Standards of today matter since this is a review made in the present not 3 years ago. Games age, it's obviously a fact. If they want to compete in the present they have to be compared to current games, and gaming standards.
It's better be hated for who you are, than loved for who you aren't.
Originally posted by Cymdai Well, numerous issues for the GM involved repeat botters [Everyone has at least a few on their server, and everyone knows who they are] and I can not think of a single instance where one of them was ''handled'' appropriately.
More importantly came AH issues. There were 2 seperate occasions where I purchased something off the AH, but the item did not appear in my delivery box. When I asked for my gil to be restored, or my item presented, I was greeted with a ''Sorry...we can't do that, and we're not refunding your money either''.
The billing issue which still has yet to be resolved involved being triple billed one month.
A final GM issue can be noted with harassment. A linkshell had been harassing my exp party, and we blacklisted them, and they proceeded to have their LS mates harass us further. When we asked the GM to take some action, all we got was a ''We'll look into it''. Sure enough...nothing happened. Sorry, buy telling me you'll ''look into it'' isn't enough when I can show you my chat logs right then and there. Action, not promises, are what I look for in terms of customer service.
When you buy something it goes straight into your inventory, not your delivery box
Originally posted by Cymdai Originally, I ran the game with a PC133 motherboard, with 2 gigs of RAM, and a Geforce MX420 graphics card. It ran, but it wasn't pretty. Weather effects have to be turned off for example, and graphical lag was noticable. [For example, the green mist in the crawler's nest would rape my computer]
Then I upgraded to an ATI 9800 Pro 256mb, and ran the game at much higher resolutions, I think the highest I ran it at was still 1280 x 1024, with 2x Ani-aliasing. The game ran significantly better, weather effects didn't affect performance.
FFXI renders the entire 3D scene to an offscreen buffer (render to texture) rather than directly to the framebuffer. Because of this FSAA has no effect on the game at all other than slowing it down. Multisampling FSAA is simply incompatible with render to texture and any game that uses this (usually it's done because the designers feel the improved effects are worth sacrificing FSAA) will either have graphics errors or simply won't work at all.
There's a sort of way around this, but first a warning. If you read the following and have no idea what the hell I'm talking about then it's safe to say you shouldn't be doing this anyway so just learn to live without FSAA in FFXI. If you don't know what you are doing you could seriously mess up your windows install.
You can do the supersampling trick. You edit FFXI's registry values so it renders the 3D graphics at 2x the screen resolution. Your graphics card will then scale the image down to fit the screen. ideally you want 2x the actual screen resolution. (though FFXI is limited to a max rendering resolution of 2048x2048)
This is what the "background" and "overlay" settings in the game setup are about. "background" = 3D graphics and "overlay" = actual screen resolution (and menus). The config utility only allows 256x256, 512x512, and 1024x1024 but if you edit the registry settings you can set it to anything up to 2048x2048.
Supersampling FSAA is technicly higher quality than Multisampling FSAA (it anti aliases the entire scene not just polygon edges) but it also a lot slower. Only do this if you have a fast video card.
i started playing just before the RMT fall, prices droped down to normal, it was nice that i could buy decent amour at a decent price when i hit lv 30 on my rdm, at that point i decided to unlock ninja and use thf/ninja, im now currently lv 45, and am part of a large social linkshell, i have a friend, who is part of a major HNM linkshell, we hardally have time to hang out becuase hes always fighting genbu and the other gods, not AV yet...
this game takes alot of dedication if you want to go far, not so much to have fun, but if you want it all, you've got to play, there are still things that only 3-5 people have done (each server i mean), like getting the final wepon skill "knights of the round", it takes at least a year, and the same with the lu shang fishing rod quest, you have to fish 10,000 moat carp, and after that, you recive a fishing rod (kinda lame huh?). but apparently its worth it, yet it takes about a year also.
monsters the same lv as you arnt not easy, unless you know what you are doing, and it costs money, lots of it. solo isnt really an option on the game unless your going to do a diffacult class like beastmaster, wich can be somewhat rewarding, but partying and making friends is the ture aim for players on this game.
the game will lagg on a very busy day in a dense area, but even then not much.
Originally posted by Cymdai That may be true...but in my opinion, things should be reviewed by the way they are currently, and not neccesarily by when they were created. For example, you couldn't rate UO's graphics in comparison to EQ2's graphics.
