FFXIV's Echoes Of Vana'diel Made Me Return To FFXI And I'm Having An Absolute Blast

If you've followed me at all in the last 15+ years, you likely know about my love for Final Fantasy XI (FFXI). Square Enix's MMORPG was my first MMO. I bought it on release day here in the U.S. back in 2004 on the PlayStation 2. I already had the console's modem so I got home, threw that hard drive into my PS2, and got started.

After fighting the PlayOnline boss (if you think it's bad now you should have tried it back then!) for hours and hours, I was finally in San d'Oria and was off on my adventure. That adventure, which pulled my wife in with her own character, lasted for years. Whenever I did get around to trying World of Warcraft, (read: when I finally had a computer that could actually play games), I thought the game was way too easy due to what I was used to in FFXI.

I've never truly let go of the game. While my personal experience is mainly back in the 75 level cap era, since then, I have subscribed for a month here and there to just screw around. Usually that's when there's not much going on in FFXIV. However, I never did anything seriously in the now 99 level cap environment. My sub was just a month here and there, probably for more nostalgia than anything, if I'm being honest.

That changed recently.

While FFXIV's introduction of the Echoes of Vana'diel raid series certainly has a bit to do with it, it was mainly my child that got me back in. Seeing an updated Jeuno in FFXIV (along with the Christmas holiday music!) was amazing and it makes me sad that the "remake," even if it was going to be mobile, was canceled.

Here's how it started again and how things are going so far:

Over the holiday break my middle child was home from college. They've always wanted to be a part of an "iconic" MMO moment. They look back on the genre and pine to be part of WoW's Corrupted Blood pandemic or FFXIV v1.0's Great Goobbue Wall. They've also heard me talk on stream many times about "that first walk to Jeuno" where your character was typically slathered with Sneak and Invisible, grinding out subjob quest items, getting that great experience party one night only to not get a party at all for the next two nights, and many other FFXI stories.

For a few days, they kept asking to try FFXI with me while they were on break. However, they wanted to play on HorizonXI, a private FFXI server that still has the old level 75 cap and original difficulty. I broke down (what dad wouldn't?) and we booted things up. We had a great night and leveled our initial jobs to about level 12. I had such a good time guiding them through the systems, the menus (there's a LOT if you don't know), and through getting things started with our initial San d'Oria missions.

At the end of the night, though, we needed to chat. I let them know that we had now hit an inflection point. If we wanted to really continue playing in a meaningful way, we really only had two options. The first would be to make friend in HorizonXI and join a Linkshell. You can't really do much in a duo once you reach around level 10-12 in the Chains of Promathia expansion world. Even leveling itself now requires either a full party or the patience and free time a working adult and a college student don't have. Option two was to actually play on the retail version of FFXI.

Over the years, FFXI not only increased their level cap to 99 and added content, but they have also implemented a slew of systems and changes that make soloing/duos not only possible, but quite enjoyable. Hell, based on their most recent survey and New Year's letter, they have more plans on this exact front. Not bad for a game in "maintenance mode." Perhaps the most important of these additions is the Trust system which allows you to summon up to 5 NPCs (assuming you've unlocked all the summoning slots via Rhapsodies of Vana'diel missions) to party with you. If we were interested in seeing content and playing through some of the MMO's fantastic stories in a shorter timeline, retail would be the best way to go, even if it staved off the "difficulty" FFXI is known for to the end-game.

The next night we subscribed to FFXI retail and started all over again...and I may be hooked again. We leveled, we unlocked subjobs, we earned our first few trusts, we completed a number of San d'Oria missions, and we even starting unlocking advanced jobs. The longest part of unlocking advanced jobs so far was getting Summoner opened up. For the next few days we just could NOT manage to catch a heat wave weather condition anywhere for that damn Carbuncle's Ruby.

With Records of Eminence, Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, experience, merit points, job points, missions, expansion stories, and re-learning many of the systems (while learning new post-75 systems I had little experience with), I was struck by how much FFXI had to do. Don't get me wrong, many MMORPGs have a ton of things to do. FFXIV has many by itself. Having a lot of content certainly isn't surprising for an MMO as old as FFXI is, either.

What surprised me a bit was how much I WANTED to do. I'm not really a mount farmer in MMOs, but that's certainly something you can do in many of them when you're a bit bored or caught up on main content. However, in FFXI, we often found ourselves sitting there for a few minutes deciding exactly what we wanted to go do from a list of a ton of things we actually wanted to go do, not just a list of things we COULD do.

Today my subscription renewed for the month. It's the first time I have let my FFXI sub roll for a second month in years. I played more days than I didn't this past month, had a few surprise random streams on one of my personal channels, got my Red Mage to level 99, hit 50 for my Scholar subjob, unlocked 6 more advanced jobs, finished the base-game and Zilart expansion stories, made my way through half of Promathia's expansion, started leveling Ninja for a subjob so I can melee solo a bit more if I want to, and so much more. We even managed to hunt a few Notorious Monsters along the way and, thanks to the ability to teleport all over the place these days, we didn't spend hours and hours walking around to do it.

I've got tons of various currencies and have my first set of ilevel 119 gear.

And I'm just getting started. In fact, I'll be playing right after work today.

It's just nice to be playing an MMO and thinking while I'm at work "what do I want to do tonight if I manage to log on." It also amazes me that while surfing through the Wiki (which you WILL need to do in FFXI) that there's still things in this 23-year-old MMO that we don't know for sure. Can you even imagine that in this day and age? We're still not sure EXACTLY what the triggers are on the questions you must answer to unlock the Blue Mage subjob. We're still not 100% sure on the full requirements to unlock the base Shantotto Alter Ego for your Trusts.

We have basic ideas, but there's still "secrets" out there and I love it.

If you'd like to follow my journey though both nostalgia and through systems I never really messed with before, let me know if you'd like to see me write some follow up articles to this one over the next month or so.

If FFXIV's Echoes of Vana'diel raid brought you back to FFXI or to the game for the first time, let me know your thoughts about diving back in, too.

(P.S. If you want your version of FFXI to look better than the base PS2 graphics, then yes. Use Windower and a few tools. Here's a great video to help you. It's easy to follow and although it is labeled as 2022, there really wasn't much to add to it in 2023 and 2024, so it still holds very nicely.)