Final Fantasy XI is different from all of the other games in the series in that it is an online role-playing game, meant to be played simultaneously by a large number of people. Otherwise known as a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. This was the game that introduced me to the genre, and even though I don’t play it anymore, it still holds a bit of a special place for me.
The story and scope of this game, as is the case with MMORPGs, is absolutely huge. It has to be, you’re expected to pony up a monthly fee to continue to play this game. You can kind of think of it like a service that you pay to access. But, like I said, there is a story, but it’s not important in the beginning, all you need to know is that there are humanoid ‘beastmen’ outside the main towns and you have help your home nation in the war effort.
So, what do you actually do in the game? The main thing you’ll be doing is killing monsters. Gather a group of friends together and head out to the Killing Fields and start slaughtering away. End enough of their lives and you’ll get stronger.
Other things you’ll be doing in this game include mastering a tradeskill, and… gathering materials to support your tradeskill.
There were a lot of things to like about this game, the jobs your character could do (kind of like a class in other role playing games) are lifted out of other Final Fantasy games, and there are references to the previous games all over the place.
The classes all work well together, and each one was pretty fun to play, but pretty quickly I started to see some problems. Your first 10 levels or so are where you learn the absolute bare minimum about your class will pass by extremely quickly. Then the forced grouping comes into play. Much past the level 10 mark and you can’t do much by yourself. So you have to find a group of people to help you out. The problem I had was that I really only liked grouping with people I knew because most of the people I would find in random groups were pretty worthless.
If you do manage to find a group of people that don’t suck, then you have to go find a spot to camp. Then you elect one person to go find a monster, bring it back to camp, and you work together to kill it, gaining experience points. Compounding the problem is that it takes huge amounts of experience points to gain a level. You’ll be sitting in the same spot for hours upon hours killing dozens and dozens of the same monster over and over again.
The progression in this game is so slow, in fact, that in the seven or so months I played it I only managed to get less than halfway up the ladder, and each rung was further apart as I ascended. In short, I got bored. The game started to feel like work, and I don’t really like the idea of paying people to let me work, in my free time. So I hung up my character and waited a couple of months for World of Warcraft to hit, which we’ll talk about another day.
[...] mentioned that I played Final Fantasy XI for a time. I really liked the concept, but ran into some issues. Mostly going to school full time, [...]
[...] the in-between time after I played Final Fantasy XI and before I played World of Warcraft I got a whiff of another MMORPG that was under development. [...]