However, you wouldn't rate a sports team now by the way they played back in 2002 now, would you¿
I tried to keep in mind it's release date when I wrote it, while not disregarding the fact that there are standards for today as well.
Well, by this logic, this argument applies: Shouldn't every MMORPG be re-rated every year to keep a more current standard? Are they? DAoC, for example, has an 8.4 rating; surely, according to 2006 standards, that rating should have gone down, right?
I'm just saying, if FFXI is to be compared with 2006 gaming standards, so should every MMO.
Originally posted by bhagamu Originally posted by Cymdai That may be true...but in my opinion, things should be reviewed by the way they are currently, and not neccesarily by when they were created. For example, you couldn't rate UO's graphics in comparison to EQ2's graphics.However, you wouldn't rate a sports team now by the way they played back in 2002 now, would you¿I tried to keep in mind it's release date when I wrote it, while not disregarding the fact that there are standards for today as well.
Well, by this logic, this argument applies: Shouldn't every MMORPG be re-rated every year to keep a more current standard? Are they? DAoC, for example, has an 8.4 rating; surely, according to 2006 standards, that rating should have gone down, right? I'm just saying, if FFXI is to be compared with 2006 gaming standards, so should every MMO. From the EVE-re-review: mmorpg.com will re-review old mmorpg:s. Cant remmember if they set any time-limit though.
Originally posted by WSIMike Originally posted by bountydog word of warning to any body that wants to try this game. its a good year and a half to 2 years of grinding to lvl up your first 2 jobs. also make sure to look up the excepted job combos our you will never get a group. people are very very picky in this game and most of them would rather sit around and wait then go out with a job combo they think sucks.
Amen to that. I was gonna touch on that in my response (above), but figured it was negative enough :-).
Part of the rigidity and "script-like" treadmill the players have introduced is exactly what bountydog says. There are a total of 300 or so possible job combinations in FFXI. Only a relative handful are "accepted".. or, rather, "demanded".
In the same vein as trying different places to hunt and gain xp, don't dare try any job combination not on that "approved" list, you know.. to experiment, or perhaps get something more out of the game than what everyone else does and expects you to do. You will be called "noob", you will be berated and lectured and shunned from parties and told you don't know how to play. It happens all the tme.
You might notice that 90% of my disappointment with FFXI is related to the player-base, not the game itself. With a different, less egocentric player mentality pervading it, FFXI would be a drastically different experience, and likely still the most amazing MMO I'd ever played.
There is a reason people won't invite you if you are a NIN/THF, WAR/RNG or MNK/WHM. It is because certain job combinations work and others are simply useless.
1. Your account is not deleted after 3 months. Your character data is saved for a year and can be reactivated for the entire year. This was changed during the "Return to VanaDiel" campaign.
My account was deleted and I was never even able to TRY the game. The fact they change it doesn't correct the situation for players, like me, that just waste $70 and never where able to even play.
Considering it is a raid-end-game, it just save me time, still I waste $70 and all I saw was the character creation, never even able to try the game...(my computer was to weak back then and when I buy a new computer, my account was completely deleted).
Square Enix may change and improve, they still wrong me in the past, and I am a vindicative person on such a level. I am glad to hear they no longer do that, but it doesn't change anything about how it WAS when I grant them some interest.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Good review, except that I think you gave it too high of a score. I thought this game was pathetic. It introduced nothing new really to the genre, and even did some things that most mmo's don't do, such as level loss on death. I don't know if they changed that, but last I played it was still something that was very frustrating. Also, it's was a very unfriendly game for soloers.
The other issues you mentioned I didn't know about, but it sounds like this game is even worse than I had thought. If Square Enix is too lazy, or stupid to prevent players from using 3rd part apps to cheat in their game then they deserve to lose every player they have. Games like Dark Age of Camelot do a great job, mostly, of preventing such blatant issues. Aside from the occasional radar user, or people who use macro programs to level up crafting (which I personally have noting against because crafting in DAoC is a nightmare, although Mythic has finally acknowledged this and is going to be changing a lot of things) you really don't see this kind of exploiting. When it does happen the community tends to jump on it, and let Mythic know that it needs to be fixed asap. Lucky for us Mythic doesn't have their heads up their butts, most of the time, but it sounds to me like SE does. I really love the Final Fantasy series, but FFXI is a huge disappointment imo.
