Preamble

I want you to look at the Tweet above. Seriously, look at it for a long minute. Look at it, and understand that every time I start a new Final Fantasy series, I get at least four or five PMs asking when I'm going to cover Final Fantasy XIV. It happens every single time. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. And look, if you are one of those people, I want you to know I love you from the bottom of my heart. Sincerely, I appreciate the admiration and support you have shown me over the years. I applaud your dedication to direct me into playing a "good" Final Fantasy game for once. And you know what? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I did you all dirty like this. No one asked for this, and I deeply regret this decision.

Alright, so, let's try to break down my thought process in playing Final Fantasy XI. I generally am not a fan of MMORPGs, so I'll just come out and say that. The handful of MMORPGs I have invested time into are long dead (i.e., City of Heroes and Star Wars Galaxies). In each case, I have gone through the five stages of grief while watching an MMO I loved die due to poor management or developer disinterest. I have experienced watching thousands of hours of my hard work disappear due to a corporate suit flipping a switch. These experiences permanently soured me on the genre in general, and until recently, I have managed to avoid playing an MMORPG for the better part of ten years. That is until I decided to play Final Fantasy XI this July.

All of this aside, I want you to know that I am not some "newcomer" to MMORPGs. I caught the tail end of AOL's Neverwinter Nights, dabbled in Ultima Online, and wasn't above playing EverQuest or Runescape while Final Fantasy XI was at the "peak" of its popularity. I also have an understanding of how MMORPGs during this time operated. I am familiar with the byzantine quest design of MMOs and the absolute time-sinks they were, and still are, to a certain extent. I understand complaining about picking up five tufts of bee pollen on a ten percent drop rate makes me sound like a crybaby. I get it. But you know what? Fuck it. It is not the early 2000s anymore, and I value my limited time on this smoldering wasteland of a planet far more than I did when I was a youngling.

Finally, I guess it is high time to mention the four games I truly dread playing for this retrospective on the Final Fantasy franchise. The first, Final Fantasy III, is a game I find so mechanically punishing that I cannot appreciate it even as a historical touchstone of the franchise's past. The second game is Final Fantasy Type-0, a shitshow I have attempted to play on three occasions. All three times, I came away with the absolute worst nausea I have ever experienced after playing a non-VR video game. The third is Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, which is not only an awful playing game but the doyenne of everything I hate about Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase's management of the franchise. The fourth game wasFinal Fantasy XI Online, and now that I have played sixty plus hours of it, I can safely say my hesitance was justified. So, without further ado, let's talk about playing Final Fantasy XI in the year of our Lord, 2020.

Part 1: If You Thought The Final Fantasy XIV Account System Was Bad

Ask any Final Fantasy fan what they know about Final Fantasy XI, and their response will likely boil down to one of three possible answers. They will either say:

1. It's an MMORPG from the 2000s.
2. Final Fantasy XIV is better.
3. FFXI has Shantotto.

Ask these people to name a specific gameplay mechanic or overarching narrative thread, and they will likely struggle. However, two facets of Final Fantasy XI have reached a nigh mythical status among the MMORPG community. First are the game's notorious bosses, some of whom have gone down as the most malicious bosses in video game history. Second is the arduous process you have to go through to create an account to play Final Fantasy XI. No joke, it took me a solid three hours to complete every step needed to construct a proper FFXI account. By the time I had, I was so emotionally spent that I did not play the game until the following day. If you want a "taste" of what I had to go through to make this blog possible, go to Final Fantasy XI's Steam page and look at how many orange "WARNING" notifications highlight potential compatibility issues between PlayOnline and Steam.

Speaking of which, let's talk about PlayOnline. The fact Square-Enix has yet to merge Final Fantasy XI and XIV's account systems into a single destination blows my mind. For those wondering, PlayOnline is a husk of what it once was in the past. The system once hosted game guides, mobile apps, minigames, on top of launching Final Fantasy XI. Nowadays, all it does is boot up Final Fantasy XI and allow you to access the PlayOnline exclusive email client, which was shuttered last year. I genuinely found PlayOnline delightful for two specific reasons. For one thing, it's a beautiful time-capsule into what the internet looked like circa the turn of the century. The UI looks like it was pulled from the Geocities web design template, and the vast majority of the homepage is unusable "dead space." Finally, the music for PlayOnline features some all-time BANGERS!

Unfortunately, we now need to talk about the laborious process of creating the FOUR necessary accounts to play Final Fantasy XI. You heard that correct, outside of your Steam account, Final Fantasy XI requires you to register FOUR separate accounts under your government name! And before you ask why I'm playing the Steam version, be aware, Square-Enix's dedicated launcher for FFXI is fucking awful! First things first, you start by buying the "Ultimate Collection Seekers Edition" on Steam, and after downloading the game, it prompts you to create a Square-Enix account. After establishing this account, you have to connect it with your Steam purchase to "activate" the game and its dozens of expansion packs. This step may not sound like much, but you have to input seven to eight one-time-use passcodes sent to you via email to complete this step, and as a result, it took me a solid hour.

Upon linking your Steam account to your Square-Enix account, you now need to create a PlayOnline profile. To set-up this profile, you have to flip, ONCE AGAIN, back and forth between your email client and your Square-Enix account to input a series of one-time-use passcodes to associate your Square-Enix and Steam accounts with your PlayOnline profile. On top of that, your PlayOnline account is different from your Square-Enix account, and your PlayOnline password follows a different protocol and set of rules. So, for those of you still with me, to play this game today, you first log into your Steam account, download the game, boot the game's .exe file, input your Square-Enix account and password, click and boot up PlayOnline, input your PlayOnline account and password, navigate PlayOnline and find the Final Fantasy XI application icon, boot up Final Fantasy XI A SECOND TIME, locate your Final Fantasy XI character and profile, and FINALLY start the game. This process takes about five to seven minutes, and YOU HAVE TO DO THIS EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME! EVERY GODDAMN TIME!

For those wondering, PlayOnline was a multi-media spanning initiative Square-Enix hoped would direct PC users to buy directly from their website. Obviously, the effort failed, but it was the progenitor of services like uPlay and Origin. However, its failure also means 90% of PlayOnline's utility is dead forever. The guides you could at one point access have all been removed. The minigames, like Tetra Master, have all been shit-canned. The only thing this launcher is used for today is Final Fantasy XI. Curiously, while Final Fantasy XI continues to receive updates and new content, PlayOnline has not been updated or improved in eighteen years. Fun fact, by establishing a PlayOnline profile Square-Enix automatically creates a PlayOnline email account for you. Even though the service ended last year, the icon to this email client is still visible on PlayOnline, and you can even read emails welcoming you to Final Fantasy XI by the game's original dev team.

Part 2: Getting This Game To Run On Modern Technology Was A Nightmare

While it took me a solid day to create an account for this game, getting it to run on modern technology was equally soul-crushing. Even after installing and re-installing the game and PlayOnline, it would not boot for me, and if it did, it would immediately crash at the menu screen. The game is so poorly optimized for modern aspect ratios and computer systems that I had to go into the game's "systems" folder and turn on a legacy feature that allowed it to output on any monitor greater than 1080p. For whatever reason, the game defaults to 640 x 480p, and you have to use a separate utility, COMPLETELY REMOVED FROM THE GAME, to change that. That's right; you cannot change your audio, UI, or video settings within the game. Instead, you need to use an application to have Final Fantasy XI look even marginally pleasing to the eyes.

I want each of you to know I am not joking when I say this: this game has the worst .exe file I have ever seen in my entire life. By default, it plays in fullscreen mode. The issue here is that the game disables all of your function keys when you play it fullscreen. It also overrides the Alt, Shift, Ctrl, and Windows Home key because they can accidentally enable applications that could trigger the game's termination protocol. Which if you were wondering, the game's .exe file is designed to be the only active application running on your computer and will self-terminate if you attempt to run any other application in the background. Also, for whatever reason, the game forces whatever monitor you're using to reset itself to 640 x 480p. So, in the event it crashes while you play it, you will have a nightmare of a time trying to reset your monitor back to its optimal settings. I say all of this to suggest you have to run this game windowed if you don't want it to look like trash! That said, the fact this game costs $30, WITH A MONTHLY FEE TO BOOT, is downright criminal!

Even then, when I ran the game windowed at 1280 x 1024, on a 1080 Ti, the game looked like it was made on a potato. To its defense, it was originally designed to run on a first-generation PS2, which, in case you have forgotten, launched without a hard disk drive. Those PS2s ran on a custom made CPU that clocked in at around 294 MHz and relied on 32 MBs of RAM. Additionally, when Final Fantasy XI launched on PS2, it required the optional HDD attachment. Fun fact, because this attachment never found itself outside of Japan and North America, Final Fantasy XI did not officially release in Europe until its launch on 360 and PC. With that in mind, you have to understand that God wanted Final Fantasy XI to run on a PS2. And as a result, the minimum system specs of the launch PS2 continue to hold back what this game is allowed to do. Even though the PS2 version shut down in 2016, the staff working on this game have left the game's baseline architecture untouched. Theoretically, all of the content in this game, including its expansion packs, could still run on a PS2, and trust me, it fucking shows!

Before we jump into the actual game, let's return to that legacy application I mentioned a few paragraphs ago because HOLY SHIT, this thing is its own little slice of Hell! As mentioned earlier, if you intend not to have this game looking like your monitor has vaseline smeared all over it, you are going to spend a considerable amount of time playing around with the sliders in this Configuration Tool. Now, a game having a configuration tool that runs separately from the main executable file is not unheard of, especially with one from this era. Furthermore, you'll find your standard shadow sliders and video settings that need no explanation. Nevertheless, some of the sliders found in this configuration tool are bonkers. The size of the UI font, number of simultaneous sound effects, and "smoothness of the foliage animations" all need to be set using this tool and cannot be changed within the game. With something like the UI font size, you no visual clue what you are changing, and you end up continually jumping between the game and this configuration tool before finding your happy middle ground.

Then we have the goddamn "Legacy Settings." You have to go into this configuration tool to enable the ability to use your mouse. Otherwise, you will be playing this game using only the keyboard and arrow keys! To add insult to injury, you also need to click a box to optimize your game for modern graphics cards. If you do not click this box, then the game's refresh rate defaults to a CRT monitor standard during the PS2's lifespan. Yup, by default, this game runs at a 60Hz refresh rate, and you have to force it to run any higher by clicking a box! This game is Hell. It is pure Hell.

Part 3: The Character Creation Tools Fucking Suck

My third day with Final Fantasy XI saw me attempting to create a character, selecting a starting hub world, and grinding out my first five levels. On paper, these goals sound relatively straightforward. However, in execution, these tasks proved to be almost as emotionally and physically draining as my past two days with Final Fantasy XI. First, creating a character fucking sucks. It sucks so much shit; it is genuinely funny. There are five races to select from, and each has different starting stats. Unfortunately, your character creation tools are incredibly limited, and the game does a terrible job of explaining the importance of several of your starting choices. For those wondering, I ended up playing as a Mithra Warrior, and before you ask, yes, I played a "vanilla" strength-based class with a dexterity-based race. But as we will discuss later, none of this honestly matters anymore.

Let's start with the shitty character creator. Again, the game's PS2 origins are the primary reason for my issues here. However, the fact no improvements have been made to the character creation screen since the game's launch is simply bizarre. Each starting race has less than a dozen different face types or hair models to select from, and you cannot customize any of the character animations. Worse, while you are attempting to change your character's physical appearance, they animate in a random backdrop. For example, while I was comparing two haircuts, I had to wait for my avatar to stop performing cartwheels before I had a clear idea of which style I wanted to commit to my character. And before you ask, I had to wait a solid two minutes before this animation sequence was fully complete.

The bare-bones character creation screen poses two existential crises for Final Fantasy XI. The first problem is how all of the game's post-launch content has wholly undermined the significance of your starting race and class choices. When Final Fantasy XI was first released, it placed a large emphasis on raiding and party creation. Consequently, your initial class was a selection made after long conversations with party members and friends, and even then, you had to double-check the viability of your long-term build plans. Nowadays, none of that shit matters, and there are sub-systems upon sub-systems that help players circumnavigate the massively multiplayer requirement of Final Fantasy XI. Don't get me wrong. Final Fantasy XI is a "better" experience when played in groups. Nevertheless, as we will discuss shortly, playing the game by yourself has improved MASSIVELY, and this paradigm shift happened out of necessity.

Unfortunately, these much-needed reforms pose an existential crisis as some of the starting jobs have lost large portions of their in-game utility. For example, years ago, the game introduced a novel "temporary" item system that provides loot drops that grant healing items during questing. The downside of this system is that much of the White Mage's usefulness has been reduced. The same goes for the Thief starting class as the game has increased the drop rate of all its loot and made lockpicking incredibly easy; thus, the need to have a character that can steal or mug is non-existent. As a result of these changes, today's Final Fantasy XI values DPS and damage dealing magical classes above all. Likewise, it is virtually impossible to start a new player group in the game. As a result, running a White Mage, Thief, or Bard is a downright miserable experience as you will likely be playing solo. Finally, and we will discuss this shortly, there's a new summoning system. This mechanic allows you to use an army of AI companions to perform support classes with the ease of a button click.

The second issue I have with Final Fantasy XI's character creation suite is that it is entirely mechanics driven. For those of you who play video games to see your stats go up, that might not make a whole lot of sense. However, with MMORPGs, I feel part of the genre's appeal is role-playing. Now, I'm not suggesting it is impossible to role-play in Final Fantasy XI or that the game's current or former player-base doesn't take RPing seriously. Nonetheless, Final Fantasy XI does not sufficiently communicate how your character choices connect with its greater world. When my Mithra warrior finally phased into existence, there was very little pomp and circumstance, and I had no idea what was expected of me as a player. Was I a freedom fighter attempting to resist an oppressive regime? Was the world torn by a continent-spanning war where I needed to pick a side? Was there a universe ending evil lurking in the shadows? None of this was communicated coherently, and worse, the game struggles to introduce its near two decades worth of expansion content on top of its mainline storyline.

Part 4: The Start Of This Game Is Overwhelming And Confusing

Real quick, let's return to the issue of character creation in Final Fantasy XI once more as it poses another problem: THIS GAME IS FUCKING EXPENSIVE! The basic service fee for using a single character is $11.95 per month. Worth mentioning, and I cannot preface this point enough, for $3 per month more, I could have been playing Final Fantasy XIV. Any other characters incur an additional $1 per month, and you can add two further "Wardrobe Slots" for an extra $2.00 per month each. Also, you have to buy a copy of the game for ~$30! Luckily, new players get one month of free service. In total, my three months with Final Fantasy XI, including my purchase on the game, came to about $54. So, when Square-Enix came forward and said Final Fantasy XI is the most profitable game they have ever made, I do not doubt them.

I mention all of this as a way to discuss some of your opening choices. Should you pick an under-optimized race or class, or possibly pick the wrong hub world, you have to pony up an extra dollar. Nonetheless, let's talk about the server situation with Final Fantasy XI. The game has well-maintained servers, and while you are creating your character, you are forced to pick one of the game's three hub worlds. Not knowing any better, I elected to become a citizen of the Kingdom of San d'Oria. The land of San d'Oria is a more "traditional" fantasy castle backdrop with barren fields and mountain ranges populated by hostile wildlife. Regardless, much like the starting classes, the significance of your initial location has been massively neutered with the game's introduction of new post-launch sub-systems.

For those unaware, at launch, it was a fucking pain in the ass to travel between the three major kingdoms of Vana'diel (i.e., San d'Oria, Windurst, and Bastok). Your first option was to hoof it by foot, which initially meant instant death as the game's original difficulty balance was downright cruel. You could also pay to hitch a ride on an airship, but the license to do so requires you to be level thirty and necessitates a painfully long side quest. Finally, you could seek out a Chocobo mount, but that entails an incredibly annoying side quest in which you spend DAYS trying to feed a temperamental Chocobo. Since launch, Final Fantasy XI has introduced a fast-travel system. However, it is finicky and limited enough that you still need to travel a significant portion of the vast and vapid wastelands of Vana'diel on foot.

At any cost, my first impressions of Final Fantasy XI were far from positive. Visually, even after spending hours adjusting its settings, the game confronts you that it is a PS2 game right from the get-go. The draw distance is laughable even on modern technology. Somewhat humorously, the ground texture quality is so bad that I could identify the stitching to its geometry on my monitor. Likewise, every location is afflicted by a "fog" that is indicative of a fifth or sixth generation console game. Finally, and I understand I sound like a broken record about this issue, but because this game was designed for CRTs, there's no good aspect ratio to play this game today. I know there are "fan mods" out there that apply HD textures to the game, but the ones I tested out made the game look even worse.

