Opinions On FFXI's Life.

At least the first few pages were an interesting read.

An active game stretched over two generations of consoles/PCs has plenty of obstacles; even more so now that its successor has finally seen proper release. Who knows how long it has, there's far too many variables going on right now that isn't solely SE, XI, or XIV. Console gaming has a tough challenge this next generation. It will be competing with games on tablets, phones, etc; something that is gaining a decent foothold and catching on (I'm sure I wasn't the only one who saw SE's business projection over the next few+ years). This may not seem to directly impact XI, and it may not since it has PC as a safety net, but there has been—and still continues to be— a shift.

The game has always had some glaring faults. The playerbase has always chosen to either put up with the nerfed or buffed recent updates/content, or do something else unaffiliated with XI. At this point, it's too early on in this expansion's life to make bold assertions of XI's death. It will be iffy for the XI population for the next couple months. When the new generation is ushered in and we're actively in it, make your bold claims and "obituaries" then.

Being one of the first on my server with sea access was a huge accomplishment for me. Those missions were DIFFICULT and it felt great conquering CoP. Kids these days don't know. [and will never know]

No poopsock here, but a few 2L bottles sure. Especially during our first Tiamat. (6hours @.@)

Its strangely so fun though.

I managed to stumble into a CoP static and get my missions completed before SE dropped the level restriction - it was the most fun I've had in the game.

Not just because of the storyline, but because each fight was a challenge that required preparation and wit - it wasn't just a mindless zerg. It was literally only about 3 weeks after we finished that SE announced that the level restrictions would be scrapped. Even then, I knew it was a bad move.

I know everyone wants the game to be easy, but when the challenge goes away, so does the enjoyment. Every MMO I've played where the Dev team actually listens to the players and makes gameplay easier/less of a grind, the players inevitably get bored and quit. Then all you have is a watered-down version of the game with a dwindling playerbase. It's really sad that FFXI has gone that way also.

sad day bro <<< vet been on fenrir from the day she was open. miss the challenge and the friends. playing hardcore like that made you really trust in each other.

Way to get me to come back to FFXI.... this

5 minute pugil fight can I have it ?

This kid doesn't even know, lol. Someone cue up pre-2007 for this. The level restriction lift wasn't the 'nerf' everyone complains about. They actually nerfed it once before as well (2006,2007, i forget when). "Pre-nerf" describes this nightmare that was the actual original CoP missions as they were released and how they were meant to be played. Talk about a literal mind-f*ck nightmare. You were lucky to complete a single mission. Any mission. Let alone anymore than one on a single night. If you didn't have a static, you didn't complete CoP. I think over the course of my static we had about 10 people who just couldn't do the grind anymore that we ultimately had to replace. Talk about a *** trying to find people to replace them with too. Countless times we had to 'jump back' and catch people up (that alone was a multiple night, multiple hour afair.)

This was hardcore. If you had sea, you were hardcore. Then the nerf came and casuals joined the mix. Man, if they only knew.

The reason why CoP will go down as the best expansion in XI's history is that this wasn't just a mission grind. Doing this ***was a brotherhood. The people you did all of this stuff with, man, I swear you became something between those people than this game can even contain. It's something bigger than XI. The euphoria...oh my God was it immense. *fistPumpsAir* I don't know if any of you have ever danced around your room after completing something in this game. If you haven't, then you didn't beat CoP pre-nerf,pre-levelCapLift.

I'd give an arm and a leg to go back. I really would. I looked up some quotes from the player base from around 2007 that should shed light on this ridiculousness.

Ah the memories. Back when you would dread seeing a ninja as the party's tank cause you knew the party would most likely end up sucking.

1/1ed every mission with original static

went through whole expansion in one weekend to help a friend

was never hard, people were significantly less organized and significantly less geared

I don't remember CoP feeling that impossible, even pre-nerf. I did have a static of all LS members, which was obviously part of the reason, but we were able to one-shot every battleground up to sea access, except the mithran Sin Hunters because we only took one SMN (the only other possible SMN in the group was a couple levels under the level cap). We took the under-leveled SMN in the second time and won. The only other wipe I recall was an intentional one on Omega because one of us came in on with the wrong sub job so we left (or maybe wiped intentionally, don't remember if you could just step out or not) so that he could change. I'm positive we beat it prior to the mid-2007 nerf, because I recall reading about it and wondering "WTF, why?!" The fights were amazing and challenging, but still one-shottable.

FFXI is a good concept, how else can you explain 11 years? SE doesn't know how to make most of it, this game could have been more popular, still could be. A bit shame really. I'm guessing FFXI has 2-5 years of life left. Bettson anyone? :D

Really confused by all this 2007 talk for CoP. Didn't it launch in mid 2004? Don't think Sea was a thing til late 2005. Now back in those days, I remember it being rough. Still got a video on this HDD of the Tenzen fight, one shot me on War with his bow WS lol.

I cant take a few minutes to understand what you are talking about. I already wasted enough time trying to read. They should make something to just give me the information that you are speaking of instead of having to do anything mildly unpleasant to get it.

