I want to play again but I miss the old FFXIFollow

I keep trying to get into the current ffxi but never have any success. I miss the old ffxi. Im talking about just the first three expansions. Are there any private servers out there like this? Are they populated? Are they worth joining?

I didn't think private servers existed for FFXI until about a year ago when I too felt the need for the old level 75 days. Unfortunately they all seem to caught up to the most recent content already (more or less.) Also, once you play on a private server all it will do is make you wish you were playing the real thing.

The communities are really small and you pretty much join a linkshell with everyone on the server as soon as you join. It really kind of puts into perspective what the game would be like if an official server was dominated by a single large linkshell with literally no one else around-- kind of like how people *think* FFXI is like already. I'd say the worst part of a private server is there is pretty much no economy-- that and they all tend to have alterations in things like the rate of EXP gain and movement speed, and most scripted content like quests are undoable.

I'm in the same boat. I quit in early 2012 and just haven't came back yet. I liked the way the game was before better.

I tend to get knocked around when I say this, but I PREFER grindy, rewarding games. Always have.

Examples of how compulsive I am with grindy games:

I play the Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3 addon for 20+ hours sometimes before I even start playing the story. I min/max all my characters with appropriate growths, unlock all jobs, get most important skills learned, etc.

Dark Souls was the same way. When I replayed the game (Yes, I beat it legit with no guides), I actually KILLED the red-robed guy in New Londo before I even rang the freakin' bells so I could kill the Four Kings early and pick up that cool dark medium armor. I had to grind for so long against those wraiths that could one-shot me for 30 levels. It was rewarding, and thus, I enjoyed it. I actually found a method with no guides to power level myself in Dark Souls. Yay. I had so much fun that playthrough.

Skyrim generally gets boring to me after I level a bunch of skills and/or profs to 100. Like, subconsciously, the skills are the only thing that keeps me interested in playing. Quests are just an enjoying side-quest to get skills and see the story on the side.

Final Fantasy X I actually found a fun way to power level and play the game I wanted to. I played Blitzball right after leaving Luca so I could stock up a mac-ton of Return Spheres and Teleport Spheres. Anyway, I made Tidus a full-blown Red Mage and Lulu a high-evasion high STR character. It definitely changed the game up for me a little bit. Why? Why the hell not!

In FF11 I had fun because I could play jobs to expand my character. It was grindy, I made friends, it felt rewarding. I had all jobs 37+ and five 75s before level sync was even introduced. I had all jobs 50+ and seven 75s before they announced 99 and Abyssea. I'd level in exotic places, I'd duo to 37 starting at level 12 before book buffs existed. It was very fun and rewarding for me. The game just became increasingly dull for me after a while. They took what I enjoyed and made it very easy. Since one could level from 30 to 75 faster than I could level from 30-40 in a duo several times over, why would I ever want to level in a duo? Because it's fun? Well, yeah, but it's not rewarding anymore.

TLDR;

I didn't stop playing out of bitterness, spite, tears, or anything of the sort. I just logged out one day and never came back. I never said I was quitting, I never really told anyone I was quitting, I didn't even PLAN on quitting, I didn't make any QQ posts, etc. I haven't really found an MMO that I enjoy long term since FFXI and early WoW days (Pre-LFG finder), but I'm sure it will come out eventually.

Edited, Jun 16th 2014 4:34pm by Zafire

Honestly, it wouldn't change much. A year ago i duod blm to 75, just for fun. It took a few days. And now with an oatixur mnk, i can easily pull in 100k exp/hr with gov. Not quite abyssea levels, but still, it's really fast.

I agree with you on the whole "bad side of the grind" thing. There were a lot of things that simply just took too much time, required too much luck, etc. "The good 'ol days" feel had fights that lasted longer, had a balanced party, required tanks to tank, mobs that were dangerous, etc. There was absolutely no point in allowing Abyssea access at level 30 other than to let people get to max level as fast as possible. It's basically a free pass to skip over the game itself. There is nothing engaging about that at all.

Actually being in Alliances now for EXP? You get one, maybe two swings off. If you're lucky you can get a weaponskill off once every five mobs. This is not fun, engaging, or anything. I just found it really dull. I like to play my job and have my personal performance make a huge difference. That is not the case in an alliance and you don't even need to achieve good performance to destroy everything for ridiculous high chains.

They basically just destroyed a form of content I found enjoyable. If I chose to keep doing it the way I always did it, I would just be wasting time. Everyone could now achieve the same reward in no time at all.

I am not bitter, mad, upset, or anything about it. In fact I wasn't even consciously aware of why I stopped playing until I actually thought about it several months later.

I disagree with you on the "Run out of jobs to level", because I could always level sync with friends on something I was in the mood to play. I jumped at the chance to play NIN/RDM in the 40-50 range with friends.

