Whacking The Moogle For The Whatsit
posted by Rei at 11:30 PM on Monday, February 2nd, 2004
Final Fantasy XI was a tricky little chestnut. Never before had I played a
game where people would attempt to bend time and space itself to catass
themselves to wherever they wanted to be. FFXI is a purely goal-oriented
game, make no doubt about it. Every last player has entered that game with a
pre-set list of goals in their head; become a dragoon/ninja, get a chocobo,
get that nifty pimp hat that the Red Mages have. People also enter FFXI
expecting to just start OUT fighting bunnies and work their way up to
massive creatures that inspire fear and pantaloon wettings. What they do not
know is that for every time you take a new job or sub-job, you are back at
your starting town getting your ass handed to you by that bunny that was
ignoring you out of sheer TERROR 20 minutes ago. This ingenious setup
created a super-treadmill where players found themselves tip-toeing on only
1/3rd of the treadmill at a time. It just completely enamored some people
from our group. Nephren Ka would disappear for WEEKS at a time from IRC and
supposedly existence itself.
In the end, that was what got me. I was sitting there running from a Goblin
Tinkerer with my Red Mage and two things suddenly hit me at the same time; A
second goblin that had spawned next to me purely out of spite for my
existence; and the realization that THIS IS THE ENTIRE GAME. Yeah, sure,
there are high points where sometimes you'll go fight a dragon or perhaps
some sort of demonic pastry chef, but next to that you realize that all
you're going to be doing is fighting various classes of goblin and whatever
sort of new psychotic bunny rename job they think of. Every 5th set of armor
I got was some weird-ass bondage gear crap and I was leveling at an
incredibly slow rate, even if I did put in several hours a day. What also
got me was the fact that college was upcoming and was under the impression
that my entire life was about to be taken over by classes. I didn't exactly
see "classes only 3 days a week" coming. Between the fact that every friend
ingame had blazed past me at a mind-boggling speed, playing constantly and
going nowhere at an equally impressive rate, and that in a few short weeks
I'd be occupied with finding the proper technique to shade cleavage in
College, I cancelled my account.
When I quit a game, I like to leave my options open. I know that when it
comes to LtM Legacy sites, an MMORPG is like a case of herpes; the game
never REALLY goes away, it just lays dormant for a while. Eventually there's
a new expansion, or some amazing new patch or new content added and everyone
on the forum goes "Hey, maybe WE should play that again!" and a guild starts
up and maybe for 10 to 30 days the entire forum is abuzz about the game. We
have some laughs, pay our 15 bucks and then the game fades into obscurity
again for whenever the next little shiny addition is made. This does not
happen in FFXI; Square-Enix has adopted a "play when we say or don't play at
all" plan. After you quit you get 3 months, and after that they delete your
account, and then you're a lucky owner of a 70 dollar cardboard box.
As much as the treadmill bugged me, I did enjoy many features of the game;
it was about as good and balanced as PvE-centric gameplay can get, and
really encouraged interaction and cooperation between players. The graphics
are nice and the locales are awesome looking, and I never got a chance to
see more than a fraction of them. Dungeons are well-designed and the
storyline is unique for each kingdom, all leading together in the end as
players see all the well-done cutscenes and meet up in the grand continent
of Jeuno. The ol' Linkshell is apparently much larger now and has a wider
level range of players. I have a lot more free time than I expect, at least
this year anyway. Finally, I am a Final Fantasy nut, plain and simple. I own
every recent release since FFX-2 (Even I have limits.), I even have this
damn Chocobo key chain that's been sitting on my key ring since I was in
grade school. Something about the quality of the games worlds just seems to
intrigue me more than most other series.
So buy a copy, or reactivate your account while you still can. Trying to
get onto a specific server in FFXI is like trying to play roulette with your
teeth, but try to get onto Valefor. Maybe we'll make a rabbit hunter out of
you yet.
And, well... Boobies are harder to see in Shadowbane. Because you don't have a lot of time to scope out the pixellated goodness when you're being stabbed in the face.
Discuss being a consumer whore in our forums.
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