It's obviously not worth your time to worry over it them. This is the internet. Everyone has their opinions and those who dont jump on the bandwagon as quick as possible.

The fact that FFXI still has traction today boggles me, but makes me happy at the same time. It was a few good years of my childhood.

Legacy players are gonna be far and few between so you're looking for the niche of the niche basically. Dont let it discourage you though. Keep on trucking, I bet you'll find a decent place where your voice will be heard.

This doesn't compare to that time The Rock called Kane a big red retard. I mean the poor guy was doused in flames and left deformed for the rest of his life, only to be made fun of about it in front of the millions and millions of the rocks fans. Absurd, I say.

Yeah! How dumb can he truly be? He was smart enough to hook jumper cables up to Shane McMahon's testicles and electrocute him. Clearly 200 IQ.

I don't get people who still play retail. I've had discussions with people in some of the same places you mentioned and I get people like different things but I started retail and it wasn't the same and caved from the Ninja streams to come here. If I wanted to play a streamlined MMO I'd choose one of the many new ones with better graphics and combat. Not to knock on FFXI combat but it's dated and I prefer action-combat.

I play this game for the experience of dying, running around, exploring and not being handheld. I watched a good youtube video recently that stated that the difficulty of this game was the reason why it formed the best community I've ever experienced in any game. Community is a huge part of this game intentional or not. Most gaming communities are toxic as heck. Last MMO I played was ESO on PS4, and the PvP community was toxic as heck. If you were among the top players, you couldn't chill, you had to worry every hour you were online because kids just love posting you hecking up on Youtube and the shit talk that went with it. I honestly love this type of competition, but that's not what FFXI is about. It's a PvE focused game and the difficulty is what makes the community great - you can't get that with retail FFXI now-a-days.

Retail can be enjoyable, but if you're like me and hadn't played in a long time and came back, you probably wanted to take the opportunity to finish all of the stories.

So I did, and I soloed all of it, with Trusts. It of course was a complete joke. I was already 99 from Abyssea era and missions fights literally took seconds to beat. If I had to have leveled from 1, I probably would've been even more disappointed, since I would've soloed to 99, with Trusts.

I get the point of Trusts. I even admit that I liked them a lot more than I thought I was going to. But all of the content in the game that was added in the first 11 or so years of its life is completely negated of all difficulty with them. I could always not use Trusts and equip lower level items, but I shouldn't be forced to create my own difficulty (and I'd still be soloing), and I don't play FFXI to solo or force difficulty upon myself. I play FFXI to play with others, and because every inch of the game is difficult in one way or another. Or it used to be.

One of the many things that people are nostalgic for in FFXI is finding or creating a party for missions. When people return to FFXI and find that this is no longer a part of the game, it turns them off. The same with leveling.

Again, I understand the point of Trusts. The game is old, and it's hard to find players who need to level or do missions. Old games are very top heavy in terms of player base. Just about all of those folks have been playing forever, and really only have use for the highest tiers of end-game content. Which brings me to the next problem:

Finding people to do stuff with once you're level 99. Not only is the current FFXI community extremely classist, but they don't even let you join MID-GAME content without being geared. And they've been requiring players to have REMA to join groups for the better part of a decade. It's just silly and embarrassing, considering most of the content in the game doesn't require you to be THAT geared at all. I mean they want you to have REMA for capacity point parties and I just can't even begin to explain to you how absolutely and despicably unnecessary that is.

And since it only takes a day to level from 1-99 now and gear rains from the sky, they expect you to have all of the best jobs leveled and ready to go. I appreciate that FFXI allows us to level multiple classes on the same character, but I prefer the old days when people really only had 1 or 2 jobs leveled. I prefer playing with people who go all out on playing their favorite job to the best of its ability and put tons of effort into getting the right equipment for all of their spells, abilities, and weaponskills. Plus, once we hit that Abyssea era where people literally leveled in their sleep and everyone had all the jobs leveled, it meant that they all wanted to lot on EVERYTHING, even if it was for a job they didn't care about or hardly ever touch.

When you do get CP done and get some equipment for yourself and try to do end-game content, you're quickly introduced to what end-game has been like since Abyssea: spawning a boss over and over and over and over and over. Ambuscade is one of the worst things to ever happen to the game. Escha/Gaes Fete is basically just Abyssea 2.0. There's a few other things to do like Vagary, Omen, and Dynamis D, but Vagary groups are uncommon especially when there's no campaign for it (the campaigns are another crappy mechanic), Omen is more common but only for card runs, and Dynamis D just didn't quite entertain me enough.

