I started back in beta so my first impressions are a little different.


When I started I remember running through E. Ron and thinking that this game looked so much better than DAoC and that the animations and controls felt much nicer. I didnt like the macro/bind system (DAoCs is better) in FFXI at first. I also felt like things were so empty. I didnt have a linkshell in beta and since theres no "general" chat for each zone like most other MMORPGs it felt like I was the only one playing some times.

My first cool experiance was when I saw my first Orc. I remember thinking how detailed the model was and how crappy DAoC now felt. I got too close and he started chasing. I swear to god I am not making this part up. I ran for a few seconds when a full group of 6 humes all in full leather armor jumped on the orc and killed it. I was like, what the F are those guys all dressed alike for... still it was funny

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

My first impression was kinda mixed. I was impressed by the grafx. First person I spoke to in Sandy gave me some quest to chase down some Mithra. Then after my first few fights, I was not liking FFXI at all. Took me quite a while to get into the groove.

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FFXIV Craft-a-holic Anonymous | Shuichi's YouTube Channel

FFXI made me realize that the lack of background music is what makes real life so boring.

I got killed by a bunny. (`; w ;')

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o_o The product of MNK73/THF25

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/profile.xml?72267

Being utterly disgusted by an auto-attack system..

oh, and noticing that the area outside of where I started (Gustaberg) looked remarkably similar to the starting area outside for Everquest:Online adventures.

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Karma.

being how this is and probably will be my only MMORPG I had no idea how to do anything i didn't even know how to equip my dagger, let alone checking mobs.

I was seriously bummed when I found that I was not going to able to make my money from just killing mobs.

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Now that I think back. I hated the controls.

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COBRA KAI DOJO NEVER DIES
RIP Shiloh

my first thought was that it took forever to get from one place to another

edit: this is whisp ..lol.. my computer is still broken and TS never logs out on his computer

lol i just liked the semi console feel it has. I actually liked the music until i got vc and then i had to lower it lol. First person i talked to were the japanese fish bots. I've never know of botters before so i stood for 15 min trying to talk to some guy about game advice

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Job 10: 20
The mikey's have a plan. Djay isn't all powerful.

I remember my first time in E Ron.. I thought it was humongous and I didn't know that I had a map of it so I'd always get lost. I thought the graphics were amazing.. but it was like my first online game.. didn't know any other online games even existed at that time. I also thought it took forever to get from one place to another.

I was SO scared of orcs.. one time I accidently pressed * and couldnt run from an orc attacking me and I was so pissed off 'cause I was right by the zone. I was like ahh wtf is up with this game. So ever since then yeah I would actually be truely scared lol. I was like 14 at the time though =p

And the Sandy music pissed me off.

I didn't like the controls and the graphics sucked too. Figured I wasted 50 bucks on the game and was excited over nothing before it came out.

Now I like the simplistic controls but the graphics still suck compared to other games :P

I didn't know what to do at first because I felt like I had so much to do ... if you can understand that. I started killing mobs in Sarutabaruta when a Japanese player welcomed me into the game, gave me a mithakabob, and wished me good luck. FFXI has always felt so depressingly huge to me, but since I've wrapped my head around it now it doesn't seem as bad.

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Retired 8/21/06
Don't click this link.

"Addictive"

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99 BLM . 75 mnk . 75 nin . 75 pld . 75 war . 48 rng . 41 rdm . 37 thf . 37 drk . 37 sam . 37 brd . 35 bst . 23 whm . 10 pup . 7 blu
http://www.myspace.com/hccmike

1st time playing I thought the world seemed so big. Now it seems so small lol since it's not hard to go anywhere. I liked some of the character models. I didnt like the zones though and the fact that some monsters would never give up chasing you and could hit you through zones. I like Lineage 2's approach a lot better. I also liked and disliked that you could change to any job whenever you wanted to.

