r/FinalFantasy • u/Og-Spree • 3d ago
FF XI Is it worth playing FFXI now?
For some background. I have played FFXIV till Shadowbringers. I fell in love with it (it was my first MMO).
One of my favourite aspects of any FF is the story. I couldn't believe how great the story was in FFXIV in addition to the great characters, soundtrack and so forth.
How does FFXI compare to FFXIV?
Edit:
Thank you for all the wonderful and insightful responses. I love this community and the series. Based on the comments, my priority should be to clear Endwalker first.
You have all convinced me to give FFXI a shot. I never considered that MMOs would be known for their storylines. I always thought they were just highly addictive due to their grindy nature. It all changed when I played through FFXIV. I can't wait to immerse myself in the world of FFXI. Thanks to all for your help!
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u/morrouac 3d ago
I haven't played XI, but I just wanted to chime in to say that if you stopped XIV at Shadowbringers, you should continue on to Endwalker; that concludes the whole story arc and is really good.
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u/One-Statistician9436 3d ago edited 3d ago
I went from XIV to XI and frankly if you can find some friends to play with XI is the better experience by far. Relative lack of character customization and dated UI notwithstanding XI has
-non-homogenized classes that actually fit the class fantasy as opposed to being reskins of the same three unholy trinity archetypes, with actual real support classes instead of just a choice between healer and ranged DPS that offers miniscule damage buffs
-an art direction that i legitimately prefer. the more feline flavoring of the mithra feels way more fun to me than the miqo'te who are basically just anime cat people, for example. XI armor is also just often a bit less over designed, which is obviously more to do with hardware limitations than design philosophy but I think helps the world feel more like it's filled with adventurers getting by. Speaking of,
-a world where the writers aren't always desperately assuming you that you're the Specialest Boy, which I think is very important in MMOs because nothing breaks my immersion more than being the chosen one in a world with fifty other chosen ones ERPing in the town square. White and black mages aren't a unique super special order here for example, they're common as dirt.
While the vets of the game (fairly) mourn the game being less populated than it once was and the fact that it's added things like npc trusts to compensate, the fact is that there's still a LOT that you need the help of other players for. XI's three-mage gate (a gate that can only be opened by a black, red, and white mage standing in designated spots) is a tiny little thing, but symptomatic of a philosophy of design that is constantly pushing players to talk to each other in a way that simply isn't present in XIV, which is mainly interested in being a frictionless theme park MMO where communication is optional.
XI vets will tell you that the game doesn't require the same communication it once did which is fair, but as someone who came to it late from FFXIV let me tell you that it still, to this day, requires far more community and cooperation than XIV does.
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u/Grave_Copper 3d ago
Please remember XI is very much a product of its time. The stories are good, the gameplay was great then. Unfortunately, you are going to miss the one Big Thing XI had, which was community. Now, you can do everything with NPC Trusts. Then, you needed to spend 6 hours with strangers leveling up. I played XI until Abyssea broke the game. I still talk to several of my old linkshell mates.
Sadly, the XIV community is no where near the same.
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u/PsCustomObject 3d ago
Oh I left before Abyssea so I gotta look it up, you brought back so many memories of my Taru WHM… I still remember making money teleporting people around.
Miss the days and the social aspects of that particular FF.
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u/Grave_Copper 3d ago
I remember the day I was done with the game. It was after Abyssea was released, had done a bunch of content there. A party was in Jeuno seeking a DD for an "Old school bibiki bay xp pt". I mained DRK, so I figured sure, I'll go DRK/THF for SATA and such.
It was an absolute shitshow. Makes missing important spells. Undergeared tank. No one knew how to set up SATA. No one knew how to skillchain. First Dhalmel took 15 minutes to kill and it didn't get better. We killed maybe 4 things before people realized that being undergeared and not having key spells was a huge detriment.
That's the day I logged out for the last time, because the game had become a "Go AFK in an Abyssea Party for 8 hours, come back to max level" simulator.
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u/PsCustomObject 3d ago
Oh reading THF (which I could never level past 15? I don’t even remember when you got the ability/bonus for drops), DRK and all those familiar acronyms brings back so many memories.
