As far as grouping goes, I knew the game had “forced grouping” when I jumped onboard. I heard about the terrible first 10 levels before I started playing so I was anticipating my adventures in the Dunes. Having a full group of people, each one performing their roles accordingly and you get pulls after pulls of mobs, giving you those nice XP bonuses, it’s a thing of beauty! I really miss that aspect of the game in other games. Now, if you get a bad party, it will probably be one of the worst MMO stories you will remember for a long time haha. But like I said, this is really minimized after a certain point, since everybody sort of expects to group and somehow they gotta learn their class, if not, they won’t be able to find teams in the future and progress.

But, the game has changed a lot from what I’ve seen. There is this new feature I don’t know much about called Fields of Valor, that will allow you to solo some quests (?) and that may be a viable way of leveling up without groups… Maybe. I don’t know really. It’s worth checking out if parties in the Dunes are not happening for you, which I think it should, since they added Level Sync making that a lot easier.

What you are saying about grouping is probably true, but to be honest I returned to Windurst pretty much directly after I finished writing this post (with a bit of a help from a goblin butcher, who killed me and sent me to my home point…). I guess I should just return to the Dunes and just wait until I find a good group, then.

And yes, there’s always that magical FFXIV…I shall get back to that in a future post, but it’s hard to stop thinking about it when you pick up a game as old as FFXI. Especially if what they said at E3 is actually true and we can look forward to it already next year.

It turned out that I got really hooked to the game past level 10. My first trip to Valkurn Dunes was an epic story. Traveling in the game was full of dangers and when I got to the Dunes for the first time, I felt a big relief and accomplishment. My next objective was to get to level 18 and get a sub job. After that I was able to finish the Chocobo license quest. And just like that, every little progress you make with your characters, gives you this huge sense of accomplishment.

It is a very social game too I think, since pretty much everything you do past level 10 will require a group (at least it did when I was playing), you end up meeting new people all the time and you’ll learn a great deal about the game that way. Past a certain point, Pug’ing in FFXI is not so bad as in other MMOs you’ve played, just because leveling forces you to group so everybody out there pretty much knows all the mechanics of their classes after they got a few levels past 20 I’d say. I have a lot more fun leveling that way than Quest Soloing on nowadays MMOs.

It is an amazing game with very deep gameplay elements. I always think about returning to it at some point. I played it for 4 months and I got to a point where I didn’t have the time I wanted to dedicate to the game, due to work and other family activities. Now that features like Level Syncing and Fields of Valor are available, I should maybe give it a try one of these days. Or maybe I should just wait for FFXIV…