PC Final Fantasy XI Wings of the Goddess Tour

Of course, there’s no point in just listening to be blab on about all the nifty new stuff: you want to try it out for yourself. Now, you can, as FFXI is offering a free 14-day trial! Download it and give it a go, so you can see the new experience for yourself.

The recent September update for Final Fantasy XI brought in some of the biggest game changing features since the game was first released. As a higher level player, the one that was most obvious was the new Level Sync system, which lets players ‘sync’ their level down to the same level as someone in their party. It was great: a bunch of us, with levels all over the scale, could all sync up and party together. Even better, your gear scaled too, so no need to re-equip!

Of course, there were plenty of other features included in the update, some of which escaped me entirely. Thankfully, Square-Enix was pleased to show me all the nifty new things during my third guided tour of FFXI.

Although FFXI is pretty old, as MMORPGs go, the game is by no means on the decline, though it is struggling to reach out to new players. The September update was largely focused on renewing and enhancing the new player experience. The Level Sync system makes it easier for veterans to play with new players, just as leveling new jobs once did. But there’s a lot more for new players than just old players, of course.

One of the biggest changes was a revamped in-game series of tutorial quests. FFXI was not a very easy game to learn and offered new players little guidance prior to this update. But now a friendly NPC is available in each town to give players both some starting tips and some useful items to help them out. A number of other changes also benefit new players, including dropping the initial weapon skill from skill 10 to skill 5, meaning players don’t have to level up to 3 or 4 to get their first weapon skill.

There’s also been a big change in experience points awarded for easier monsters. This benefits lower level players slightly, making it more viable to solo into the teen levels, and even makes soloing viable – though still arduous and far from optimal – for higher level players. Along with prior signet changes which made easy prey and decent challenge monsters easier to kill, FFXI is friendlier than ever for new players.

Of course, there’s no point in just listening to be blab on about all the nifty new stuff: you want to try it out for yourself. Now, you can, as FFXI is offering a free 14-day trial! Download it and give it a go, so you can see the new experience for yourself.

During the tour, which spent some time showing off the Level Sync system with which I was already familiar, I asked the guides how the sync system worked with alliances. See, in FFXI, you can link up to three parties together in an alliance. In the past, when more than six members of my linkshell wanted to team up for XP, we formed an alliance and killed stuff together. Sure, the XP was lower, as it was divided among seven or eight players rather than six, but the game mechanics didn’t impede our efforts. The guides didn’t know if Level Sync would work across an alliance, but we gave it a shot anyhow. Turns out that, although Sync is party-only, two parties both synced at the same level in an alliance can XP just fine together. So, as long as you have at least two sync targets, you can pile in the friends and get big XP alliances rocking!

We finished off the tour with a synced trip through one of the Chains of Promathia boss fights. The Chains of Promathia storyline involves visits to many level-capped dungeons. The Promyvions are capped at level 30, then the Riverne site at 40 (I think?), and so forth. One of the many annoyances in the CoP storyline (and, yes, there are many!) was that players had to have gear sets for each level cap. However, with the new Level Sync’s gear re-level system, the same mechanic applies to level-capped fights, meaning that you can do the entire storyline and all of its capped zones with your normal gear. A fabulous enhancement, if I may say.

Despite feeling a bit long in the tooth, the venerable PS2 and PC (and Xbox 360) MMORPG based on the Final Fantasy world lives on, and continues to grow and adapt. If you’ve been waiting to check out FFXI, the free trial means you have the perfect opportunity to see what you’ve been missing out on. Read all about it at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml