Meeting Again, again

[Taskmage]

I ran across this flash again today. Still makes me tear up every time.

http://ffxi.darkmystics.com/download...ngagain-en.swf

[cidbahamut]

Re: Meeting Again, again

This is emotional blackmail!

[Armando]

Re: Meeting Again, again

Fuck the sub job quest.

But exploring zones was always a bunch of fun. I used to hang around Buburimu just for the scenery, and found almost every stone tablet without any guides*. Good times.

* I missed the one that requires you to go through Dangruf Wadi. That's some tough shit to find.

[Malacite]

Re: Meeting Again, again

^ agreed, I really miss just exploring Vana'diel. Eorzea's not the same at all.

And yes, F the subjob quest. Magicked skulls for everyone!

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Meeting Again, again

This is probably a perfect expression of 物の哀れ (mono no awa're)...

Well, for me, anyway.

[Taskmage]

Re: Meeting Again, again

I had a lot of fun exploring Eorzea for the first couple of months, as evidenced by the many screenshots I've posted of landscapes and sunrises and cool locations. Especially as a casual fisher, hunting down all the fishing holes and collecting entries in your fishydex, you get to really appreciate some of the locales that might only get a look in passing in the course of normal questing.

Granted there is less total area to explore than even pre-Zilart XI, but I see that as the price of building a world that is denser with detail and variation and story. Take Upper La Noscea, for example. On east side of Bronze Lake you have Camp Bronze Lake, which aside from being a hell of a vacation spot has a backstory of being a rehabilitation facility for Maelstrom soldiers who have been disablingly injured or PTSDed in fighting. Right across the way there are the ruins of the Nymian temple to Oschon, which most people know as that place we do WP speed runs, but alludes through its mob names to a story of a civilization which was destroyed by some corruption from within, and connects with the Floating City of Nym up north in Outer La Noscea. I hope future content allows us to learn more about that story, but the mystery itself is intriguing. On the west side, there's the giant fossil of the Thalaos, from which you learn of the Eorzean myth of the creation of the seas by Llymlaen. Also gives me an idea of just what my catch looks like when I fish up a little Thalaos in Costa del Sol. That has its own little area that is visually distinct from the rest of the zone. There's Poor Maid's Mill which is a thematic extension of the story in Summerford, showing the ex-pirates struggling to tame Vylbrand and build a nation. West of all that is a waterfall that would make the one in Misareaux hang its head in shame. And did I mention how beautiful sunrises and thunderstorms are over the lake itself?

Compare to what I feel is the equivalent area in XI of The Sanctuary of Zi'tah. While much larger and quite beautiful, it's more or less the same scenery all the way through, with little backstory. You get a little bit of information from the headstone quest there, but what other history does it have? What is its relationship to the rest of Vana'diel? It's pretty much just next to Ro'maeve.

FFXI zones didn't even begin to include this level of richness until at least CoP, and perhaps even a couple patches into that. This is just the starting point for XIV. I'm looking forward to seeing the world grow.

[bikkebakke]

Re: Meeting Again, again

Wow... Miss my old XI days... Used to have so much fun exploring and dying with my IMT and SilentLine comrades... Actually I think we spent the better part of 7-8 years just roaming around sightseeing and taking in the storyline than stupid level grinding just to get to endgame like every other game.

[Malacite]

Re: Meeting Again, again

The lack of open world content ruins Eorzea for me though.

I really do hate that the overworld is reduced to nothing but a pretty curtain for the duty finder. Like TM said, there's lots of amazing backdrops and even some decent lore buried behind the scenes, but at least for me a good deal of it is lost or spoiled. Coil is absolutely STUNNING, the sheer scale of it all and how utterly massive Bahamut is in this game (he literally dwarfs the XI version, he's that goddamned big) but it's instanced, so you can't really just wander around and admire it. It's also one of the only dungeons that has a different battle theme, something else that kills my immersion. All the dungeons have unique little tune that plays at the start, and then the same tired old battle theme. Same for the overworld. Soken's done a great job with the music, but it'd be nice to have some more variety in the battle themes, particularly when the basic one isn't even that great (I still prefer XI's default battle music to it, lol.)


I miss Vana'diel, and wish they'd do an HD version of it, but for now this was nice ^_^

Hell they've even referenced it in-game, and given hints of a possible link at some point. A future expansion that includes a cavernous maw to vana'diel... would be epic beyond words.

[Armando]

Re: Meeting Again, again

I miss Vana'diel, and wish they'd do an HD offline version of it, but for now this was nice ^_^

FTFY. Of course, that's never going to happen.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Meeting Again, again

What Armando said. FFXI doesn't need HD anything. 11 years later the game is still absolutely gorgeous, but I would like to frolic through some of the zones after the servers eventually go dark.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Meeting Again, again

A graphic revamp would be good, actually.

I won't run out of battle contents (since I haven't touched FF11 in years) and have plenty of jobs and crafts to level, so don't need more of those. Visiting all the beautiful sites and have them more gorgeous than ever, though, would be enough for me to resubscribe.

(That said, probably won't stay in FF11 once I've seen enough--pretty much all my FFXI friends who still play MMORPGs have moved to ARR, and only one still plays FF11.)