[DissolveD_JameS]

FFXI yeah?

I played this for only 2 months like... maybe almost two years ago. Really enjoyed it but didn't get very far into, ended up with no internet for a while then got distracted by various other games (as you do) - there's a good chance I'll go back to play it though depending on how good Age of Conan shapes up to be.

The things that I found most awesome about FF online only really kicked in when I played WoW. Theres so much more depth to FF and generally more rewarding as WoW has been totally gimped to being almost an arcade game:

FFXI has this constant theme of the elements throughout it, which I found so totally charming. Every element has the summon that represents it, eg - fire for ifrit, ice for shiva (classic). Each element has power over one other element (except for Dark and Light, which only oppose eachother). See pic below. Each element also has its own corresponding status effect, eg water = poison, fire = berserk, wind = slow. This meant any elemental attack had a slight chance of causing the related effect.

Also each element had its corresponding crystals which are used in one way or another for various craft recipes (which, without looking up on the internet requires a lot of experimentation). For instance (this may not be entirely correct), you could use a log with a wind crystal to sand it into a plank for building furniture... or some meat with a fire crystal to cook it getting it ready for some crazy stat-changing sandwich. Also... you had a better chance of performing the action successfully if you used the crystal whilst facing the corresponding star.

Each summon had its own star, shining its elements colour. There were also many constellations that as far as I know play a part in the game.
The stars, sun and moon all move in realtime.

In the same way each monster type also had power over one other monster type and would prey on them in the game. Like... plants attacked flying things, flying things attacked fish, fish attacked beasts... or something.. i forget.

So anyway, everything was built on this nice balanced pattern, i liked it.

Also... the job combination thing is pretty sweet, you can change jobs any time you visit your house and you don't lose your stats/abilities. Like... I can get a black mage to level 60, decide i want to start playing a warrior, go get changed at home, start as a lv1 warrior (with lv1 stats), but keep the same char, name, items, money etc - however, whenever you choose to switch back to your mage, it's like you never left.

The real sweetness comes in with the support job, once you hit lv18 you can select on of your other (already levelled) jobs to be your support job... but it doesnt get xp and is capped at half the level.

Eg say you had a warrior and a thief, both at level 20. You play your warrior and select your support job of thief... you have all the power of a lv20 warrior, but with the added abilities of a lv10 thief. When your warrior dings lv22, your thief will get the abilities of the lv11 thief... and so on until your warrior gets to lv40+.. the thief support abilities will be capped at lv 20 (until you play your thief again as your main job).

I think theres only 8 starting jobs, but there was something like 36 in total when I played, most of them unlockable by missions that you can only do at certain levels.

This meant there are *counts*.. fucking loads of combinations for your character class.

I was looking forward to unlocking the Blue Mage before I got cut off, they absorb abilities from certain opponents - would have been nice to have that as support for my monk (which is specialised in fisty-cuffs)

I really liked how the classes were very specific, with few spells and abilities, it made grinding a bit boring but I would say it made playing the different classes worth it. Like early levelling as a white mage you NEED to heal yourself in every fight whilst doing pathetic damage with your staff and you aint got the money or xp to learn any offensive magic yet.

This made parties rely on teamwork pretty early on in the game, unfortunately i dont think i got past level 30 - so i cant really comment. The thing that really pissed me off about WoW was that it had been made so ridiculously easy that when you were in a party, as long as everyone had half a brain. There wasn't much that could go wrong as every class had so many similar spells and abilities they could cast (to help counter various dodgy situations) that you could fire through the co-op stuff so half-assed, the lack of accomplishment didnt seem worth the time and hassle of finding a party.

It's a slow game, but theres plenty of things along the way. For instance when getting a boat it sails in realtime, no skipping the ocean and loading at the other port. Once it sets off you can go buy a rod and some bait from the onboard shop, do a spot of fishing out at sea, which occassionally results in treasure, or even some monster coming on board and probably killing you, and perhaps some of the other passengers. Also sometimes your boat will get jumped by a pirate ship, skeletony pirates come on board, you die then too mostly.

When you die, it's not like WoW when you can be back to your corpse in just a couple of minutes, unless theres someone friendly nearby who can ressurrect (which with all the classes, isn't too common) you will be ressurecting at your 'home' which... could be a good hours journey away. AND you lose xp when you die, and levels. You actually level-down as you lose xp, its brutal, i love it.


SHIT. I wrote loads.


In short, its an awesome game, WoW fanboys need not apply.