The lifeless textures and lack of visual fidelity can be forgiven considering Final Fantasy XI is both old enough to vote and has lasted longer than the Confederate States of America. What I cannot fathom is how haphazardly it introduces its main storyline and its umptillion expansion packs. As a case study, let's review my first twenty minutes with Final Fantasy XI. First, I got the game's introductory cutscene and was directed to seek a government official for my first quest. As I explored San d'Oria, I triggered TWO cutscenes for the game's expansion packs and a tutorial for the game's "Records of Eminence" system. And while I aimlessly tried to find the consulate of San d'Oria, I was prompted to: pick a guild, take up a quest to become a paladin, put something for sale in the auction house, and buy furniture for my "Mog House." All of this happened in TWENTY MINUTES!

Part 5: The Menu-Based Combat System Is Awful

With my head ready to explode, I wanted to leave the castle and see what the world had in store for me. Therefore, when a random city guard told me to kill worms for three hours, I happily obliged them as I desperately wanted a simple task to get my feet wet. In doing so, I discovered a kludgy, slow, pedantic menu-based combat system that was no goddamn fun to play. I understand many of you would point out that the mechanics of MMOs rarely get one's blood pumping. And you know what, I'm pretty open to that suggestion as I gravitate towards the MMOs that allow me to RP and vicariously live through luscious environments with larger-than-life characters. Be that as it may, the combat in Final Fantasy XI is so slowly-paced that I felt like I was waiting for my dial-up modem to boot.

The biggest issue with Final Fantasy XI's gameplay is that it uses the mainline games' menu-based combat system. Attacking with a weapon, magical spell, or summon all require the player to fan through a myriad of menu tabs and select the prompt or move they want. In a turn-based JRPG, this isn't that big of a deal as the player has plenty of "wait time" to mull over their options. In an MMORPG running in real-time, fanning through these menus causes every battle to slow to a crawl. Sure, this game has hotkeys and macros, but this game also has the worst macro UI I have ever seen. Nonetheless, even with these supports, every attack functions using a modified ATB waiting system that takes FOREVER to queue up your attacks during your first dozen levels. On top of that, chasing down enemies is always a pain as the targeting system is downright broken.

Alright, so, level with me for a bit. Let's say you see a little rabbit you want to murdalize. If it starts running away from you, and you have already queued up to strike it, your character will chase after it like a goober until it lands an attack. The issue here is that most enemies do not engage in combat until AFTER you have landed a move on them, which makes grinding for loot groan-inducing. Equally frustrating, once an enemy engages you in battle, it is virtually impossible to shake them off unless you phase into a different environment. This point is incredibly irritating when you start encountering enemy mages or archers who can attack you from yards away. In this case, you'll often spend whole minutes trying to figure out who is attacking you and from where.

When it comes to the game's use of the traditional Final Fantasy ATB system, honestly, I'm not too fond of it. The cooldowns on every useful ability are insane. Every class has a once-a-day ability, which now is based on in-game time, but many moons ago was based on real-time. As a Warrior, I had buffs that allowed me to draw aggro, increase my strength stat, land a flurry of critical hits, and buff my defense. Unfortunately, the duration of these abilities always felt too short, and the cooldowns astronomical. To illustrate, the Warrior's "Mighty Strike" ability converts every attack in a forty-five-second span into a critical hit. However, the cooldown to this ability is one hour IN REAL TIME!YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR AN HOUR FOR A FORTY-FIVE SECOND BUFF!I SHIT YOU NOT! Other skills like drawing aggro, which is a fundamental part of MMORPGs, only last thirty seconds! And before you ask, no, leveling your characters does NOT improve these buffs!

The final culprits for why this game plays so slow are its Combat and Weapon Skills. All classes in this game have a weapon proficiency grade. For example, my Warrior started with an "A+" proficiency grade with Great Axes. However, while a class being proficient in a weapon provides some baseline buffs, every equipable weapon still needs to be leveled individually. To return to my Warrior's Great Axe skill, despite axes being its favored weapon, I still needed to spend HOURS grinding to avoid my character missing every other hit while using their lovely ax. The "Combat Skills" system is designed to address this problem as you unlock new special moves as you level up your weapon skills. However, like everything else in this game, the recharge rate on these abilities is insanely slow, and the "banking system" for attack commands is ass-backward. The result here is what you might predict; it takes hours of power grinding before you deal decent damage with any particular weapon. Worse, if you decide to change your character's job later down the road, you are back to level one with whatever their new job's weapon skills might be.

Part 6: Why The Fuck Is There No World Map Or Quest Markers?

While a lot has changed in Final Fantasy XI, certain aspects of it reek of MMORPG design circa the early 2000s. For instance, there are no quest or NPC markers. Absent also is a mini-map. Mercifully, there is a quest log where you can keep track of your active quests and challenges. Still, your only hints about where you need to go are the game's bizarre rectangular survey system wherein every plot in the world is given an alphanumeric code. To say it is "easy" to get lost in Final Fantasy XI is an understatement. Getting lost is a certainty. To illustrate, after the game's introductory cinematic, Final Fantasy XI plops you in a plaza and asks you to figure everything out on your own. It doesn't guide you in any way despite some initial pretense of storytelling, and in my case, it took DAYS to figure out where the plot-threads even were.

One of the first things I noticed when I entered San d'Oria was the NPCs' lack of markers. There's nothing to differentiate the NPCs that repeat useless flavor text and those who are lynchpins to questlines. As a result, unless you consult a guide, it is incredibly easy to miss out on whole portions of Final Fantasy XI's worldbuilding and early opportunities to pick up quests. Likewise, you'll often find yourself interacting with a random NPC and inexplicably initiating a mission. In my case, I talked to a little girl next to a flower bed and then started a five-step questline to find her a flower. The reward of which, mind you, was gaining the ability to exit from any zone within the city of San d'Oria from my house. Yup, a fundamental quality-of-life feature is hidden behind a random side-quest where you buy a little girl, who looks indistinct from everyone else, a flower. This example perfectly highlights how you lack half of the tools and features the game intends to provide you when you start! And because this is Final Fantasy XI, you are the one who has to seek out virtually every citizen in a town and see if they can unlock these tools. The maps to the surrounding environments have to be purchased by an unmarked NPC as well, and Lord have mercy on your soul if you attempt a questline without them!

There's another fundamental issue with Final Fantasy XI's steadfast refusal to take cues from modern MMORPG design. The lack of markers and other contextual clues makes it downright impossible to follow anything the game tries to accomplish in its story. This issue is especially the case with storyline characters as they primarily exist during the starts and ends of quests. NPCs like Ayame, Prince Trion, Aldo, and Gilgamesh do not interact with the player enough for their character traits and quirks to solidify with the player. It is next to impossible even to discern them from the rest of the world. Characters like Shantotto are the exception to this rule because they have one-off expansion packs and showcase incredibly unique speech patterns. But when I was interacting with the princes of San d'Oria, and they pantomimed precisely like the rest of the NPCs in the game, I can safely say I forgot their names and character arcs within minutes. Which is a shame because, as we will discuss, the underlying story in Final Fantasy XI is legitimately well-done.

The lack of a mini-map is especially heinous considering how large the environments can be and how involved the quests usually play. One of the first quests you get if you start at San d'Oria is to fetch one unit of Orcish Mail Scales at King Ranperre's Tomb. The hardest part of this mission is NOT the enemies that swarm you at the tomb. No, the most challenging part of this quest is staying awake as you fjord river after river and trek through open plain after open plain to get to the mission's starting location. But, to return to the issue of the game's apparent lack of a mini-map, exploring new environments in Final Fantasy XI is downright infuriating! After every turn or pivot, I had to stop and pull up the main map to verify I was going in the right direction. To add insult to injury, the game doesn't even allow you to set custom mission markers! As a result, you have to refer back to the game's quest log and use the alphanumeric location numbers to identify your destinations.

