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As I mentioned in GND, FFXI's servers have been taken down to reroute electricity after the earthquake. In light of this downtime, I figure now might be as good a time as any to give an update to anyone curious about the radically-changed state of the game; most MMOs periodically change to sell NEW!! and BETTER!! mechanics to fresh meat, but in the past year FFXI has gone through the most radical changes a major MMO has seen short of EVE. I figure there might at least be some academic interest in what's going on, so why not post about it!!!
First of all, the biggest overall change is that the level cap has been increased for the first time since NA PC launch in 2003. They've been doing it in 5-level increments up to 99; current cap is 90. This means a bit more than just saying "we're letting you get bigger numbers" or even "we're adding new content WoW-style"; 7 years of endgame had been built up around a 75 cap and SE was notorious for bending over backwards to keep old content relevant. A level in FFXI means a lot in terms of power, so incrementally bumping the cap by 5 levels every few months sends a pretty clear statement that they were ready to completely punt the old game to make way for something new. And oh, did they make way for something new.
The focus of max-level FFXI is almost entirely on small groups (as in, 2 to 4 players) and in many cases solo work. In fact, a major criticism lodged at the game right now is that it's too easy, and this isn't simply culture shock; it is in no way an exaggeration to say a MNK and a WHM can duo 90% of the content available with the right buff setups (I'll get to that) and even those who like the current situation agree the game will live or die based on what opens up from 90-99, because the right now is untenable. Ideally, the current content will be a jumping off point for a true 99 endgame: essentially an extremely deep, complex, and fun take on WoW's badge system. If not, FFXI will last about as long as WoW would with nothing beyond said badge system. But even so, the content itself represents some innovative ideas by people who Learned Lessons, so it's worth taking a look at.
Anyway. There are a few different aspects of FFXI's current endgame, but two major ones: Trial of the Magians and Abyssea. Trial of the Magians is a weapon upgrade system, and Abyssea is a sandbox. I'll start with Magians
Trial of the Magians: When Did I Start Playing a Solo GameWhen the FFXI devs were coming up with Abyssea, which would be the focus of their new game, they were presented with a few problems. Weapons are so important; how do we stop a bottleneck? How do we add customization now that everybody's capped merits? What do we do with people outside Abyssea, anyway? How do we assure the people who invested a year or more into making a relic or mythic weapon their time was not wasted (well, not wasted in the context of the game, which would be the ultimate insult)?
They basically answered all of these questions with Trial of the Magians. TotM is pretty simple: you take a weapon, get a trial for that weapon, complete the trial, and it upgrades, at which point you get a new trial to upgrade it further. In practice, it looks like
this.
As you can see from the chart, there are a bunch of different options. Different weapon paths are better for different jobs, but it's worth noting that with some exceptions (staves, for instance, get spelldamage enhancement paths) everyone has the same range of changes in trial paths. You can make an evasion weapon for your Dark Knight by following the wind elemental path for Greatsword or Scythe, or make a +magic attack weapon for your Thief (elemental WS, brah) by going ice with a dagger. You might pursue other avenues first (giving a Ninja two katanas with +20 evasion and +9 AGI each is every bit as game-breaking as it sounds), but there's no restriction on going after them if you want, which has at least led to some pretty entertaining theorycraft.
Generally speaking, there are three groups of Magian trials: the elemental group, the weaponskill group, and the NM group. The elemental group involves killing specific types of monsters on a given gameday of the week or under that weather condition. So, for instance, if I want a STR/Attack weapon, I follow the fire path, which involves killing designated mobs on firesday or under fire weather. This can be easy or obnoxious, though it's worth noting that if you kill a mob under the weather condition rather than the day, you get credit for killing 5. It's grindy, but this is an MMO, and it's substantially LESS grindy than making a kajillion gil for a BiS weapon.
At any rate, if the elemental group is too grindy for you (the day-of-the-week thing is really annoying for trials where no good zone exists for that weather type), you might try the weapon skill path. These weapons are generally slightly weaker than elemental weapons (emphasis on "slightly") and have MUCH less variety, but are generally quicker and infinitely more flexible. The just involve using a given weapon skill on a given type of mob x number of times, or killing monsters with weapon skills. Much more straight-forward; still grindy, but you can do it entirely at your own pace and the MMO Guilt ("fuck me lightningsday is in a half hour") never enters your mind.
Finally, the NM group. These trials involve killing NMs with the trial weapon equipped a few times per trial. Most of the early ones involve 1-hour repops that are mercifully useless for any function other than the trial*; the later ones involve various NM-related drops for the superpowered rapetrain-special-WS weapons (the Dagger is Twashtar with the Rudra's Storm WS) or a whole ton of normal mob kills for some multihit, kraken-club-style options.
Of particular interest in this whole system is the fact that you can use it to upgrade relic and mythic weapons, which were the best weapons at 75 and represented downright terrifying investments of time and resources. Spent a year and a half on making a Mandau for your Thief? No problem! You can level it up to 90 along with your Thief itself.
I'll talk about Abyssea later.
*and with all trials, you can group freely and still get credit, so the whole system strongly encourages cooperation
