I guess the question I'm trying to ask, is it worth the $10 on Steam? Apparently they're still sending out updates to the game. I also remember always hanging out in a group just to level. Did they fix that?

EDIT: Sorry. It was $10 on Steam. Now it's $20, but Impulse has it for $10.

@pw2566ch: Last I heard, you can solo a lot more than you could earlier in the game's life. I would imagine you still need a group for some stuff here and there, but I assume it's no longer 'the way' to progress. As far as new content goes, yes they're still doing updates, but I would assume that they're priorities have shifted to XIV. Speaking of which, XI is still a better game than XIV and that came out last year. The only downside really is I heard player population was on the decline. It never had WoW numbers, but it had a respectable playerbase, but with all the competition coming out, I would imagine many people to have moved on by now.

So really, if you don't expect the game to be hustlin and bustlin with other players then by all means I say get it. It's ultimately a good game in the end IMO. There's a ton of content and the subscription is at least a few bucks cheaper than most MMOs,

I've watched a step-cousin of mine play it for a couple of hours... and it looks like complete garbage. Avoid at all costs.

@BabyChooChoo said:

@pw2566ch: There's a ton of content and the subscription is at least a few bucks cheaper than most MMOs,

There's a subscription still? Aaaawwww man. Maybe I should get it just to hold me off till that early access for The Old Republic.

I found FFXI a lot more interesting and fun than any of the other MMO's out there. It actually felt like I was part of a world, and I wasn't just following quest arrows to level ups and raids. I could be a part of that world without having 10 other people in a guild following me around too, which is even better given how stupid human beings can be. In the long run, though, there are far too many other great single player games for me to focus on, so I ultimately stopped paying/playing. If you have time to dedicate to just one game and it must be an MMO though, I'd go with FFXI over WoW any day, at least if you prefer RPG's over grindfests.

@TooWalrus said:

I've watched a step-cousin of mine play it for a couple of hours... and it looks like complete garbage. Avoid at all costs.

Avoid the opinions of those who watch games and then form long-lasting opinions on them LIKE THE PLAGUE.

I'm going back to play it as soon as I'm through with final terms. It's a game for people with a lot of patience. Getting to level cap will take you between an year or two depending on your free time. But it's all about the journey and enjoying where you're at and in that aspect Final Fantasy XI is a good game with tons of varied content. It's mainly a PvE MMO where teamwork is going to make it a lot easier. Soloing was almost impossible during some time, but that meant that the community evolved into a more civil and well mannered one than you might find in other such games mainly because if you get bad rep you'll find tougher and tougher to get into good parties where people know what they're doing.

I'm still playing it and enjoying it quite a bit, it's not nearly as harsh as it used to be -- although still has some painful points, but in general its a great challenging, complex video game.

This is an excellent topic that I would gladly read an article about. It isn't that the game is old but that newer systems have come up with better ways to do the grindy things found in the game so why do those players stick with it?

Final Fantasy games are always irrelevant.

Starring androgynous Japanese male and perky annoying co star. That series has veered far off the tracks. And yes FF11 isn't helping anything.

No not really.

@Thoraxe said:

Final Fantasy games are always irrelevant.

Starring androgynous Japanese male and perky annoying co star. That series has veered far off the tracks. And yes FF11 isn't helping anything.

In the past hour we've seen you hating on both Japanese game design, and streamlined American game design... I'm curious, what games DO you like, if any.

If you haven't gotten into it by now, I think you'll have trouble enjoying FFXI. There are some texture packs and third party stuff you can do to make it look better graphic-wise, but the community is so old by now that you'll have a rough time catching up, unless you know someone who's been playing a while to help you out.

That said, I recently found out that two separate people I play online games with are both still playing FFXI, which was pretty bizarre to me. I guess they keep updating the endgame stuff enough to keep things relevant and interesting, because they're still grinding away even with all their classes at level cap. Might be a case of Stockholm syndrome where your first mmo is your favorite though (I definitely experienced that with Anarchy Online, so I could see how it would happen to FFXI players).

EDIT: I don't know if they changed it since the last time I played it, but FFXI has, by far, the best fishing of anything I've played. It sounds dumb, but really I got so into fishing in that game, and haven't played a game with anything that even remotely rivals FFXI fishing.

I imagine the early levelling areas will be pretty bare from when I used to play 8 years ago.

I think that a MMO that still has a decent player base after this long is still relevant, especially since XIV was a "flop" V2.0 for XIV might change things but as it stands if you want a FF MMO then XI is still the place to be. I played for 7 years and loved (miss it still sometimes) it completely. At the time it was either this or WoW pretty much being a fan of the series I took the plunge and I don't regret it at all. As it aged they tried really hard to introduce ways in which you wouldn't have to PT so much lots more fot the casual MMO'er.