None of this is to suggest the game features a "minimalistic" interface or UI. As my dozens of screen captures hopefully show, it does not. However, it's shocking how little of the player's screen is useful information. Obviously, the bottom quarter of the screen is occupied by the traditional "action log" found in every MMORPG ever made. What I find horrendous about Final Fantasy XI is that character dialogue is not color-coded or conveyed in a different, more prominent field. Shit, using speech and thought bubbles would be preferable to reading through mountains of text in the action log. To illustrate, while I was watching a story cutscene involving Shantotto, the game interrupted her lines of dialogue to inform me that my "quickening" and experience point buffs had worn off. The game does a terrible job teaching the player what any of the shit on their screen means. It was not until much later when I realized "TP" translated to my ability to use Class and Weapon Skills, and this meter builds up across all battles. Finally, and this point drove me bonkers, there's a difference between "temporary" loot from downed enemies and the items you buy from merchants. However, the game does not differentiate between these two types of articles and instead globs them together on the same menu screen!

Part 7: The Mission and Quest Design Made Me Question My Sanity

The contrast between the original and newer quests is stark. The older missions stick out like a sore thumb as their design reek of a long-gone era. I completed all of the tasks you get if you pick San d'Oria as your starting location, not out of love, but spite. The game forces you to refer back to your map and quest log with the earlier quests, and almost all of them boil down to fetching items from dungeons. Even then, all these missions give you is a name and a cardinal coordinate in a far-off location. In these situations, the game expects you to take notes as it RARELY repeats proper nouns. In particular, the game's instancing requires a specific set of steps to be completed before triggering some quests. On top of that, you have no idea what your rewards are until after you complete missions. Given the endless amounts of "balancing" the game has experienced over the years, there is a high likelihood your rewards are entirely pointless.

Speaking of pointless bullshit, Final Fantasy XI's notorious crafting and guild system still exist as they did when the game launched, but both have been massively de-emphasized over the years. If you want, you can go on long-winded quests to pick up raw materials and refine those materials into embers and ores that can be melted into the game's best sets of armor and weapons. However, with the introduction of "Unity Compacts," players can now outright buy the best equipment in the game using credits acquired through the completion of quests. Another unforgettable trip down memory lane is the game's auction house, where I was amazed to see people still trying to make a killing selling quest-specific drops and materials. When I encountered a quest involving me collecting four bee pollen units, I attempted to buy the item from the auction house but found the lowest asking price to be 10,000 Gil. Which, if you are wondering, is hilarious because the game changed the drop rate for that item by orders of magnitude.

Before we jump into the "nitty-gritty" about the general quest design, I want to share one more pet peeve. The in-game quest log is a nightmare to navigate, and it has become worse over time. However, the real issue is that it does not update in response to you completing steps. For example, when the game tasked me to deliver a shield from the Windurst embassy, upon giving the item to a foreign diplomat, at no point did the mission log change to remind me to return to Windurst. Instead, it still read the same generic quest description telling me to deliver a shield. That made remembering where the starting embassy was harder than it needed to be. Things are ten times worse with the missions and challenges as the game does not have any in-combat cues indicating your progress with killing enemies or picking up loot. Rather, the game expects you to pause your activities, fiddle through its menu, and physically check where your progress stands.

The lack of updates and notifications is a fundamental shortcoming as the quests and missions in Final Fantasy XI often require an involved series of steps to complete. Take, for example, "The Rescue Drill," the fourth story mission you attempt at San d'Oria. First, you need to check if you have enough "renown" to receive the task, and this stat is hidden in a nigh impossible to find character traits screen. If you do not have enough renown, you need to sell crystals to a specific San d'Orian guard who has no notable markers to differentiate him from the non-questline guards. Then, after starting the quest, you need to travel to the "La Theine Plateau," which is two environments away from your quest's starting position. The process of going from the guard who initiates the quest to the plateau, without teleports or mounts, takes about fifteen to twenty minutes with a moderate amount of combat thrown into the mix. Keep in mind, after reaching the area where the quest is performed, unless you have a teleport scroll, you have to travel back the same route to "cash-in" your quest. For those keeping track, just walking between two endpoints IN ONE QUEST takes about thirty to forty minutes!

Now, let's use "The Rescue Drill" as a bit of a case study on how FUCKED the quest design is in this game. First, Galaihaurat, the person you first need to track down to initiate the proper quest, is far away from any of his goons that you need to interact with to complete the task at hand. Then, you talk to Equesobillot, Deaufrain, Vicorpasse, Augevinne, Yaucevouchat, Laurisse, and Narvecaint to gather enough information about a missing member of their party. If you fail to talk to all of these characters, the next part of the mission will not initiate, and predictably, they are all miles away from each other. Eventually, you make your way into a cave and find their missing friend to discover he wants a sword he left with one of the NPCs outside. The game then rolls a die to determine who that person is, and does not tell you ANYTHING! Rather, you go around and interact with every NPC and see who has the sword. In my case, I had to go back to Galaihaurat and backtrack again to the asshole in the cave. Then, I needed to talk to their commander to pick up a certificate showing I had completed the mission, which I needed to show to the guard at San d'Oria before I was FINALLY done with the task.

Part 8: Everything They Have Added To The Game Post-Launch Is BONKERS CRAZY!

Final Fantasy XI has had its fair share of post-launch content. Some of the last games to release on the PS2 were, in fact, expansion packs for this game. As impressive as that might sound, the issue is that you often watch different eras of Final Fantasy XI stand side by side one another. Despite the current design team making the concerted effort to provide efficient ways to grind and gain levels, they haven't removed any of the old quests and enemy encounters. For shits and giggles, I wailed away on ten or twelve land worms like it was 2002 and gained a whopping three levels after thirty minutes of hard work. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, you often trigger expansion packs and new content by accident. To illustrate, when I entered Jeuno for the first time, I triggered a nigh fifteen-minute cutscene upon entering the level's harbor. As impressive as I found the cutscene, it was wildly disorienting and caused me to lose my place with my initial quest. Also, all of the expansion packs ARE FUCKING HARD!

What I now wish to discuss are the dozens of post-launch mechanics that have been grafted onto Final Fantasy XI. The most notable of these systems are "Trusts" or the game's new summoning system. As the game's community plummeted with the shuttering of old platforms and advent of more recent and better MMORPGs, Final Fantasy XI finally threw a bone to solo players in 2011. "Trusts," as they are called, allow players to summon a computer-controlled companion that assists them in their activities while questing and exploring the world. The summons are in-game doppelgangers of quest-givers and storyline NPCs, and as expected, provide plenty of funning about and hilarious hijinks. These trusts enable players to summons bards, white mages, paladins, and other classes without needing to worry about finding real interested people still playing the game. Unfortunately, it is a system hampered by the game's terrible pathfinding and "wanting" artificial intelligence.

Subsequently, a new challenge system called "Records of Eminence" allows you to power level in record time. This system helped me grow more accustomed to Final Fantasy XI's combat than the actual story-based missions. However, this system is bolted onto the original game without disturbing it. In fact, it adds extra menus to the game's already confusing mess of a UI. In some ways playing Final Fantasy XI is far less user friendly than it was in 2002. You spend minutes upon end micromanaging pages upon pages of quests and challenges with no idea if what you are doing is genuinely helping you play the game more efficiently! Worse, none of the game's essential vocabulary is explained in any way, shape, or form. It wasn't until much later that I realized "Quests" and "Missions" were completely different and had no connection with one another.

Last but not least, we have the THREE distinct forms of fast-traveling in the game! First, every city in Vana'diel has Save Crystals, which you can use to teleport to different sections of that specific location. Additionally, any of these crystals can be designated as your "Home Point," which you will instantly travel to upon your death. Next, we have the Instant Warp scrolls you can pick up from a Conquest Overseer. These NPCs direct you to collect "Conquest Points" by completing quests and performing certain worldwide actions. These scrolls are incredibly helpful as they can instantly take you back to a single designated "Home Point." Finally, there's the Unity Concord system, which allows you to spend guild points to travel to any story-specific location. And I haven't even talked about how the city of Adoulin has its own rune-based traveling system that only exists there and nowhere else in the game! While these systems make traveling the world of Final Fantasy XI ten times easier, they also have system-specific currencies removed from the game's pre-existing currency and EXP systems. So, hopefully, you enjoy looking at spreadsheets to determine how much of any currency you need, because that's going to happen!