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
I don't know if this was already said in a comment as it's late here and I just skimmed the comments:
About the part where you mention the game deleting inactive accounts after 3 months, that's not always the case. I know they had a Return to Vana'diel campaign a while back that allowed old players to reactivate long gone characters but I don't know if that's still active anymore. However, I thought I quit earlier this year and left the game for 7 months. I just returned last month to find that all my characters were right where I left them. Whether this has to do with the above mentioned campaign, a plus of being on a slightly less-populated server, or the fact that I've been a subsciber for 3 years, I have no idea. Some accounts are still there after 3 months, some aren't. I don't know why.
Anyhow, I enjoyed your review of the MMORPG I love to hate and hate to love but can't stop playing no matter how hard I try.
"Chinamen farmers" I think the writer sholuld be a little moe sensitive in his choice of words, granted that most gold farmers in many mmo's are based in China, I do not believe that calling these people "Chinamen" is acceptable. I believe that "Chinese farmers" would be a much more acceptable term.
a fair review.. some scores higher than I would have given them but others lower..
honestly I played the game for a year but found it not really to my liking... I'm a very "I want to do this" type and "why can't I do this?" and reasons like "because everyone else says you can't" just aren't good enough for me..
mana-burn parties would never have come into existence had someone not asked the question of "why"... "out of the box" thinking is not a common thing in FFXI though... to that effect, what works works well but due to the games rather brutal punishment of failure few people are willing to take a risk.
I left FFXI around 2 years ago, maybe more.. SWG introduced a world where solo'ing was possible and for a while that alone made it a good game.. then I moved to EQ2 and finally WoW, but I did miss FFXI until I re-activated my subscription. Honestly my 2nd go around I didn't get higher than around 10th level because I knew the future LFG hell that was to come.. I spent a lot of time fishing and playing the AH and it got old fast. I was in one of those HMN linkshells too but the thought of the grind was just too much..
anywho, the depiction of FFXI in the review is accurate enough to give people a good idea.. it truly is a *HEAVILY* social networking necessary game and it requires a pretty big investiment of consequitive blocks of time. If you can do both of those the game will be good for you.. if you can't, move on and don't try it there are lots of other mmo's out there better suited to a more casual playstyle.
But.....for those who dislike this game please bequite...im tired of hearing "this game takes to long" "people in this game arnt new player friendly" blah blah blah
most pro players expect you to have at least read a guide so you know what your doing, and expect to know you can type...
i personaly hate dealing with new players that dont even try to make full words...
"how do u heal?" "type /heal or press H on the keyboard..."
simple...
but off of that,this game does take lots of time so you gotta make sure you have 3+ hours a day to play to get a good amount of things done.
and i have had personal experiance, most people hate players who beg for gil (myself im poor constantly x,x)
Linkshells are a key part of having fun in this game.
this game IS almost complete partying after about 25+ (unless your a beastmaster or MAYBE puppetmaster)
but please PLEASE, when you talk use words that have ALL the letters and dont consist of NUMBERS PLEASE...its so hard to comunicate with players when you do and trying to explain to new players about things when they dont use all the words in a sentence makes you just /walk away.....
thats about all i can think of >,o
OH and i enjoy starting over and leveling to 30 and such so fun for me (just started over again)
if anyone lands on searph when starting just ask for help from Okima and im sure i can do something.
is there ever going to be a free trial for FF?? i really want to try it but the cost to buy it from my country is too big couse i have to order it from elsewhere...
so i would like to try it at least for a week i think !!!
I was going to restart my subscription to this game, but after installing it all over again I found out that my game KEY has expired, now they want me to buy the same game again.... I can guarantee them it's not going to happen, I enjoyed it when I played, just like most every other MMO I've played, but I'm not going to buy the game twice and pay a monthly subscription for what they offer... It's not that good!
Especially when my game KEY for other games never have expired even after longer absenses from the game then I've had from FFXI. I don't care about them deleting my characters, I would most likely have done so myself, but they went way beyond that...
So, if you want to take some time of from the game, make sure you know how long you have before your game KEY expires, not just before they delete your characters...
Most of the review was pretty much bang on.One point i would like to mention about the majority of gamers in general.Too many people in there complaints are worried about time???Why are you playign any game at all if you are worried about time?You are suppose to be in there having some fun and teaming up with other players.
It always becomes very imminent to me that players are in some kinda hurry to romp through any game,why is this?IMO that proves how bad a game is ,if you just want to whip through it without enjoying it.
