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In reference to thread "10 reasons not to play FFXI"
Pringo
Member Posts: 9
This is my first post in this forum so please bear with me. I will also being using WoW as a comparison to FFXI since the majority of people flaming FFXI tend to play WoW. (Another reason would be because I have played both extensivley, so it would be easier for me to comment). I also apologize that this may or will seem as a wall of text.
MMORPG, probably the most addicting type of game out there on the market at the moment. WoW in all essence has captured what gamers need and what they have sought after a long period of time, 'the casual gamer-ness.'
This meaning that you don't need to devote endless amounts of time in leveling and getting gear since the average instance run near end game takes a few hours (excluding high-end raids eg. Onixya, BWL). WoW is very much geared towards the average casual gamer in which they do not have to use a lot of time to accomplish very little. This is however, where the downfall begins. Due to this lack of commitment or time, it attracts many "Childish" or "Immature" people to this game for the lack of better words. Hence why the majority (Emphasize on the word majority, I didn't say all) of the population on WoW servers are usually Kids, teenagers or seriously immature adults. The reason, which I undoubtedly agree with, that makes WoW so great is that in all, you can get really good gear, level up your toon to cap without much time needed in comparison to other games on the market. But what Blizzard excels with in the casual gamer department, they lack in the "extensively end game" material. This meaning that once a person has reached level 60, gotten their epic mount, and twinked out their toon till kingdomcome, there isn't anything else to do. Yes, people will argue that to counter this boredom a new expansion is being put inplace with the addition of new areas, armors, races etcetc. But will this be enough to attract or keep the current players satisfied? Time will tell, but the way Blizzard is going in concerns with the end game content they will undoubtedly, sooner or later, crash and burn.
Before you go on and say that "OMFG YOU NOOB, I BET YOU NEVER EVEN GOTTEN TO END GAME!!1
1 LOLOLOL." I'm actually playing WoW at the moment. Previously I had quit FFXI to come play WoW after the release of the game last year during xmas period. But after 3 months of play, getting to 60, twinking out my mage, running endless amounts of MCs, attained my epic mount, gotten my second character to 60, I found myself, bored and back in FFXI. The fact that getting jobs to 60 takes so little time is great, but in the end, it gets boring. I know many of you have flamed or have read flames about FFXI on this forum, but comming from a person who has played both extensively, reached end-game in both games, please listen me out before making comments.
FFXI in all essence, is an EXTREMELY time consuming game. I will not argue with anyone when people say that FFXI will take absolutely the most time to accomplish anything in the game in comparison to any other game out there in the market. But that being said, this weeds out all those "immature" and "Childish" players that WoW seems to be infested with. WoW of course has its mature player base, but is dominated by 10-19 year olds who find it fun to grief, and repeatedly kill players 20+ lvls below them (Yes, I rolled a PvP server unfortunately). The fact that WoW is so centered on solo leveling, makes people socially retarded to be honest. They have no idea how to play with other people, and WoW is a MMORPG. Yes, these people who I claim to be "socially retarded" are abundant, but there are a lot of nice people too in WoW. FFXI however, these "socially retarded" people are quickly identified and taught a lesson and won't be touched with a 10 foot poll. Since FFXI is based on team-work and partying (Term used in FFXI for grouping up for those who don't know), and with this in mind, people are taught to be co-operative and friendly, or else they will hardly ever get any party. It's amazing how lonely it can feel in a server with a population of 3000+ if they know you have stolen/mpk/bern a jackass overall. Unfortunately, these "socially retarded" people who do NOT get weeded out tend to be hard to avoid like a Dick Cheney joke on David Lettermen, but they are a lot LESS abundant on FFXI than on WoW.
The main thread I will be refering to will be the thread entitled "10 Reasons not to play FFXI" on the FFXI thread posted by Corbo.