Part of me wishes to point out how "difficulty" can bring together a sense of community in MMORPGs. Everything about Final Fantasy XI's design that sounds archaic brought people together and formed friendships and relationships that still exist today. People needed each other's help out of necessity because the game doesn't tell you shit and actively punishes you for playing it solo. It's cruel on paper, but the game's design forced people to seek interactions and form social networks organically. There's also an element of nostalgia whenever one butts against Final Fantasy XI's byzantine structure. When I publicly complained about needing to collect bee pollen for a quest on social media, I got several replies attempting to comfort me by calling the mission a Final Fantasy XI "baptism." Stuff people complained about back in the day is part of the reason why it is so fondly remembered, and that is worth remarking upon.

Part 9: The Interface And UI Make Me Want To Puke!

In an earlier section of this blog, I talked about how the menu-based combat system causes even the banalest of encounters to slow to a crawl. I cannot emphasize enough how this menu-based system colors every part of this game to a fault. Every interaction, task, mission, quest, or action will require you to futz around aimlessly with this awful UI. Take, for example, the maps in this game. They are all terrible. They are low-res pseudo paper maps that do not even display your character. No arrow shows you where you need to complete one of the game's millions of fetch quests. Therefore, when in unfamiliar environments, you frequently have to stop to pull up your map and fiddle with the menu system to bring up the correct map transparency.

Another example of the game's fucked up design is its chests and coffers, which you encounter whenever you get loot. The treasure from these chests includes gil, armor, weapons, raw materials, key items, and questline artifacts. The issue is that whenever you encounter a treasure chest, it subjects you to the same number-based guessing minigame. The game here randomly selects a number from one through ninety-nine that you need to predict to open the chest. Luckily, the game provides three hints before the chest disappears. The problem with having a minigame be the barrier between the player and their rightly earned loot is immediate: getting shit takes fucking FOREVER! The loot drops in the game are inconsistent enough to where I always questioned if the chest minigame was worth my time but good enough to where I always felt terrible when walking away from a chest.

The second, and more distressing example of the UI breeding frustration is the item trading system. When you wish to trade an item to an NPC or real player, you must follow an exhausting process. First, you need to select the person you'd like to deal with, and from there, find the "Trade" tab in the menu system. After selecting "Trade," you open up a screen where you scroll through your ENTIRE INVENTORY to find the item you'd like to trade. You place the item in the inventory of your recipient and then submit your trade. That might not sound like a lot, but you have to do this EVERY TIME you need to hand a quest-specific item to a quest giver! EVERY SINGLE TIME! You cannot merely talk to the quest giver and move onto the next portion of the story. Every time you need to hand a certificate, emblem, or random loot drop to a named character, you have to fiddle through the trade menu! It's not a technically "broken" process, but one that absorbs an absurd amount of time!

As hinted at earlier, fetch quests define almost all of the early missions and a significant portion of the mid to late game. Sure, it's dated MMORPG design that you cannot entirely fault the developers from relying upon when making this game in 2002. On the other hand, the process of managing your items and quests is a nightmare! Your default inventory slots fill up in no time because you have to select a prompt in the menu to enable item stacking. That was a lesson I learned the hard way. Likewise, the equipment system in this game is atrocious. Each part of your character's body can don a piece of equipment, be it a weapon or set of armor. However, certain classes can take advantage of specific equipment slots, whereas others cannot. For example, as a Warrior, I can wear any armor set so long as I am the appropriate level. Nonetheless, magical items are useless to me, which means I am unlikely to don necklaces or earrings. Unfortunately, the game fails to communicate any of that information. As a result, you don't have a handle on what loot to sell and what to hold onto for the future.

And in 2020, you NEED to play around with this menu system more than ever! The "Records of Eminence" challenges expedite the process of leveling up your character so significantly that skipping them is not an option. When I finally got a grapple on these challenges, I was able to boost my character's second job to level thirty in about one to two hours. At the same time, you have to unbolt your missions and challenges every single time when you enter a new environment so you can continue to take advantage of location-based loot drops and enemy encounters. The result is that I would move from one environment to the next, stop, take about fifteen minutes to set up my challenges, and then continue my exploration of the level. Again, it is not an easy process, and the fiddly menu system makes it twenty times more challenging than it needs to be.

Part 10: The Actual Story In This Game Is "Decent"

Before we close this "episode," I wish to highlight aspects of Final Fantasy XI I enjoyed. While I wouldn't call the game a "looker," something is charming about its world. Each of the hub worlds feels "lived-in" and do an admirable job of depicting Vana'diel's different cultures. I appreciated how every environment felt distinct from one another and how each level serves as an appropriate climactic shift to subsequent locations. The enemy designs are also fun, especially when Final Fantasy XI shares some of its more ambitious design work beyond the usual franchise callbacks. The inclusion of a dynamic weather system and day-night cycle is genuinely impressive, even if they made some of the game's fetch quests demonstrably more difficult. Additionally, the music in the game is fantastic. Sure, most of it is loopable background music meant to take away the sting of MMORPG monotony, but there are a handful of real musical bangers. Finally, there's something to be said about the game still managing to attract a reasonably active community that has held on for this long.

Without a doubt, the portion of Final Fantasy XI that impressed me the most where its earnest attempts at storytelling. Throughout your journey in Vana'diel you'll meet a colorful band of storyline characters. Regrettably, your time with these characters and their arcs is too few and far between, but they are a memorable merry band nonetheless. As I started in San d'Oria, I quickly encountered Prince Trion and learned of his plans to reverse his kingdom's stagnation. As I continued forward, I discovered his scheming brother and the religious hierarchy seeking to undermine his reform efforts. The framing for the game's cutscenes work within the scope of this being an MMORPG, and the only voice acting you will ever encounter is during the opening cinematic. That said, there's something endlessly entertaining about this game earnestly working within the scope of its limited toolset to convey a wholeness to its world.

Additionally, if you are willing to dedicate some time, the game has some vivid locations and flamboyant characters to share. The clearest example is Shantotto, Final Fantasy XI's mascot of sorts, and its best character. Seriously, I'm not joking about that last point. I will NOT tolerate any Shantotto SLANDER in the comments for this blog. Unlike the lion's share of NPCs, she is a larger than life character that feels like an organic extension of Final Fantasy XI's community. There's a reason why she, more than any other character in Final Fantasy XI, has extended beyond her video game progeny. She sticks out because she's so different and segues into some of the best and most exciting questlines. The easiest comparison I can think of is Edwin VanCleef, a character in World of Warcraft that, by hook or by crook, stuck with people more than the characters driving WoW's narrative and worldly machinations. And that's why Shantotto appears in Dissidia and Final Fantasy XIV instead of Prince Trion, Aldo, or Ayame.

The unfortunate dilemma here is that much of this compelling narrative and character work is locked behind Final Fantasy XI's expansion packs. Regrettably, the game's post-launch content is not to be taken lightly. These expansion packs require high-level characters and co-operative play with Final Fantasy XI veterans. For anyone attempting to play the game solo, as I did, you'll need characters that have optimal build paths and are bridging towards the level cap. And unless you know what you are doing, that could take upwards of two to three weeks even with all of the quality-of-life additions the game now has to support character progress. Even then, you have to assess whether seeing these "diamond in the rough" storytelling moments are worth the HOURS of busywork necessary to seem them, and eventually said I "no más." There just came the point when I felt the game disrespected my time to such a degree I didn't want to even look at it anymore.

For whatever reason, I have convinced myself that I need to publish at least one more blog entry detailing my adventures with Final Fantasy XI. Part of it is that there are a handful of dubious questlines and gameplay mechanics that I haven't even touched upon in this write-up. Conversely, I wish to spend more time talking about the game's surprisingly well-done production values and enamoring story. Likewise, there's something more to be said about how this game has transformed over time, and the highly commendable expansion pack content Square-Enix has made for it. That said, I would never state my experience with Final Fantasy XI even remotely represented "a good time." And there's so much fucked up shit in this game! In fact, when we return, we need to talk about this game's boss design and how it damn near killed motherfuckers. Until then, peace be with you and here's the PlayOnline log-in music to help you stay safe out there.

I will always have very fond memories of my time with this game.

But also I will never play it ever again.

ZombiePie, why? Who did this to you? (It was Ian Kelley, wasn't it.)

Jokes aside, if you ever want to join us in the good FF MMO, the GB FC VinCo is here to help.

