A question for those who no longer play.

[Kittyneko]

I play both FFXI and WoW.
I never quit FFXI, meaning never cancelled my account. But it has happened that I didn't log on much for a month or two in a row.

The only reason I decide to boot up a different game than FFXI, is because I want to.. I never really put much thought into it. Most of the steady players, when they get behind their computer the first thing they do automatically is boot up FFXI, without thinking about it much. They just log on and then see what they want to do. While I do and have done this myself a lot.. sometimes I just feel like playing something else, and so I do. If I end up playing it for months in a row, than that's that.

I swear, not once have I seen the term "FFXI" on the WoW forums or ingame.
Everytime some mentions WoW, you're advertising the game and showing how small FFXI community is compared to WoW, and I'm sure you don't want that.
It's like people from some small country, lets say Farawayslavia, always talking about USA being the land of miracles, but 99.9% of USA hasn't even heard of Farawayslavia.

[Feba]

Everytime some mentions WoW, you're advertising the game and showing how small FFXI community is compared to WoW

Calling FFXI small is more like calling Japan small. It's not small, you're just comparing it to titanics in the same category.

FFXI is still, last I checked, in the top 5 MMOs in terms of subscribers-- it's definitely in the top ten. To look at it another way, assuming there are 32 servers with 2000-4000 players online at any given time each, that's a total of around two hundred thousand people online simultaneously. That is huge-- EVE online; not counting chinese servers; has pushed around 40k at their peak times (oddly enough, the figures I've seen point to them having similar subscriber numbers, although I could be confusing total accounts with active subscribers)

[Kitalrez]

Well, as someone who left then came back, I guess I could pipe up on here as to what it was that did make me come back to play. That would be nostalgia. No matter how bad the game is, I've still had a good time here. I came here back at the NA release after about 3-4 years on Everquest. I hated EQ at this point, it was a pain to log on. Everyone min-maxed the living daylights out of every encounter, Verant Interactive and Sony rarely bothered to let players in on things they were changing, or even seek our input on how things were working. Events were mainly excuses for the GM staff to massacre players, pretend every GM in this game is GM[Dave] and they write the content of the event. It felt like working a degrading job by the time I got to endgame. So I came here. My first day in the game I got a pointy hat for my caster, something I'd been asking for in EQ for years. After that, I enjoyed a wonderful cathartic release from running around in a pumpkin shaped hat and whacking things with a little bat on a stick. I met nice people, and I had fun. Most of them are gone now. I started on WHM, and hated partying, so I found my own way to make it to the 20s. It was slow, but I enjoyed myself.

After awhile, I blew up at a few ls's... I put a buttload of work into one, and the leader decided to punish people for not promoting his own agenda better. He booted my friends, and I went with them. On my own, I grew more and more distant from the people who were enjoying the endgame, and after retreating as far as I was comfortable with, struck out for other games.

I have learned something from other MMOs out there. They, by and large, suck. Content isn't great, or if it is pretty good and has potential it's rare that that potential is realized. Take Saga of Ryzom for example, it was founded on a great set of ideas, the original parts of the game are fun to play. However, Nevrax went under due to poor marketing or market variations very soon after it was released. It never got a real US following, and now it's sort of stagnant and unpleasant to play. D&D Online suffers from the opposite problem, they had a horrible set of ideas based on a pretty decent module. They had great game structure and development, but that was all lost when you realized it had about the same level of story arc as Everquest had. It just wasn't fun to play after a week or two. Which was a shame since you had a month free and it took less time than that to get to or close to max level and realize how empty the content was.

The people that play MMOs fall into two categories. Ruthless min/maxing dipshits, and the types of people you actually enjoy being around. In my tour of Ryzom, D&DO, Corum, and Rappelz, I found that these two types of players usually were distributed in about the same amounts across the sphere. If I really applied myself, I could easily find someone who's worth to me was so incredibly low that I could easily see myself driving across country to forcibly sterilize them. By the same token, I could find people I really wished I could meet IRL and hang out with. Relationships can be forged anywhere, it doesn't matter how odd the backstory is. If there's a chance to group with people, or join their guild, you can meet worthwhile or worthless individuals.

So, I came back here. I was only intending to stay for a month or so, see my old friends and regroup a little. That was January. Since my departure my old friends are largely gone or no longer play enough to really stay in touch. I'm still here. I guess if I had to say why, it'd be because I've met new people who I like just as well, and if they leave I know I can always find someone else to play with. The story is good, the content is enjoyable, and the idiots leave in roughly the same amounts as the good players. Its all a matter of patience, really. On my return, I got into campaign, which I was pleasantly surprised to find a viable way of soloing my way up on several jobs. I can solo WHM again and I can't believe how much fun I've been having doing this. I made the last 4 levels of summoner doing this as well. As for my relationships? Well, I know I can build them anywhere now, it's just a matter of choosing where to start. I like this place at the moment. If the people I need aren't here, I know which types of people can grow into them, and I'm more than willing to start building.

[Rain_Blade]

Well...if there were a much lower population of idiots and greedy people(which popular online game DOESN'T have that?) and a better Summoner fix, then I could have a change of thought. I also left because of the Auction House craziness with the prices going extremely low making many things nonprofitable in Asura (didn't wanna change servers either).

[dirtyclown]

I like this crazy hardcore game....but maybe you don't? I just don't get those casual MMOs at all....and I probabaly never will...

If your idea of hardcore is wasting 5+ hours just to get a cool new hat, then you need to get your head examined.