10. Waiting: As I have explained before, I note that FFXI is an extremely time consuming game, no doubt about it. But it is that, that gives a sense of accomplishment in the game. It may of taken you a year (yes a year) to get that relic weapon, but you know and everyone else will know, how much dedication it took to get it. It is a status symbol due to the extreme rarity of getting one, but you will be respected. In comparison to WoW epics can be bought on the AH and used. I know the best epics are usually BoP but there are exceptions where the best armor or weapons can still be bought on the AH.
9. Pvp: FFXI, in all respect was never MEANT to be a PvP game. The PvP aspect, called Ballista, in FFXI was added as an extra touch for the FFXI player base. It was meant to give it some excitment after the majority of the FFXI community requested for a PvP area. I believe the person posting hasn't done any extensive playing of ballista, since if (s)he did, (s)he would find out that Ballista is a team PvP, not a stand-alone pvp. Hence, taking the term MMORPG to a hilt.
8. Exp and death penalty: Yep, dying in FFXI sucks balls. But would it matter if you died and nothing happened? The exp penalty when dying is a DISINCENTIVE to not die. Unlike WoW where you just have to recover your coprse and pay for repairs, nothing major ever happens when you die. So people don't really care if they die or not. While in FFXI, dying is a huge thing but you can easily recover nearly all your exp (200 exp will be loss on a raise III) with a raise III.
7. Genkai: Genaki, or limit break, is a quest that every adventurer and player must complete to advance in the game. This is again, to weed out the weekend warrior since these Genkais (and the time to level up) will take a long time. I use the term "weed out" very loosley. FFXI sole purpose was not to weed out these casual gamers, but does filter through the more dedicated and friendly bunch.
6. Crafting: Major difference between WoW and FFXI in crafting is that, in WoW it takes quite of bit of gold, but you can actually powerlevel all the way from 1-300 (excluding gathering crafts) in one day. While in FFXI it will take you MONTHS of even a year to get to level cap (100), and will cost you millions and millions of gil. But in the end you can make a LOT of gil. Crafting isn't for the faint of heart in FFXI since you CAN break your item, but in the end you can end up HQing (higher quality, better stats then the normal item) your item, increasing the value of it usually by ten-fold in most cases. In WoW you are garunteed to make it, no such thing as a failure, but no such thing as a HQ either. FFXI crafting system is also insanely complicated. One must take into account the element of the day (lightning, earth etcetc) and the phase the mooon is in for the best result. While in WoW you just click "Create all" and walk away.
5. Magic scrolls: Not much to say about this, since in WoW you buy skills. In FFXI you automatically learn some abilities but you need to learn magic. As in WoW, the price of your skill will increase as level increases. FFXI as well, the higher you get, usually the more the magic will cost.
4. AF: AF was developed by the FFXI team to give you the feel, and look of your class. Not to mention some valuable +skill and attributes to boost your abilities as the class you play. Some peices of AF will give you some weird +attributes, but this is done as to not to overpower the AF, since there are such things as AFv2 where you get a stronger version of your AF during end-game. The poster of this list commented that you needed 18+ people beating a mob to get your AF. This is unture, however may have been true at the start of the game since everyone was new and had no idea what to do.
3. Crabs: Yes you do level on monters which undoubtedly look the same. But the same goes for WoW. So no argument there.
2. Shitty point less jobs that can be replaced by other jobs and race specific stats.: Absolutely untrue. A blakmage or redmage cannot heal as well as a Whitemage. A Whitemage or redmage cannot nuke as well as a blackmage. And a whitemage and a blackmage can't nuke and heal equally as well as a redmage. Same goes with the damage dealing classes, each classes has a specific role to fill. As does the classes in WoW
1. Auction house system omg worst idea.: I'm sorry, but to be absolutely honest. If anyone has played both WoW and FFXI (except the moron who posted the thread I'm commenting) would agree that FFXI AH is the best idea ever. You are never actually BUYING gear, you're renting it. After you're done with the gear you are using, you can resell it usually at a profit. Whereas in WoW, it gets "soulbound" (majority of the time). The FFXI AH lists the amount an item was sold for, for the last 10 transactions. So buyers know what is overpriced etc. Whereas in WoW you need to download or create addons such as Auctioneer to be able to do that.