All of this is just my opinion, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest if someone thinks I just spoke a bunch of hogwash, nor does it bother me if for all of the reasons I dislike the current FFXI someone else loves it for the same reasons. And for the record, FFXI is cheap so there's really no reason not to try all of the content yourself if you haven't. They also have free login campaigns (I think the recent one might already be over?).

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https://www.change.org/p/official-square-enix-final-fantasy-xi-level-75-era-server

Of course he's a galka, pretty sure that increases the chance of him being a tard irl by about 7 fold.

#NotAllGalkas tho

It is disrespectful in the sense that sub fees are not being paid to SE for what they ultimately created, akin to watching a film for free on an illegal streaming website, no?



There is a fair amount that is patently false in your post.

Difficulty of retail: Sure if you are a lvl 99 returning player difficulty of older content is pitiful. No shit... But most of the content may well have already been completed anyway that was 75 cap. Rhapsodie doesn't take that long before the fights become harder that even 75 with 4 trust struggle to overcome without good gear/merits (Siren). If complain about older content being easy then do it with a new character.

If you start a new character from lvl then the difficulty is what you make it, no one is forcing you to do lvl break quests. I didn't, and I made the fights difficult by mostly being era level or slightly under-levelled and I have the opposite opinion of you; Trust AI is very basic and they can't use meds like poison pot or echo drops, they cannot kite and they can't sleep/bind/stun -ga spellor tp move effectively so the player has to develop strategy to overcome trust AI. Some fights are much harder because you can only hold one "cheese" item like mistmelts or CCB polymer and trusts don't all come with /nin shadows so lvl 60 cop airship is extremely hard. Fights where kiting is optimal are practically difficult with trusts because you have to be engaged to the mob you want trusts to fight and you have to solo kite. Frankly you seem to have no idea how difficult it even is with trusts, but ffxi was never hard anyway as you just needed people and finding/waiting for people was a fake challenge of patience only. Thankfully SE removed those time sinks.

You complain that you shouldn't create your own difficulty but also complain it's far too easy. There are many tools available to the player and it's made so to cater for all types of players, if you self-harm and refuse to maximise your enjoyment then that is you being unreasonable and it is not a problem of the game.

Everything else in the post can apply to Nasomi too. Toxic/elite players, needing certain jobs, balance woes, needing expensive gear/full merits before being invited to a LS. As for end-game they are not exactly comparable, pros and cons to each, but equally there are plenty of complaints for era end-game like waiting for HNM pops. There is more content variation in retail than Nasomi, but this subject is simply a matter of taste more than anything. Given your seemingly uninformed opinions of retail you may well have 0 experience of end game though, but I don't care as long as you those obviously wrong opinions to yourself. Spreading false crap about retail is even more disrespectful than simply playing Nasomi (whilst having no active sub to retail).

This here. Let us say you wanted to watch an anime that does not have english subs on someplace like crunchy roll or another commercial site. You go to a fan site that has subs. For example, before Naruto had official subs I used to get them from Kyubbisubs and Uchiha subs which were fan made sub torrents. It wasn't that I didn't want to support them, it was the product was not being made available for me to be able to support them.

Off topic, I don't know if anyone has seen Lost Ark, the Korean Action game. Zomg I cannot wait for the localization for that game. Check it out.

I soloed everything. All the old stuff, Seekers of Adoulin, and Rhapsodies of Vana'Diel. I'm not the only one either. Only thing I couldn't solo was Provenance Watcher but I only tried once. I had never tried the fight when it was relevant so I don't know anything about it and went in blind.

Since the game was not new to me, I had no reason to create a new character, and I'm sure most people who went back to the game in the past 5 years didn't either. As I said, the purpose of FFXI to me isn't to create my own difficulty nor solo content. The point of FFXI for me is to play with others. To play with others on the current FFXI, you have to spend a lot of time getting through older content, especially if your character is new. Beating all of the story content in the game provides incredibly massive bonuses to experience and capacity points. On legacy FFXI, you start partying with others around level 10 usually. That's a huge difference, and that's what we want out of a legacy server. But again you're talking about soloing content with Trusts... which is precisely what we DON'T want to do. You're also basically saying if I want all that old content to be difficult, that I have to create a new character. You even called it "self-harm" if I don't do that.

The film reference just isn't the same. This is an MMORPG, not a movie. We don't pay monthly fees for movies to be frequently updated and we don't pay for access to the same movie each and every month. This is the only way I know to use your analogy: let's say you're a fan of Warner Brothers Pictures, who develops movies. One day, Warner Bros. stops providing access to their older movies. You prefer the older movies over their new movies, so you're upset by this, especially because of all of the money you've given them over the years. So you find a way to access those older movies anyway.

