FFXI Replacement MMO

Well elder scroll online is FTP now

it didn't do well at the start tho see joe for review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov3B26h12C4

NINE PAGES

...I mean...never mind.

I was told TESO wasn't really worth the time.

I'll be sticking around here until the end. Nothing has the feel FFxi does. I made the mistake of looking for greener grasses and found that nothing could replace FFxi, Iam now years behind where I would like to be in FFxi and there's the possibility that SE shuts the game down before I feel "finished" with it.

But, when Im forced to quit by SE shuting the game down I will look for the most deep, most grind-y, most time consuming MMO I can find, maybe EVE like.

Just to echo some of the previously expressed sentiment...I too have searched high and low for a FFXI replacement MMO - something with a few features that I really desire. They are (listed in no particular order):

Sustainability and Permanence of Progress (If I work on it now, I want to know that it'll still be somehow relevant in a year's time. Not top of the line, of course not, but I just can't stand the rate of gear replacement in WoW and it's sibling games)

Subscription Model (I hate cash shops. Something about setting up a recurring billing payment for a monthly fee that I can forget about entices me to play over the cash shop f2p model. A p2p model also functions as an equalizer of sorts, with everyone being on equal footing from the start and having no way of skipping progress or hard work or excessive eastern-style grind by simply paying a few bucks...well, no formally permitted way, that is. It's just you and your sweat and blood)

Horizontal Content Expansion (I've been thinking about this a lot recently. It's what sets FFXI apart from most other MMORPGs. Every event that we're given is like a mini-game itself within the larger game, each with rules, systems, and statistics of their own that you have to individually learn and practice. The unifying variable, of course, is the weapons and gear you get from each mini-game or "event," and combat is always an element of each event. While some events have been far more simple (Ein, HNM, BCNM, etc), and others have been admittedly very complex (Salvage, for example), the fact remains the same - you have to learn a whole new set of rules for a new event, and then merge those rules, however complex or simple, with your inherent understanding of combat and job roles. This horizontal content bulge is something unbelievably unique and utterly impossible to find elsewhere)

Lack of Cross-Server Activities (There is no quicker way to make an MMORPG impersonal than to implement cross-server technology. I'm not talking about server transfers, I'm referring to group finder tools for random group matching. This has literally been the death of many server communities in a handful of other MMOs, and I think it is extremely counter-intuitive to producing a vibrant server-wide community that gets to know itself, rather than others)

Rate of Combat/Play (I have nothing against the very challenging raid battles in WoW, or similar conceptual combat found in its brethren such as Rift etc. That said, I have played this content in other games, like WoW Heroic raiding, and I have found that it's just not to my taste. Combat in our beloved FFXI is, admittedly, slower and more tactical, even with the shift towards quicker gameplay in the last several years. I like being able to comfortably tri-box. I like playing a slower game where my decisions need to be more thought out and rationalized, not just mechanized jumping and dodging while button mashing macros and listening to a program tell me which way to strafe. FFXI might be slower in terms of combat rate, but that's a major point that I like about it)

I could go on, but those are the major ones. I can't find all those factors together in any other MMORPG anywhere. It's just not possible. The closest I can get are some very esoteric and arcane Oriental MMORPGs, which often have cash shops or are mindless grind without balance (not to say, few that look as good as FFXI, even in its rather outdated state).

I realize, like the rest of you, that FFXI will effectively shrivel up and die once the content updates dry up. The way I see it, one of two outcomes will make me happy, and satisfy our niche little community:

1. Private servers will pick up, development on DarkStar will increase, and with the settling of FFXI patches, variables will finally lock in place and allow development of private emulated servers to surge forward (last I checked, for example, several jobs weren't working that well and a lot of content still required implementation). From this could spring new content, through custom user-created events, such as the long requested Sky/Sea 2.0, or new Limbus floors, even entirely new events. This is a very real possibility, and I can only hope that the in-house counsel at SE decides to calm down on the enforcement of their IP rights once the retail servers are mostly dead. Still a risky prospect, though. It's a lot of time to invest in a server which might be issued a C&D letter and shutdown overnight.

