Looking for Info

[lakitu]

Hi all,

I've been looking at the 2008 edition with all the exp's etc in it and i have to say it looks tempting.

I love the ff world and have played and completed them all from ff7 onwards and played the older versions on emulators.

I've been playing wow for a fair while but got sick of it and the people in it basically, so have been looking around for something else, got warhammer recently but the game isn't fully finished at the moment and population problems are making me think of waiting a couple of months before playing it fully.

So i've been thinking about getting this pack but firstly i'd love if someone could answer some questions for me since i find it quite hard strangely to get basic info on the game i'm after, here's a few questions if someone is nice enough to answer them :

1. Im in England at the moment and i couldn't find out how much it is per month in sterling for the game, could anyone tell me?

2. What is pvp like in this game? or is there any at all?

3. Is it players against npcs only or are there factions e.g horde/alliance etc

4. Can a casual player (around 4hours or so playtime a night) still feel like they're doing something or does it require a huge time-sink ie do you need to have a whole day free to accomplish certain goals etc

5. What kind of comp requirements does it need at the moment?

6. Does the fact they released this package mean that this game is in a very final stage or is there alot more life in it yet?

7. What rough number does this game still have playing worldwide.

Thanks in advance.

[Satori]

Re: Looking for Info

Hi there just thought I'd try and answer some of your questions for you.

1.) I'm in England too and your first character is 8.99 a month and just less than a pound for any additional content Id's.

2.) There is pvp in the game allthough I haven't tried it mayybe someone else can tell you of that.

3.) We battle mainly Npc's for exp but we have our own version of "guilds" called linkshells. Linkshells differ greatly depending on the mindset of the people that created it. social/ endgame etc...

4.) Some things take some time to do, The game isn't as easy to reward you as WoW is. Things do take some work but it's totally up to you how much time you spend to do things.

5.) You can try the benchmark to see how your computer can handle it on the playonline website also you can play it on xbox 360.

6.) It's not close to dying well not yet we've just had a new expansion. Having it all on one disk works out cheaper especially in the uk Hmv still sell them for the same prices 20 quid and less expansions. Having them all on one disk is just convenient to new players so they can dive straight into the game.

7.) I have no idea on the numbers that play but I'm guessing it's alot. People even leave then return it's addictive lol.

I hope that helps you

[Shoope]

Re: Looking for Info

1. Im in England at the moment and i couldn't find out how much it is per month in sterling for the game, could anyone tell me?

Well it cost about 10$ here in the US and everthing is like half prissed in England so it might be like 5 Lira (if I am wrong correct me.)

2. What is pvp like in this game? or is there any at all?

Yes its called Ballista, but you have to be level 30+ to play it.

3. Is it players against npcs only or are there factions e.g horde/alliance etc

No factions sorry just players against NPCs, you can go to Whitegate and fight hords of evil monsters for exp. There is a thing called a LS however ware everyone that has one equiped can talk to everyone no matter ware they are on that server.

4. Can a casual player (around 4hours or so playtime a night) still feel like they're doing something or does it require a huge time-sink ie do you need to have a whole day free to accomplish certain goals etc

Certain Missions/Quests/Levels etc.. will take a lot longer then 4 hours, but when you start off 4 hours a day should be enough.

5. What kind of comp requirements does it need at the moment?

Basically Normal Windows XP and Normal Windows Vista should work fine, that are you can play on Xbox 360 or Ps2. (also if I am correct at PlayOnline.com there should be something to test your PC to see if you can play it.)

6. Does the fact they released this package mean that this game is in a very final stage or is there alot more life in it yet?

Nobody really knows they realesed a 2006 and 2007 edition before, so I dont think so..and hope not.

7. What rough number does this game still have playing worldwide.

It depends on Odin its about...6000+ players a day and every other server is roughly around 2000-4000 players a day. It also depends when the Japanese,Americans, and Europeans are on.


Well umm I hope that helps lol... (also sorry I am American, just thought I would try and help.)

Also here is the url to the EURO sight for FF11 and the sytem requirments for it.

FINAL FANTASY XI Official EURO Web Site

Also, if you want to test it here is the program for that, you can download to see if it can run FFXI

OFFICAIL FFXI EURO BENCHMARK PROGRAM

[Rothy]

Re: Looking for Info

1. Im in England at the moment and i couldn't find out how much it is per month in sterling for the game, could anyone tell me?

