So as of this point. What would your review of ff11 be

[darkchrono]

For me it is actually better than I thought it would be. I kind of liked how it kept you involved in the game through the quest system even if you are not an extremely powerful character. Meaning there is more to do than just fighting monsters and collecting money to by better weapons and such.

But what is this I hear about an overall story. Granted I am only on level 5. But I do not really at this point see anything revolving around much of a world wide story. So when do you start accessing that part of the game.


My one complaint so far is that the monsters are to sparsely populated. I think if they are going to make you fight monsters to gain levels they should make the monster population as dense as possible. And another bad thing is that when you do find a monster there is a greater chance than not you will not gain any loot from him to sell. They should make the monster population as dense as possible. And then when you do fight a monster you will find something on him everytime. That way it does not take forever to gain levels and get money to buy weapons and such.

[Flying Mullet]

As I've heard people say before, this is Everquest, not Everloot. The same is true for FFXI. You are exploring the world and enjoying it and not just fighting enless monsters for the coolest stuff. You said yourself that you enjoyed the quest system, and that's part of what it's about. That and the community feel. Join some parties and you'll find the game that much more enjoyable. Besides, if there were lots of enemies that all dropped great loot, there would just be a bunch of level 70 people wandering around, and that would be boring. You have to earn your levels and status in this game, and that's what makes it entertaining.

Overall I'm enjoying it a great deal. After playing Everquest for two years I find this to be a much more enjoyable game.

[eikichi]

Side note for this whole lack of money thing, there are hella quests that are repeatable for newbs and give a load of cash, especially in Bastok.

[Advent Child]

I spent $80 on 5 "Final Fantasy XI" frisbees. I think that's a fair review.

[Bahamut2000X]

I've played it so far for about 35 hours and I love it completly. I especially like how the actual community feel is implemented to the game and how socializing is needed. Now I can spend 12 bucks a month on a online game that actually makes it needed to play with others rather then by myself for hours on end.

[Talus]

It's pretty good, the quests are really well put together.

[Lionx]

Pretty much as great as an MMORPG can get, also u get more story as u complete missions for each country, try to do em all, at first they arent really story but later on it slowly gets better.

[Black Mage]

It's a good game. Quite enjoyable.

However, up to where I am, level 10 or so, despite what the lot of you have said about the community part of the game; I've found leveling to be more profitable, both Gil and Experience wise, going solo.

The party system has no perks when it comes to leveling. Your Exp is divided, which is to be expected, but the boost in Exp per added party member is very little, to none.

It also seems that the Exp allotted is based on the person of the highest level, resulting in a lower amount of Exp for all the members.

But yeah, it's nice when you're not worried about leveling up.

[Lionx]

Well the party system is not usually used like lvl 12 and below, once ur up to lvl 14 or so partying is a must, you arent near it yet but later on you will see that you wont go anywhere without partying. Then at lvl 40 partying with a good sub job and the right combos matter alot and even more rely on your party even more extensively.

Then later on when most things are at least 7K and up doing guild trade jobs are profitable since you can sell rare stuff for alot of money in the AH. Some stuff cost over 20K, something no matter how many monsters u kill wont give u that many since its usually only 20 or so gil per beastmen kill.

For me, it doesnt get interesting til you get a sub-job and start going into basic partying. By the higher lvls, things become hard ><

[Super Christ]

There's some good and some bad - the good definitely outweighs the bad.

Bad:
Can't own chocobos. Chocobo breeding would've been especially cool - I'd love to get myself a dark blue chocobo and start riding around.
Unless you know how, money is hard to come by. This doesn't really count, since it's the case in all MMORPGs.
Worldpass system. Granted, I'd pick the least populated server to stick myself on anyway, but I don't want to spend gil to get my friends on there too.
Lack of character customization. You get more than you could ever could in UO and RO, which are the only other MMORPGs I've played, but seriously, look at PSO for how character customization should work.
Very strong (for a level 1 character, anyway) aggressive monsters outside the starting town. While there's no problem with somewhat strong monsters outside the first town so you can still level there when you power up a little, but they shouldn't be aggressive.

Good:
The crafting system. Specifically, the fact that I can finally ignore it completely and still have a reasonable amount of money. I remember in UO you pretty much had to be able to craft to make money early on. Here I just make sure I've got signet cast and go fight the monsters I would be anyway. They drop crystals, and I sell them at the auction to people who do craft for a load of money. Sure, I could probably get more money if I'd craft, but I don't care to since I've got all the spells I can presently cast, and the best armor a character of my level can wear. I'm not hurting for money, for once.
The job system. I can't say enough good things about it. This is how getting strong in an MMORPG should be.
You start out with a house. That, and it's located in a residential block, so you never have to worry about getting a good spot. That was another bad thing about UO.

