Three new Final Fantasy XI expansions announced for 2009

Uh, FFXI has like 500,000 subscribers. It isn't "going out".

Take a look at almost any article about FFXI and they made the same dull ass comments on all the various blog sites Nick. It gets fucking obnoxious after a point.

i can feel ya on the rabbit slaying. So god damn boring. that game was and still is bullshit.

@Coldbrand:

You're free not to read it, and look elsewhere for commentary that's not quite as dull as mine. Sorry to disappoint.

I purchased this game (along with the PS2 hard drive) on day 1, and I played it for about a month. I didn't enjoy, as Necros put it, the monotonous grinding. Not my thing. You're right, there's 500,000 users currently playing FFXI and something like 1.7 million characters; obviously, people enjoy the game. You might be one of them, and that's great. My rabbit comment still stands.

Those are all horrible names

Hah! I signed up just for this.
I played FFXI for 2.5 years total with WoW weaved in between the times.

I still love the game, but it takes too g'damn long to do anything.
As such, I am rooting for these expansions to breathe life into Vana'diel, hopefully my old FFXI friends will have new noobs to play with.

@Coldbrand, you mean "peek"?

FF11 was/is a great game, but it was released in 2002. That's ages ago in both hardware and software evolution. Let alone an MMOs lifespan... the reason they can release so much content is because it costs so little to upkeep. It may have 500,000 subscribers, but that doesn't make it relevant anymore. You couldn't make it relevant unless you named the expansion FF14.

The same happened with DAoC, Asheron's Call, Everquest. Companies move on, leave a small dev team behind, and make new games. They're not getting any new subscribers, and the old ones will play whatever shit you give them because they're all fucking infatuated fools like Coldbrand.

It's a great game, but I'm being kind when I say it's going out.

Seriously, this game needs to die already. It was alright when it first came out, but by now it's vastly inferior to pretty much everything else on the market that isn't a generic Korean grindfest.

I'll admit that the "Moogle Kupo d'Etat" bit made me giggle.

Also like how the moogle picture is reminiscent of the old FFVI magazine ads.

i dunno about this. maybe i'm old-fashioned and weird, but i'd rather get a physical expension pack than that expension scenario thing.

i have mixed feelings. i guess we'll see.

@Sledgewick

These aren't full fledged expansions sadly, they're just small 10 dollar content packs, so I wouldn't expect anything heavy like changes to existing mechanics.

what's with the ball sack to the left of the chicken?

FFXI is still thriving. It never got a lot of press so many people think it is dead or was always dead. It is funny because MMOs like EVE, PSO, and Everquest II get more attention while having smaller playerbases. Maybe it is the japanese / console thing.

To say there are a lot of superior titles on the market would be a pretty bold statement. MMOs haven't evolved much since Ultima Online, so it's not like you are getting a lot of difference between them. You don't even get much polish with new titles. True polish don't come from new releases they come from old releases with a lot of updates. FFXI has been around for a long time and has dev team that is clearly becoming more experienced and getting better at answering players' demands.

If nothing else, it is one of the few successful MMOs that hasn't been inspired by WoW. To put it bluntly, it is one of the few non-WoW clones that isn't a Korean grindfest.


The rabbit comment is true, the game has an incredibly boring beginning though much more so at launch then now... but I can see why someone would find it obnoxious. It is not so much that it insults the game, only that it has hardly anything to do with the topic on hand. Mentioning the game's age would be a better point to make. This is something I hope bloggers would come to understand... it's like "Hmmm, need two more sentences, what is the first thing that comes to mind?"

Actually, a good rule of thumb would be if the message you are trying to get across is "I have nothing to say about this", maybe nothing should be said after the facts.

There was also a class system of some sorts in it. I remember at the time rangers were popular and then they were gimped because they overpowered. White mages became useless and replaced by Red mages. Even the whole pld vs nin thing too.Certain jobs wouldn't get parties or would have to wait hours(dragoon) in order to level up.It's not really square's fault but it prevents players from excelling especially at endgame with the "wrong" job.

I had a 75 RNG/35 NIN.

ALL ON ONE CHARACTER. I loved that shit, having one character have a bunch of jobs instead of having different characters with different professions.

