It is official, after 8 years of playing FFXI I have finally retired. Treubond and Screamingeagle have officially been canceled on October 31, 2010, and I don't have any intentions of reactivating them. FFXI has changed so much and has become a big grind again to get to the highest levels and I don't want to have to do that again. I had to do that for my Maat's Cap and now that that elite piece of gear is only ok now I feel that SE has told me to move on ... so I did.
I am now playing FFXIV basically daily but not hardcore like I was FFXI. I have changed my name and only a few of my RL friends know my new name or server. If you read this and are curious let me know and I'll think about letting you know. :P
14 has been kinda fun so far, but nothing amazing. There are a lot of issues still and my BIGGEST complaint is the stupid Market Wards. I LOATHE MARKET WARDS!!! Let me say again, I LOATHE MARKET WARDS!!! It is just a place where people throw they're retainers and hope people see them and hope those people that see them actually want something on their retainer. Or if for example I want to buy some ore, I'm just as likely to find it in the leatherworking ward as I am the ward specifically for ore. The only difference is you get taxed 2% for selling items in the proper ward instead of 5% ... woo. Sunday night I literally spent HOURS looking for crap in the market wards and didn't find it. What a waste of time looking for stuff just to HOPE you find it there and sold at a reasonable price. It really irks me because it feels like a huge chore to find new gear or crafting items to make the gear I need. That is one big thing that I miss from FFXI, the auction house. It was a great way to have a centralized place to buy things that was organized into basically market wards. Now if they only figured out a way to incorporate an auction house into the market wards that would be just swell.
The other big thing that I'm really having issues with is searching and partying. There really is no way to search for someone, at all. And if you do know that they are online, you have no clue where they are. This also becomes a problem with partying because no one understands how to use the partying system because it is not intuitive. I watched a video of someone explaining how to use it, but that doesn't help anyone else because they don't know how to use it. It was nice to be able to just throw up your party flag in FFXI and add a comment if you wanted and people would know you want to do some sort of exping or partying. Knowing that partying is going to play a big role in getting your DoW and DoM jobs ranked up means they need to enhance this system or people are going to get to 20 or so and just get sick of it and quit. I'm starting to feel that way because it is quite a grind to even get to 15.
One more kind of annoying aspect of the game that I really don't understand how they didn't implement but I guess I can live without right now is sorting your inventory. STUPID!!! That is something that should have been thought of when they CREATED THE INVENTORY. Obviously they don't have people with any sort of foresight at SE or even knowledge of their previous games because I'm pretty sure there was a way to sort your inventory in FF1, yes, that says Final Fantasy 1.
I could keep going on little issues and annoying aspects of the game that shouldn't be too difficult to work out but hopefully most of these bugs and lack of functions will be fixed at the end of November or beginning of December when they do their big updates. Here's to hoping or I'm gonna have to find a new hobby...