2. There is currently momentum in the MMORPG industry to produce something that breaks the WoW mold. The problem is, game development is slow. I imagine that most the WoW-clones were put into development during the height of the Lich King expansion or early Cata, meaning that by the time they launched into a sub-par MMORPG market with a fully developed game, they were met with failure due to the delay and market over-saturation. There is clamoring for a more difficult game, something appealing to us hardcore types. We will see if anything comes of that in the next few years.

What do you guys think?

I've tried a couple of other MMOs while I took some time off from XI (SoA launch to a few months ago.) Mainly XIV, a group of us migrated together so we had our mini community. Never did anything together other than Coil mind, so I eventually found myself logging on for weekly points for gear and nightly events and doing nothing else with the game, interest fairly quickly waned.

Tried Tera, had some nice ideas couldn't really get into it though. Still try from time to time.

I even flirted with Defiance (lel) and Destiny for a while.

For me all other MMOs have been let down by a few key things that XI did that no-one else can seem to emulate properly.

Firstly, the sense of community. I'm sure I'm the only one, but I genuinely enjoyed leveling for the most part, pre-Abyssea. It forced you to talk to people or die of boredom. Still have a couple of friends playing who I met in Cadearva Mire parties etc. Duty Finder etc totally killed it on XIV, not long after launch.

Sense of scale/exploration. XIV failed at this so hard. XI felt big. XI still feels big. Even with all the teleports and the general ease of getting around nowadays, the worl still feels huge. XIV killed it by making the zones fairly small, making mobs have no threat or consequence in the zones, teleports from the get go and now flying mounts. There is no quicker way of killing a sense of scale than letting you skip out everything by flying over it. WoW had the same problem with them, though granted it too a long time to get one.

In the first month or so of XI me and a few friends who started playing together used to have adventures just trying to get to Jeuno from Bastok. Exploring the random caves dotted around (and subsequently getting destroyed by skeletons. I'm looking at you Gusgen >_>)

Nothing has ever come even remotely close in that respect.

Gear swaps. Probably an odd one, but an MMO (or any RPG for that matter) feels kind of weird to me without being able to change gear situationally. Though that being said, I could live without it.

Challenge. Okay well not challenge XI was never particularly hard, but it was kind of unforgiving at times. XP loss on death etc. It did bring with it a sense of accomplishment that I've not encountered much since.

Until something else gives those kind of things I probably won't be playing another MMO, at least not seriously.

If private servers became a proper thing I'd probably go down that route and play casually.

All these lengthy lists of requirements for mmos.

Did you have any of these in mind when you started XI?

Why is everyone looking for another XI? I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people that picked up XI, at launch, and didn't lament it's shortcomings. You acquired a taste for it. For many, you took breaks from it when frustration set in.

Give yourself a chance to acquire the taste of another game.

Now is a good time to try FFXIV. You'll get a dose of ARR, be familiar with things and clear content just in time for the game to change drastically.

As to the social element, you can DF and treat it like a single player game. If you don't want to do that, join an FC or an LS (they're different and allow you to carry 8 linkshells) and use voip.

I don't think a sense of scale and community are outrageous requirements for an MMO. An MMO without them is essentially FFXIII.

I'm afraid you will be woefully disappointed with any MMO that isn't AAA then.

What you want is a massive community and a massive game. MMO's don't start that way. They grow to be that way.

And you'll be the guy that needs help with promy-holla while other players are trying to kill Kumhau.

I never once said I wanted a community to be massive, only that it has to have a sense of community to it. It doesn't have to be massive to be so.

I'm fully aware that community takes time to build up, cross server player acquisition etc around launch isn't exactly the way to go about it though. I played XIV both pre ARR and from ARR's launch up until the end of Feb this year and I honestly can't remeber the name of a single player I partied with other than the few people I knew from XI.

