Bruce's Blog

I've come to the conclusion that I really do not want to be playing Final Fantasy XI for more than another month or two. The game world is decent, NPCs interesting, jobs and abilities are accepitable, but the people and the grind suck.

The game has three fatal flaws. The first is the Linkshell system. It simply does not encourage community, at all. Linkshells are over glorified chat channels. Instead of guild tags over your head there is the color of the bead. This is understandable under the context that in a multilingual environment guild names in other languages would distract from an role playing environment. Unfortunately this tends to destroy a sense of belonging to a 'group' (I'm sure a sociologist would have a better term for it) since there are only so many colors and colors are not very expressive at all. There is also the fact there is little to no role playing at all in the game.

The second flaw is the level grind. Square-Enix has put tons of content in the game. They have many zones where you can level, many quests and missions to do, and places to explore for all level ranges. No one ever uses this content. There is a 'set in stone' leveling progression in this game that you can't get around unless you can convince people to leave these key areas and explore with you.

The problem is you can't guarantee safety and experience because very few American players have ever been to these places and without a tight knit community its hard to encourage people to go with you. So you end up having to go to these 'set in stone' places to get a group. And since the mobs are often so incredibly hard a group is a must in the game. I don't consider forced grouping to be a downside of the game, it is just a trait of a game and I take it as it is (since I'm someone who likes grouping anyway).

The job system makes this even more of a problem because you are often grouping with people who are doing the level 1 to 30 grind for a second or third time. These people grinded their way to 30 the first time at the usual spots and will be damned if they have to endure "substandard" experience at unfamiliar spots. They want to get back up to 30 as soon as possible and I can't blame them. I feel the same urge myself with my Bard. People say the game really starts after 30 (as the bulk of the content of the game is not accessible before then). They may be true but I'm too much of a jaded MMORPG burnout to wait for the magical level when all of the evils of the game will go away and the players will be in content bliss.

And finally the third fatal flaw of the game is the players. Simply stating "Jesus... what a bunch of dumbasses" would not be fair. This game seems to have an abnormally high number of people new to MMORPG games and not willing to learn or accept tips on how to play. Then there are the general assholes who think they can do whatever they want and end up doing the usual camp stealing, training on groups at zones, etc. There are quite a few experienced MMORPG players or newbies who are clearly making an attempt to learn but I'm starting to think they are the minority.