FFXI in 2024: First impressions

(image from bg-wiki)

FFXI is 23 years old, but it is not a dead game. There was definitely more activity than I thought there would be.

In my first 10 hours several new players asked for help in the Assist-English channel, and received it right away. and there were shouts every 10 minutes or so for LFG or LFP.

When I was running around what should be a pretty quiet zone, I saw four other players. That's literally more than I see in any overland zone in FFXIV except base game and Dawntrail Zones.

State of the game

FFXI is more accessible than ever. You can get set up through Steam or use the basic installer provided by SE. The game is no longer playable on console but is extremely controller-friendly on PC.

There are still thousands of players online every day on the most popular servers. And some new players are coming in too. Some people, like me, are coming over from FFXIV out of nostalgia or curiosity after the release of Jeuno: the First Walk from the new Echoes of Vana'diel Alliance Raid series.

You can solo most of the game now. The Trust System from very early on and lets you select a party of powerful NPCs to wander around Vana'diel with. They level up as you do and are summonable and dismissable. There are a lot of different Trusts to unlock, so you can build a party to support your job and playstyle. The incredible community-created wiki can answer just about any question you might have.

First Impressions

The Good

There are definitely people around. Playing very late last night, I saw about 25 players in one of the starter cities (and a couple of bots). A few new players introduced themselves in chat and were immediately greeted by others. I think other hubs would have even more players.

The community-developed launcher, Windower, helps you with improved graphics and QoL upgrades from the start with just a few minutes of tinkering around. You should get that right away.

There is so much freedom in this game. There was no linear path I needed to follow, no required chain of events. The tutorials aren't shoved in your face. If you wanted to you could just go run around for as long as you wanted.

There's also a great feature called Records of Eminence that gives you some direction in its Tutorial activities without completely holding your hand. You can also passively gain a lot of exp and a currency that is tradeable for gear (and the gear can be vendored for gil) by setting Records of Eminence objectives.

I didn't feel the need to powerlevel or rush to endgame. Just the act of playing and exploring was very relaxing and fun. If I decide to pursue that, great! If I want to join a linkshell and make friends, great! There are plenty of active folks around and on the FFXI subreddit who seem happy to help. But it's totally an option to play this like an RPG.

There's a lot of familiar stuff from XIV and older titles. It's been great to see XI's rendition of those places, gear, jobs, amd more.

For Blue Mage enjoyers, it is a fully fleshed-out class and is not a limited job. Hell yeah!

The Bad

From the start, my chat was absolutely flooded with mercs and gil sellers, all that stuff. It was so bad that it was literally unusable because my NPC conversation dialogue was overwhelmed, and manually adding all the mercs to the blacklist was not my idea of a fun start to the game. Luckily, there are a few vanilla options baked in to configure log windows. In my main window, I turned off everything except NPC dialogue as a quick way to get started.

If I want to spend more time configuring logs, SE introduced a more advanced chat filter system, and there are plug-ins to help with that also.

My favorite class, Dragoon, is a meme. (loldrg) From reading the FFXI reddit, DRG did get a lot of changes making it a competitive DPS, but it seems like the bad impression stuck. I'm going to unlock and level it anyway.

The LFP shouts in the major cities were mostly limited to COR (why didn't we get this instead of Viper?!), BRD, WHM, and tanks. Occasionally there will be one for DPS.

There weren't any English linkshells available, so I'll probably have to go on Reddit or something to find one.

The Ugly

There's no nice way to put this: the PlayOnline launcher is hot garbage. Setting that up and getting it working with the game itself is painful. I've heard the launcher itself called the first big game boss.

I did the setup a while ago when I first played the game, and once everything was hooked up, I didn't have any problems with it. One important thing to note is that if you have 2FA on your SE account by default, you must also use it with PlayOnline even if you deselect it in the PlayOnline interface or you will not be able to log in.

Without graphics mods and additional QoL plugins, the game feels like a PS2 game, because it is.

The ugly gear that drops from FFXIV's new Jeuno is available for purchase with login reward currency this month. I can't escape it!

Solo Play is completely viable

FFXI's Trust System

FFXI is mostly a solo experience now until you hit level 99 and can start participating in endgame activities with others (if you want). To enable solo play, you can round out your party using Trusts. They are powerful NPCs unlocked very early in the game progression. Very powerful. Just go unlock the Paladin. Take my word for it.

These Trusts are superior to the FFXIV ones in pretty much every way. They are usable in the open world, and can be selected to complement your character. They level up as you do. Imagine running around Eorzea with Thancred, Urianger, and Estinien able to be summoned at will!

You can also collect them like Pokémon. Certain Trusts come up for purchase for the monthly login events. You're not forced to log in every day to be able to afford one, and the currency carries over from month to month with a reasonable cap.

Why you should try it

FFXI is a vast, beautiful world. It's radically different Level some different jobs and find a combo that works for you. FFXI has 22 jobs and you can sub a job at half the level as your main job to create hundreds of different combinations. It's an incredibly deep system.

The game may be over two decades old, but don't expect it to go dark anytime soon. The servers should be up for years to come. While is is in maintenance mode at the moment, there is over 20 years of story amd battle content to explore, and new content was even released within the past year.

There's plenty of time to explore the secrets of Vana'diel at your own pace.

I'm Mistermidnight on Asura, come say hi!