If/when your time limit is up for the day,so what,logoff the game and continue it again when you have the time.This is not at work where your being paid to complete so much by end day.If your bound to a LS and playing with other players then yes you have to commit time to them to accomplish anything,otherwise you shouldnt be playing a MMO but rather play a free asian solo grindfest or play FPS's.
This game has been and IS designed for group play,so don't ever ridicule it because it's not solo friendly.Solo friendly games i have seen take very little effort to design and usually have terrible content.Fps's are the only genre that is truly designed properly for solo play.If you like to play solo there is amillion asian games or try quake/unreal tournament/serious sam[lol][funny game]/call of duty there is a ton of options.
I myself flip flop from party based games to solo based games to keep my interest going,i think others should follow the same routine to keep from ridiculing games that cant solo or are very time consuming.
For the life of me i can't figure why i would want a game to finish super fast if its a game i enjoy alot.The majority of people i know that truly enjoy a game,pretty much want it to last forever.
I also want to point out that your players are NOT deleted after a cetain time frame,only YOU can delete them.If you deleted them then why the heck are you blaming squenix for your stupidity?I have been offline for a year and still re-activated all my players.If it's past a year you just email them and they can still re activate a player,but no you cannot bring back deleted players lmao,that's your fault.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by SeraphexFFXI Hey those pics on page 3 are my pics!!!!!!(...)
No they are still copyright of Square-Enix, EVERYTHING on your account is also owned by Square-Enix (ingame name, items etc). Also show the pics WITHOUT the mmorpg.com logo on them (since you say you took the screenshots), you have only shown the pics that ALREADY are linked to on this very site (that have mmorpg.com in the corner along with copyright info).
Uhm, bit late in reply.. haven't really followed the thread... but still better then not bothering (or being able) to read what is being said...
I never said I deleted my characters, I haven't ... what I said is that I wouldn't mind if they would delete my characters after not being active for more then a year (since I would probably do so myself) rather then being told to buy a new key after reinstalling everything ... nothing was mentioned about an option for reactivating the account, if that's a possibility then I might consider going back to this game, enjoyed my time in it...
After 3 months of inactivity all characters are deleted on the account, there was one campaign last year that let you activate account & get back your characters (I think, dont remmember too much of it). For the numerous keys for account AND game I am not sure how they are handled, if you canceled the playonline-account you need to buy a new game.
Square-Enix really need to take lessons from other mmorpgs in regards to keeping character records & account keys (FFXI uses four(!) different cd-keys for a single account, that is 3 too many).
Nah, I don't care if I'd have to type in 200 account keys to activate my account (well, it would get real tedious, but that's besides the point), what bothers me is that they want me to buy the game again. I don't have any of the expansions, except for rise of zilarth (believe that's the name), and they do have those nice boxed sets that include the old game plus all expansions, so it's not like it's undoable, but I wanted to see if I could get back into the game before I did that... and now I think it's just not going to happen.
Not when a game like Anarchy Online even has all my characters fully intact after 2+ years of complete inactivity, and no BS about buying a new game key.
Customer service in FFXI is rather laughable. GM's are seemingly powerless to do anything. If you trade an item and it disappears, that item is gone forever, and it won't be getting replaced. While billing issues can usually be resolved with great efficiency, in-game problems are normally just ignored. It can be extremely frustrating when a repeat botter is constantly reported, and no action is taken to prevent these illegal activities from going on.
One other thing of interest is the fact that Square Enix will nullify your content ID, which is essentially deleting your character, if you stop playing for more than three months. Considering inactive characters aren't really affecting their server, it seems peculiar that they would not want to secure their customer's satisfaction by just leaving their character alone, at least for a longer amount of time. Games like Dark Age of Camelot have kept characters forever and it's absolutely laughable that Square Enix does not.
Just wanna point out that the above information is no longer valid. SE does not delete characters anymore. Also GM's have become a bit more player friendly. Now if you lose an item you CAN call a GM to get it back, and they do take botter's seriously. This score needs to be brought up.
Comments
It's better be hated for who you are, than loved for who you aren't.
Which FF Character Are You?
FFXI renders the entire 3D scene to an offscreen buffer (render to texture) rather than directly to the framebuffer. Because of this FSAA has no effect on the game at all other than slowing it down. Multisampling FSAA is simply incompatible with render to texture and any game that uses this (usually it's done because the designers feel the improved effects are worth sacrificing FSAA) will either have graphics errors or simply won't work at all.