I'd go back if they had game cards, or if they had easy character recovery, or if there wasn't so much grinding, or...

Well as old as it may be, the game had one thing that still is keeping their huge fanbase hooked and that is style. For a MMO game that is as 8-9 years old, it has been one of the best due to the styling of the game and of course the fanbase.

Don't tell me about FF fanatics only play it because that is BS. I met people who never played a FF in their life or even a MMO, even hot milfs I got the pleasure to meet in rl.

So FF11 has probably one of the best styles in MMO ever. But like Nick said, its allot of grinding, some people like that and some detest it. I just wished they release the new one they been working for the past 4 years... Nothing out there calls my attention.

Coldbrand wrote on 11.22.2008: Uh, FFXI has like 500,000 subscribers. It isn't "going out".

Yeah, and at $12.95 a month, that's 6.5 million dollars. And if you have mules... Well, I have 15 mules, so I pay $27.95 a month. So you figure an average, maybe, of five mules for each character, that becomes around 9 million a month.

One thing I've read about is that the game might be made "offline playable" after the online play dies. For me, that would be great. I, for one, don't care for the level grinding, though I've been playing since January of 2005. I shunned the online game when it first came out because of a bunch of baseless assumptions I made: That people would be able to just log in, kill me, take all my stuff and leave me with nothing, over and over again. For some reason, I guess I assumed that many players would be like that, never stopping to consider that there would be rules programmed into the game to prevent that type of activity. As a result, I got a very late start on it, and I've been playing Final Fantasy games since the first one came out in America on the original Nintendo console. The only ones I haven't played are the handheld versions.

Necros wrote on 11.22.2008: Sounds to me like Nick just doesn't like monotonous grinding. Other people are free to do it if they dig that sort of thing.

I've actually changed the way I play the game. I now try to run it more like a business. I use it as a crafting game. That way I spend about 90% of my time leveling crafts and doing things to earn gil. I spend the other 10% of my time leveling jobs like Thief that aid in gil-earning, plus I level crafts. I've got Alchemy 100+2 on my main character, as well as subcrafts of Leather, Bonecrafting, Cooking, and Woodworking all to Lv.60, and I've got Cloth, Gold and Smithing in the 53-55 range. I've got a mule with Woodworking 80 (IIRC), and a Cooking mule with Lv.76 cooking.

My plan is to eventually get each crafting mule to Lv.100, assuming nothing happens in my life to pull me away from it. I continue this project with the idea in mind that another Final Fantasy MMORPG may surface, and that one I will be into on the first day it's available. I don't want to end up way behind like I did in FFXI.

dip wrote on 11.22.2008: I actually both loved and hated the game when I played it years ago. It had a pretty steep learning curve and was really (overly)punished the players sometime. But there was a lot that I loved about the game; things I enjoyed and thought were better done then WoW (only other MMMORPG I've ever played). I think I would definitely try out a new SE MMORPG but would hope to see a lot of improvements. Then again, I haven't played XI in ages so the game could have been improved a great deal since I last played it.

Yeah, the game is very punishing, and unforgiving. I've had more emotional breakdowns, angry cussing fits, and frustrations in that game than any other. Failing at endgame missions means a whole day of inconvenience for everyone, because all leave empty-handed and having made no progress in the game, and sometimes having lost experience points and levels. People must go out, get their experience points back, regroup and get 18+ people all aligned with their schedules and personal lives to try a mission again. Unforgiving and punishing is an understatement for this game. I guess the result, for me, has been a washing over of glory, accomplishment, satisfaction and a rush of euphoria that takes away the pain of past failures in the game. It makes success a full-body experience, not just some ho-hum accomplishment that means I'll get 3-4 other things I want this day. It means you got something you really wanted THIS WEEK. or even THIS MONTH.