Not a clue about this one, I'm australian so its pretty different.

2. What is pvp like in this game? or is there any at all?

This game is very team-based, just like the PvP. So it's fun if you like to work as a team to complete goals

3. Is it players against npcs only or are there factions e.g horde/alliance etc

We have Beastmen (NPCs) vs. Allied Forces (PCs) as the "main" conflict. You also get Windurst vs. Sandoria vs. Bastok in Conquest, which is like.. each nation tries to get as much influence in each area to "take it over" and claim it as the nations own for a week.

4. Can a casual player (around 4hours or so playtime a night) still feel like they're doing something or does it require a huge time-sink ie do you need to have a whole day free to accomplish certain goals etc

4 hours should be enough, depends what you want to get done.

5. What kind of comp requirements does it need at the moment?

Uhh, shouldn't that be on the website you buy it from or on the box?

6. Does the fact they released this package mean that this game is in a very final stage or is there alot more life in it yet?

This has popped up alot, personally I think FFXI has alot of life left in it.

7. What rough number does this game still have playing worldwide.

Database - FFXIAH.com could be a good way to measure.

[Ellipses]

Re: Looking for Info

1) No idea, but it's been answered.

2) Kind of, but it's not at all what you're used to. There are special PvP games, Ballista and Brenner, where you take other players on in teams, and killing each other is not the solitary goal. It's a step in racking up points toward a higher score than the other team. Sports, basically. Raw PvP doesn't fit the story at all, since all players are "good guys."

3) Players against NPCs. There are three different nations, and different forms of competition between them, but it's more like competing for employee of the month; we're all still on the same side.

4) Some things will require a larger chunk of time. For a good deal of the game, though, four hours a night is plenty.

5) System requirements

6) No. They release one of these packages every time they release an expansion, after it's been out long enough. There are no indications they have any intention of stopping service anytime soon. They've said time and time again that they'll keep the game going as long as people are still playing. See question 7.

7) The population across all servers has been holding steady around 500,000 for a few years now (2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004). I'm pretty sure it's still in the top 10 in subscriptions for MMOs (though I don't remember if that's worldwide or US only or what).

[Shoope]

Re: Looking for Info

Oh one more thing I forgot to mention, you can switch jobs at anytime by going to your MH (Mog House) You wont lose your job level or anything however the items that you are currently waring will not work on that job you switch to unless they are the same level, and the can ware it too. Only certain jobs can ware certain things, you get the point though lol.

[Armando]

Re: Looking for Info

wear

[Firewind]

Re: Looking for Info

1. Im in England at the moment and i couldn't find out how much it is per month in sterling for the game, could anyone tell me?

I'm in England and it costs £8.99 per month with each character costing an additional £1 per month

2. What is pvp like in this game? or is there any at all?

The PVP is based around team sports where you are essentially allowed to kill each other though it's not the entire aim. Some people will use Brenner for the purposes of private "duels" against each other. all in all the PVP is very fun though the classes are highly unbalanced. That and being a White Mage I usually find myself being bombarded by spells and ranged attacks within seconds of the match starting

3. Is it players against npcs only or are there factions e.g horde/alliance etc

The factions are allied Forces vs The Beastmen Confederate. Like it has been mentioned eariler it's pretty much Players vs NPCs. FFXI is much more party intensive then other MMOs and while you can solo you will find that you can do a lot more things in parties.

4. Can a casual player (around 4hours or so playtime a night) still feel like they're doing something or does it require a huge time-sink ie do you need to have a whole day free to accomplish certain goals etc

I'm at Uni and I only have reliable access to the game at weekends but I can still get things done perfectly fine.

5. What kind of comp requirements does it need at the moment?

Just about any modern computer will run it without difficulty. You can also get it for the 360.

6. Does the fact they released this package mean that this game is in a very final stage or is there alot more life in it yet?

Considering they SE are still releasing new missions, quests and content for Wings of the Goddess I would say it has plenty of life.