There's a sort of way around this, but first a warning. If you read the following and have no idea what the hell I'm talking about then it's safe to say you shouldn't be doing this anyway so just learn to live without FSAA in FFXI. If you don't know what you are doing you could seriously mess up your windows install.
You can do the supersampling trick. You edit FFXI's registry values so it renders the 3D graphics at 2x the screen resolution. Your graphics card will then scale the image down to fit the screen. ideally you want 2x the actual screen resolution. (though FFXI is limited to a max rendering resolution of 2048x2048)
This is what the "background" and "overlay" settings in the game setup are about. "background" = 3D graphics and "overlay" = actual screen resolution (and menus). The config utility only allows 256x256, 512x512, and 1024x1024 but if you edit the registry settings you can set it to anything up to 2048x2048.
Supersampling FSAA is technicly higher quality than Multisampling FSAA (it anti aliases the entire scene not just polygon edges) but it also a lot slower. Only do this if you have a fast video card.
i started playing just before the RMT fall, prices droped down to normal, it was nice that i could buy decent amour at a decent price when i hit lv 30 on my rdm, at that point i decided to unlock ninja and use thf/ninja, im now currently lv 45, and am part of a large social linkshell, i have a friend, who is part of a major HNM linkshell, we hardally have time to hang out becuase hes always fighting genbu and the other gods, not AV yet...
this game takes alot of dedication if you want to go far, not so much to have fun, but if you want it all, you've got to play, there are still things that only 3-5 people have done (each server i mean), like getting the final wepon skill "knights of the round", it takes at least a year, and the same with the lu shang fishing rod quest, you have to fish 10,000 moat carp, and after that, you recive a fishing rod (kinda lame huh?). but apparently its worth it, yet it takes about a year also.
monsters the same lv as you arnt not easy, unless you know what you are doing, and it costs money, lots of it. solo isnt really an option on the game unless your going to do a diffacult class like beastmaster, wich can be somewhat rewarding, but partying and making friends is the ture aim for players on this game.
the game will lagg on a very busy day in a dense area, but even then not much.
Lv 45 thf/24nin/31rdm
Well, by this logic, this argument applies: Shouldn't every MMORPG be re-rated every year to keep a more current standard? Are they? DAoC, for example, has an 8.4 rating; surely, according to 2006 standards, that rating should have gone down, right?
I'm just saying, if FFXI is to be compared with 2006 gaming standards, so should every MMO.
www.draftgore.com
Gore '08
From the EVE-re-review: mmorpg.com will re-review old mmorpg:s. Cant remmember if they set any time-limit though.
UnrealSWAT, my mistake, human error. I wrote what I meant to put down. AH =/= Sending items, sorry about that.
Also, MMORPG.com has started doing re-reviews on all the games. It just takes awhile for all of them to be aired. Just give it some time.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Part of the rigidity and "script-like" treadmill the players have introduced is exactly what bountydog says. There are a total of 300 or so possible job combinations in FFXI. Only a relative handful are "accepted".. or, rather, "demanded".
In the same vein as trying different places to hunt and gain xp, don't dare try any job combination not on that "approved" list, you know.. to experiment, or perhaps get something more out of the game than what everyone else does and expects you to do. You will be called "noob", you will be berated and lectured and shunned from parties and told you don't know how to play. It happens all the tme.
You might notice that 90% of my disappointment with FFXI is related to the player-base, not the game itself. With a different, less egocentric player mentality pervading it, FFXI would be a drastically different experience, and likely still the most amazing MMO I'd ever played.
There is a reason people won't invite you if you are a NIN/THF, WAR/RNG or MNK/WHM. It is because certain job combinations work and others are simply useless.
Hey those pics on page 3 are my pics!!!!!!
The Hume Thief and hume ninja are meeeeee!
Want proof, here.
http://www.theforcels.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1027
Name is Seraphex on the alexander server, i think MMORPG.com owes me some gil for using my pics
My account was deleted and I was never even able to TRY the game. The fact they change it doesn't correct the situation for players, like me, that just waste $70 and never where able to even play.
Considering it is a raid-end-game, it just save me time, still I waste $70 and all I saw was the character creation, never even able to try the game...(my computer was to weak back then and when I buy a new computer, my account was completely deleted).
