If you are a class that uses pets you should learn everything you can about them, including how to best control them....

After 4 weeks of FFXI I know the game a lot better, so its time for a second review. But to give an abstract, I still like it a lot, and still look forward to playing this for several more months. That could be years, but frankly, in 2004 there are World of Warcraft and Everquest 2 coming out, and unless those are really bad, I'm likely to get pulled away from this. That has less to do with the quality of the new games being better than the quality of the old games, but with the fun you have from exploring something new. But having said that, I believe that FFXI is not only one of the newest games right now, but also one of the best. As far as I can see, FFXI resources are mainly looted from mobs, forcing crafters either to kill the relevant monsters, or to buy the resource expensively from other players.

That is primarily due to Final Fantasy XI having very much more content than most other new games. Zones are obviously hand-designed, and not just huge randomly created landscapes. Each zone has a distinctive feel to it. I mentioned the "Crushbone factor" in a previous post, FFXI definitely has it. The "Crushbone factor" roughly describes a zone having an immersive feel to it, with the monsters and quests telling a good story, after the Crushbone zone in Everquest. Now in FFXI the Crushbone zone is reborn in Ghelsba Outpost, which is also a very nicely designed zone about orcs. Wooden palisades, hanging bridges, crude huts, lots of orcs using "watch lizards" as watch dogs, an intrigueing quest to "save the children", Ghelsba has it all. And thats just one zone, there are many more well designed zones that reek of the designers having had 10 bestselling games of experience before this.

One of the things that really draws you into the world of Vana'diel are the quests. Yes, quests are basically the same in each and every computer roleplaying game: Go from A to B, fetch something, go back to A. Or kill something at B and bring whatever that monster dropped back to A. But the secret is in the presentation of this simple principle. Not only are the stories of FFXI quests believable and well-written. But brilliantly FFXI often uses cutscenes to tell these stories. Not pre-rendered ones, but created on the spot with YOU being part of them. Great way to make you really want to fulfill that quest. But while the introduction into the quests of FFXI is near perfect, the execution often isn't. Most of the time you get not enough information to be actually able to do the quest without reading about it on some website like ffxi.allakhazam.com . And an important part of the information you are missing is for what level the quest is.

Actually combat is fun, especially in groups. It is fun, because it has just the right difficulty level. It is not trivial, you have to make decisions in a group combat, and if you make the wrong decisions you or another group member might well die. That is games are all about, a series of interesting decisions. There is a sense of achievement when you manage to play your character so well that everybody survived a tough encounter. The exception to this is the so-called missions, a series of quests you do for your starting kingdom. The items you need for those can't be traded, and the quests have to be fulfilled in order of difficulty. See? It's possible. Now please make all quests work that way. :) FFXI is playing in a sword and sorcery world, but it has a distinctive japanese console game feeling to it. For example landing a critical hit shows some pretty light effects around the monster you hit, and if you play with a controller, it even vibrates from the impact.

Yes, you can solo if you don't have the time for a group, and you do get some experience points. But xp from soloing is very slow, and you have a lot of downtime. If you have the time to play for some hours, it is well worth looking for a good group first, and then playing with them. You level a lot faster, combats are more interesting, and you get some social contacts as well. The downside of this is, that you would often like to group with the guys you had so much fun with last week, but often can't. One problem is common to all online games, people are not always playing at the same time as you are. But FFXI adds another problem, by making it very difficult to group with people that are not close in level to you. So if you had a nice level 10 group last week, but are level 14 now, you might find that one of the guys you grouped with is still level 10, while the other played 16 hours a day and is now level 18, and the three of you can't group any more, because you the monsters that are easy prey to the high level character are incredibly tough to the lowest, and nobody would get many xp.

There is no useless loot. Everything you can find is either equipment, or a quest item, or useful in crafting, sometimes even more than just one of these options. And because everything is useful, you rarely have to sell your loot to a NPC. The rabbit hides you found can either be handed in for a repeatable quest with a reward of money and fame, or sold on the auction house to somebody working on leatherworking crafting. As in most games, higher level people are often much richer than lower levels, so they often start crafting and buy the loot of the lower level characters. That not only finances the lower level characters nicely, it also produces items which then fill the auction house, so you can buy items that are either not available at all from an NPC in the city you are currently in, or the auction house is offering better prices.

Massive multiplayer online role playing games are not for everybody. Some people do not play them because they don't fulfil the basic requirements to even start, reasonably powerful computer, internet connection, credit card. But even of those gamers that could play MMORPG, many don't enjoy the game, because they lack some of the skills you need. Because the set of skills you need to play a MMORPG is rather different than what you need to play other games. So, what does it take to play a typical MMORPG, like Final Fantasy XI? So you need to have the skill to be able to make new friends. And if you particularly like a group of people, you can still use the linkshell system to set up a guild, and at least chat with them, even if they are not of a level to group with you.

These skills are mixture of skills that are particular to a certain game, and skills that are common to several games. As combat works rather similar in many MMORPG, many group combat skills are common to several games. If you understood how to control aggro, what a tank was, and what the role of the main healer in a group was in Everquest, you'd easily translate these skills into their minor variations in Dark Age of Camelot, or Final Fantasy XI. On the other hand, quad-kiting was a solo combat skill unique to EQ, while only in FFXI do you need to know how skill chains work in combat. Most of these tactical skills are acquired by playing the game. Some things you learn by observation, some you will be told by the other players in your groups. Most of the time these skills require just some intelligence, and not fast reaction speed.

Unlike Everquest, most items have level restrictions. So you won't see level 1 characters run around with level 70 armor. You still have an advantage when you switch from a high level job to another job and restart that one at level 1, because you can buy the very best level 1 equipment there is. But that advantage is reasonably small, and doesn't totally outclass a real level 1 character. In fact, the knowledge you acquired with your higher level character is more likely to help you than the riches he got. After 4 weeks of playing, I encountered the first bug in FFXI. And that was just a minor graphical glitch, when you draw your sword and immediately give the command to fire your ranged weapon, it looks as if your character is firing with his sword. The total absence of bugs is remarkable, especially when you played a very buggy game like SWG before. So all in all, Final Fantasy XI is a high quality game. No bugs, well designed, well balanced in all aspects.