Ending my hiatus..possibly

[Ahinjel]

Well, I know a lot of you, won't even remember me. I use to play a few years back, I had a WHM, and she was leveled up to 73. I was swayed into quitting when WoW came out by some folks who were friends at the time. Needless to say, I really do regret making that decision. I had some fun in WoW, met alot of cool people I wouldn't of. But I just never had the fun, and excitement...sense of real adventure I had when I was playing FF. I checked w/Sony a few months back and got some good news, my account would be saved(apparently they changed it from 3mths or whatever the time limit was)until this coming November. I've REALLY been doing some consideration about returning to the game.

My biggest gripe back then was the JP community, and how nationalistic they seemed to be. Anything, or anyone NA seemed to be an offense to them. The guild I was in at that time was getting to the point of doing some really cool things, but we always seemed to be in competition w/the JPs who from our viewpoint, seemed to purposefully go out of their way to make sure we found no joy in taking down HNMs. The economy was a travesty, items on the AH were sold at ridiculous prices, as it seemed that it was mostly, once again, the JP players who would have the ability to set price rates. Then there was looking for groups, now, as a WHM, I never really had it all too bad. Longest time I had to wait was about 20 min. And that was at low populace times.

Ive heard there has been an expansion, or one being planned. The last one that I played was Chains of Promethia(only unlocked that partially iirc). I guess I'm asking, is it really worth it to come back. Have things changed much in the past months?

Thanks in advance for replies.

[Illuminatus]

This might need to go in the "Returning Players" section, but meh.

Inflation
SE has recently banned lots of gilsellers and taken lots of gil out of the economy. At least on Caitsith, the prices are on the downswing (mostly). The economy is pretty good in my opinion. Prices are higher than I would like, but so are the farmable items.

Japanese Nationalism
Of course there are some Japanese players with "{English}{No thanks.}" and "JP ONRY," but honestly I've seen a lot less of those comments than in the past. We're pretty much on equal footing now, at least moreso than two years ago. Then, NAs didn't have many Lv75 jobs... now we have NAs with Maat's Cap. So there you go.

WHM Party Seeking
I think the longest I've seeked (at WHM62) was fifteen minutes. I'm not sure how it is for Lv70+, but I'm sure the demand is still high.

Expansion: ToAU
This is an entirely new expansion with no annoying Promyvions to do. Seriously, Aht Urhgan is pretty awesome. Only 7 or so missions have been unlocked (mostly cutscenes), but this expansion is much better than CoP. By far.

Have things changed?
Yes and no. There are still gilsellers; there are still JP ONRY players; there are still bad parties and n00bs. But it has gotten better.

[Ahinjel]

Alot of this is really good to hear, I know there are "tards" on both sides of the playing field. I ran into more than my fair share of NA players who I vowed to never PT w/again in all my days, so I can see why it is some of the JP players have the opinion they have. But you shouldn't group everyone from that background into the same bunch. Anyway, it's the expansion ToAU that REALLY piqued my interest. I had been kicking the idea around of playing again for several months, but, the itch has gotten alot more noticeable, especially w/D&D Online not turning out to be what I had hoped /sigh(yet another game to add to the shelf).

From what I was told by SoE CSR over the phone, I'd have access to my old account up until this November. If that truly is the case, looks like I'll have to buy a copy of FF Online again, since the first one I bought never did install correctly as Disk 2 had some sort of errors.

[Jei]

compare to last year, I've been in more and more party with mix NA/JP these days. Like mentioned above, there are still JP ONRY to be seen but not on ragularly anymore. Except in japanese prime time.

[Shadowofamn]

Only thing I can say is come back and check it out yourself, the price will scare you a little bit but you will live. As for party, I dont play when JP play so I rarely get into a JP party.