In all, yes my post may seem to be biased towards FFXI. But all I'm trying to do is defend this game, since I love the game so much ( not actual love you freak). I play both WoW and FFXI at the moment and like both. Each game has the pros and cons which make them great and which make them stink at times. But in all, they are great games.
I again apologize that this seems like a wall of text, but please take the time to read it.
Comments
Nice post :-), I will agree with you on this, I might not be currently be playing FFXI right now, and there were a few things i myself did find wrong with it but there really isn't 10 incrediable bad things about FFXI, really the xp dept when you die is somthing their trying to bring back, does every one remeber the old EQ1 days? you lost all your equipment when you died then they carebeared it all up. So yes, Wow is for normal people and FFXI are for more hardcore of gamers
yes!! Intellegence in the post!! (btw there is no sarcasm in that if you are wondering) I've been browsin the ffxi forum section, and this is one of the very few people who have a level headed consciounus (sp?) when it comes to posting a reply. In each game there are flaws, FFXI's are more apparent since the majority of people who give up playing the game are usually casual gamers who are not prepared to devot so much time to a game. But in the end this is what makes FFXI so great, a sense of accomplishment. As I stated in my post above, WoW is great if you don't have that much time. It's kind of like FFXI but on steriods and in fast forward mode, but takes away all real gratification of completion. So anyways, yea they are both great games in their own respect. All games are great to certain people, but other games can be horrible to other people too. The only thing that disturbes me (other than spiders), is the fact that people generalize so much in their comment or critisizm of FFXI that it unfortunately effects everyone else reading it and makes them think it's such a crap game even BEFORE they try it. Anyways, I'll let more people post.
I agree with a lot of the stuff there. But the thing is the variation of stuff so you can choose to do whatever and whenever.
Things like Genkai and AF I thought were fun, because you do some quests and you learn new parts of the story. And it's a nice way to get a awesome party together and take down some big mobs and such.
Fongsaiyuk
75 Beastmaster 70 Warrior
Energy Linkshell
Bahamut Server
Well you must be extremely lucky on your sever or extremely lucky with the encounters of mature people. I did not say anything about playing a game 24/7, nor did I define my own premise of what 'hardcore' and 'casual' gamers are. So please, before you go flaming or as you put it 'dispelling ignorance' please get your facts together.
In my post, never did I mention the word 'hardcore gamers.' The term which you have bastardized was 'dedication.' These two words to you may mean the same, but to the rest of the world are used to represent different severity of a situation. When I use the word 'dedication,' I'm refering to more time spent than a 'casual' gamer. And I define the word 'casual gamer,' as many other people do, as spending a certain amount of your free time (note: I said a 'certain' amount, and 'free time') playing a game. From this you can derive that 'dedication' means spending a bit more of your free time than a casual gamer. Do you want me to explain each individual word in my post for you? Or would you prefer to try and 'dispel ignorance?'
You also took my statement out of context. I stated that the casualness, and the less work required by WoW is what makes the game successful and attractive to some gamers. I did not make a blunt statement saying that it was the primary reason that there are an abundance of 'childish' players on the game. But it contributes to the fact that it allows children (usually who have an attention span of a fly) to enjoy MMORPGs. Thus, allowing more 'childish' and 'immature' people to play the game, since it is relatively easy to progress through the game. While compared to a game which requires more 'dedication' (refer to explainiation above if you are not sure how I use this term), it is less likely that these 'childish' and 'immature' people would want to play this particular game. Since due to their limited attention span, they would not like to spend more time achieving the same amount that you could get spending less time on another game. And if you would like an indicator why I believe the majority of players on WoW are children or kids, or atleast people who are attending college. Have you notice that on servers with full populations, queues usually occur when schools are on holiday and during the time when school lets out? These specific times nearly exclude these mid-20's people you are talking about, assuming that they have a job and hence are 'grown up.'