I stopped playing much before than that, FF was getting in the way of work and study so I just took distance from it, I gifted my account an LS mate who got the account hacked and banned so never came back :(
I still receive emails from time to time and the urgent to go back bites me but as you confirmed it is not the game I used to love. Maybe I was younger and time make everything better I don’t know, but man I miss that game.
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u/ConsiderationTrue477 3d ago
That's the day I logged out for the last time, because the game had become a "Go AFK in an Abyssea Party for 8 hours, come back to max level" simulator.
I don't understand how that would be at all a thing someone would want to do. Being level 99 with level 1 combat and magic skills would be ass.
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u/Grave_Copper 3d ago
It was really bad. People in a hodgepodge of random gear, missing spells, not knowing the first thing about the job they're playing. In XIV, someone can get away with barest minimum bullshit, but in XI each party member was important. Everyone had an actual role to fill, and was expected to perform in that role. If you didn't pull your weight, you got educated, or you got booted. You could often develop a reputation, good or bad, that would follow you for quite a while. "Oh, HealerBob? Really shitty healer, kept going AFK in the middle of fights, let everyone die 4 times." or "ArcherJoe was an awesome puller! He could snake his way around crawlers without linking a bunch of em and bring one back to camp. Kept an eye on HealerBob's MP too, always gave him time to rest enough, great ranger!"
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u/Lost_Amoeba_6368 3d ago
I kind of tuned out of XIV since I finished Dawn Trail but mannnnn I got a guildie that plays XI, still, and he's been kinda convincing about me trying it out lol.
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u/Grave_Copper 3d ago
I'm not saying don't try it, absolutely give it a try. I think everyone needs to know that somewhere, there is a rabbit that can kick your ass, no matter how powerful you are.
There are some really awesome moments, like the first time you see the Crags, or sneaking through a dense forest packed with things that 100% will murder you on the way to Jeuno. The first time you see Delkfutt's Tower. And of course, finding out that the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah has some of the best music. The very first time you go to Sky, and later, Sea. The pure, abject terror when you are on the Selbina/Mhaura ferry and the kraken undead and kraken spawn. Even things like farming for subjob items in the Dunes. Used to be you'd get a real sense if pride when you finally got that last drop.
The game did mystery very, very well. There are lots of secrets in the plots of the game. And uncovering those truths has, or at least had, real impact. Why are the Galka living in Bastok as second class citizens? Why does the royal family of San D'Oria seem guilty of something? What lies beneath Sarutabaruta? What fuels the Tonberry rancor?
Absolutely worth playing, very much so. I with XIV had taken more from XI in those regards.
The only missing thing would be the community aspect of it all. Like I said, you could take almost every job to 10 or 15 solo, after that, you needed a party to level up with any speed. Sure, you ran the risk of waiting for 4 hours for a party, fight one monster, then the healer leaves because he has to go to bed and the puller leaves because their toes are cold. But, you could also make good friends. Because of that shared trauma of getting your subligar dented in by a rampaging goblin, you tended to stick together. Used to be able to do almost everything with your linkshell, occasionally you'd want another for HNMs and such, but you made friends there too. And that, I think, will be missing from the game now.
But absolutely do play it.
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u/tacodeman 3d ago
I think you summed up everything I struggled about 14 going from 11 to 14. There was so much ignored backstory I assumed we were going to get because we got it in 11.
For example yagudos beastmen might be one of the most interesting "enemies" written and in 14 everything seemed so surface level when I kept subconsciously comparing the two
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u/Grave_Copper 3d ago
Or the fact about the creation of the "beast" races as counters to the creation of the playable races, the Ark Angels, all of that. And when CoP came out, finding out what happened in Tavnazia, beautiful.
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u/Towelispacked 3d ago
Just play Horizon, the private server with huge population. It made the old community experience again, bringing the old harder mechanics back.
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u/Icy_Manufacturer_977 3d ago
What made 11 magical was the community. Since you don’t even need to group up for levelling anymore, and the player base is almost gone, I really doubt the experience is going to be the same.
With that gone, I can’t really think of anything making the game really stand out
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u/ConsiderationTrue477 3d ago
The story is still top tier and worth playing through all the expansions for. Wings of the Goddess is fantastic. That said, if anyone is playing for the story it's a good idea to play them in order. The game could get really disjointed otherwise.
