Introduction
I have a Level 75 Mithra Thief character named Quicklet on the Bahamut server, and I've been playing FFXI since the PC release in October 2003. FFXI has been a very enjoyable game in many respects, but it also has its problems, of which I will probably expound upon in great detail over the course of my posting. With the release of World of Warcraft and Everquest 2, I would venture to say that a somewhat significant portion of the FFXI world left for greener pastures. With a major game update on the horizon (which hopefully won't disappoint like so many others have), it will be interesting to see how SquareEnix deals with the problems it will be facing as their server populations mature more and more.
Perhaps one of the more encouraging signs of the cross-server community is the increasing popularity of livejournals, websites, and forums dealing with endgame content and issues as opposed to the typical forum babbling you find on the major forum sites like Allakhazam where the average player level is probably 30 or 40. In any case, I hope to make my (albeit small) contribution to the endgame community. Naive as it may be, perhaps in some way the existence of a more developed endgame community across servers may help steer developers toward solving some of the more pressing issues which have turned the endgame from something with great potential for fun into an endgame which is, oftentimes, extremely frustrating and more of a chore than a challenge.
Perhaps one of the more encouraging signs of the cross-server community is the increasing popularity of livejournals, websites, and forums dealing with endgame content and issues as opposed to the typical forum babbling you find on the major forum sites like Allakhazam where the average player level is probably 30 or 40. In any case, I hope to make my (albeit small) contribution to the endgame community. Naive as it may be, perhaps in some way the existence of a more developed endgame community across servers may help steer developers toward solving some of the more pressing issues which have turned the endgame from something with great potential for fun into an endgame which is, oftentimes, extremely frustrating and more of a chore than a challenge.