I have not played EQ1 so I cannot comment on it extensively. However, from the information gathered from this forums I have been led to believe that if you were to die in EQ1 all your armor would drop. Hence, providing a HUGE incentive NOT to die. Whether or not this is applied to PvP terms is something I am unsure about, but if it was this in itself would be enough for someone not to risk the chance of dying in PvP.
I'd also like to turn the attention to your other post below your previous one commenting on the exp debt. Again I never used the word 'hardcore' when describing the usefulness of an exp debt. The FFXI game system if you were to have read my post, removes a certain amount of exp based on how much exp you require to level. Again I will emphasize on how this is a disincentive to die. If you were to die and there were no concequance, would anyone really care about dying? Would there be any need to die at all? Why not have everyone at 1hp since you can't die? Again, before you go on 'dispelling ignorance' on the internet, you would be better off getting rid of your own ignorance before commenting on anyone elses.
www.hamstring.ytmnsfw.com
lol WoW Immaturity? Nah, that's passion.
Well, haha, lots of people with strong opinions about I see. Thats a good thing, controversy makes ya re-evaluate.
I personally thought it was a pretty good post. No I don't agree with the way a few things a phrased. But hey, thats me.
I've been playing online since "The Realm" originally came out by Sierra. Its a fun thing ya know? Go online. Dink off, play game, talk with random people, make friends, dink around with friends. See, passing time well enjoying myself.
Never forget that just because you don't agree with someone doesn't make thier perspective moot or without value. Every person reguardless thier station in life deserves basic civility.
Don't hate, appreciate...
Hahaha, that sounds really corny.
JD
FFXI and WoW are polar opposites in a lot of ways.
WoW:
Solo friendly
Rapid levelling
Shallow crafting
Has decent (not great) PvP
Few long term goals available
No housing
FFXI
Grouping practically forced
Nearly the slowest levelling speed of modern MMORPGs
Deep crafting
PvP is (at best) an afterthought in the game design
Many long term goals available (some practically required)
You start with a house
What they have in common is that both are wildly popular fantasy MMORPGs, and not much after that. They will tend to appeal to very different folks. You aren't going to convince many WoW fanboys that FFXI doesn't bite, nor can anything you come up with convince many FFXI fanboys that WoW doesn't bite.
One thing about casual players. There are two types:
1. Kids with short attention spans.
2. Adults with jobs, families, and other RL concerns (i.e., mature players that lack sparetime).
WoW actaully has a pretty large supply of both types, believe it or not.
Don't think I'm bashing FFXI. It seems like it would be a fine game, if you had the sparetime.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
I can answer your question about "where did this childish stigma come from"?
First thing i witnessed joining WOW was almost every player in the main zone dancing around naked.Not only were they all naked ,but they were in a train line fashion yelling CHOO CHOO.My impression right away was OMG how childish.This went on and on all day long,i said to myself ,i gotta get away from this crap.
I couldn't care less if there is a million flames in the wow forums,i don't make statements on generalization,only facts of what i see.
The other thing that gets me is that,since in RL it would never cross my mind to jump someone nor would i find it entertaining,why all of a sudden would my brain say,WOW wouldn't that be fun?
i couldn't care less to defend any game as i have seen many faults in every single game i have played,but some statements really sound like homies defending a game they like while never admitting any fault in the game.
i have played FFXI for as long as any NA and can say,the other poster hasnt quite seen the whole picture.FFXI is a HUGE timesink.The original idea was to make lvl50 thecap but after players hit that too fast and easy,the devs had to re-think there updates when eventually making 75 the cap.They decided to make content after 50 extremely time consuming,it has nothing to do with fun/satisfaction or accomplishment.This way it would be a very long time before the maxxxed out players cry for more.FFXI camping of NM's is totally retarded IMO.
