FFXI was way too steep for me. Actually, I don't see how anyone can play it for as much as they do. I played it until level thirty, and got frustrated with the grind, downtime, time sinks, and other things that have plagued MMORPGs. My older brother plays it literally all the time. He's like a level 61 paladin, and I'd figure that anyone who puts that much effort into a game should get a lot more than that. I just couldn't get what I wanted out of the game, despite all the effort I put into it.
Literally, FFXI endeavor to level 30 went like this:
1) Spend a week going from level 1-10.
2) Spend another week farming for money.
3) Spend two weeks getting to 18.
4) At 18, you get your subclass, but you're not high enough level to solo it, so you have to find a party or higher level guy to help.
5) Level your subclass by repeating steps 1-3!! Hooray!
6) Get to 20, then farm for 3 weeks to get enough cash for level 20 equipment and spells
7) get your chocobo liscense, which is an extremely annoying process
8) Go to Qufim, spend 2 weeks leveing to 25
9) Do the Khazam key quest, which is still too hard for you to solo at your level.
10) go to Kazham, get to 30.
11) farm for three weeks, and then give up on the game because it's too slow
I must have spent six hours on an average day. Lucky it didn't affect my grades...
All the time I spent in this game, I could have fully studied quantum mechanics, understand it, and make an amazing discovery which gets me the noble prize.
You can't solo in this game. Only 1-10 you can solo, and that's it. You can't solo quests, you can't solo for EXP (unless you're a beastmaster). And despite this, you can spend an insane amount of time looking for a party. I've literally spent all day looking for a party before. And once you do get into a party, you have to hope it's a GOOD party, which is rare due to the fact that the only REAL efficient party that doesn't die a lot is comprised of a very specific combination of character classes.
And then, about 75 percent of your time in this game, you are standing around waiting for something, whether it's waiting for your party to heal up, waiting for an airship or boat, waiting to get IN a party, and waiting for everyone to get back after dying and losing a bunch of XP that took you five hours to get. Almost every time I walk into my brother's room and he's playing that game, he is standing around waiting for something. In fact, I'm gonna go check now...
*goes to see his brother playing FFXI*
Oh snap! I swear, I must have ESP or something. Actually, no, it doesn't mean that I have ESP, because I predicted a very predictable thing.
Another thing. Death in FFXI is just way too frustrating. You lose so much XP for dying, and you die A LOT. I bet that, if there were no XP penalties, I would have had enough XP to be level 35 (and five levels worth of XP is a lot).
The REAL irony is that I didn't experience even the worst of grinds. I only got a small taste of how slow this game was, as I was still what people consider a "low level" (despite all the effort I put into the game). The time you spend for every 10 levels is literally exponential. My brother, who is now 61, was level 60 like two or three weeks ago. Maybe even a month ago. I can't imagine how someone can max out in this game, but I've seen maxed out characters (level 76).
I had one good memory in FFXI: when I sold 12 fire chrystals at the auction house and got 17,000. See, they usually go for 1,700, but this person must have accidently added on an extra didgit.
/rant
Hmm. I origionally meant this post to be only a few sentences. Guess I got carried away. Goes to show how much this game frustrated me. This isn't the first rant about FFXI I've written. FFXI is about the only game I ever played that I really hated playing. It was like a second job. I don't know what got me to level 30. Great, now I'm starting up again. I better stop here.
Anyway, just my opinion, but FFXI was too slow. Now World of Warcraft has a nice leveling curve, not too easy and not too hard. Some people like these steep leveling curves, and that's fine (even though I can't imagine why), but meh, I don't want to get anywhere near it.
