My Final Farewell to FFXI

It’s been several years since the release of Final Fantasy XI, and several years since I “broke it off” because of the game’s failure to put-out the way I like my games to put-out. Yet even after all this time, I still feel hostility toward my experience playing in a similar way I feel hostility toward some ex-girlfriends. And I just haven’t been able to let go. So here’s my final attempt to make amends before turning my back and saying goodbye forever to a dysfunctional and unsatisfying relationship.

Most MMO’s have several commonalities. Most never end, (or, at least, not in the traditional sense of finishing a campaign with cut scenes and credits) most provide some form of quest system to assist the player in their leveling experience and make the grind less tedious, and most offer an expansive world that feels just real enough to confuse the barrier between reality and fantasy. Final Fantasy XI shares only one of these commonalities.

Everything in FFXI feels very real. And I’m not talking about graphic quality or any of the visual affects offered (although they aren’t terribly impressive, either). I’m talking about having to deal with similar bull crap nobody wants to deal with in the real world. And this reality, taken several steps too far, is responsible for every problem I have with the game.

My first complaint revolves around transportation. Most of us, when traveling to work or school, use a car. Some of us take a bus. Some even use a tram if it’s an available option. My point is, we use transportation because it gets us from point A to point B faster than walking.

FFXI also provides a form of transportation called the Chocobo. But you can’t use it until you reach level twenty and complete a nine hour quest that involves buying greens (which I will cover in more detail when I bitch about the games economy) and feeding the stupid thing. Once you’ve reached level twenty and completed the feeding quest, you don’t get to keep the Chocobo. Each time you use it, a fee is required that is determined by the amount of Chocobos currently being used by other players. If the number of Chocobo’s being used is high, the cost sky-rockets. Then, once you arrive at your destination and get off the Chocobo, it leaves you stranded, forcing you to return by foot.

My problem with this wouldn’t be as significant if the world wasn’t enormous. But the fact is, I spent at least forty percent of my play-time traveling by foot. On many occasions I was forced to run between two of the main cities, a whopping thirty real minutes from one city to the next.

The game does offer one other form of transportation—the airship. If you’re lucky enough to carry a boarding pass, be level fifty, and be heading in the direction of one of its three destinations, you can use the airship every forty-five minutes.

My next complaint revolves around the leveling system. Setting aside the irritation I felt after being obliterated by a level thirty-eight rabbit when I was level fifty-nine, my major problem lies with party structure.

FFXI was designed to force players into groups to kill more powerful monsters. I actually like this aspect of the game. I enjoy gaining levels with groups of people more than I enjoy playing alone. But the structure of the group system, combined with lack of players, provides endless frustration when looking for a group or attempting to create one.

When grouping with others, there are several rules that must be followed.

First, you must find players that are within two levels of each other. For example, if I’m level fifty, I must group with players level forty-eight to fifty, or players level fifty to fifty-two. If I’m in the group of players level fifty to fifty-two, and the level fifty-two player levels to fifty-three before all level fifty players are fifty-one, he must leave the party or experience goes down the drain. (If you understand that you’ll know that it’s dumb). This causes an unnecessary amount of time asking questions and searching for players in the proper level range.

Second, the classes that makeup your parties are very specific. A party is made of five players. Among these five players, the following classes are required: Paladin, White Mage, and Bard/Red Mage. The damage-dealing classes are interchangeable. If you’ve managed to build a party with all required classes except the White Mage, and there is no groupless White Mage in your level range currently online, then your balls out of luck. Your next step is to speak to the party leader of a currently formed party (if there is one) and tell him you’d like to be put on the waiting list, or wait for a White Mage to come online and hope the other players in your party are willing to wait (because you might be waiting for eight hours).

To refrain from writing a novel (and trust me, I’ve considered it), I will express only one last large frustration. In fact, this last problem, in my opinion, is the core issue with FFXI. It’s also one of the core issues in our country right now (remember that real world bull crap I talked about?).

The economy in FFXI is totally screwed because it’s controlled by the players. All items and equipment worth having are sold through an auction house. Each item’s information shows you how many are available and the price history for the last ten sold. This information gives players a perfect arrangement for jacking up the price whenever an item’s availability is zero.

And they take advantage of that. When a popular item is not available and the price history shows the last ten selling for approximately twenty million, most players will place that item on the auction house for twenty-five million… then thirty million… then thirty-three million, etc. Before you know it, the items price has become seventy million – an impossible amount for any new player to afford (severely reducing the chances of new players being successful in the game). Because of this, the rich, higher level players get richer, and the poor, lower level players get poorer. Let me share with you an example.

Once I attained level forty as a Dark Knight, players wouldn’t group with me unless I had two Sniper Rings. These rings improved accuracy and transformed my character from useless to useful. I had two options for acquiring the rings. I could either compete with the numerous Chinese gil farmers (Asians who sell game money for real money) to find and kill the monster who appeared once per hour and dropped the ring three percent of the time you killed it. Or I could spend the time earning and saving money to pay the ridiculous price of twenty million gil per ring. Although it may not sound like it, earning and saving money was the more practical route; and it was the route I took. Eight hours per day and three months later, I had saved enough to buy both rings (and in those three months the price had increased from twenty million per ring to thirty million). Dumb.

And now that I’ve gotten all of that out of my system, I will answer a question that I have been contemplating while I’ve been writing. And, perhaps it is even a question you have been considering while reading. If the game is so terrible, why the hell do I know so much about it? Well, the straight forward answer is that I’m a competitive ass hole. I don’t like being beaten. Even in spite of all the things I hate about FFXI (and there are many more I won’t cover) I had to keep playing. It wasn’t until I had logged fifty-five days of playing time, only to discover I wasn’t more than half way to the level cap, did I throw in the towel. And until today, I’ve never vented properly. Goodbye FFXI. Goodbye forever. I won’t think of you again, and I hope you don’t think of me.