Are we all being overly optimistic in the things we'd like in a new MMO and expecting it to have them all? Yes, of course we are. A decade with one game is obviously going to define our likes and dislikes of it. Is it unreasonable to point out those characteristics to get a sense of what we'd probably like and dislike in a new game? No, not at all.

I'm not even sure what this none insult is even based on.

It's not an insult. It's pointing out that the "sense of community" you are looking for will be colored by your late-entry into the title.

I can name about 100 players I've played with in XIV on my server alone. My friends-list is LITERALLY full. I started in June. Are you sure your experience is fair judge of "community?"

To reiterate: I literally have to delete someone from my friends list every time I want to add someone.

You can define what you want. But don't let it limit what you might enjoy. You just don't know what you don't know.

EDIT: You played FF XIV ARR for over a year, and can only name a few people you knew from XI? That sounds like operator error not a design flaw.

The list that I posted was based on my experiences with XI compared to all other MMORPGs that I have played. Lye's comment is poorly reasoned. I have played WoW, Rift, Guild Wars 1 and 2, Tera, Vanguard, TESO, Everquest 2, and yes, FFXIV 2.0. I have given all of these games adequate time, and the only two I truly enjoyed (WoW and Guild Wars 1) paled in comparison to XI for the missing factors I listed.

As consumers, we are perfectly able to voice our opinions on what an ideal game looks like, and the market may someday respond to absorb our demand (and money). I haven't been living in a bubble, and I doubt many of us have. Most of us have tried other games and, despite a good faith effort, found them to be unfulfilling and we are left grasping for why. Our dialogue here aims to address this.

Hope you find what you're looking for.

What exactly about FFXIV did you hear about that puts you off I wonder?

I don't know if you play XI for the same reasons I did for 8 years 4/5 hours a night every single f***ing night (not measuring d***s here, im just trying to say I know the game, idc if you've played more or less) but this is what changed me...

I wanted it to be like FFXI initially. The differences bothered me, I liked gear sets, dualboxing, I wanted specific pieces of gear to give specific abilities related to my job etc. But what won me over was the game play. The games too hard to dualbox in pretty much every situation but a dungeon thats worthwhile. And I came to like that, hell, games should be too hard to dual/trio/quadbox in the first place. I realized XI was more a trophy game than a challenging game in reference to gameplay. Show off your grind, show off your ability to get others to get what you want (and hopefully help those others, although im sure we all ran into selfish douches who left the LS's immediately after getting their bread and butter). The game was, Look at what I got, you know the s*** i put up with to get this, therefore its impressive.

Was any of that really so much fun doing? Was gathering 30k Alex in Salvage fun? Not really. We even created add ons to deal with the f***ing cell drops. It's a great accomplishment, Loved to use my yagrush. But its the process that should be fun, and thats what XIV is. And if you wanna get all trophy about it, you can find some of that as well, but for the most part, if you're like me, you wont even care about that. Hell you wont even want to help random people just to be a nice guy and build friendships, thats just the side effect of wanting to do it because its fun. Would you help someone farm 30k alex or dyna currency? F no. Would you help someone in XIV kill Garuda HM a bunch of times? Hell yeah. Its fun to smash that b****.

ON A SIDE NOTE. To anyone on Fenrir that remembers me, Im going to be on and off a bit till Nov for old times sake. Hope to see you.

Game dies I am done it is not worth sinking so much time in to a new game.

I don't see the difference between, say, spamming the same delve in FFXI and spamming garuda w/e in XIV regarding "helping others". If you were an illustrator, would you have fun drawing the same picture over and over again? You can't really compare farming currency for someone else to an event where you also get something for your time.

Man, *** FFXIV. Do I want to log in and jump into duty finder to grind out my allotted cap of gear tokens, or would I rather keep an open window of Progress Quest and scratch that same itch for mindless incremental progress? It's a tough choice, FFXIV isn't free but it's just got so much more gwaphics.

