FFXI turns 11, time for a trip down memory lane...

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

So Final Fantasy XI turns its titular 11 this month. As usual SE is having its annual adventurer's appreciation campaign. I got to thinking and that's really an incredible milestone for a subscription MMO in this day and age of F2P. More shockingly I thought, was the fact that I have been playing this game on and off for over a decade. So yes my dear friends, this is a trip down memory lane...

*Yes I know there's a Journal Thread, but this is more of a Nostalgia thread than an achievement one. *

I remember participating in the beta test on PC in the summer of 2002 as a RDM and recreating that character one day before NA launch. I remember spending all day turning in Zehrun soot among the other lowbie repeatable quests just so I could buy our first Linkshell: ZOHAR. I like to think that Arliman was the first "official" NA character on Leviathan, but that's my ego :p Anyway, we populated the Linkshell with mostly RPGFan folks, and about half of our editorial staff at the time. The LS imploded and Dio, Mike and I formed Solaris, which became the home of RPGFan on Leviathan for several years. I still remember the first time we did the mission for the airship pass in an alliance. It was like herding cats with all the sneak/invis wearing, but it was good times. We were among the first group to complete Genkai 1, with the help of a few Japanese players - back when the vast majority of them still wanted to play with westerners.

I remember clearly riding my way to Hall of the Gods, even though I was nowhere close to that progression in Rise of the Zilart, just cause I wanted to see the landmark. Then again when pushing everyone through for sky access. Somewhere around Chapter 5 of Chains of Promathia (pre-nerf) a little game called World of Warcraft and split the group up and for a while a new Solaris thrived in WoW with about half of the old guard, but nothing quite captured the fondness of the times we had in FFXI.  From the chain deaths in Castle Oztraja to stomping all over Kam'lanaut, those were the days. Even after so many other MMOs, XI has still kept its hearth warm. The game has held up well over the years and I'm curious to see this UI revamp they keep talking about, but like always, change in XI is always slow. Maybe that's why it's stood the test of time for so long.

As a longtime MMO player, I long for that magical game to come along that recaptures that special feeling that I had for FFXI so long ago. You know, a place to finally hang my hat and say "I'm home..." I'm hoping FFXIV:ARR can grant that wish, but if it doesn't, FFXI will forever hold a special place in my heart. From the friends I made (who are still friends 11 years later), to the memories we made, Vana'diel will always be a home away from home.

Here's a small portion of my old pics.
Arliman's Pics

Please feel free to share any of your old special memories and pictures from the game.

[Agent D.]

Special memory huh?

My first retirement from XI was pretty memorable. I had been in a linkshell for 2ish months at that point, and spent alot of time working on making our shell nice. Farmed pop items for abyssea, did early fell cleave runs for my ls members to get them some easy level ups, fought mobs that gave no real benefit for most anyway in our shell outside of 1 person, and often helped 1 certain member, Tonius was his name, with a number of solo projects he was doing. I thought we got along pretty well, he told me about how he was dating this girl and gonna get married to her soon, and problems he was having with his job (a roofer), and other things, meanwhile I'd be killing a fuckton of enemies for his weapon trials or an NM or other things. Cut ahead to the day of infamy, I had been busy with rl shit for a couple weeks and hadn't been on much. I get on and say hey to the shell, and seconds later I get kicked out. Started asking members wtf why'd I get booted and they pointed to tonius, who after a set of tells back and forth made it pretty clear he was a twat fuck jerkoff who'd been using me for bullshit and making sure everyone in the shell thought I was a dickwad and talking shit behind everyone's back. Literally an entire shell thought I was dirt now, and being that Hathen at this point was busy with his shell and none of my other pals still played, I said fuck it, this was drama I didn't need and promptly ended my account.

Year and change latet, ashtrot and daggerstrike had started playing and I decided it was a possibly good time to.get back into the game with a couple pals. Neither of them lasted very long....

Long story short, FFXI made my life very...drama filled.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

That's... Really depressing :(
I think everyone who has ever MMO'd have had someone leech their time and/or experience. I didn't have much of that in XI but boy did I have people like that in WoW. It takes alot of trial, error and luck to get a good group of people to play and stay together. The biggest problem I see now is that with everything going F2P, people don't have any real incentive for sticking around unless they have a significant social investment. I'm sorry you weren't around back in the day, you definitely could have used some more positive experience.

[Agent D.]

Blame Parn, he coerced me and a few of our buddies to start playing back in early late 2009 iirc, and quickly left us all high and dry. It's all Parn's fault! Lynch him!!!!!!

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

LMAO. Yeah Parn played with us too, quit and came back like 4 times that I recall. Even microwaved his discs so he couldn't reinstall. Well you guys are welcome to join us when ARR launches. Alot of good peeps returning for Solaris 3.0, should be fun times.

[Hathen]

Even microwaved his discs so he couldn't reinstall.

Even that didn't stop him from coming back to the game again a while after that.

[Parn]

Good thing too, otherwise I wouldn't have grabbed amazing screenshots like this one.



It's worth noting that the timestamp on the file is 7/28/2006.

[Haven]

 Man, those pics brought me back to a real special time. When the game launched, it really felt like some "no 7th graders on the 8th grader's lawn" kinda shit, and if you got lucky, a few cool JP players would let you sneak in a group and it would feel like winning the lottery.
 
 I also learned I would never play another MMO that had a sound file for "level down".

 How big is the group coming back? My wife and I played WoW from open beta until about a month ago. Killing Kael'thas and Vashj in their day was always a high water mark for me, but the FFXI days were pretty great. Is FF14 ARR close to the FFXI experience?

[Ramza]

My favorite memories from playing FFXI include:

1) pretty much all of CoP. I played through these missions in 2006: that is, after the first few balance-fixes, but before the removal of level-capping (or equipment-level-scaling, for that matter).
2) the ending of CoP.
3) beating the seven Jailers in Sea, and dying to AV a lot.
4) About 60% of the Salvage runs I went on. For some reason I just REALLY liked that event.
5) Level-grinding summoner in Abyssea. Ridiculously fun/easy/rewarding all in one.
6) Taking down some of the Abyssea zone bosses with a pet-only LS. That was wild.

[WDNall]

Man those pics really bring back memories. The whole reason I joined FF XI was because of friends I had in Mirc that played the game. Joined up and got a Solaris pearl... made a lot of friends with people who are fun to play with. I remember when Suspiria would go fishbot hunting by dragging the kraken over to the bots. I also remember having to do a full alliance to even get to the spire in promy. one of my favorite memories was Leopold's /shout boost macro in dunes. I remember when my DRK was with Feight's PLD, Risten's BRD, Valesti's THF, Annwn's WHM, and Grimreaper's BLM. at the end of our exp sessions Feight would invincible and i'd try to get hate off of him. and it wasn't a exp pt unless my DRK died at least once lol :) FF XI was the first MMO I ever played. and I'm happy that I decided to play.

WDN

[Hathen]

Can't find a lot of super-old screenshots, and even fewer of people that you might recognize.

Also my screenshots have ass resolution. I should really update my computer more often.

[Sagacious-T]

Anyone have that FF11 Copypasta story? About some guy who had a friend in game from his n00b days who he grew disconnected from, but she was actually going on quests and sending him letters about her adventures for years without a response because he never checked out the sphere-a-majiggy thing the game used.

;_;

[Parn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARghlVjBab0

[Agent D.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARghlVjBab0

That was terrible.

[Sagacious-T]

That chick was a weirdo noob.