by Galois » Mon Mar 19, 2007 10:13 am
I played FFXI for about 2.5 years. The main reason that I quit was due to a lack of time.
FFXI is a serious timesink. Be aware of this before you begin. If you don't have hours upon hours to invest in the game, I think you will find that you won't get much out of it.
I was fortunate to find a good group of players to play with when I was a no subjob whitemage running around LaThiene, and stayed with that core group for about 2 years. That made the game much more fun to play, and was probably the main reason that I invested so much time into FFXI.
My main problem with FFXI isn't the necessary time investment, the lack of new endgame content, or the class unbalances (although I do believe that square-enix is making some strides to improving things, but I don't know for sure, since I have not played in about 4 months). My main problem is that a group is basically required to do anything past level 15. And not just any group, but a specific set up in order to get anything done in an efficient manner.
Even after you get in the group, which can take an hour or longer to get together depending on the time and day, but getting to the leveling site can take a long time as well. After that, you will want to spend a few hours getting experience points. Add all of this up, and you're investing 3-4 hours of playtime in just one sitting.
Ok, so I'm complaining a lot about FFXI, but the truth is that I loved the game. I made some good friends playing the game and had a great time working with some of the best players on my server and being a part of an amazing linkshell, even though I was a background member for a relatively short time.
All of my rambling comes down to this: if you have the time to invest in FFXI, I think you can get a lot out of it. However, it takes a while to get to the "fun" stuff in the "endgame" portion of FFXI.
I just don't have those large blocks of time to play FFXI anymore. WoW suits my needs fairly well. I can log on, play for an hour or so, and feel like I have accomplished something. There is plenty to do with a group, but I can do plenty on my own as well.
I think it all comes down to how much time you want to invest.