I know a lot of people who've played XIV since 1.0 and show no signs of slowing down. It got me to thinking, do you suppose there's someone out there who has consistently played XI since the early 2000's? Not necessarily every single month since launch, but for a good majority of each year.
That takes dedication. I'd enjoy hearing why they love it so much and have stuck around for over a decade.
NOPE!
Seriously though, I can think of one guy from FFXIOnline.com. Other than that, no. Most moved onto other MMOs or migrated to FFXIV.
The game is 12/13 years old.
I played from the beginning more-or-less consistently until about two years ago, and I've been tempted lately to resub, just to see how it's going these days.
It basically ruined me on MMOs for life. None of them are satisfying in comparison. FFXI was too much of a time-sink, but that time made the game rewarding.
It's a game that absolutely forced social interaction (at least for the first 8 years or so), but still had plenty to do for solo-artists.
Though it's terribly outdated now, when I first started playing the game looked beautiful. And more importantly, it felt real. Not hyper-realistic real, but it felt like a world that might exist somewhere, sometime. Vana'diel is a world that invites the player to explore and discover.
I know most people are spoiled these days to UI's with elaborate mapping and detailed quest-support systems. I don't like them. I like learning the landscape for myself, and figuring out the quests and missions by myself or with the help of other people in-game.
It was such unforgettable pleasure to plan for impossible/near-impossible battles and then execute that plan, especially when the fights went slightly wrong or a kill came down to a final hit or the last second.
And I personally loved FFXI's NM/HNM system. Though many of the game's rarer mobs were utterly frustrating, finding all the game's Notorious Monsters was sort of a mini-game for me. FFXI was my pokemon. I had to kill them all.
Thanks for this thread. Now I have to go play again. DANGIT.
I will join you.
WHAT SERVER
I really did resub. >_< Just to see what the game's like now. So many things added I'm confused as smurf. There's like 3 or 4 new storage systems. A bajillion new currencies. New quest systems. (Not new quests, new SYSTEMS). Trust NPCs (you can make full parties using only npcs). I don't know that I see myself digging in enough to keep up the sub longer than a month, but it's nice to be back in the game and dammit if I don't miss the smurf out of this music.
While that IS a long time, it's also kinda... not, IMO. There are still people playing EverQuest and Runescape. WoW is ten years old and I know plenty of people who have been playing since Vanilla.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dante WolfWood
Never underestimate MMOaddictionloyalty!
I've played since the european launch, which was in 2004 or whatevs. Only stopped a year ago because my internet seems to hate it now.
Sooo, 2004 to 2010, that's a decade so i can answer!