.

The story elements are simply too fantastic to miss. With the updates they’ve given us over the years, what was once a long slog of months and months can be completed within weeks if you have someone competent leading you through it. But again, this is predicated on the fact that you already know people who can help you out. I wouldn’t recommend starting off as a newbie.

Well, I’m afraid that I don’t know any current players, apart from those who offered generously here!

As for waiting for FF14 or WoW… You miss the point of my OP. The only real reason I was considering FFXI at any point at all was because of the Blue Mage job. I love that job, as I said. If FF14 doesn’t have it, and never gets it, my interest will drop to near nil. As for WoW, I know it doesn’t have anything like it, so there you go!

So y’see, there’s little point in advising on other games right now that don’t fit in with that mindset. If I’m going to go to the trouble and expense of getting into a MMORPG, say, FFXI, at this point, I’m going to be asking myself this: how much time and effort will it take to get me slinging blue magic? :smiley:

Leaper, if your only goal is to be able to play a Blue Mage, then you’ll probably want FFXI over FFXIV. From what I’ve read, FFXI has base classes which are then customized with armor and weapons. None of those base classes look anything remotely close to Blue Mage.

I’ve applied for Beta testing. If approved, I’ll let you know if Blue Mage looks like a possibility in FFXIV.

Blue Mage was added like 5 years into this game. I’m sure with it’s popularity, and the fact that FFXIV is the spiritual successor to FFXI, they’ll have a Blue Mage sooner or later

If you want to see how long it’ll take, first you have to take a job to 30. As a penniless newbie with no friends, might take you a month or two if you work at it everyday. Once you’re at 30, you need to get to Aht Urghan, and the quest for that will take only a few hours if you know high level people, or else you’ll need to raise about 5-10 more levels if you plan on soloing it. However, if you don’t have it by now, you’ll want to be able to travel easily on airships. That’s a 5 rank mission where you need to party up with people to help. At level 30, you can solo 2 mission ranks. Level 3 requires a party, 4 can be soloed with some skill at sneaking around, and 5 is done with another party. Let’s say a week for that, if you put in the hours everyday, and 2-3 weeks if you don’t and also have trouble finding people to help.

Once in Aht Urghan, the quest for Blue Mage is easy. It’s no more than 30 mins.

So to get to Blue Mage, I would guess that a newbie who doesn’t know much about the game can get it in a couple months. You won’t have much gear though if you don’t farm some money and do some camping. Some quests give you money, so you can do those too.

You can spend a good weekend and get Blue Mage up to 15 while getting some limited spells. By that time, you’ll get to know how it plays and works and how much effort it’ll take for you to get the 100+ other spells. Each one can get you minutes or hours, depending on how lucky you get. It certainly takes more effort to be good with Blue Mage than other mages, where you just buy your spells

I’m pretty sure they’ll have Blue Mage in FF14. Maybe not when it first comes out (it was added in 11 with the third expansion), but maybe so.