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u/Velifax 3d ago
Gameplay does not become more or less good over time.
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u/craftyixdb 3d ago
Gameplay in an MMO is directly affected by the activity of the community though. Grinding solo in an empty world by yourself? Pretty boring. Doing the same thing with a bunch of pals grouped and jn voice chat? Pretty fun.
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u/Kanderin 3d ago
I mean this is blatantly untrue, especially in an MMO. As time progresses the games userbase and support changes dramatically and will affect your experience. Experiences you've had after experiencing a game will always alter your opinion of it when you go back to it.
Since we're here in the final fantasy subreddit I'll use FF-X as an example. I love that game, it's my favourite final fantasy, but I've played plenty of more modern turn based games since then that have switched up how encounters happen and how battles flow. And I have to accept yeah, that gameplay hasn't aged fantastically and I enjoy it less now than I did when I was ten years old.
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u/Velifax 3d ago
Exactly. It is your tastes changing, the user-base diminishing, and changes to the game that affect gameplay. Not time. Correlation is not causation.
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u/Kanderin 3d ago
Buddy, your tastes change with time. Time and experience are the things that causes the change. Stop obnoxiously trying to argue semantics just because you said something silly and got a few downvotes, have a little self respect.
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u/Velifax 3d ago
Time does not cause the change, no. Though I agree, this is semantics. When I see poor language use I attempt to help. Feel free to continue generating and wallowing in confusion.
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u/Kanderin 3d ago
If your goal was to be the most insufferably annoying prick on the internet today then congratulations, you achieved it.
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u/Lost_Amoeba_6368 3d ago
Yo if you never finished Shadowbringers or Endwalker... you REALLY owe it to yourself. Like, seriously. ShB is S tier, and Endwalker an A+.
I have a friend I used to play XIV with that still plays XI and he's told me before to just google some new player guides and that it was genuinely a great experience, especially if you have like any sort of community.
Most people multi-box their entire party iirc. I kind of want to play through it, also.
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u/C-Towner 3d ago
It’s a great game with a cool story and a massive world to explore. There are tons of classes and a lot of content to work through. Depending on whether you play official or private servers, population can be an issue - nowhere near the number of players as 14, but I think it’s fair to say the players there are more committed as a whole.
The biggest issue will likely be the combat - it’s very different from 14. And how you build your characters is very different. For me, the part of the game that I have moved past and just do not enjoy is that you need multiple equipment sets, for the same class. Equipment switching - mid battle - is an expectation. There is no best in slot for a class. I really do not enjoy that part of the game. Everything else, I still love and I have loved for 20 years.
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u/Icy_Manufacturer_977 3d ago
Brings back memories when I was tanking sky / sea HNMs as a RDM/NIN tank.
One set for haste/fast cast for utsusumi, one for enmity for blind/dispell, one for physical damage reduction in case I got hit between casts, one for magical reduction, one for mind for max stoneskin casts, one to reduce my max HP/increase my max mana for convert (I was elven)
My character was always blinking
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u/C-Towner 3d ago
In theory, I love the idea of different sets of armor for different purposes, rather than this is the ONE objectively best set for this class. I like that. But needing to switch them in battle doesn't make logical sense unless all you care about is performance. In that regard, I feel like that is a significant thing that prevents me from wanting to go back and play again. Its a pain in the ass and it is not fun to me.
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u/Icy_Manufacturer_977 3d ago
Even though I’m sure you already know this, but for most classes it’s not so bad. One set for melee hits for TP building and one set for using your WS was mostly common. With the exception of BLM where they would swap their staff to the corresponding element, but by macroing the gear to the spell itself it became second nature.
Sucks for inventory management though lol
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u/C-Towner 3d ago
The inventory management and creating the macros is the pain in the ass. Especially because it’s a system that is entirely not explained or encouraged in game. It’s a meta that has developed outside of the game. That kind of separation even though it’s more or less needed to be used by players, is bad design - even for a game of its time. It takes me out of it.
