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Amarok on 22 July 2008
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Words Of Wisdom said:

I'm not an MMO fan at all but last month a couple friends got me to try FFXI so I got a free trial and played it for a bit.  I noticed several things:

1)  The community is about as lively as a dead hamster (Titan).  For an MMO, it sure didn't feel like any part of it.  I realize it is an aging PC game with a dying community so I didn't have high hopes anyway.

2)  The combat is tedious and uninspired.  Out of the many RPGs I've played, FFXI's class system is among the worst I've played with.  Absolutely nothing felt rewarding for the effort required to get it.  For the amount of time required to get anywhere I could be making more progress and having more fun in tons of different games.

3)  FFXI has the absolute worst controls of any PC game I've ever played.  I've never seen a control scheme so bulky, so unintuitive, and simply so awful on any PC game ever.  This is coming from someone who has been an avid PC gamer since the days of eTangle/vTangle, vgaTrek, and Commander Keen.  FFXI made it quite clear to me that Square Enix had no freaking idea how to make a PC game.  From the very first moment I pushed the Escape key and nothing happened, I knew it would be downhill from there.  It was appalling. 

If it's what you and your wife enjoy, more power to you.  I know I couldn't stomach playing a game like that for any length of time.  ^_^

All fair comments in this day and age.  The community factor has gone downhill since I started, the same group of friends we made early on are still with us, so on a day-to-day basis we have our little community to keep things feeling alive.

It's a hard ask, but for anyone to really experience the battle system properly you need to get at least 1 job to 45, meaning another needs to be at 22 as a subjob, and thats just gonna take a long commitment from a new starter.  However once ppl get that far they get hooked as so many possibilities open up and you have a much bigger choice of abilities and spells.  I have completed all of the missions in all of the expansions (so far) and have really enjoyed them, and alot of quests.

There seems to be a shocking lack of skill in some of the lower lvling, mainly because experience isn't being passed around from the older players,  they tend to find different ways to lvl new jobs 1-30 instead of repeating the same old same old and partying with new impatient players.  I think the only way to get into this game now is either to find a good friend ingame early on, who is willing to mentor, or join a RL friend already in the game.  However its been going for 6 years now, and is just as strong as ever player base wise (over 500k paying players).

As for controls, I played on the PC keyboard for a total of 2 days I think, before getting a Gamecube to USB controller for both of us.  The GC controller works perfectly for it (it does take a while to get used to the UI, but I think thats the same of any game with many choices).  I'm completely lost if I don't have my controller now.