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My first impression was, that everything seemed so big an dthat i'd get lost.

then i went and soloed a rabbit in e. ron with bare hands on BLM. it killed me

i liked how at the time there were very little people on the server and it wasnt laggy. i liked the enviroment the most but this is my 1st MMORPG so yea i dont know much

I spent my first half hour or so trying to move. after that I got to lvl 5 and decided the game sucked. I decided to give it another try a week later and relized I had a staff and stone in my inventory. I also got my first LS and then the addiction settled in and took over my life.

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lol at first i didnt like it at all..........i was fighting a T crawler and i engaged it i could swear to god i could dodge attacks by moving around them...but it came soon to me that you cant..........first person i talked to was melissa she gave me a Orange juice @ the Easter event thing XD

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I beat FF. Maats Cap is over rated.




BLMAF2:3/5
RDMAF2:2/5
BSTAF2:5/5(lies!hi2ublacksage)

I remember thinking, "omg. Lots of Japanese people to talk to. I'm going to make so many Japanese friends and learn about their culture.".... Only took like two days before I realized I was NA grabage.

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lmfao mil your hilarious <3

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No sig because 3 sigs in a row people make me change my sig and I refuse to have a pony sig!

After figuring out how to move. the first thing i tried to do was buy some potions so i could go lvl, i always used alot of pots in other FF games. after searching for a shop for like 4 1/2 hours, i found out that potions were like 3 K each, i had like 50 gil. Right then is when i realized that this was not my old FF. But after playting for a few days and figuring the AH and battle systems out it got really fun, specially after i made some friends. This game was never more fun than when i was a total nooblet.

I remember completely getting lost in Bastok thinking it was soooo huge and I'd never find my way. I spent 90% of the day talking to the direction guards.
The controlls were really natural and clean. It wasn't hard to figure out what everything was.

I tried to start a quest but it was horrendously vague and I remember wondering how on earth anyone was supposed to know what to do next.
I really wasn't (and still arent) impressed by the quest system. It encourages too much use of outside sources to decifer.

I recall being very disappointed at the autoattack system. As when you're level one there's not much menu command wise you can apply to your fight. So as a first time player at lvl 1 it seemed really automatic. Now I think the system works fairly well.

I went outside and began leveling my whm and imediately started to die to a sheep. I hit benediction and survived, and thought what a really cool spell benediction was. So I pulled another sheep and started to have my rear served to me again. I tried to "Recast" benediction but it wouldn't let me, then i saw there was 2 hours cool down on it. Cursed quite audibly out of confusion and desperation, then attempted a speedy retreat.
However, I thought if i ran just enough the sheep would get tired and leave me alone. But it didn't. Instead it brought like 3 of its buddies near by as I ran around in circles with 2 hp screaming my head off for a good 15 mins before they finished me off.
I didn't know you could run into Bastok and live.

I was pretty impressed with the graphics, but I remember being a little disappointed that there weren't real CGI movies but rather just in-game graphics cut scenes. I dont know why I assumed there would be CGI movies, it seems really illogical looking back.

Yeah at first i thought the game was insanely huge, like traveling from windurst to shakrami was an adventure.

I also agree that ffxi was infinatley more fun when i was a noob.

I remember the first thing I wanted to do was level, not because I had no interest in the idea of quests and missions, but because the thought of running around as a level 1 "noob" annoyed the hell out of me. Especially because I was about 4 days late from NA Launch Day because I had to wait for my copy of the game to be imported.

I assumed that the starting gear SE provided me with would at least be half-decent for a few levels. So I equipped my Onion Sword and Bastokan Ring and ran outside into South Gustaberg.

Outside there was a Bee. I wasn't completely oblivious to how the game worked, I mean I had a huge installation to sit through and give me time to read the manual, so I proceeded to check the bee, it was Decent Challenge. Now, this sounded like I'd actually have my work cut out for me, like a real challenge or something.