I wasn't really comparing FFXI to FFT1.3 or DS. I was explaining that I like games that have fun and rewarding forms of grinding in them and gave examples of the kind of grinding I find "fun"

That's not really how it works. Typically you have 1-3 mnks killing mobs in one round of punches, a few other misc people fighting who really aren't contributing anything, but want to feel like they are, so they don't just afk, 2-3 people opening boxes, and 10 people afk leeching exp. You're right about mobs dying in one or two swings, but not because there's too many people fighting the same thing (in fact it's rare that anyone at 99 is ever fighting the same thing as someone else, they usually just run past anything being fought), it's because that's all it takes to kill exp mobs. With dom ops, i can get others 300k exp/hr by myself on mnk. Having an alliance doesn't really change much when more than half of it is guaranteed to be afk. The biggest different is simply 119 gear being used to obliterate old content, with exp not being hurt so much by being much lower level. You can get a ton of exp doing gov with a 99 character at even lower levels than abyssea.

If you don't like it, you can simply opt not to do it. Exping outside abyssea has also been improved quite a bit. You can easily get good exp with a friend or two (or solo with trusts). I personally play a 75 character as my main, because i like playing at 75 better than 99. Some things though i don't like, such as exping, so i simply use my 99 mule to breeze through it. You are free to play any way you want, it's easier now than ever before.

And how is this a good thing? People getting levels without really having to do anything? People killing mobs in a few swings because they're too easy? Mobs one level higher than you used to be hard to kill. Killing a VT on my NIN solo used to take 3-5 minutes.

And exactly, I don't play anymore. Just because you like it doesn't mean I have to. I don't know why the hostility because I have a different opinion.



And I never would have stopped playing if I could have enjoyed what I spent six years enjoying. I don't really like the endgame in FF11, but they forced me into it with no other option.

Endgame should never be the entire game. I don't understand why this mindset exists.

I found parties fun and satisfying. Again, different opinions. I used to level in very odd places, and that usually made people stick around longer. It's boring if you do the same old monotonous leveling. It's more fun if you, say, kill Giants in Xarcabard from 36->40, then run to the outside of Castle Zhavl and kill demons until 43, then go INSIDE the castle and kill demons until 45.

Edited, Jun 19th 2014 8:31pm by Zafire

I played XI primarily in 04-05. I'll never forget our deeply this game drew me in. Back in those days I could feel the chill of the morning, as the sun came up over South Gustaberg. I could almost smell the sawdust as I did my carpentry. The soundtrack still gives me feelings of nostalgia. When a game's music is so good, you'd be happy playing just to listen to it, you've done withing more than right. WoW and XIV are great MMOs, but for me, they'll never compare to XI.

I've got an ls on sylph with a few 75 players. We mostly do end game stuff, but i'm up for some occasional exping, missions, etc if anyone wants to join us! If anyone's seriously up for doing 75 endgame content i'll gladly help you out and throw you some gil, and help with exping and gear.

Edited, Jun 20th 2014 7:44pm by Rachel9

Why do you need to compete with everyone else? People don't work high paying jobs that they hate so they can make more money than everyone else. They do it so they have money to do other things that they actually enjoy in their free time. It's pretty common for people to take a pay cut to do something they enjoy much more, if the extra money isn't enough to make up for what they lose by working a less enjoyable job. You may need to sometimes do stuff you don't enjoy in the game, such as farming, or possibly abyssea exping, but you shouldn't be doing it to compete with others, You can just do your own thing and not worry about what everyone else is doing.

Well, crabs have paladin as their main AND sub job, so they're not exactly a good target unless your goal is to kill slow (they're good for skill ups!).

You don't have to be subpar. This is my brd. Does it look subpar? Well, maybe compared to some others, but for what i do, it doesn't get much better. You can do the best you can for what you want to do and still have fun without competing with others.

Why drop them? Back then ninjas was basically the single best dd in the game up until at least 60 doing that, with the right gear.

Edited, Jun 20th 2014 10:47pm by Rachel9

Yes. Actually I do. For my skill set, my job is on the lower paying end of the scale - but it fits my values. I could do the same thing for a pharmaceutical company or an oil company and make waaaay more money, but I choose to feel good about the work I do. Same with my partner. We're both making less money than we could doing similar work for companies whose values don't fit ours.

Lots of people do that. Pretty much anyone who works for an environmental organization or other charity could make more money doing similar work somewhere else. (At least if they didn't catch on that our values don't fit the org...ha ha)

So, bad analogy, even worse when you consider the point of video games is to have fun... so I'd say choose the way that is more fun for you regardless of how "rewarding" it is in terms of gil or gear on a macro level. Who cares? The point is to have fun, so if old school exp is fun for you, then do that. I personally find it pretty boring after not too long so I choose to do other things, and that's OK - we can have different visions of fun.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2014 11:05am by Olorinus