Does your job pay you before you work and your job is actually eating candy?

It wasn't that hard at all. Though it did require a bit of strategic planning in terms of what to do and what jobs to bring(also not being cheap and willing buy some meds). early missions were very smn friendly and (if my memory recalls correctly) the later missions where very rangers friendly... though it could be because we did it pre-rng nerf in 2005ish. I don't even know what they did in this COP nerf that everyone talked about, I believe I quit before then.

"if you didn't have a static you can't get it done" translates to getting 6 random people to listen to each other and forming a plan without ensuring they aren't retards and screw up is hard in a mmo. It's as true as always. :P

With or without playback at 25% speed?

Even before the level cap removal I think there has been at least 3 nerfs to CoP missions.

I completed CoP at the end of the summer 2005 (was it september?) and I started playing on the 16th of september 2004.
I was a in a static of friends, some of which were really noob.
Let's see at the composition:
1) Lv73 PLD with AF1, no gearswaps and /WAR of course
2) Lv72 MNK with AF1 and shitty gear, doubt I had many gearswaps, if at all
3) Lv73 WHM, no gearswaps. Often went /SMN for autorefresh
4) Lv75 multiple jobs. Mainly went as BLM or RDM as far as I can remember
5) Lv75 multiple jobs as well. Think at the time he didn't have BRD so it was BLM or RDM for him as well I think?
6) Lv75 DRK, no gearswaps, on some missions he went /NIN dualwielding Axes I think?

4) and 5) were good players, altough not the top, they were starting to cooperate with end-game LSs, the rest was a complete bunch of clueless people, especially me.
Yet, in spite of all the several wipes (and believe me there have been many, especially on the Pots missions...) we managed to complete it, and quite early I'd rather say.

It sure was challenging for players like us and for our setup (at that time NIN was the favoured tank for everything, and people laughed at PLDs). I remember the amount of strategies discussed, temporary items used and so on.
It was punishing, old FFXI was really punishing and hard on the players, but with that came a huge sense of reward.
I join the group of people saying that sense of achievement, of reward, it's something you can't feel in any other MMO, and trust me I've played many, even seriously (my WoW guild was one of the best in my country).




tl;dr
While it was challenging, I dissent from the "if you had it done you were hardcore", because my group was all but hardcore, trust me.
It's just that most people didn't even bother, that's it imho.

That's great and everything, but I wasn't attesting to how difficult CoP was at launch, because that's not when I worked my way through it. My point was that the level restriction shouldn't have been removed. At the time I completed CoP, the difficulty of the fights seemed to be the right balance. Now all of CoP is a joke.

Btw, if I'm a kid, then you probably need a walker.

Not sure about at 2007, but at this point in time (i.e. 2013) it makes sense that they have lifted it. It'll be impossible to get 5 other people to help you through those content now. Whilst it was challenging and fun back then, it's just impractical to keep it the same. I guess SE's intention is that people can just get access to whatever that is of value in there and move onto the new stuff

Wasn't most complaining that leigon was to hard when it first came out? it seems that when they try to make things hard people complain it's to hard, but when people finally figure it out it's to easy and in most cases they are using programs to help them I don't get it. back in the king days wasn't the only challange was who had the better bot? not the actual NM's themselves... I mean the only then i could see that took a team effort was dyna,B2,and sea?.. Hell look how long AV was sitting there unbother'd. then we wonder why SE is like man fk all of you take what you get...

I loved CoP. It was difficult. It didn't hold your hand, in fact it stood behind you and pushed you in to oncoming traffic.

But... I think a lot of the CoP difficulty was simply players not knowing how to play(exact mechanics), not being prepared with med and good gear as well knowing how to handle the various fights. Back in 2005 when I was a level 30 whm trying to do promys, I was a nub. I didn't know much of anything and still managed to get through it. And this was before I knew about windower or even swapped more than just resting gear. I can't remember the last time I've had to prepare as much as I did for a CoP fight.

There was something great about failing numerous times but then perfecting a strategy and finally pulling through. I do admit I got rather stressed out about some of the fights like 6.4 because it ended up costing quite a bit of gil or time if you used any ccb polymers and failed. But the feeling after winning is one that few games can give me.

When i switched to Bismarck server two years ago there was always 1300 - 1500 ppl online daily during PST daylight hours. Now there are 500 - 700 on during the daytime. FFXIV looks interesting but i have 7 years into the game and don't want to walk away from that. I would believe several servers need to be merged together so party shouts are not so random. Its hard to make a party when nobody is on the server.

mmm nostalgia


I couldn't get through prommies at launch in pick up groups...by the time I got to 30 I think most people had been like "screw it I aint doing that again" so trying to find people to back track to do them was near impossible. When you finally did find a group it always made me "laugh" (I really mean cry) when people said near the top of the tower "I gotta go!" and left...as if we could suddenly replace them.