Just going to repeat myself, we shouldn't be forced to create our own difficulty. Period. During TOAU almost all aspects of the game were difficult enough. We didn't have 5 different levels of difficulty for some content. And again, if you enjoy that aspect of retail, that's great. That's you. But that's not what I enjoy and it's clearly something a lot of people here aren't looking for either.

I didn't touch on the subject of toxicity in the post you quoted nor did I compare Nasomi to Retail. However I have played plenty of retail and many others here have too, so we already know what it's like.

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I have to agree with Kazaram. As someone who spent several months this year playing through this content fresh from level 1 (and doing all of it) during my hiatus from nasomi, you are selling modern retail quite short, and your post is clearly a "soloist-who-never-joined-a-linkshell" summary of the post-RoV endgame. Seriously, you downplay Escha and Geas Fete as "basically just Abyssea 2.0" when it features some of the most insanely challenging encounters from any era in this game. That comment and saying Omen is nothing but card runs are serious tells. If you had joined or formed a linkshell you would have actually seen the real content from these events, maybe got your prostate tickled by a HELM NM or two. Vagary is typically only ran when your lsmates have armor they need to upgrade via a system similar to Limbus tokens and ancient beastshekels, so I can see why a soloist would think its junk (but it's true that top percentile scholars can solo this 18man event). All of the above content is relevant and rewarding to complete at-level with the gear you're meant to have for the tier. If you're getting carried by vets who are asspounding mobs into the dirt, or you only peruse the cross-city yell chat to find groups to join, then yes, it does look very dry.
Dyna-Divergence sucks, but dynamis has always heckin sucked - status quo preserved.
This is akin to saying you soloed your missions up to the black dragon, it's not a feat. It's also not the vast majority of active content in the game. I know you know this. Seekers is over 5 years old, Rhapsodies is over 3.
This has always been true. How much time did you spend getting through nation missions, ROZ, COP in order to access the endgame? Rhapsodies is even streamlined, you can do 1 chapter (or less) in each expansion's mission line bare minimum to progress through it and get to "current FFXI." ROV also holds the vast majority of the exp/cp bonuses, something like 70-80% of the total available. I also partied up for the majority of 10-80 on my first job - you chose to solo, it wasn't thrust on you. It's not a wasteland, the population levels of Odin and Asura peak at only ~500 players higher than here, you can always find people willing to chitchat and have fun with while leveling, and the sync range is 89 levels wide.
Despite the crowd in Mhaura, ambuscade is not the only endgame activity. Judging from the animosity towards this in your posts it would be surprising if you ever completed one on a difficulty above N, let alone VD where mechanics shift and the entire fight changes. The difficulty tiers were implemented to give both fresh off the boat and veteran players a way to enjoy the same content, the same way difficulty tiers being added to battlefields breathed life into old encounters like The Warrior's Path and Dawn. Unless things have changed in a year and players on nas are no longer champing at the bit for content, hard modes of classic fights would probably be well received despite your conclusion here.
Saying that current retail players have to create their own difficulty by choosing to do content that will be challenging for them is like saying you're required to create your own difficulty on nas by choosing to fight something higher level than a heckin forest hare.
Don't look to do higher tier content than you're geared for, it's simple. The vertical treadmill is present, barely, but it's very short and your criticism here is misplaced. You're not taking "sparks" gear wearing 99s to Reisenjiima the same way you're not taking bone armored paladins to your mid level exp parties. Much like Nasomi, there are people at all stages of content on retail: from super-FOB to septuple-super-weapon-wielders. Forming your own group is always an option, as I know you're fully aware and capable of doing, and I never spent more than 10 min filling a party for anything. 75 cap is actually more classist than retail because there's actual parity between melee and mage jobs for exp and the majority of Geas Fete can be completed with a multitude of comps.

There's a fair bit that I think is "wrong" with modern retail (mostly due to how spread thin the bones of the skeleton crew maintaining it are) and I've been unsubbed for several months now because of it, but your point is seriously damaged by your poor representation of the state of things there. Your review of retail is worth as much as someone who wandered onto nas, had one or two bad experiences, then whined on plebbit or twatter about how TOXIC the community is. In a thread that you started because some "other game" e-celeb dork was dumping on this server without giving it a fair shake, you've turned around and mimicked him with regards to shitting on retail while having zero real experience with any meaningful content besides chain-running old missions and quests. Yes, I can rock up and blast boreal hound, truly representative of 75 era.

You do a disservice misrepresenting something so blatantly, since I think we all just want to have fun with our free time. If we choose to use it to play video games, having accurate information on available options is important to help people make the choice that's right for them.