Best Expansion / Most Time Spent

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I am genuinely shocked how highly WotG is ranked in this thread because I think it's a piece of shit.

ToAU > RotZ > CoP > ACP (lol) > WotG
(Just joking about ACP)

ANNM would be WotG's one redeeming feature. Too bad that I despise Campaign so much that I'll never have the AN to do it.
Widescanning 4 hours for Dark Ixion is one of the most mind numbing bullshit events in the entire game (At least you can afk between King's windows). Not to mention all the drops are just bazaarable so they're hardly trophys at all. Campaign is horrible and never worth the EXP compared to party. The rewards are pretty useless except Sandy's. As a system, it had great potential but SE has neglected to fill it out with any decent buyable AN items and just stuffed it with garbage.

CoP brings a few nice pieces but the NMs are retarded. I mean Jormungand.. seriously? Sea is a nasty maze and a deathtrap. Huge time sinks for Torques (THAT NEVER DROP!) which can be outdone in most cases. Hi2u Ancient Torque. The missions are annoying and demanding. The jailer weapons are a nice idea but they really need more DMG to be useable. Limbus is CoP's one redeeming feature and I love it.

RotZ is nice and short, has a coherant story and fantastic rewards. Stepping into Sky for the first time was one of the most awesome moments in the game for me. It has amazing replay value and NMs which are still fun and rewarding to do. Dynamis is great because it gives a chance for each job to get their own specific pieces (= less competition). Too bad that most of the pieces suck now. It's also incredibly profitable and relic weapons are outstanding (compared to the rather lackluster lolmythics).

ToAU.. what can I say? A new Lower Jeuno, city sieges, tons of new areas and exp spots, excellent merit camps, huge amounts of new equipment with decent systems to obtain it. There is so much about this expansion which is amazing. It's definitely the best thing that happened to FFXI. Although, I'd still like to see less useless HNMs like Hydra and the ToAU kings. ISNMs killed an awful lot of profitable items from the original areas just to provide one, the khroma ore. That pissed me off immensely.

ps. Wanted to add something on ACP. I really REALLY like the augmented item rewards, redoable missions, being able to help out anyone on the fights and the body pieces are ok.

The one thing holding ACP back for me is the fact that the missions are barely worth repeating because of the amount of crap items you can get instead of armor. I wouldn't mind getting a ring or earring that isn't specific for my job or getting one that's not as well augmented as wel as it could be.. but getting virtually nothing (1 cloth or a gem worth 5k or so) for WINNING a fight and doing all the work/pre-requisites? That's bullshit.

I want the option to choose between Materials for reward or Augmented Item.

[Argettio]

Some? I'm pretty sure there's a whooooooole lot of people that are better off paying 300g when they want to go to WG vs paying 1000 gil every time they want to go anywhere else (on top of outpost fee where applicable).

My point was, for the events I do, WG is the right place to be. I Do Dynamis twice a week, but the rest of the time I am in or around WG.

So I spend 2-3 silver pieces a week and about 1-5k on outposts to get to dynamis and other messing around.

If I was based in a starter city or jeuno I would spend just as much on outpost warps, and spend 300 gil a couple times a night to get back to WG (I normally warp back from einherjar and ZNM pop points etc). Sure I could walk back to WG, instead of warping; but why when I can set my HP in WG and warp?

I am normally subbing WHM so if I do need to get some where in the in the RotZ area I can just tele and choco the rest of the way.

The difference in cost is minimal and normally cheaper to live in WG (depends how many times I need to go to jeuno/home nation).

Sure if you do HNMs, then you need access to the RotZ and past zones so a starter city is probably best. Or you are leveling a lower level job (I normally move into jeuno for a week in this case).

[Nevex]

WotG>ToAU>Zilart>CoP

CoP: The most annoying and tedious set of missions by far. The story wasn't even that good until the last few chapters, the BCs were a real chore that forced you to use specific jobs (SMN and RNG) to be able to get past them most of the time.
Level Cap zones were largely unecessary and before the introduction of level sync, they forced you to waste a lot of inventory slots with otherwise useless gear.
Leveling spots were somewhat decent, but mobs were ridicolously overpowered in comparison to the exp/hour they gave (Catoblepas, Tragopan).
The only useful HNM (Tiamat) is extremely boring to camp and its drop rate sucks.
The only saving grace of CoP are Sea(not counting the horrible drop rates), Limbus and ENMs, other than those, I can see why nobody ever steps into a CoP area anymore.