Ok, truth be told, I was incredibly scared of dying. There was nothing I wanted more to happen than die. I'd read the manual, I knew it wouldn't be the end of the world or anything, but i'd slightly misinterpreted it. I was under the believe that if you died, you had to wait 1 hour before you could continue playing, unaware you could just Home Point and run right back out.

So anyway, scared as hell, I attacked this bee. And to my amazement it died in about 10 seconds with almost no damage taken to myself. I figured "wow, that was easy" and ran around killing more stuff until I was level 4-ish. I'd seen a Quadav but it said "Tough" so I stayed far far away.

I started the first bastok mission, which was to deliver some note to some NPC in Zeruhn Mines, easy enough I figured. I actually got it done rather easy with my level 4, after I'd done it I decided to attack a DC Crab, since i'd never seen one. I was easily owning it until it was almost dead and it used Stoneskin, and I started hitting it over and over for 0 for like 30 seconds until the point I was just running out of HP, so I disengaged and started to run. Like everyone else, I was under the impression if I ran far enough it would give up. I did actually manage to outrun it by taking some nice turns around all the tunnels. I couldn't see it anymore so I assumed it had stopped, so I stopped too. About 5 seconds later it ran up and killed me with a critical hit.

So after discovering the Home Point button, I returned to bastok disgruntled, and decided to do more missions. I remember the next mission telling me to goto the Presidents Office, but I had no idea where it was. I checked the map, it wasn't marked. I went into one of the other zones, checked the map again, I couldn't see it marked. I was running around bastok for 2 hours looking for the President's Office. I didn't want to shout/ask and make myself look like a noob. Eventually I gave up and went into Gustaberg to level some more.

I remember making a stack of fire crystals from killing Vultures, returning to an AH (I had a decent idea that if I wanted to make real money, this was the place to go) and finding out I could sell them for 3K a stack, I was amazed. Because up until now all I'd had was about 250 gil from selling Insect Wings and stuff to NPCs. 3K back then was huge, I'd say it would be the equivalent now of having 25K at level 1. I was able to buy an entire set of armor and a shield and stuff. I immediately went back outside to level on nothing but Vultures.

Thinking back, it's funny how I was so happy and having fun with nothing more than running around at levels 1-15 solo doing whatever I felt like. FFXI was my first MMO so I actually felt a huge amount of freedom in the game because of how much stuff there was to do and nothing was dictating what I had to do and when to do it.

The graphics seemed kind of bland to me, but I had to put up with Bastok and Gustaberg for a long time, as well as it's nearby counterparts Palbourough, Dangruf Wadi, Konschtat Highlands, etc. It wasn't until I was level 20 and got to Rolanberry Fields on my way to Jeuno that I realised how damn nice the graphics were. Then reaching Jeuno made me realise how huge this game was going to be, I didn't really know what to expect but figured I'd be playing this for a while. :P

I remember selling silk threads to NPC for 30 or so gil, took me a week to figure out there was an AH. I also discovered fishing and met a nice JP who explained me about the craft, I thought he was awesome and all because he was already level 3 fishing. We fished together in Port Windy for like 2 hours.
I also remember later on the day going out and doing the first missions with some Galka I met in Saru and on the second mission this Mithra joined us.
In that dungeon those Gizmos were guarded by them vicous Balloons, I remember we built an alliance with a nearby group and still only barely survived each bomb.
Eventually got the mission done and disbanded with the other group so me, the galka and the mithra went to the mission in Giddeus where we met a nice JP WHM she was like level 50 but we thought that was awesome super high level, anyway she gave us directions to the offering altars and we brought the mission to a good ending and received a 1000G award, I remember thinking I was rich then.
Oh yeah on the way out of Giddeus we met an Aspirite Santu linkshell member and we got pearls but it took me half a day to figure out how to talk in linkshell. Thats about the end of my ultra noob days.

I really hope they make another online FF someday just so I can be a total noob again, because those times really were the most fun.