Call me crazy, but in my opinion, any team of programmers that can put together a game that can balance such negative emotions with player loyalty to a known time vacuum is a truly skilled and brilliant team of programmers. I'd like to say something about wages, but I dunno. I heard it said one time, "What use is an artist if he's not starving in the galley?" Do poor game programmers who love their work, and can only afford to spend more time working at a project they feel love and devotion for make better programmers than one who takes the job because it pays a lot? Yes. :)

<ramble> Executives who demand short-term, immediate profits are the game destroyers. They don't see a game they love. They just love what it does for them: fills their pockets. Square-Enix seems to have a team of executives who have learned to balance profit and game quality. Probably long-term people who have learned about each others' trade enough to give the executives what they want while sacrificing as little as they can with the game. Giving a true programmer the authority to delegate tasks works a lot better than some guy who was hired to manage bodies. If the boss has to ask how long it'll take to program something, he has no business being the boss. </ramble>

Magesx posted on 11.22.2008: Ehh, I'll stick with WoW.

I tried WoW for a month. It gave me motion sickness. The players move too slowly in walk mode, too quickly in run mode. There is no acceleration when you move your character. You whiplash yourself into full speed running all at once, and you slam yourself to a stop when you stop running. Same thing when you pivot on your heel. In Final Fantasy XI, when you take off running from a stop, you actually accelerate. When you stop running, you decelerate, then stop. Same when you pivot. The lack of those game mechanics in WoW, I think, is what gave me motion sickness. I have to play in first-person or I can't steer my character. Also, when you "run" in FFXI, you seem to run more in scale with the objects around you. Like, in WoW, I'd run unrealistically fast past a building and be beyond it far more quickly than I could in real life. In Final Fantasy, you actually run at a more realistic pace. This also helps the game feel bigger than it really is. I think it takes about ten minutes to run across La Theine Plateau on foot. Probably a 20-minute run from San d'Oria to the closest town: Selbina, and that's without having to avoid aggrouchy (just coined a new word here today: (aggro + grouchy = aggrouchy) monsters, and they are "ouchy" when they attack low-levels. In WoW, it seemed like I could leave one town and be in the next in about 30-60 seconds. I think that'd give me motion sickness in real life. I've never had motion sickness at all in Final Fantasy XI. (I did get it from Deus Ex, though, even though it was rare...takes about an hour of WoW, and I'm so nauseated I can't even sit in my computer chair). Could have been FFXI withdrawal, too.

Shinu wrote on 11.22.2008: I dunno about this. Maybe i'm old-fashioned and weird, but i'd rather get a physical expension pack than that expension scenario thing.

I like physical expansions simply because here outside the city limits, we can't get DSL or cable internet, and dialup sucks. So my only option was to pay $70 a month for a satellite connection that only has a 1 mbps download, and 200 kbps upload, and I can only download 300 megabytes per 24 hours, except from 3am to 6am, when I can download without activating the Fair Access Policy restrictions. You know... satellite doesn't have the capacity. I think you can get a 6-megabit connection for like $300 a month. Last I heard, Cox Communications in Virginia beach had 15-megabit connections for $56 a month. -.-

bluexy posted on 11.22.2008: These aren't full fledged expansions sadly, they're just small 10 dollar content packs, so I wouldn't expect anything heavy like changes to existing mechanics.

True, but since collectively that's $30, just like a real expansion, I'd say that collectively, they'd add something to be desired. Since they want to keep people playing, and since new jobs always go over well with the existing fan base and which bring back old players, adding more jobs is no big deal. What they really need to rework, though, is the item storage system. The whole mog house thing might have been fine for the original game, but so much has been added. I like to store Rare/Ex items I end up with when I'm killing mobs with parties. Then when I'm bored, I take a look at all the Rare/Ex items I have stored and see if I can do any quests with them. I figure that was an easier approach to getting quests done that I might otherwise have to ask for help to finish. I'm all about being forethoughtful enough to be considerate enough of other players to keep what I find when I find it instead of tossing it, knowing that I'd need help to get another.

Muddy Waterz wrote on 11.22.2008: [i]I remember playing this game years ago. It was pretty good actually but it takes a long time to reach the level cap. (Is it still 75?) There's lots of cool people on it from my experience. A lot more mature than other mmos. The only flaws I can see is the constant grinding and the need for a party to do anything at all. If you don't have patience or have spare time don't get this game.