Wow this brought unhappy memories flooding back to me. I think I needed this sobering blog because I was starting to think back to my time as good. Yeah you had to be lvl 30 to get a fucking Chocobo, and that took me longer than it took playing through FFX. I think I quit at level 45-50 after the grind made me truly feel like I was wasting my life, and this was me thinking this at 13/14 years-old. Also like you said, the best stuff was in the expansion packs and they weren't cheap for someone just starting their first job at 15 when Chains of Promathia was coming out, so I never had a desire to pick it up again.

I ended my time like I often did with MMOs of that era: I spent $50 buying gold from a gold seller and was filthy rich. I bought everything I wanted from the AH and was still underpowered for any solo play. Did some crafting, but eventually felt that "wasting my life" feeling. I then found a random person name "Cialis" in the starting city and after a heated exchange in which they didn't believe I was going to give them all my money... I gave them all my money. It was a lot. Then I logged off forever.

The only good takeaway I have from it is that I learned to love Red Mages. They're cool. My favorite class in all the FF multi-verse. Dragoon a close 2nd, but fuck unlocking that class in FF XI.

You had to be level 20 and make an incredibly dangerous journey through high level areas in a game where you can level down if you die.

Although I think future updates eventually removed the need to wait a full goddamn day to finish the quest.

The way most people travelled early game was also at the whim of other players because mages could teleport you to certain landmarks. So you shouted in town for a magical taxi and hoped they would charge a reasonable fee.

These warps were not to cities you wanted to go to though don’t be silly. The landmarks are always at least two zones away from town.

I played 14 1.0 and couldn't exit the first ship because apparently 'open door' was hidden behind an obscure menu system.

Thankfully i got to see 14 A Realm Reborn during its beta phase and I never stopped playing. I've been subbed to that game for 7 gdyears. I occasionally play with some 14 folks who wax nostalgic about 11, and over the years its given me SOME desire to see what 11 was all about. This blog post sealed the deal for me tho. I'm good.

At first these two sentences did not make sense next to each other, but then I thought back to some of the stuff I experienced in FFXI's expansion packs.

This makes perfect sense.

You can actually blame @jeffrud for making me play FFXI. For whatever reason, he thought the game was set to die when in reality it is doing well and even experienced new expansion pack content earlier this year. Just as I logged off from the game for the final time, the game had a summer festival event with new items and NPCs and its 18th anniversary celebratory event. It was bonkers.

However, @ltsquigs has mounted the most emphatic defense of FFXI I have seen outside of the people I interacted with in the game.

They grow on you as you play the game. Something that likely does not translate into a written blog is how each environment feels like a distinct little microcosm within the world of FFXI. There are visible climactic shifts and the enemy encounters change in every location. It is a game that might not look great, but it has subtle touches here and there that I give a great deal of credit to the dev team for including given the circumstances.

Yes, definitely. Ian/Squigs' discussions around/defense of FFXI almost got me to reinstall.

And then the memories came back.

@zombiepie: Well also the most fucked up things in XI are kinda viewed with the lens of this being right before WoW kicked down the mmo doors and asked what the fuck you all are doing in here.

Oh boy...

So much to unpack

Very brief history of that time, MMOs were and still is never about quality of life and making things easy for the player. WoW was probably arguably the first to toss players a bone. FFXI however came out before that, it is probably the last big pre WoW MMO. IMO they were all pretty terrible, and to be honest a lot of MMOs today aren't good either, but that's an entirely different topic. I distinctly remember WoW causing a small exodus from FFXI which sort of overlap with the release of CoP expansion. I also left a little afterward due to not willing to grind anymore, not into the game meta at the time, and didn't want to further invest extra money on the expansion.

The warrior's Mighty Blow used to be known as a 2hr ability. Every class has a 2hr ability. Why is it call 2 hour? BECAUSE THE RECHARGE TIME WAS TWO HOURS LONG! The fact that it is 1 hour now is already half of what it used to be! It is basically an oh shit button or something that is a pretty big deal. Not all are created equal...some are better than others, but we can talk game balancing at a later time if you really want to kick that hornet nest.

The pace of the combat is what it is. Sometimes I almost prefer the quasi ATB/turn base combat than a lot of newer game's "action" style combat that feels terrible because they are fitting a square peg in a round hole. The greater issue isn't just the combat, but rather EVERYTHING feels like it is slower than it needs to be.

The control takes a while to get use to. It was probably designed with a controller in mind first. Macro short cuts are pretty much a requirement, you pretty much bind one to each job ability along with a few to your weapon skills of choice. You also macro equipment switching so you can do it during fight (yes it is as ridiculous as it sound, but very common) and occasionally a few system message like recharge timer and hp/mp/tp report, you can also use it as a timer to plan weapon skill and magic combo.

The biggest system level combat hot key you need is the target lock and unlock button which dictates where your character faces and what range of movement is aviliable. Basically if you are trying to hit something you lock on. If you need to run away you lock off.

...and onto running away...it is basically a crap shoot. The game was (is still?) punishing and unforgiving and pretty much require a group to get anything done. The fact that you can do so many quests solo is already an improvement. Especially given how fast level scales in the "main quest"

Speaking of quests, the truth is MOST of them weren't worth it. It's hard to explain, but it pretty much boils down to going on the internet and filtering through which quests is worth doing/farming/prereq for others.

As usual, I enjoyed hearing about your suffering, very interesting read. Thank you

A lot of old MMO nostalgia always gives off some real “and we went uphill both ways IN THE SNOW” vibes. watching your streams earlier this year clarified how much that stuff does not work if you start at the ground level without a group of friends willing to make the same poor choices as you. There’s something very fascinating about that, especially with all the additional bolted-on features to circumvent the hardest part of the early game grind.

But yeah, it seems like you had a bad time. It’s cool that FF XI exists and is still going on, but let me say from experience that XIV seems like the same person’s MMO.

So, I broke a tooth and read this while at the dentist‘s office.

I was dreading having to have a root canal, but reading about your suffering with FF11 made me realize having a broken tooth isn’t so bad.

For instance, there are no quest or NPC markers. Absent also is a mini-map. Mercifully, there is a quest log where you can keep track of your active quests and challenges

This sort remind me of another old mmo, Ragnarok online, which while it had a mini-map.. not only there was no markers for quest, but there was no quest log... and some quests (and the few there was) where sort long and easy to break, doing any of them without a guide was a nightmare.

Ahh.. FF11 rocks. Or I should say it used to. Now that they've neutered/"streamlined" a lot of the stuff, its a very different game that feels all disjointed and weird.

I appreciate your hard work writing all this up, but I only made it through Part 4 lol

I haven't played it for real in a long time, but I did make a new character on a private server a year or two ago and thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the world again, listening to the music, and getting to level 12. I still find the visuals pleasing; it's hard to explain why the visual design and feel of it hasn't been captured by more modern titles.. A certain warmth and real-ness to it all. The music is fantastic as well. I've had the goal of figuring out a way to output it from my PC to my RGB CRT, but haven't been able to find something that would work reliably and simple enough. If I could do that, I think I'd enjoy playing it again even more.

FF14 is pretty good, but it's just your traditional modern MMO/service time/money treadmill. Back in the day glory days of FF11, building your character out (leveling jobs, collecting gear, the story etc) was this literal multi-year journey. The more I played the more powerful I became in the sense of being more flexible and having more play options. Things to do. People I'd meet and make long term friendships. It felt like everything mattered. In the new games with gear scores and item levels.. meh. Everything you do is obsolete and irrelevant in 6 months. Nothing has any emotional weight to it. There isn't really a reason to talk to anybody. I played it for years and eventually grew tired of how they were just churning out the same formulaic content, patch after patch, while they left the fundamentals and progression system alone and shallow.

At this point, when they come out with new expansions, I play 14 for a bit but thats about it. It's kinda a throwaway experience for me. I long for the days of FF11 lol It's always fascinating and sad to see people try 11 now, or even back then. Because I know what it felt like in the beginning; how everything felt insurmountable and glacially paced. But once you get over that initial hill (for me, back then, it was getting my first level 75 job), everything starts to make more sense and you get a better perspective on things. That first 75 took me probably 4-6 months. My second one took about a month. I was that much more independent and understood where to go and what to do.