Square Enix may change and improve, they still wrong me in the past, and I am a vindicative person on such a level. I am glad to hear they no longer do that, but it doesn't change anything about how it WAS when I grant them some interest.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
The other issues you mentioned I didn't know about, but it sounds like this game is even worse than I had thought. If Square Enix is too lazy, or stupid to prevent players from using 3rd part apps to cheat in their game then they deserve to lose every player they have. Games like Dark Age of Camelot do a great job, mostly, of preventing such blatant issues. Aside from the occasional radar user, or people who use macro programs to level up crafting (which I personally have noting against because crafting in DAoC is a nightmare, although Mythic has finally acknowledged this and is going to be changing a lot of things) you really don't see this kind of exploiting. When it does happen the community tends to jump on it, and let Mythic know that it needs to be fixed asap. Lucky for us Mythic doesn't have their heads up their butts, most of the time, but it sounds to me like SE does. I really love the Final Fantasy series, but FFXI is a huge disappointment imo.
It is pathos we lack, and this lack of pathos makes the worlds we explore quite stale.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Antioche
Anyways, one of the best (read: fair) reviews of FFXI I have seen in a long time.
About the part where you mention the game deleting inactive accounts
after 3 months, that's not always the case. I know they had a
Return to Vana'diel campaign a while back that allowed old players to
reactivate long gone characters but I don't know if that's still active
anymore. However, I thought I quit earlier this year and left the
game for 7 months. I just returned last month to find that all my
characters were right where I left them. Whether this has to do
with the above mentioned campaign, a plus of being on a slightly
less-populated server, or the fact that I've been a subsciber for 3
years, I have no idea. Some accounts are still there after 3
months, some aren't. I don't know why.
Anyhow, I enjoyed your review of the MMORPG I love to hate and hate to love but can't stop playing no matter how hard I try.
Good job.
a fair review.. some scores higher than I would have given them but others lower..
honestly I played the game for a year but found it not really to my liking... I'm a very "I want to do this" type and "why can't I do this?" and reasons like "because everyone else says you can't" just aren't good enough for me..
mana-burn parties would never have come into existence had someone not asked the question of "why"... "out of the box" thinking is not a common thing in FFXI though... to that effect, what works works well but due to the games rather brutal punishment of failure few people are willing to take a risk.
I left FFXI around 2 years ago, maybe more.. SWG introduced a world where solo'ing was possible and for a while that alone made it a good game.. then I moved to EQ2 and finally WoW, but I did miss FFXI until I re-activated my subscription. Honestly my 2nd go around I didn't get higher than around 10th level because I knew the future LFG hell that was to come.. I spent a lot of time fishing and playing the AH and it got old fast. I was in one of those HMN linkshells too but the thought of the grind was just too much..
anywho, the depiction of FFXI in the review is accurate enough to give people a good idea.. it truly is a *HEAVILY* social networking necessary game and it requires a pretty big investiment of consequitive blocks of time. If you can do both of those the game will be good for you.. if you can't, move on and don't try it there are lots of other mmo's out there better suited to a more casual playstyle.
>_> <_< ^_^
I personaly enjoy playing this game...
that was a good review btw...
But.....for those who dislike this game please bequite...im tired of hearing "this game takes to long" "people in this game arnt new player friendly" blah blah blah
most pro players expect you to have at least read a guide so you know what your doing, and expect to know you can type...
i personaly hate dealing with new players that dont even try to make full words...
"how do u heal?" "type /heal or press H on the keyboard..."
simple...
but off of that,this game does take lots of time so you gotta make sure you have 3+ hours a day to play to get a good amount of things done.
and i have had personal experiance, most people hate players who beg for gil (myself im poor constantly x,x)
Linkshells are a key part of having fun in this game.
this game IS almost complete partying after about 25+ (unless your a beastmaster or MAYBE puppetmaster)
but please PLEASE, when you talk use words that have ALL the letters and dont consist of NUMBERS PLEASE...its so hard to comunicate with players when you do and trying to explain to new players about things when they dont use all the words in a sentence makes you just /walk away.....
thats about all i can think of >,o
OH and i enjoy starting over and leveling to 30 and such so fun for me
(just started over again)
if anyone lands on searph when starting just ask for help from Okima and im sure i can do something.
i really want to try it but the cost to buy it from my country is too big couse i have
to order it from elsewhere...
so i would like to try it at least for a week i think !!!
thnx in advance!!!