If anything, private servers for old MMOs. The genre's stuck in this post-WoW hellscape where if you can't describe your game in the form of "It's like WoW, but..." then it doesn't get made. What kept me in FFXI was challenge, community, and storytelling and good luck finding some or any of those things in any MMO currently operating, XIV included.

As much as it sucks, I have to agree with all of this. The last few new MMO's that came out....I described to my friends in exactly that manner. ._.

I'm just getting into dayz community playing hero trying to find a home.

The only way I'd try ffxiv again is they remove that god awful gear lock out system. A lot of the things I can deal with in ffxiv and there are somethings I even like but I can't tolerate the gear lockout. That + making crafting useless just left very little reason for me to keep playing once I've spammed and gotten my allotted tokens for the week.

My opinion on the gear lock out would change if there were other things to do but spam the current dungeon for tokens....but there isn't.

There's Coil!

>_____>;;

I quit ffXI like... 3 years ago, so idk why im posting this, but From what I 've seen so far from this demo this game is looking amazing....also I hope you only get dudes as your allies the entire game....

And they removed the lockout in the newest Crystal Tower and Coil as well

I'm probably just going to be done w/ MMOs. For a while now, I've been looking for, not necessarily a replacement, but just another MMO I actually enjoy playing and have had no luck finding one.

You do one daily roulette just five times in one week and your done for tokens for the whole week. Takes a total time of about 30minutes in one day. What are you even talking about? You can get top tier weapons without grinds as well. You can even get great gear in pvp. Basically you just have to play the game to get good gear since they're so many ways of getting it. There really isn't anyone single grind you have to do unless you want to.

The difference is one is fun and one isn't. One is done differently and the other isn't. Ffxi grind is drawing an image with a pencil alone, ffxiv grind is using Adobe Photoshop.

Just an FYI for those considering FFXIV in its current state

There are about six ways of getting gear, the "AH" this gear is surprisingly good, if you put materia into it correctly.

Treasure chest in dungeon runs

Wolf Marks (a pvp currency you get for doing pvp - which is pretty much all I play, so fun, hated ballista)

Primary Tokens (you get these from pvp, dungeons, primal fights, and coil fights)

Secondary tokens (same as primary except you'll get more of these in each of those scenarios).

*Notice you get primary tokens, secondary, and wolf marks from pvp. This is the quickest means of progress for gear, imo also the funnest thing to do in the game

Coil Fights. Coil gear is the best, this requires team speak, this "grind" is memorizing a single fight and getting good at it because it is literally that challenging. It makes things like when Tojil come out look like a joke. Extremely hard fights that require extremely good players and coordination. If one person can't put out enough dmg the whole team will lose. These are the trophy/showoff pieces of gear, because you literally have to be good to have gotten them, you cannot be carried, and you did not grind something for months as an OK/avg player.

Outside of the primary tokens these other means of getting you gear are all about equal in terms of gear strength, meaning there is no one grind you have to do, and because primary tokens come from pretty much everything you'll do in the game you still gain progress towards that top tier gear indirectly when you're going for the lower lvl gear.

All these same things apply to weapons. Wish I had more time to do a better explanation of all of this. But i really recommend this game.

But like i said, the gameplay is the fun part, you wont care or notice the grind if you're doing most the things the game has to offer because you can get all these things from all these ways. You get bored of dungeons for tokens, go do pvp, get bored of a dungeon or pvp learn a hard fight like a primal maybe even coil. So much more variety.

once you figure out the hokey pokey steps nothing in 14 is challenging lol

I wish they'd make whatever MMO is represented in Log Horizon.

Screw coil, I hated the fact they pretty much forced you to segregate into cliques, and crystal tower pissed me off because you couldn't set a run up with just your FC to do it. No instead your forced to DF for 2 more parties.

You can make 3 parties, alli up and enter..... Don't know what you're doing wrong!