Like the chocobo license example, having to wait actual days to complete that quest. It feels like a frustrating nightmare. Yet in the long term, once you have that done, it's done. That quest that takes a bit of your time across a few days is but a microscopic blip on the timeline that is your life spent in FF11. I don't even remember doing the quest! It's that insignificant of an event in the grand scheme of things. I ended up with thousands of hours of in-game time by the end I think, and even that paled in comparison to other people I knew who played it a lot more and for far longer than I ever did.

I ended up unlocking Paladin and Ninja in my journey and using the Records of Eminence system was able to boost my Paladin secondary to about 30 in approximately ten to fifteen hours. The four to five part process of getting the Paladin was even worse, and don't even get me started about the quest to even unlock the ability to use sub-classes.

It was around the time I had made a go at two expansion pack questlines. I tried Shantotto's quest, which decidedly kicked my ass and "A Crystalline Prophecy," which I got a bit further into... before it also kicked my ass.

And that giant white monolith structure that is in the middle of the field next to Jeuno? HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GET ON THAT THING?! I tried for like two hours and couldn't find the teleporter!

Look! The new fast travel options are not great! You have to farm basic quests to rack up guild points so you can go to ONE teleport point per environment. Worse, the teleport points are miles away from wherever the NPCs required to initiate quests can be found. And I tried to get a chocobo mount, but when I read up how to tame the damn thing, I just settled with my long aimless strolls through the world. damned if you do; dmaned if you don't.

These two points are what continue to mess me up the most. With running away, you can often force your character into an unwinnable scenario. That is, as you are running away from one unbeatable foe, you end up attracting more and your only hope of surviving is that you can warp into a different environment. The end result is that you end up dying a LOT just from attempting to go from where you pick up a quest and moving to where it needs to be completed. And as many have already pointed out, the penalties for dying are HARSH!

Then, there rewards, and as you mentioned, they are usually shit. I finished all of the quests involved with my starting hub world, and I do not think I ended up with a single reward that felt worthwhile. The loot I got from playing the lockpicking minigame felt more worth my time than completing actual quests and furthering the game's story.

I am here to please and support anyone getting a schadenfreude rush from reading my blogs.

It definitely is cool this game still exists and it is even cooler it is still receiving support from SE. But as I have shared with you before, I do not respect how this game is designed. The boss encounters are punishing in a way that doesn't feel fun, and the slow combat bakes in a lot of unneeded frustration. And I haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the quest design.

We need to talk about delivering that shield to that birdman and falling through an invisible trapdoor.

The quests are interesting because now MMOs are built upon the back of tons and tons of quests as sort of a primary means to level up at least your first character. So when they're not required to pull such a heavy weight they were instead a bunch of obtuse bullshit. They're unmarked, with no guidance, and constantly make you do things that feel like you shouldn't be doing at whatever level you picked it up at.

Most of em only good for teaching you the value of the most important spells in the game, Sneak and Invis.

Nice write up, but am I missing something with "Yup, by default, this game runs at a 60Hz refresh rate, and you have to force it to run any higher by clicking a box! This game is Hell. It is pure Hell." Other than G-sync/Freesync which is pretty new still, isn't everything 60 hertz default?

You can make the graphics look a bit better if you play around in the Windows Registry (lol) - https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Graphics

I remember playing FF11 when my only serious MMO experience was RO/Lineage 2 and being blown away. The world felt alive, combat was really fun etc. I actually stopped playing because I thought I would get too into it and flunk my high school classes. I even remember arguing with a friend, that FF11 looks better than WoW (European release of 11 happened with Chains of Promathia, which was as someone here mentioned around the same time WoW released). Those were the times.

I actually bought the complete pack during one of the yearly sales a while ago, tried playing twice and very quickly gave up. I'm grateful for this write up - I'll read it again if I ever thing about playing 11.

What's interesting is that while SE went in a completely different direction with FF14 (although I don't know what direction that was supposed to be based on how terrible 1.0 was) and 2.0, there is a game which feels like a spiritual sequel to FF11 - Dragon Quest X. Never localized, also still going strong after being available only on the Wii and PC at first. It uses the menu based combat, but a lot of the design ideas feel like the direct evolution of FF11 (and some are using Dragon Quest UI almost as-is from the single player games). It's really good, and the story is one of the best in the series. Bummer it never got released in the West.

Sorry that I am just now getting around to responding to all of the input I received on this blog. To all of the FF11 vets coming out of the word work to respond, thank you so much and keep it coming! I will likely have at least one more blog about FF11.

This is a perspective I was really hoping to hear when I published this blog. I can only imagine there are players who viewed the streamlining of FF11 as an affront to the hours and days of hard work they put into the game. I should know, as I played Star Wars Galaxies and that game had a similar streamlining attempt following the launch of World of Warcraft. For FF11, it's odd, right? What they have done to streamline the game makes it a better playing experience, but at the same time, it puts the game in-line against other more modern MMOs. And once you try to put FF11 on the same playing field as WoW or FF14, it has no hope of standing up to the competition. Part of me wishes it still played like it did at launch. That way, it would be an even better time capsule of a by-gone era.

Old school MMO design was just inconsistent and scattershot all around. EverQuest 1, for example, did not have a minimap well after its launch and even then, it wasn't until much later when it had dots on it. Also, it launched without a quest log and you were expected to talk to NPCs and write down notes with all of the essential information about how to complete quests or even where you need to go.

And then you have a game like Runescape...

I will tell you, the Records of Eminence Quests, which they only recently added to the game, SAVE ME! they taught me essential gameplay mechanics and sped up the leveling during my playthrough by a considerable amount. Had it not been for these quests, I likely would have had an even less of a chance to tackle some of the expansion packs.

Which, if you wanted to know, every expansion pack made me feel like this:

I have a monitor that has a refresh rate of 144Hz and this game was a nightmare until I bit the bullet and dropped it down to 60Hz.

I actually came around to the original graphics. After I had time to adjust to them, I found the muddy graphics to have a ton of character and all of the HD mod packs I tested kind of ruined the tired and worn nature of the environments. And it is weird to think that FF11's greatest legacy is that it convinced Square-Enix to make a better MMORPG... eventually... after fucking up royally once.

Your first story actually reminds me of one @sparky_buzzsaw once told me about their high school drama teacher lost their job because this game ended up sucking their soul.

@zombiepie MMOs and their somewhat temporary existence is a fascinating topic. At least I think so. Of course, these days with every other game being a live service, it's a much broader thing I guess.. but something about RPGs in particular makes them more of a loss. Though you can play FF11 more like the way it was back then on one of the private servers, it still isn't the same because there aren't many other players around, if any.

So I'm not sure if the streamlining of FF11 bothers me per say. It's just a completely different game now. A lot of people thought it was a slog back in the day, but I feel like those were people who just preferred a more standard, short term, offline game experience. I most certainly felt like aspects of the game were brutal, but everything was designed and scaled that way, and when you were able to play it as intended (with a stable group of friends), it felt like everything fell into place. Now, because they added the summon NPCs to fill your party, the social element is gone. The sense of danger in the world. Being able to teleport almost anywhere removes the sense of scale and adventure (which is why I think mounts and teleport anywhere in modern MMOs kinda suck.) And non-MMO veterans don't quite have the perspective on what pre-WoW was like. All of them were like this. WoW came along and changed everything, for better or worse. Honestly, it might as well be a different genre. Maybe we need a "Classic" i.e. CMMORPG genre. I long for a world and experience that feels as huge and deep as Ultima Online, Everquest, FF11 etc. Something to get lost in. Still waiting for the VR MMO to consume my life.

One of the common arguments from former FF11 players you'll see is difficulty vs time investment. I'm planted on the "FF11 was hard" side of the debate because it takes a certain type of person with a lot of patience, dedication, stubbornness, and willpower to succeed in it. If you were doing something serious in the game then you more than likely had to be paying 100% attention to it. Playing Black Mage and being one or part of a team of Stunners (a spell that can interrupt an enemy skill or spell), was super stressful. If you screwed up, the whole team of 6 or 18 people would be dead. You watched that enemy and chat log while your eyes were burning and your heart was beating through your chest. I spent 18 hours camping a certain Malboro NM for one of the items used to get my Brown Belt (for Monk). It was a mental test. It sucked but when I got it, it felt so good. Others would say.. you just stood there for 18 hours.. that's not hard. Or you just stood there and hit one button for your macro. Etc etc.