7. What rough number does this game still have playing worldwide.

SE claim to have over 500,000 subcribers with a decent chunk of that playing actively the population is spread over about 30-something servers and you can always find a decent number of people online at any time

[Ziero]

Re: Looking for Info

1. No clue, but been answered.

2. As described before, it's more like a sport then any kind of open combat. In Ballista, each team has a goal tower that moves randomly through the match and everyone has to search for a special item to throw into the goal. However the only way you can get the item into the goal is to kill at least one member of the opposite team. Brenner is a more capture the flag type thing, where each team has a set number of towers, and half of them are lit up. You have to attack the opposing teams tower to steal their flames and bring them back to yours to light up the rest of your teams. In this game, killing someone isn't even needed, but it'll happen since you need to attack and defend the other's towers. PVP is mechanically the same on every server, but it's popularity is wildly different. Some servers have heathly and full time PVPers and others have ghost towns when it comes to PVP.

3. It's mainly Player vs monsters. In this world, in this game, we're the good guys and we're supposed to be the ones helping people and saving stuff. Even if we do so reluctantly, we're still meant to be the side of light. But having said that, there are still numerous different countries that can indirectly fight for control. Those three main ones are Bastok, the modern Republic, San D'oria, the medevil Kingdom and Windurst, the tribal Federation. At the start of the game, you ally yourself with one of these three and all of your actions (in specific areas) directly influence the strength and control of your nation. Though there are more countries, cultures, civilizations, and factions in game, those are the only three you can really actively ally yourself with.

4. Though some of the harder, endgame things can run pretty long, four hours a night should be more then enough to do most things in this game. And as the game gets older, there is an ever increasing amount of more "casual friendly" events people can do in shorter amounts of time. However the thing that always takes the most time to accomplish in this game is actually leveling up. But if you're in no rush, and enjoy what you can at the level you're at, it shouldn't be too big of a concern.

5. This has been answered so no need to re-answer it

6. Not in the least. They release a new bundle every year, a new expansion every year and a half and a major update every three to four months or so. SE said as long as the player base was interested in this game, they would keep updating it.

7. The last major census put the number at 500kish accounts, making it the 2nd/3rd top MMO worldwide But recently SE has done some major changes to game mechanics as well as released a new, downloadable free trial for the game so that number seems to be going up. Which isn't all that bad for a 6 year old MMO. Infact for the first time ever in the history of this game one of the servers actually filled to maximum occupancy (6k users signed in) and didn't let people log in. Playing on a lesser populated server myself(2kish at most), I can assure you there's still always someone on at every time of day.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Looking for Info

Just on the system requirements, some of those are less rigid than others.
I think the game probably still runs on Win98SE, though I haven't tested it on that for quite a few update cycles so I can't say for sure, and official support for it was dropped. I run the game just fine on Windows 2000, so don't think of XP as a minimum requirement either.

nVidia GeForce and ATI Radeon are the only officially supported graphics chipsets, but FFXI will run on some of the newer integrated video chipsets from Intel. I think i810 is too old but I think I've seen it run on i945? Don't keep too much track of this. I can say that the game will run on GeForce going all the way back to 4, and on Radeon going all the way back to 2 (the earliest Radeon 2 chipset was branded Radeon 8500; I used a Radeon 8500 LE as my first FFXI video card).

Almost anything is likely to work sound-wise. There's an obscure bug with old Creative SoundBlaster Live! cards running with the Creative drivers on a multi-core CPU, but that's the only sound difficulty I've ever encountered with FFXI, and it can be worked around (either use the Microsoft drivers, or force FFXI to run on only one core).

The slowest system I've successfully run FFXI on was a 1GHz Athlon, I think (briefly tested a 1GHz replacement for a 1.3GHz CPU that was causing problems). You might be able to go lower than this, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it. FFXI seems to run okay with about 128MB of memory, though newer versions of windows than I use would definitely need more. 512MB is about where I stopped seeing performance improvements in FFXI from adding more memory.

Honestly, the thing that will do the most for you is probably a good video card with good raw drawing speed. In what comparisons I was able to make between video cards, the Maximum Fill Rate spec seemed to have a good bit of influence on FFXI benchmark scores. CPU speed would be the next thing to worry about, though any computer made within the last 2-3 years probably falls into the 'good enough' range for this easily.

Comparison of ATI graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Asir]

Re: Looking for Info

Can You RUN It? Since everything else has been answered, here is another link you can use to find out if you can run various programs on your PC. When I bought my laptop, the salesman said I would never be able to run most MMOs on it. This site proved him wrong.