Quote Originally Posted by Ouch! View Post
That's exactly the opposite what I hear from almost everyone, even WoW players. A majority of my friends play WoW, and every one of them agrees that the player base is full of dicks, idiots, and otherwise incapable people--moreso than other games, anyway. They play the game because they enjoy it and have their own group of friends to play with. They've admitted they wouldn't enjoy it if they couldn't play with people they know. My favorite thing about Final Fantasy XI is that I don't have to do everything exclusively with my close group of friends.
Honestly, that's not the same as my experience. I met a handful of nice people playing FFXI, and was in a couple of decent Linkshells, but overall I found the players to be impatient and elitist. (And I don't blame them, it can take an hour to get a party together for basic grinding, if you do that and someone has to go after two fights I'd be pissed as well.) WoW players are arrogant and care about e-peens, but I've found it a lot easier to actually get into a good guild there. I've been in more good than bad.

Really though, it's a question of personal preference in gameplay. I like WoW a huge amount more than any other MMO; only EVE Online and City of Heroes have ever taken time away from WoW for me. FFXI was fun to begin with, but I just couldn't handle the complete and utter dependance on other players which the game, at least in my experience, entailed - I commonly heard reports of people at higher levels who were magic classes being killed in a fight with an enemy "Too weak to yield experience" or whatever it is it says. I like to party, but I want the option of not doing so, which most MMOs that aren't FFXI offer to a much greater degree than FF.

That said, FFXI has a couple of things I really like about it. Crafting is more fun there for the most part, for example (WoW's is still nice, though) and owning a house is pretty cool. The fact there is a storyline, told through cutscenes, is pretty cool as well - WoW's storyline to date has largely consisted of taking a gigantic dump over the earlier Warcraft lore. And when you do get a really great FFXI party together - which I can only genuinely remember occuring once - it's something special. We breezed through absolutely everything with bugger all downtime (<333 bards) and it was swish.