A segment of players seem to enjoy the Extreme/Savage difficulty content in FF14.. What if they made the whole game feel that way?

Give me the Dark Souls of MMOs! Yes, I said it. The perfect intersection of player skill, challenge, exploration, wonder, and the sense of accomplishment.. And then let me do it in a party of friends.. Where I can be one part of the Holy Trinity..

The reality is that I think everyone has learned that there's no viability in a game just for hardcore players like that now. The idea was introduced that they didn't have to be grueling full time jobs to enjoy a game and now the relative handful of people who still want that gameplay isn't enough to market a game.

Like I played XI quite a lot back then and hearing you lay it all out sounding like it's some triumph of achievement to spend a day for Some Item just reminds me of huddling in the back of a cave for hours pulling the same enemies over and over for a few levels.

I won't claim that I was not obnoxiously proud at the time for catching 10,000 carp for a fishing rod though WHICH YOU COULD INSTANTLY BREAK BY THE WAY JUST IMAGINE IF THAT WAS STILL A THING.

Yup. He lived right next door to us, and you could see him play until two or three in the morning. We live a long way from our speech and drama meets, usually needing to drive hours on end, so the bus would leave by five or six in the morning. If he showed up, he was exhausted, and that was a big if.

As a fan and longtime player of FFXI, I feel personally attacked.

I could be wrong, but looking at the screenshots, it looks a lot lower res then last time I played. If you turn up all the settings to max in that config tool and then the mess of options menus in game (like finding a 16:9 aspect ratio), it actually looks pretty nice even now IMO, particularly when compared to like EQ1, which FFXI was closely modelled after. Also I hope you used a controller, makes the archaic controls and menus more bearable. Not to mention that there's a lot of 3rd party addons most people use that skip the whole playonline login process now...

I totally get that the game is both horribly complicated and unapproachable these days, both by how much the original, 2002 version didn't give a fuck about you, and how all of the new tutorial quests are overwhelming. The original version was like "here's the town, get on out there!" and you kind of figured things out by trial and error, or by consulting a guide, or asking people. Annoying but just took time.

However, now there's endless quests and menus you're fighting the whole time that definitely makes the new player first 10 hours way more complicated. Streamlines the whole 1-99 process but complicated. Personally the times in recent years I went back I played on a private server for the 75 cap era experience.

It's definitely a relic of its time; you can excuse the archaic MMO design of the original launch due to being pre-WoW and also designed for PS2s. No updates to that are less excusable (well maybe; according to the devs the only way they can develop it further is on like the last working PS2 devkit lol).

I still enjoy the battle system, being slow-paced, using my macros for everything (never using the battle menu lol). Skill chains and magic bursts were great, with a party (still can get that on private servers at least). I always liked getting my newest, coolest weapon skill, the moment I unlocked stringing pummel for my puppetmaster was great.

Two things I think that FFXI still has above FFXIV are its community and incentives to do the end-game content. In FFXI you had to rely on other people, otherwise you'd hit a wall real quick. In FFXIV, it's an MMO but I don't need to talk to anyone hardly. Also in FFXI it feels like there's always some amazing piece of uber gear I need to go figure out some additional battle system to go get, my character is getting stronger over time with all these crazy gear pieces that you swap on the fly. Less true now in 2020, but not long ago (probably in fresh Adoulin era at the latest) you had at least a dozen worthwhile end-game systems to go fight to get stronger. FFXIV on the other hand... you grind tomestones and it hands you the best gear in the game (or almost best gear in the game). If you want to be optimal you can do the hardcore raids, but a tiiinnnyyy percentile of the community (at least on NA) actually participates these days. Whereas in FFXI, at level cap, the end-game gear grind is the game.

That said, I play FFXIV these days since I sadly don't have the time commitment required for FFXI anymore and FFXI is in maintenance mode (some story content came out in August, the first in 5 years which was pretty cool though).

hahaha i did this to you

I still think about FFXI more than I probably should, and it was a little bizarre how much of this blog brought back evocative memories. I started in the same location with an elf Warrior that tended to stumble into super strong gloves, so I fondly remember imagining that the combat system worked like FFVIII's where you could press X as the punch connected to increase a chance for a crit. I never looked into whether it actually worked that way but I spent hundreds of hours pretending it did.

But FFXI stands out in my memory primarily because it's the only true MMO I've ever played, the only online experience that I made friendships with total strangers in, and the only time I got to do something in gaming that felt truly exclusive and "cool" - I never played FFXI publicly, I only played it as a betatester. The timing couldn't have been better, as the U.S. tests took place over the summer so I had nothing but free time between my freshman and sophomore year of high school. At that age, I didn't just feel like I was playing an overly cumbersome, hugely risky experiment of a console game, I felt like I was helping push my hobby into the future and I was on the frontlines! I devoured this game as a result...which doesn't mean I was any good or anything close to efficient about it. Over that three-ish month period I think I hit level 35 or so by the end of the beta despite being in one of the most prominent guilds, founded on Day One of the Beta in the main courtyard of San d'Ooria and many of the guys I partied up with early in the Beta were closer to level 50 and 60 by the end of it.

Plus, more than anything, I remember that moment for the email Sony sent out confirming after months of curiosity and silence that players would be allowed to keep their PS2 HDDs, and thus when friends would come over I got to show off all kinds of weird features their PS2s would never emulate because they could never justify the price for gimmicky things like the NFL 2K series featuring video replays instead of static images during the halftime show, but I could prove my PS2 was the best in the whole school like a real cool guy.

@nodima: Just wondering, after playing in the beta why didn't you continue with the retail release?

@belegorm: Primarily, to that point I had never paid a subscription for anything online gaming related (later, it was a big reason I resisted the move to 360 most of my friends made) and even more importantly, I was just a high school kid working as a host for $7 an hour a couple nights a week. If I was spending my money on anything it was gas, new games and weed.

It all felt a bit like a novelty to me also and honestly I was a little burnt out on the game by the time it was all over. Plus the beta characters weren't going to be carrying over to the retail release - as ZombiePie's noted here, the opening of the game is a real slog and I didn't want to start over from scratch.

Reading these only solidify the divisions in the player base that has always existed in the game.

I personally found the grind in the game to be abysmal, yes I was part of the level 75 era. The whole exponentially ramp up of grinding rather it is for exp, money, and end game gear are all terrible. The "special" quests and missions to unlock certain things all felt annoying more than anything else. The whole giving a sense of accomplishment after X hours/days/weeks/months is probably the worst part of the culture. That we are encouraging this behavior. Keep in mind that this is a subscription based game.

The underlying quasi-hypocrisy that existed in the community has always irks me as well; the elitism, group-think, maintaining of facade. The harsh nature of the game does not help in the slightest along with SE's dodgy attitude towards the mechanics of the game at that time.

...Yet the game had its charm, rather it was that FF flavor that still meant something back in the days, or perhaps they were actually able to craft a world/story in a MMO that was actually good and engaging, or maybe the potential of job/sub job system...which would have been great if it isn't lock in a MMO.

Then again these issues aren't exclusive to FFXI, I would argue all MMOs have this problem one way or another, and it always boils down to "play this with a group of people, and you'll have a good time...but then why does it have to be a MMO with all its traditional failure points if all you want is a small set of people anyways."

Sorry ZP that your 2020 was further tainted by this game.

Here's my experience of FFXI: my family had recently got an Xbox 360. As you said, the game didn't come out in Europe on the PS2, so this was the first opportunity I had to play it. My Dad bought me the game as I was super excited to try it (and it had 1 month free with it) so I put the disk in and installed it. It took all afternoon to try to start the game dealing with PlayOnline and all that but I got in. I made a character and was completely overwhelmed by the information dump (without any significant story) but I managed to get in a fight which was extremely boring... then the game crashed.

I cried.

I used to play WoW a lot, and quit back in 2016. My wife was really into FFXI for almost a decade before moving and switching jobs, but now she talked me into joining a classic server and I have yet to see the allure of extra hard difficulty and essentially all of the pain points that you have listed in your blog. I prefer WoW where you don't have to hope and/or beg for help from strangers for the simplest of quests. I endure it for her sake, but I feel zero achievement in spending dozens of hours only to de-level and eventually get help from someone 10 levels higher than me to finish a quest that gives 300 gil.