You wont live long enough to remember my name...
Especially when my game KEY for other games never have expired even after longer absenses from the game then I've had from FFXI. I don't care about them deleting my characters, I would most likely have done so myself, but they went way beyond that...
So, if you want to take some time of from the game, make sure you know how long you have before your game KEY expires, not just before they delete your characters...
Most of the review was pretty much bang on.One point i would like to mention about the majority of gamers in general.Too many people in there complaints are worried about time???Why are you playign any game at all if you are worried about time?You are suppose to be in there having some fun and teaming up with other players.
It always becomes very imminent to me that players are in some kinda hurry to romp through any game,why is this?IMO that proves how bad a game is ,if you just want to whip through it without enjoying it.
If/when your time limit is up for the day,so what,logoff the game and continue it again when you have the time.This is not at work where your being paid to complete so much by end day.If your bound to a LS and playing with other players then yes you have to commit time to them to accomplish anything,otherwise you shouldnt be playing a MMO but rather play a free asian solo grindfest or play FPS's.
This game has been and IS designed for group play,so don't ever ridicule it because it's not solo friendly.Solo friendly games i have seen take very little effort to design and usually have terrible content.Fps's are the only genre that is truly designed properly for solo play.If you like to play solo there is amillion asian games or try quake/unreal tournament/serious sam[lol][funny game]/call of duty there is a ton of options.
I myself flip flop from party based games to solo based games to keep my interest going,i think others should follow the same routine to keep from ridiculing games that cant solo or are very time consuming.
For the life of me i can't figure why i would want a game to finish super fast if its a game i enjoy alot.The majority of people i know that truly enjoy a game,pretty much want it to last forever.
I also want to point out that your players are NOT deleted after a cetain time frame,only YOU can delete them.If you deleted them then why the heck are you blaming squenix for your stupidity?I have been offline for a year and still re-activated all my players.If it's past a year you just email them and they can still re activate a player,but no you cannot bring back deleted players lmao,that's your fault.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Uhm, bit late in reply.. haven't really followed the thread... but still better then not bothering (or being able) to read what is being said...
I never said I deleted my characters, I haven't ... what I said is that I wouldn't mind if they would delete my characters after not being active for more then a year (since I would probably do so myself) rather then being told to buy a new key after reinstalling everything ... nothing was mentioned about an option for reactivating the account, if that's a possibility then I might consider going back to this game, enjoyed my time in it...
After 3 months of inactivity all characters are deleted on the account, there was one campaign last year that let you activate account & get back your characters (I think, dont remmember too much of it).
For the numerous keys for account AND game I am not sure how they are handled, if you canceled the playonline-account you need to buy a new game.
Square-Enix really need to take lessons from other mmorpgs in regards to keeping character records & account keys (FFXI uses four(!) different cd-keys for a single account, that is 3 too many).
Nah, I don't care if I'd have to type in 200 account keys to activate my account (well, it would get real tedious, but that's besides the point), what bothers me is that they want me to buy the game again. I don't have any of the expansions, except for rise of zilarth (believe that's the name), and they do have those nice boxed sets that include the old game plus all expansions, so it's not like it's undoable, but I wanted to see if I could get back into the game before I did that... and now I think it's just not going to happen.
Not when a game like Anarchy Online even has all my characters fully intact after 2+ years of complete inactivity, and no BS about buying a new game key.
Customer service in FFXI is rather laughable. GM's are seemingly powerless to do anything. If you trade an item and it disappears, that item is gone forever, and it won't be getting replaced. While billing issues can usually be resolved with great efficiency, in-game problems are normally just ignored. It can be extremely frustrating when a repeat botter is constantly reported, and no action is taken to prevent these illegal activities from going on.
One other thing of interest is the fact that Square Enix will nullify your content ID, which is essentially deleting your character, if you stop playing for more than three months. Considering inactive characters aren't really affecting their server, it seems peculiar that they would not want to secure their customer's satisfaction by just leaving their character alone, at least for a longer amount of time. Games like Dark Age of Camelot have kept characters forever and it's absolutely laughable that Square Enix does not.
Just wanna point out that the above information is no longer valid. SE does not delete characters anymore. Also GM's have become a bit more player friendly. Now if you lose an item you CAN call a GM to get it back, and they do take botter's seriously. This score needs to be brought up.
im about to start this game, and would like to thank you for tellin me what to expect.