[The Praiseworthy]

Apparently the live in Vana'diel stream is now on youtube, awesome. I remember watching this thing in windows media player 8-9 years ago. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rRYzjUYvic

;_;

My heart is breaking into pieces out of nostalgia:(

[Clear]

WoW had a good end game though, FFXI's is so horrible that it isn't even fit to be spit on by WoWs, especially the extremely high quality TBC through Ulduar fare, but the whole end game rush is something I wish would die off some (mostly raiding, I want to be challenged without scheduling raids). Looking forward to GW2 for that, hopefully I like it.

FFXI's endgame stuff was pretty damn good in the end. Abyssea is/was probably the single best addition to the endgame events because it served as a solid playground for HNMLS as well as being a fantastic place for small-group/solo activity.

The honest truth about FFXI was that your experience would be very different depending at what point in its life-cycle you were playing. Back in 2004, it was a painfully, brutally, hard game for the vast majority of players. Death-trains in dungeons. lots of mobs with true AoE attacks, and most of all painful penalties for death and a harsh xp curve.

Nowadays, it is easy by comparison, and pretty solo-friendly.

Also, as regards the story campaigns, there's a night and day difference in quality between the initial Zilart campaign and say Wings Of The Goddess. Personally, I loved CoP, going through that (pre-nerf) was easily the highlight of my time in Van'a'diel, but in terms of story and presentation WotG knocks it into a cocked hat - its truly an epic tale worthy of an offline FF.

[gibut]

In terms of difficulty, i can't think of any MMO's that comes close to matching FFXI. I think that's what gave this game such an epic feeling. Our first time downing AV and PW it really felt like we accomplished something.

[Jijidasu]

Bit of a bump here but I spent some time digging around for the old FFXI collectors edition map of Vana'Diel illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. I spent a little bit of time repainting the damaged parts due to the poor quality of the map now. Here

Also for those in Japan I suggest picking up this: http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/.../logsoku00-22/

[impact]

In terms of difficulty, i can't think of any MMO's that comes close to matching FFXI. I think that's what gave this game such an epic feeling. Our first time downing AV and PW it really felt like we accomplished something.

Yep, it really weeds out most of the shitty players. By the end of the game you rarely play with bad players and it makes the experience much better. I don't think any RPG/MMO will ever top FFXI for me, just the best time I've had on a game. It's just way too different now :(