Also expect the classic fad to crash pretty quick. Sure, you've got the vocal nostalgia here and there, but games change for a reason, and not just in the context of new content. RIFT is learning pretty quick that splitting your players between two modes is leading to a lot of discontent on both ends of the spectrum. Then there's always Wildstar as the How To in not to listen to the vocal nostalgia base.
inb4 private server defense where a fair chunk is just people playing because it's free while the rest of the game post-CoP is relatively not coded for so it's not like they have a choice.
Ya I really want to pick up the game and take 1.5 years to get one job to 75 and spend my 3am nights camping Faf windows so my LS leader can get 1.2% more DPS.
Man that actually sounds glorious. PTSD is a terrible thing.
SuperNova private server is pretty dope. 75 cap custom content easy grinding. I'd recommend it if you want to put those rose colored glasses on for a bit.
I did supernova for a good while. Its a blast. Fast leveling, nice people, and the servers are relatively stable. I played a few years ago and when I did, server would go down once a week or so
Did the private server thing a number of times years ago. It was fun and had some cool people, but stability always seemed like an issue and wacky things happened a bit. I recall on one server enmity was always out of wack.
I did retail again and it was fun for awhile. Had fun blasting through Dynamis. Had some fun exploring the new areas. After awhile I just lost interest again. Started feeling grindy again. Don't regret the few months I did play again though.
Server issues for SuperNovah have been pretty much negated at this point. The server stays up for days (weeks?) on end without any crash or hiccup. There are draw backs, it's not perfect, but if you've got that 75 era itch it's a great remedy. You can easily come in and take a job solo to 75 utilizing pages and meds etc. Or multi box (can only do so alone) and bring an entire party up on your own!
There's more nostalgia for the community than the actual gameplay for me. I miss logging on to an LS full of people and a server full of drama/competition. FFXI now doesn't feel all that far removed from FFXI of old as far as gameplay, gearing, min maxing etc. Vanilla WoW compared to Legion are two completely different games which is why many people, myself included, played private servers on WoW for years.
I have a few questions:
1. If you have two different starting mythic weapons, can you have one working on unlocking the mythic while another is on the WS quest to unlock it for all the weapons of that type?
2. I have the azure key item that should give me the assault titles, but they aren't there. BG wiki says I need to have the requirements to buy the item, but what requirements are they talking about? If I had the requirements, what's the point in buying it?
The actual mythic quest takes the weapon out of your inventory, so you could get another one to unlock the WS.
Assault titles from the Curio Moogle still require you to do enough assaults to rank up. You just don't need to do that actual quests. Just saves a lot on time, especially now that you could basically spam assaults all day if you wanted. Great for, say, people with no assault progress tagging along for full clear runs. Every five new-to-them assaults they can take a minute to hit up the Curio Moogle and rank up.
Thank you!
How hard would starting fresh be now? I've got the itch to play but certainly can't dump the hours like the old days.
They are doing a discount campaign starting the 16th if you want to buy a new copy of FFXI: http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/campaign/discount/
Its not hard to start up fresh, but you'll probably end up lost for a few days (re)learning things, depending on how long you've been gone.
As far as leveling and questing, super easy. gil is super easy as well for just getting started. I never spent time strictly farming and I never had to go without so to speak. I ran through ZM & CoP by myself. Did a bit of ToAU, WoTG, and the SoA. I never joined a LS or tried to do group things so I can't speak to that.
Wait so it's a solo game now?
The majority of old content (ROTZ, COP, TOAU, WOTG, Abyssea, A lot of SOA) can be solo'd at level 75+. Much of Rhapsodies can be solod, but is easier to team up for it. The highest level fights still require a group though, and the party/alliance aspect is still there for some content.
You can do far more solo than you ever could before. As mentioned, obviously, there's a large chunk of the game that was made for 75 cap, or 99, and we're "level 119" with gear.
Additionally, you can call NPCs to party with for most things. Only three to start out with, but after some Rhapsodies missions you can call five and roll with a full party.
Records of Eminence objectives (which are largely things you do anyway, so just flag them) will build Sparks, which can buy you basic gear - all you need for XP - and/or can be spent on items to NPC for gil.
Key items from RoV alleviate a lot of old time gates, and also unlock Curio Moogles that cover many basic consumables and the like (they've also added a lot of spells to NPCs). Using gil from sparks, you don't really need to farm much. Fully clearing RoV will mean doing a chunk of other missions as well, but if starting fresh you'd want to do that anyway.
Long and short is that you can do quite a lot in-game entirely by yourself, and barely even touching the AH to boot. Later on, it'll be helpful to group up to at least get geared up or finish Adoulin/RoV missions. However, just going out and leveling with Trusts can actually be pretty similar to the old days, and completely on your own schedule.
There are also multiple teleport systems that vastly cut down on time wasted running around.
Yeah, you're still gonna want friends if you actually want to do current endgame-y things, but the more important aspect of that would be to not pick a dead server unless you're absolutely sure you've got a group that will take you in.