All in all, this is the best MMORPG I've yet played.

[Ichy]

I'm inclined to agree with Black Mage, the game is much more profitable for exp and cash if you solo as long as possible in the earlier lvls with one exception, that being if everyone did it there would be no mobs left and we'd all be waiting hours to ding anyhow.

I love the auction house and the quests system. Combined, I honestly can't see how anyone would be hurting for cash. Hell, I've frequently bought stuff on auction and turned around to trade it to a quest NPC for twice as much. You just need to do a bit of research on the net to find out which quests are where and give how much, then start keeping an eye on which mobs drop what. Annother thing, if you're willing to put the extra time in for it, try to get enough of an item to auction it as a batch. Players, for some irrational reason, have a tendency to pay more for the items in bulk than if they purchased them all individually. Plus it wont clutter up your seller's list (only 7 items at a time allowed.)

The conquest system, well, it just rocks, but again with one exception. Land is hard to maintain from the beastmen if every second joe and mary you run across doesn't know what the Hell a signet is. I see alot of this and I've since gotten into the habit of shouting as I leave town: "Everyone got their Sig?". Aside from that, when the crystals are dropping it's great.

The missions are fun and progressively more challenging, each one taking you further away from the safety of home. As a MMORPG explorer I love this. As well, if you put as much time and effort into fundraising, as I have, you should be of a good lvl to take them on either solo or with a small party in no time.

The eye candy in this game is jaw-dropping. I've spent a good 15 minutes just running back and forth around town marvelling at how I can see each individual strip in my leather armor swaying independantly with my body motion. The landscapes, as well, are a work of and I can only fathom how much time and coding went into them all. I've spent a bit of time examining the sprites used for trees and rocks and such, and I'm telling you, they must have at least 10 slightly different models of each scattered throughout all the areas I've been to.

Second only to the visuals is the soundtrack. For once, a game that doesn't make you cringe when you hear the same music repeatedly (unlike the prirate music in Metroid Prime, for example). I have the game running over a set of Logitech Z-560s and I'm frequently lost in the tunes as I play, as well as I find myself humming them during the day at school.

The job system ROCKS. As you play you can gather a true feel for your preferred style of progression without having to delete and start over. With combat skills that raise as you use them (passive, no attention required) you will NEVER find yourself second guessing what skills you may have put those skimpy hard earned points into (no such points in game ). Those skills carry over from job to job, too, and never drop. So lets say you wanted a change of pace and went from thief to warrior (I did ), your dagger, evade, shield and parry will all be just as high as you left them as a thief, just capped to lvl max, but the actual skill lvl is retained and will go up to the next lvl cap (if you got it that high) the next time you ding. This means that when I finally get my Ninja job I'll have all the combat skills of my warrior job at the equivalent of a lvl 30 character, which will carry me through the bottom ranks VERY fast .

There is SO much I could go on about that would detail how much I love playing this game, but I'm afraid that if I type any more peeps will think it's too long and not read it!

My one beef in the game? NERF POISON DURATION! Landing at your home point after dying one HP at a time from 40 to 0 SUXX0RZ

[Lionx]

Actually there is a cap for skill per lvl, say you have 56 as a dagger for lvl 15...but if u start as RDM lvl 1 it is only as high as the lvl can get like 7 or 8 i think, but it will go up as ur job goes up.

[Oddious]

Just to make a Long Drawn out explanation Short im just going to say AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Super Christ]

I do have one more gripe about the game actually: how in the freaking hell can a Quadav with a sword hit me from 30 yards away?!?! Should you find yourself outclassed by a monster, running is pretty much impossible since the monsters seem to be able to hit you from any distance, even when the weapon they're using is a part of their body; for instance, rock lizards bite and tail slap. That's a huge freaking problem.

There's a whole lot of things that could be done to make this game better. However, it's still the best MMORPG I've ever played.

[Ichy]

Actually there is a cap for skill per lvl, say you have 56 as a dagger for lvl 15...but if u start as RDM lvl 1 it is only as high as the lvl can get like 7 or 8 i think, but it will go up as ur job goes up.

I had said that in my post, but I guess I wasn't as clear about it as you were just now.

Should you find yourself outclassed by a monster, running is pretty much impossible since the monsters seem to be able to hit you from any distance

I agree, this can be a huge problem under extraneous circumstances, however the alternative is that you outrun them or they give up on you, and you end up training all these harder mobs onto undeserving countrymen. Keeping that in mind, I like it far better the way it is, I hate trainers. This game provides me with the tool to avoid this situation, the "check" function, and at least 95% of the time I never have to worry about fighting a mob that's too tough for me, barring that no assisting mobs spawn during the fight.