Final Fantasy XI News & Events & Guides

 By now, it isn't easy for a massively multiplayer online role-playing game to distinguish itself. Years ago, games like Ultima Online and especially 1998's EverQuest set the standards for this unique style of gaming, which today spans a seemingly countless number of similarly styled games that look identical on the surface--and, in many ways, actually are virtually identical. The inherent novelty of coexisting along with numerous other player characters in a persistent world has pretty much faded during the past several years, even as the monthly fees for these games have risen, while their gameplay hasn't really advanced--most MMORPGs still revolve around highly repetitive, time-consuming combat. Meanwhile, social interaction tends to be a means to an end: You need allies to be able to kill monsters more efficiently. Now, into this oversaturated category of games arrives FFXI Gil , which, if nothing else, carries a powerful brand name. Though the FFXI Gil series obviously is better known among console gamers, it's just about as famous of a series as they come. FFXI Gil is equal parts EverQuest and Final Fantasy, clearly deriving gameplay fundamentals from the former, but presenting them in the distinctive style of the latter. The result is an online RPG that manages to break the mold, if just barely--but, actually, that's no mean feat. 

FFXI Gil may be a port of an online RPG for consoles, but it offers even more depth and content, and better looks, than most of its competition.

Interestingly, Final Fantasy XI is actually a port of a PlayStation 2 game, which was first released in Japan early last year. The North American PS2 version of the game is slated to be released in 2004 alongside the PS2 hard drive, making this the first time that a Final Fantasy game has debuted on the PC prior to on a video game platform on this continent. When FFXI Gil first launched, it experienced many of the growing pains that many online RPGs experience in the days following their release--server instability, game balance issues, exploits, and so on. The good news is, these issues have basically all been taken care of, so what you're getting out of Final Fantasy XI is an online RPG that's fully ripened. The game is stable and lag-free on a broadband connection (don't even think about playing over a dial-up connection). The character classes (called "jobs" here) are balanced, and each is respectable in its own right. There's a considerable amount of content for players of all levels, including content from a full-on expansion pack, which was released as a separate retail product in Japan. The gameplay, though not drastically different from that of other online RPGs at a glance, has some unique and interesting features.