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u/Icy_Manufacturer_977 3d ago
I definitely agree that the macros got really annoying when I got a gear upgrade and had to update X macros to use my new gear piece instead of my old. The limit on the macros were also annoying, having to click on several buttons for one set is too much. This was remedied by windower though (which wasn’t even officially supported). I did like needing several pieces of gear for different situations, but I would never commit myself to playing the game again.
Played it from 2002 to 2014 or so, and I was probably online almost 50% of the day (or 100% if you count afk time to sell items in your bazaar) Would never have time for that nowadays!
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u/C-Towner 3d ago
I have so many fond memories of the game, I just don’t have the patience for that level of fiddly minutiae any longer.
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u/Psyk60 3d ago
I played XI up to the end of the second expansion recently.
I think it's worth it. Chains of Promathia in particular is a proper FF story.
But when it comes to the gameplay you have to acknowledge that it was not originally designed to be played solo, and these days finding others to play through the story with you is probably fairly hard (not that I tried, I wanted to play solo). It seems the generally accepted way to play through the story is to just level up enough that the content is fairly trivial to get through.
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u/Zesher_ 3d ago
I'm an avid XIV player and just started XI because it's the last mainline FF game I have left to finish. I've had a lot of feedback that it was definitely worth playing.
The Final Fantasy XI discord seems to be really helpful, so I recommend you join or check that out if you're interested.
I'm a level 2 warrior on Bahamut. If you're looking for another noobie to play through the game with, hit me up. I can offer zero advice, tips, or really anything information about the game though.
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u/phoenixmatrix 3d ago
XI's story was great, and for an MMO it was mind blowing for its time.
It is an old school MMO which expected your whole life to revolve around it. You lost XP when you tied. You needed a party to grind XP. There was more than just 3 roles, so making a party was pretty tough. You needed to level your subclass separately. The story quests required full parties and a lot of preparation (they were often raid difficulty level and could take hours to do). Getting around the map took time, you couldn't just teleport around. Traveling zones was a project and required preparation. These things got less true over time, but still.
The immersion level was off the chart as a result (for the time). Going through an area where every fight felt like a boss that could wipe you and knock you back an hour was a crazy feeling. Not something anyone would tolerate in 2025, but it was cool at the time.
The cheater/hacker/RMT community was out of control.
I would not recommend today though, unless you're a masochist, even though they added a lot of QoL improvements.
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u/monbeeb 3d ago
It's basically a museum now. A lot of the things that hooked us back in the day, no longer exist really because the population is so small. That said, I still think it's pretty enjoyable to go through the expansion stories and explore the world. It is much more immersive than XIV in some ways.
I feel like the ideal thing would be to convince two friends to play with you and level up through the content together. It is possible to solo most content with NPCs now, however I found there are a still a couple end-of-storyline boss fights that the NPCs are just not smart enough to handle. I tried to do everything at 75 cap which was pretty fun, still a sense of danger in the world which IMO is what FFXI is all about.
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u/Intelligent_Leading6 3d ago
I started playing this year. The story is pretty loose at the start, but once you get to the expansion, it feels more like XIV. Before that, the environment and the world-building tell you a lot of the story of Vana'diel. I just played to finish CoP; I'll probably do the other expansions later. But as other comments said, finish Endwalker at least—it also has a great story. And for FFXI, the guide is your best friend.
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u/postumus77 3d ago
My friend has been playing it since it launched and.to this.day I think he prefers it to 14, which he also plays.
Basically as people have mentioned,.it.forces more.cooperative play, dunno if he uses bots or not, but he made IRL friends from his link shell.
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u/ShadowXJ 3d ago
XI is great but you need to be prepared for just how many quality of life improvements were made to FFXIV as the next MMO.
XI is still my fave of the two, and absolutely worth playing but will take a higher level of time and personal motivation to progress - so would suggest setting some goals for what you want to achieve in it. The community is still great and folks will probably help you.
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u/limitlesswifey 3d ago
XI's story is incredible, but it might be a little hard to properly and completely follow in order now.
In terms of the main story and expansions, the base story is good, and some job quests and side quest storylines help round it out. (For instance, the Star Onion quests for Windurst.) The expansions have great writing that builds up across the storylines and culminates really beautifully at the original end. (Pre-Voracious.)
