Girlfriend was looking into getting into an MMO and suggested taking a look at the FF one since she heard me talking about stuff from FFXI. Figured I'd look into how XIV is and I thought maybe CKD was still around, sure enough.

Not sure if you guys remember me, you'd probably remember a RL friend of mine more at the time, Xiona. I joined a couple of CKD events here and there and pal'd around with some of your members a fair bit. Was just wondering how this game compares to FFXI? How long has the relaunch been out for now and is it worth coming into this late?

Haha, seeing some of these names from ten years ago man..

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I remember your little forum portrait, at least. haha :P Not sure if it was used by others.

As for the game compared to 11, there's not a huge ton of similarities. The races are similar, biggest changes being the Tarutaru -> Lalafell conversion. Hume (Hyur), Mithra (Miqo'te), Elvaan (Elezen), and Galka (Roegadyn) are pretty similar to what you'd recognize in 11. There are male Miqo'te and female Roegadyns, so that's good.

The game plays out a lot like WoW. The holy trinity exists (Tank, DPS, Healer), with currently no support-only classes. It'd be hard to have it otherwise with only parties of 4. Baby dungeons require 4 people total, while the bigger dungeons/raids require 8 or 24 people, though I believe you can enter with less.

You don't need to find 5 friends to help you wipe after going to the bathroom, like you did in FFXI, so that's good. The community is pretty nice for the most part, but there are always bad apples, or assholes, or whatever. I don't know if that's still the case, since the game has been out a while, the may have moved on to the latest and greatest "wow killer".

The game is about to start a new chapter with the upcoming expansion. I was personally a bit disappointed with how they did end-game stuff in 2.0. CKD started off with 6 coil parties, and only 1 was ever able to actually get to the end of the storyline. The rest broke upon bosses like waves upon rocks at various stages. I'm hoping that 3.0 will have an end-game that is a bit more welcoming, though I guess it really comes down to finding the right group of people to raid with.

Either way, I think you and your girlfriend would be able to get your money's worth out of the game. Whether you end up playing it super long-term remains to be seen, but the storytelling and environments are just as awesome as they were in 11, if not more so. The game is pretty awesome, even if I'm not currently playing it :P

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Answering your questions one at a time:

Not sure if you guys remember me

You'd be surprised. (EDIT: See above.)

Xiona

Nobody could forget Xiona.

Was just wondering how this game compares to FFXI?

Gameplay-wise, it's completely different. If you get into it hoping that it'll be "like FFXI" then you might come out disappointed. FFXIV as it stands right now is a lot more like Vanilla World of Warcraft than FFXI. It's thematically similar of course though, with an on-the-fly job/class system and other Final Fantasy elements up the wazoo. The game has "might as well be the same" races from FFXI so that you can remake your old character if you'd like, and like FFXI there's a massive focus on lore/story/cutscenes.

That said, honestly most of us couldn't go back to the way FFXI was for many things. We might remember sitting in Valkurm Dunes all day, camping kings, 5 hour exp parties, spending all night in Sky, and waiting for parties in Jeuno extremely fondly, but we're all older now and most of us would never have the time or patience for that kind of gameplay again.

New FFXIV is fast paced, a lot more casual-play focussed, and oozing as much "Final Fantasy" as they could possibly squeeze into it to the point that it's practically all fan-service, but great anyway.

FFXIV is probably the best MMO on the market outside of WoW right now. It's a very "safe" MMO, that doesn't really do a lot new and innovative, but rather puts a lot of polish on things other MMOs have done over the years and does them well.

There's a free trial (LINK: http://www.ffxiv-freetrial.com/) that allows you up to level 20. Though I'd honestly say playing until only level 20 does the game a disservice, it's something you could try.

How long has the relaunch been out for now

Since around August 2013. It feels more like "just a year" but I guess it's almost 2 years if you include things like Beta and Early Access.

and is it worth coming into this late?

Worth it? Sure. It's constantly easier to "catch up" than it is to play at the "end game" level. Battles get easier as newer gear is released, and older gear gets easier and quicker to acquire as newer gear replaces it.

Just bear in mind that if you're interested because of the expansion (Heavensward), SE have announced that you'll need to have beaten the entire main story from 2.0 (A Realm Reborn) to access anything from it. This isn't a problem as "getting people to do your story missions" isn't a thing like it was in FFXI, but it will involve levelling to 50 and doing LOTs of fetch quests along the way. If you play casually it'll probably take you 2-4 weeks depending on your play time.

Seeing some of these names from ten years ago man..

Lots of us are still around, and not necessarily CKD. When we started FFXIV we had an open invitation to anybody from Ifrit to come join us. (This invitation still holds, btw, we don't do the application process nonsense anymore.) Also I wouldn't use the forum as an indication of how many people still play, as lots of people don't really do forums anymore.

It's admittedly a little quiet right now though since we're in the post-updates/pre-expansion/everybody's-bored stage.

How active are things in game? Is it still fairly large community wise? I remember towards the end of my time on XI the player base shrinking, RMTs everywhere, and the economy becoming absolutely ridiculous. I know it won't be another XI, and you're right I and most of the people I played with back then can't but that amount of time into a game like that again so hearing that it's easier (in terms of not needing an army for everything) is good, and kinda bad. I liked how XI kinda forced your to need others and that's how Linkshells became important. If I do come back with a +1 I'd probably try to come in and join you guys. You're on Hyperion sever, yes?

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XIV's in-game community isn't really the same as XI was. The fast paced nature of the game leaves very little time for talking to each other, and since dungeons are done with something called the Duty Finder (builds parties for you automatically with people from other servers if need be) you'll rarely meet someone for a second time.

Your community will mostly come from your Free Company (guild) and linkshells you're in. You can be in (and chat in) multiple linkshells at the same time without having to switch or anything, so it's easy to keep to your own social groups if you want to.

Actual player-base wise, it depends what server you're on. Hyperion is one of the more populated servers. Last I heard, XIV has about as many active players as XI had at it's peak, which isn't bad since we're pre-expansion. Expansion release will bring a lot of people back for a while.

Economy isn't a huge deal. There are very few high-rolling markets that value in the millions upon millions of gil. Housing (furniture and land plots) and glamour (fancy gear for looks) being the only two really. It's never a problem for important things like gear because almost all dropped dungeon loot is always better than crafted gear, and quests give you free gear for levelling up in. And practically everything gets bound to you as soon as you win it or use it, which means you can't re-sell gear. People botting Emperor Hairpins to sell back to you for millions just isn't a thing anymore.

RMTs are still a thing though. Unfortunately they like to use bots to spam advertisements at everybody in /tell which SE still hasn't done anything about. The RMT nonsense is probably the biggest black mark the game has on it so far. They don't mess with the actual economy though, because they can't.