[Jarre]

I just lost the spark i got when I first played the game, levelling was much harder with the reduced time I could play the game expecially when people didn't want you unless you could spend 4 hours+ in the party. When you work for a living, want to spend some quality time with some special person as well as having other commitments, that time gets very short and I was rejected from parties because of it. One guy told me I was weak for not having enough time to play" translated he was telling me I was weak for having a life?

I love computer games and still play them in my short time I can, but the MMO game in gneral is time consuming and doesn't fit my lifestyle anymore. I don't want to spend RL money to just fish, craft or farm all the time, to me that was boring. Granted SE has put a bonus on smaller parties, in my experience not many of them existed and when they did they wanted to do a long time or just didn't want to know.

The spark has gone for me, so rather than bitch and moan about the game all the time, I left, put the boxes and books into protected storage in my cupboard and moved on.

[Kitalrez]

This is kind of why I got so heavily into campaign when I came back. If I only had an hour or less to play today, I could log on, feed the chocobo, and run a campaign battle or two before I had to leave. I'd net between 2 and 5k exp off that, and could at least say I was making progress towards my next goal. This is probably the best new change they've made since I took the year off.

[Telera]

Mostly I think the casual RPG thing is ruining MMOs to a certian extent.

I don't. The people who like MMOs but aren't hardcore need somewhere to go. MMOs shouldn't be only for the die-hards. That's a good way to fuck over the genre. There should be a healthy mix of hard-core and casual MMOs, and at the moment, there are. I do wish that some of those who played the hard-core ones would stop pretending like they're oh so much better gamers, though.

Some of us want to play an MMO, but get sick to death of seeing people who started a year or two after us hit cap before us. I played FFXI 4 years and never got a single job to 75.

Blah, blah some people who work 60 hours a week pull it off. Whatever. I tried and couldn't. Not from lack of funds, but from lack of time. My work schedule isn't a nice, regular 9-5 office job with holidays and weekends off. I work all over the place, and most often during the prime-time afternoon/evenings when the rest of the world is off and partying in game. And when I had a day or evening off, spending 2+ hours seeking and another 6 hours just to ding wasn't the most exciting prospect in the world. I'd much rather have been out with friends, or at least socializing in the game.

Especially because I am at heart more of a socializer/roleplayer/explorer than an 'achiever'. I cannot stand - nor justify - something in the realm of 6 hours to gain one level. Killing 23094823423423 crawlers is the most boring thing in the world to me. 24+ hour respawns on an NM with R/EX equip that still isn't a 100% drop is yet another glorious waste of time I could never justify.

I get my sense of 'achievement' in a MMO not from gear or levels, but from exploring and helping others. (Also roleplaying, if you can even find any going on.) Leveling up is arbitrary at best, to me. And only useful so far as it allows me to help out my friends or guild/clan/linkshell/kinship. My thought on finally hitting cap on LotR wasn't 'Oh, wow, I did it.' It was 'Good frickin' lord. Finally I can stop worrying about this boring shit and have fun role-playing and messing around.'

And I personally like a game that lets me still advance without having to dedicate a 6-8 hour block to do so. Leveling is not fun to me. Even on LotRO. Unless someone is talking quite a bit, or even better, we are role-playing our way through it, I'm falling asleep. And by advance, I don't mean get 3k exp out of the 20-some oddk I need. Advance to me means to at least get half of the bar out of the way. Not 1/10th. I prefer to get a level each time I set out to level, but I'd settle for even half. (Note: this applies only to lvls 60-ish+. Of course you can ding lots of times earlier on. :p)

[Asmodai]

I'm still paying for 4 eve accounts as i've had a 3 week hiatus from EVE-online and counting. I've been playing it for 2 and a half years. Lately, I've been looking for something else to do besides log into eve every day when I wake up. Now im logging in to ffxi..lol. We all need a change of scenary every now and then to spice it up a lil.

I have all four Guildwars expansions and only played the last one for a lil bit till I was bored with it and went back to eve-online. I bought tabula rasa and played it for 2 months and was totally bored with it and went back to eve again. I don't know how long ill play ffxi till i get bored with it but im having fun every night with friends that play it. Will I go back to eve, more than likely yes. I'm almost done training marauders lvl 5 which will make running lvl 4 missions a whole lot easier..lol. but for now im still having fun with ffxi. So see you around.

[Bluecat]

I get bored very easily with games, so if I ever get bored with FFXI someone please shoot me in the head. Because at this current moment I am not bored with it. Also, just because you get bored with a game doesn't mean you have to cancel it I hate when people do that. Then they get mad that there account is gone when they want to play it again. Just keep your account, and don't delete it lol.

[neighbortaru]

/em pokes head in
if they made traveling around MUCH shorter... dare i say maybe instant

/ninja

[Murphie]

I get bored very easily with games, so if I ever get bored with FFXI someone please shoot me in the head. Because at this current moment I am not bored with it. Also, just because you get bored with a game doesn't mean you have to cancel it I hate when people do that. Then they get mad that there account is gone when they want to play it again. Just keep your account, and don't delete it lol.

Wait, you get bored very easily, so if you get bored with FFXI (which you claim happens pretty often), we have your permission to kill or at least seriously wound you?

Kickass.

[Feba]

Wait, you get bored very easily, so if you get bored with FFXI (which you claim happens pretty often), we have your permission to kill or at least seriously wound you?

They know what I like.

[Jei]

progress quest : / It's almost like a fancier stop watch. I wanna play my character myself.

[Yellow Mage]

Hey, Jei, have you tried recovering your account recently?