Farming items was kinda hard, using your items wrong in the boss sucked..losing to the boss sucked..it was hours...and hours and hours...(and expensive if you knew what you were doing and brought items AND GEAR to any of the CoP fights like you were supposed to)

then when you finally beat prommies you were stuck trying to group an alliance for whatever that one dungeon crawl was. TERRIBLE

and then walking to ouryu or mammets..actually the mammet fight was one of my favorite accomplishments..I got such a gamers high when my strategy worked better than somebody elses. Then you had subligar farming (this, story-wise, zone was ridic but I never did actually get my subligar til after the zone-nerf because people'd get theirs and leave..I feel like I helped alot of people with this too ;;)

the AIRSHIP omg airship....that was 6 failures and finally a win on the 7th. Toughest boss fight ever..I'd rather wipe to AV again, it was less painful.

and then my perma beat the final 2 bosses without me one weekend. I went on a family trip for a day. We traveled 3 hours to vegas and spent the day and came back the same night. They misunderstood and thought I was going on vacation for a week so beat the expansion without me T_T I really did cry and my family didn't understand why. And then half of my perma members didn't want to redo it so we had to replace them so I could win it. That was what made it difficult.

have to say that CoPs ending almost made me cry as well..not that it had much of an ending but you were exhausted by the time you beat it you didn't know what else to do with yourself.

CoP was by far my favorite expansion and just reading other people's comments about it makes me miss it a great deal. It was always my greatest accomplishment back in the day. I certainly wasn't one of the first to beat CoP on my old server, but I was the first in my ls. Slapping on my Rajas Ring for the first time... man I'll never forget what that was like. Someone earlier said that their CoP static was like a brotherhood, but I honestly felt like that towards EVERYONE who had completed CoP. Only people who went through the entire storyline could really understand how difficult, frustrating, and extremely rewarding each mission was. It's one thing to hear people talk about how difficult something is, but experiencing it firsthand is something entirely different and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.

I think it's more of a shambling corpse at this point, instead of being the proud show horse it once was many years ago. It seems that every time they've released an expansion after ToAU, that they're only hurting the game more, due to changing status quo constantly and inept devs mishandling the prize winning formulas that the game built itself up on.

It just seems that as time goes on, and the more the devs try to "open up" the game, the more it pushes away players.

Like... Campaign and past areas made it even better than ToAU to level, and was alt job friendly compared to the pretty strict bird party setups, demeaning the back then actually hard to accomplish 75s running around.

Mini Expansions were nice, but the gear options were causing some people to bypass other events as they could just augment instead of working towards that random drop that took a full group. Kinda good and bad there, wouldn't complain honestly if they pushed more of these down the road.

Abyssea completely pooed all over most of the old game content, as it was semi transparent at the time that they were trying to make the game go out with a bang, as it was all planned and announced with XIV's first reveal. You could actually put in solid effort and time to get things, and low man was possible, even soloing once you were geared and skilled properly. This was the era that marked the death of Big Linkshells for most players, and began the Age of Box to replace the old order.

VW technically goes back to Wings, and changed the game flow yet again, back into full group content with random drop rates, to try to entice players to keep playing while they stalled for content, probably due to yet another handover of devs due to XIV basically sucking SE's resources from all departments from what they were saying. Meebles came along and yet again changed things back to a steady grind and work towards things but with small party sizes, but alas, was short lived and not too well recieved as the bulk of the playerbase rather mindlessly slaved in VW for loot gambles for money and drops.

Adoulin... I think is the worst expansion they've pushed, even compared to WotG for the first two years. The power gap for all the equipment is insane, and completely nulls the need to really do most of the other game content. 9+ years of established content, completely worthless all the sudden. Most of us would honestly be fine with this to varying degrees, but the current devs are showing really hard that they don't have any idea how "XI" works as a MMO, and the magic that makes it special. It brought back large LS play and group content, but having flawed content in the game all along like low drop % items and high time sinks like R/M/E 99 versions being completely wiped out of viable play for the most part by obscenely easy to get items was likely the final nail to many players. A few updates in and we see the devs have an inkling of an idea internally about item levels and such, but even they seem lost about how to handle things and every update it seems they outdate their own fresh content they JUST put into the game.

I think the game has the kind of die hard playerbase to it that'll keep it going for over 20 years easy, even if it's just down to 2-5 servers in the end. It's just... Nowadays the playerbase is too thing and the content lowered as shown with the delve item upgrade due to how trashy the normal players were to force SE to adjust things on a curve like a school class on a mass failing, killing the magic it all once had. Merges will give the illusion of a bustling world once more for a time being, but instead of 1/3 players being bots with another 1/3 are afk in town due to no mandated idle kick and the other 1/3 actually playing, it'll most likely just be piled up more with active bots, I'd reckon.

I'll still hope that they'll get things down properly and get the game back to some form of glory, but it just seems that the current team is struggling, and I'm not sure how much more tug of war they can play with the game before more players let go of the rope and find something else to do.

Yeah, they're basically failing at implementing vertical progression for entirely predictable reasons but not stopping because they assume it will somehow get better if they just keep doing it. I'll probably wait until they release the RME updates, re-gear my DNC, rape whatever the current content is, and then quit.