Basically to keep from a longer post i can say this about FFXI..the game in itself is very good,however the setup encourages gil selling and botting ,both of wich run rampant in the game.Both of these blackmarks have made for a very unbalanced game economy.Every single worthwhile NM in the game is camped...why? because the spawn points are all known[no randomness]and high level players can come back and camp a level 10 NM,this is a dumb idea to wich EQ2 has taken care of by greying out mobs an giving no drop for such.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I agree with alot of what you've said Pringo. The only thing is as far as Auction Houses go, I preferred WoW's because of the ease in finding things.
I played FFXI from closed beta up until about 9-10 months after release. I played with my husband and we both got sick of trying to find groups and having a hard time...because we were more casual players and the majority of NA players were about 5-10 levels ahead of us.
I played SWG, then we both played EQ2, then off to WoW. We stopped playing WoW because we came across money problems. WoW was definitely a breath of fresh air to us, we liked the ease at which we could level. Since we couldn't play often, it was perfect for us...and we were thrilled when we got to high levels.
This month we came back to FFXI, once our money troubles sorted out. Why didn't we go back to WoW? Well, we wanted to take a break and play something different....and we were extremely disappointed with DDO beta (it was our plan to play WoW till DDO came out). We both missed FFXI and many of the aspects it offers that WoW doesn't offer. Greater satisfaction with attaining high levels, more versatility with jobs/subjobs, and oddly what we missed the most was what drove us away to begins with...grouping. We missed the teamwork that lacked so much in WoW.
The point of my reply, hmm...think I forgot it by now lol
Seriously, I think Pringo made some very valid points that I agree with. WoW and FFXI are both great games for their own very VERY different reasons.
I agree WoW does attract many childish and immature players. My 1st experience on a PVE server made me doubt my decision to start playing. Then I switched to an RP server and found more mature folks. WoW is synonomis with childishness because of what most of us experience. The one poster who hasn't had a problem is extremely lucky.
You must enjoy kidding yourself if you played Alliance and think 99% of the people around you weren't immature kids. You might be able to find a few pockets of mature players, but you wont be playing with them all the time, if at all, so you'll frequently find yourself with the thousands of idiots who like to whine, complain, and quit before the job is done. We call them kids because they act like kids, plain and simple. You make an easy game, idiots are going to play it. Nobody in WoW actually has a life, that's just a common misconception and excuse. Besides, having a "life" doesn't mean you can "dink around" messing with other people's playing experiences, that just means you're a loser.
Pringo is dead on, can't agree more. His arguement was so consise the usual forum trolls and idiots couldn't form a coherant enough response.
You know, I come here looking for a new MMO to try out and this post hooks me on FFXI again. Tried it back on PS2 and loved it, but ending up quitting for WoW. Money and time problems
Now that I'm set with most of my life, I got some extra time. Now to see if I can install WoW or FFXI at my internship <_<
This thread is largely filled with very interesting an informative posts. I have never played FFXI but I have played WoW for a long time and while I enjoyed it, I am now very over it for many of the reasons already mentioned. Having played SWG in the past (though now it is ruined - RIP SWG), I often find myself missing the added depth of crafting, the slow character progression and the player housing! I also am a fan of semi-forced grouping as it is much more fun. So while I don't have a heap of play time, I just might check FFXI out at some point, since it seems to have all the right stuff and I really don't care if it takes me ages to level as TBH if there is anything that WoW has taught me it is that the journey is where the fun is, the endgame can wait.
But I wont be trying it this week cos my monthly internet usage is maxed out and my speed is down to 64k
/peace
This is my first post, but I must say I agree with this topic. I have been playing FFXI years and WoWfor months. And I like them both, on the occasion I get frustated with one and jump onto the other. Heh, and I think we can all agree they are both very frustrating games.
I dont think we should be flaming each other, they are completely DIFFERENT games! It's like arguing you that you can't do a "Ryuken" in Ridge Racer. 
Good post, I would rate you up if I could ^^
FFXI is the only mmorpg that got me hooked since old Everquest. The whiners are just jelous of us who can handle the challenge and got the patience to play FFXI otherwise they wouldnt be here posting their WoW propaganda