For those still playing. Is it still alive?[/i]

Level cap is still 75, but now there are merit points you earn after hitting 75. I did some calculations for red mage since that's my main. If I wanted to use all the merit points I can on the character level, and job level, I'd have to earn another 1.9 million experience points. Well, it only takes 845,350 experience points to cap your Lv.75 job. That includes the 44,000 you might want after hitting 75 so you'll have a huge buffer to let you die a lot without deleveling to 74. That said, getting Lv.75, then, is about 44% of what's require to max out your main job, if you want to consider your base stats (STR, DEX, etc...) as part of a job you're meriting. I really only want to merit RDM to be as much of a solo god as I can be, not spread my merits around to benefit multiple jobs. You can still merit more than one job, but things like skill with a weapon -- I can't max out my Sword or Dagger merits on RDM and also max out Archery and Marksmanship on Ranger. I've got to pick a few or spread the merits around to be a jack of all trades. Kind of cool, but while I've been a RDM75 for about a year now, I've only earned two merit points. I used one for an MP boost, and I used another for a boost in Enfeebling Magic. I want to merit spell interruption (good for soloers)

For example, you can only spend five merit points on STR, DEX, VIT, AGI, INT, MND and CHR. So you can raise five by one, or you can raise one by five or any combo. But to get those five points will cost you 30,000 experience points for the first (3 merit points), 60,000 for the second (6 merit points), then 90k, 90k, and 90k for the last three boosts. That's 360,000 experience points, and the equivalent of leveling from 1 to 60 (358,550 exp required). So it's true. When you level to 62, you're halfway to 75. I can spend 8 merit points on MP and HP, and you get 10 HP or MP per upgrade. That's 300,000 limit points (converts to 30 merit points) to max out your HP or MP. Is it worth 300,000 limit points (earned at the same rate as experience points) to get another 80MP? If I've nothing else to do.

On weapons, you have 20 upgrades, but only 8 can be applied to any one weapon. So I'll max out sword and dagger. That'll work for both RDM and THF, since I do want a Lv.75 THF. That's 525,000 more limit points to work on that. So far, just for weapons, base stats and HP/MP boost, we're up to 1,185,000 experience/limit points.

The comes your magic skill boosts. Maximum boosts are 16, 8 to any one magic skill. You'll need 420,000 experience points if you want to upgrade only two magic skills. (a little less if you spread them around, I think). Now that's 1,605,000 exp.

Now we get into meritable abilities that are job-specific. Most have an equivalent number of abilities that can be added or upgraded, so I'll continue with Red Mage. The Group 1 category, which adds a boost to elemental magic accuracy or knock 20 seconds off your Convert timer. It has a maximum combination of 10 boosts, with 5 being the max for any one. To get all ten boosts applied to two elements, you'd need 300,000 exp/limit points. Some red mages might spread it around. I probably will. If you spread it around the seven boostable traits, you can max out with 130,000 exp/limit points. I plan to use 4 on Convert, and 1 on each element, I think, so it'll cost me 180,000. 1,785,000.

Then there's the Group 2 boostable stuff. For Red Mage, these are magic spells that you cannot buy or get as a drop. You can only get them with merit points. Spells like Dia III, Slow II, Paralyze II, Phalanx II, Bio III, and Blind II. You can get the spell with the first three merit points, then upgrade the spell's accuracy for 4, then 5 merit points three more times for a combination of 10 boosts in the group. I think I want to get Paralyze II maxed, and get basics for Bio III, Paralyze II, Slow II, Dia III, and Blind II. That'll be 370,000, or totaling to 2,155,000 exp. Divide that by the number of experience points it takes to level to 75 (801,350), and you see that making your character as much of a god as you can will be like leveling your job to 75 2.69 times, and no time to 69 with anyone while you're doing it. I wasn't a leveling fool. It took me about 2 years to get RDM to 70. It took me a week to get from 70 to 75.

Anyway, I have taken a break from FFXI to play The Sims 2 and some other things. I tend to lose interest in FFXI when things aren't going quite as I planned--things aren't selling on the Auction House, profits are weak, progress is unsatisfying, and sometimes there's just so much I actually do need to get done in the game that I can't decide where to start first. Like, I spent a bunch of time farming and mining and working to make a big huge buttload of bolts to sell for lots of gil on the auction house. I have enough materials stored away from leveling crafts to make a few million gil with bolts and arrows, but actually taking the time to craft them all is a mind-numbing experience and something I must do with the TV on or I crack and must go on hiatus.

Damaeus