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

[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