Comments from the Devs

[Nadrojj]

I see a few issues with Nadrojj's situation. Firstly, Ragnarok was backwater from what I understand but he was also looking for party in EST time on a server that was stated to be the official EU server. So you're at least 5-6 hours behind the prime time of that server. I can see why you'd want to get off Ragnarok to that end.

Next, and something I always say to my players when we recruit - You can't cure Stupid. If you got in with bad players, that sucks. If you're better than that, then I'm sure when you do transfer you'll find a group that plays at your level. Bad players will fail for a long time until they are motivated to do better and win. If they never want to do better then it will hold everyone back. I personally find it hard to believe that someone would want to fail on purpose so when someone says "these players are incapable", that's difficult to swallow. I just think it's a problem with motivation among those players. It's not that they're incapable, it's that they don't want to put in the effort. Surely they have the potential to clear the instances in the ONE HOUR time "limit". CC/AV was not supremely hard (it had one difficulty setting: "Normal") so anyone would be hard-pressed to say it was "hard" objectively. I hope you find players that are more motivated as well as skilled going forward!

Lastly, good luck (just for good measure).

Yes, unfortunately at the time of character creation my buddy who I work with had selected Ragnorok not knowing that it was a EU based server. So I just rolled with the punches as I thought 14 was going to be something I tried, hated and never played again.

We both were in fairly successful shells in 11, and after wiping for the fourth time in a row on CC one night I just told them I couldn't do it any more. They asked why I wasn't willing to try it again and I gave them pretty much the same explanation about people not learning and just trying to throw bodies at it and hope to get lucky. It just burned me out trying to clear the same content over and over and people not learning from their mistakes. A few friends of mine from my first shell in FFXI play on the besaid server, that's where I'll be moving to.

Thanks for the well wishes, I am really looking forward to it!

[Khrno]

Yes, unfortunately at the time of character creation my buddy who I work with had selected Ragnorok not knowing that it was a EU based server.

I understand your situation. I was also on Ragnarok, however I'm in the UK so that suits my time-frame. However before Ragnarok was available, in the server I was in, there were barely any EU people, so my problem was basically the same as yours, not having any competent people to play with (unless I decided to just sleep 2 hours before having to go to work, and do stuff with some NA shell).

Back to Ragnarok, the server was definitively a hard place for pickups. Before joining a good shell, I was just wiping all over the place on the stupidest ways on Ifrit and Moogle, and joining some random AV group was always a wipe on the second poison room. And having to deal with some "experienced" people on Hamlet was the worst, but at least I managed to get all the seals that way.

Then I joined a good shell, although there's always 2 or 3 people that, as Grey just said above, suffer from 'Stupid', and would screw up in some unthinkable ways those 17min AV/CC runs. I also happened to meet some old french friends back from my XI days and got to do some things with them like beating my first Garuda, although with my shell we later mastered the manaburn way and I would invite instead my french friends to join us for some easy wins when we needed people. I was very lucky to get my 7 weapons in 40 fights (actually 9 drops and 2 weapons bought from npc), compared to not getting an Ifrit weapon until like my 50 win or so. In the end with my LS, by the time servers went down, we had just got to Ifrit EX on the relic quest, but with only around 12-15 attempts we didn't get to beat it, so we're looking forward to ARR's Ifrit fight.

All in all, Ragnarok was a good server ONLY if you had a good linkshell, otherwise pickups were just terrible, so much that I just stopped doing Ifrit and Moogle altogether just after getting certain weapons, since I couldn't deal with some of the stupidity that could be seen in those parties.

[Gokulo]

Retainer levels are there to stay

Good evening,

I checked up on the progress to see what kind of things are possible with retainer levels.
Some have already commented on this but we're looking into features such as the retainer being able to go gathering for you or go shopping once the retainers gets their levels up.
We will update you again once we confirm the details on the how the retainers will level, and what types of things the retainers can do at what level.

[Alkar]

Sending them to gather is going to be interesting.

[Raldo]

Sending them to gather is going to be interesting.

I quite enjoyed making bank off of gathering, so I hope this is very limited.

[Grey Jorildyn]

I wanna be able to send them to sell shit in X inventory bag.

[miokomioko]

A Torchlight-style pet is the best thing I can hope for regarding Retainers.

[Falisa]

Talking about how Ragnarok was makes me curious what the status of most of the servers were like if you were actually active in endgame. I got to level 50 in the game but had to quit since I had no time to play and by the time I could, servers shut down. I have no idea if my server Sargantas was even active or not... I just remember seeing the only people I knew from BG as statues that never moved in Ul'dah haha

[Grey Jorildyn]

Gungnir was very active. There were a few end game shells worth joining and many, many pickup shouts for various things (mostly GC stuff/quests). Any time my group was out at AV/CC we were rarely alone.

[Ratatapa]

Durandal was bad

If you wnated to do stuff you needed to

1) Be in a good LS
2) Be friends with JP

[Sephiroth]

I quite enjoyed making bank off of gathering, so I hope this is very limited.

I imagine it will be more along the lines of how your moogle in XI looked after your gardening while you were away.

Retainer levels that do something sounds nice, but then how do you level them up? Simple quests would make it too easy/quick and pointless having the levels at all. They should give them a role in solo play, like your NPC buddy in XI. Then you could level them up normally and designate it a healer or whatever so you can solo easier.

[solracht]

They should give them a role in solo play, like your NPC buddy in XI. Then you could level them up normally and designate it a healer or whatever so you can solo easier.

They wanted to use the Chocobo system for that, so I doubt retainer helpers will happen.

[Niiro]

Considering retainers are basically bookkeepers that help handle your assets it wouldn't really make sense for them to suddenly be out in the field fighting.

[Lucavi]

^ If they're going to be bookkeepers, they need to be wearing full Scholar AF.

Oh wait, Scholars were in the field fighting.

Oh wai-

[Sephiroth]

They wanted to use the Chocobo system for that, so I doubt retainer helpers will happen.

There's no reason why both couldn't co-exist, after all chocobos won't be the only animal you can have fight alongside you. They just have to limit it to one pet/helper out at a time.

[Niiro]

^ If they're going to be bookkeepers, they need to be wearing full Scholar AF.

Oh wait, Scholars were in the field fighting.

Oh wai-

All I got from this is that we need to petition SE for schoolgirl outfits for retainers.

Immediately.

[Lucavi]

I cant deny the fact that I'd enjoy that immensely.

[Madeline]

Gungnir was very active. There were a few end game shells worth joining and many, many pickup shouts for various things (mostly GC stuff/quests). Any time my group was out at AV/CC we were rarely alone.

I can p. much say this about Balmung as well. Even though we were the "official RP server," we still got a good amount of shit done. There were 3-4 big NA/EU/JP EGLS, plus people who would run relatively successful pickups every now and then. Everyone for the most part was friendly. You'd even see the big end gamers (even myself!) out helping the lower end people. Which in any MMO I've played is incredibly fucking rare.

I hope it stays like that in 2.0. I really did love the community there. Part of what made "the end" enjoyable.

[Falisa]

Maybe it's time to server transfer when the game opens back up. >.>a

[Waraji]

New servers, everyone is going to have to pick. First come first serve I suspect. Perhaps even a bonus Pick Early for Legacy members, cuz fk it.