Zilart: Bland and generic story. Annoying missions, but not as bad as CoP ones. BCs were more balanced in terms of difficulty, but roaming in places like Den of Rancor wasn't fun at all.
Leveling spots were actually better than CoP ones, even though repetitive (crabs, weapons, lizards and little else).
Most of the endgame content is highly rewarding, but extremely boring and tedious.
Dynamis is the worst event in the game, plain and simple. Only very few AFs, Shadow Ring and Shadow Mantle are still useful, everything else is just trash (unless you get benefit from the coins of course).
Useful HNMs, but literally giving your life away isn't worth the extremely low chance of Ridill and D.ring drop. E.body is still nice though.
Sky is a step forward, but gets boring pretty quickly as well.

ToAU: Story starts as generic and boring, but the second half becomes surprisingly interesting and enjoyable. A big step in the right diretion regarding missions, BCs were fun and challenging at the same time, especially the final one, without the useless chore of losing exp, which was the main flaw of CoP ones.
Best exp camps by far, and even though BLMs were kicked from regular exp parties, the abundance of puddings, wamouras and qiqirns makes up for that.
Besigied ended up being a massive failure: laggy as hell, impossible to solo anything, and you're forced to wait until the end.
Endgame is a big step forward compared to the previous expansions.
Salvage and Einherjar finally made ground kings nearly obsolete, Nyzul and Assaults are nice additions as well.
Mythic weapons' quest, on the other hand, is a big waste of potential.
They could have made it an extreme version of Black Belt's quest, instead it ended up as another gil-dependant relic quest, with the final BC being a joke.
ZNM is also a very unecessary event that in the end offers a lot of wannabe better than HQ staves and very few actually useful rewards, and it's not like SAMs were begging for another overpowered piece of gear.

WotG: People say COP story is the best, but WotG completely demolishes it, especially if you take the time to do all the nations' storyline quests. We're still halfway through it, and I don't really see it getting worse.
Missions have the flaw of being too easy (so far) and many of them require to farm very low drop rate stuff, which repeats the mistake they made in the Zilart expansion.
Campaign is SE's answer to ToAU's horrible Besgied's flaws: you can leave whenever you want, you can solo stuff if you wish to do so and it's not nearly as laggy (although certain places are...).
The lack of exp camps can be actually seen as a positive aspect: it's a nice change of pace being able to explore the various zones without having tp deal with random people everywhere.
SW and DI are useful HNMs that bring an anti-bot concept to the table, which is always a good thing.
WotG doesn't lack decent endgame content as seen in Splitting Heirs and SNM, the latter doubling as a fun and nice challenge for the premier solo jobs (RDM and BST) if you don't include the BC fight.

[Eldelphia]

For storyline CoP > all.

I like the story for ToAU but its so shallow, needed a lot more depth to draw me in.

As a loyal bastokan I am actually loving the WoTG storyline.

CoP > WoTG > ZM > ToAU

For time spent every week

3.5 hrs in Dynamis
30 mins in Einherjar
3 hrs in Limbus
3 hrs in Nyzul (just got done)
1-2 hrs in Campaign?
2 hrs doing ZNMs?

We still do some sky but it varies, depends on peeps having pops. ToAU wins for things to do, we're about to restart Salvage but I wish the story was deeper. More I wish they did more with Sea.

[Trolll]

Story: WoTG > CoP > RoZ >>>> ToAU

Content: ToAU > CoP/RoZ > WoTG (I have hopes for WoTG though if they ever get to finishing it).

[Mayareira]

RoZ villains remind me of 80s rock stars, I really hated the story aspect of that expansion.

Content-wise it was rather satisfying though.

[Aksannyi]

Because I was bored.

This is my take on the game and how the expansions have progressed it through time.
http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/attac...1&d=1247590946

[Nameless]

I am just glad more than half the ppl appreciate WotG's story line. To me, story line is what seperates FFXI from other games, and is the reason I play this game other than gears. For those who rank WotG very low, have you guys actually done the quests for all 3 nations? and did you actually read the log? If not you are missing out cuz that's what WotG is all about.

Storyline IMO is the biggest factor for me. Gear is second, but I don't care how I get gear cuz really none of the stuff is fun after you do it a million times. On the other hand, it is the story that you will remember forever. I can't recall what ToAU story is all about honestly.

Just my 2 cents.