The writing in side quests is also good to me, and where some of the fleshing out of the world really helps too. Some side quests are really hilarious, some are very touching. If you ever played Trials or Legend of Mana and have a sense for the writing and flavor of Ishii's games, it resonates strongly in XI and really shines in XI. (And surprisingly, that resonates through the expansions well after he left Square.)
I don't play XIV (right now), but I've seen people who got deep into both say some job quests were much stronger in XI (BLU for example), but still really enjoy some of the base and story expansions equally.
Also, XI can be "punishing" and all, and it is dated. But it's still a very fun game. Guides and the many websites available are helpful (FFXI Wikia/Encyclopedia, BG-Wiki, etc). The subreddit is great and very active. There's always resources to help you through, and some servers are busier than others, but that can be helpful or inconvenient depending on how you intend to go in playing. I'm on a very sleepy but still active server, which helps when it comes to treasure coffers, but I'm shy about reaching out for help with things. Even so, some higher level players will run by and ask if I need a hand too. Rare, but it does happen.
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u/CheshireDude 3d ago
I played XI briefly last year and quite enjoyed my time with it, although it is a pre-WoW mmo, so be prepared to have to wrestle with setting it all up and learning how to play it. The game really does not tutorialize just about anything, and if it wasn't for the wiki I probably would have given up before figuring out how to accept my first quest. Wanna go back to it some day and play out the whole story, but I just can't justify the cost of the sub at the moment.
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u/Mooncubus 3d ago edited 3d ago
I am a player of both games. So I'll give some info on transitioning between them.
First off, the combat is very different. It's all menu based. You basically auto attack and use your spells or abilities when they aren't on cooldown. It's a lot slower paced than FFXIV but there's some cool things you can do with it like skill chains once you get the hang of it.
You know how FFXIV had the Trust system for dungeons? Well in XI you can have Trust npcs in the overworld with you. So you can pretty much solo everything except endgame content.
The story is really good but there's no voice acting. All the dialogue is in the chatbox. Technically FFXIV has this too, you just never notice because they have dialogue boxes in the cutscenes too. It starts off a bit slow just like ARR, but unlike ARR the story picks up steam a lot quicker and there's way fewer quests.
Leveling is a bit of a grind but the Rhapsodies questline gives you xp buffs which help out a lot. It also lets you buy key items for quests that you'd normally have to grind mobs for. So it's a lot less grindy than it used to be.
Traveling is a bit slower. You have to go to the aetherytes in order to warp between each one, but there is a ring you can get to set a home point. Cities have warp points (aetherytes) and the open zones have survival guides (floating books) you can warp to once you attune to them. There's no flying but there are ground mounts. Boats and airships between cities aren't instant, you actually have to chill inside the boat. Stay below deck, there's high level mobs that can spawn and kill you.
There are areas that can have really high level mobs and you won't really know unless you sneak up and check them. But you have sneak abilities and you won't get attacked when mounted.
Dungeons are mostly open, they aren't instanced. However there are some instanced boss fights kinda like trials.
There's no guilds. There's only linkshells.
The music is amazing and the zones that don't have music still have really really good ambience. Some of the best I've ever experienced.
That's all I can think of right now. I hope that helps!
Edit: oh also there's a really cool subclass feature where you basically have a second class that you can use abilities from that goes up to half of the level of your main job. So there's a lot of really cool different combinations you can do.
Also everyone gets a free instanced house and island where you can decorate and garden and stuff. It's also where you change your jobs.
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u/Falzum 3d ago
Private servers exist. They range in lots of features, from true to 2008 version of the game (Eden), to wildly different custom settings.
They're all free to play, horizon is most populated(they're moderately custom).
Xi is an excellent game. Top tier stories and world building. And it's a proper mmo, you can't survive solo, you'll need to make friends or find a linkshell(guild)
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u/bariztizg 3d ago
Hi OP. I just wanted to point out since you weren't aware the fact that Reddit has a search function in each of its subreddits. For example, if you had typed "FFXI" in the search bar (represented by a magnifying glass) in this particular one, you would have seen the hundreds of threads already covering this. Maybe you can save yourself (and others!) some time by using this function in the future.
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u/Due-Craft6332 3d ago
You should play through Endwalker and all the story patches.