Airships: What happened?

With all the outpost warps, Whitegate teleports and all this other nifty stuff that exists in the game, the Airships have been kinda lost their usefulness. There are a lot of good reasons why.

As we all remember in Final Fantasy XI, getting the Airship Pass and riding it was an experience. There were two ways of getting the Airship Pass, either complete the Magicite Rank 4 mission or pay 500,000 gil. Most of us opted for completing the Rank 4 mission, which can either take us a long time to do (from the start of creating a character) or can be fairly fast (if you know a few people in game already). For me, it was a slow process because I played the game in a rather slow manner. You know, enjoying the game like a fine wine, something that I think a lot of people often don't do when they play games nowadays. But, anyways, riding the Airship for the first time was amazing, especially since I got to ride it with some (then) close friends of mine. The music reminds of Phantasy Star Online... oddly enough.

As time went on, Airships became that thing that got people places. You'd have airships full of people trying to get to where they want to go. Eventually, we've hit a point where Outposts became dominant, City areas have nothing to offer, Jeuno became less useful, Aht Urhgan offered more, and City areas introduced a teleport to Aht Urhgan.

But what happened to the airships? They still run their usual business but with how fast we can go around the world, Airships just take too long now. It is a shame too, there is one whole zone in the game that is dedicated to Airships. There are 3 whole zones that offer nothing but NPCs and Airships and those Airships are just not getting used any more. Airships are no longer required to get around, which is a pity because Airships were a big deal.

Can we fix the airships? We probably could if we have an incentive to use them. Here are some things I'd like to see:

1. Faster Airships
Waiting 12 minutes for an airship is stupid. Make the ride go faster and increase the circulation of airships.

2. NMs in Airships
Personally, I'd like to see some monsters up in the Airships and maybe some NMs. Wouldn't even have to be something great, just something to kill time with.

3. Airship from Jeuno to Whitegate
Yeah, most would probably prefer a teleport NPC to there... but heck, an Airship going there wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a teleport NPC.

4. Quests/Minigames that involve the Airship
The Discerning Quest for Airship is pretty all right, a bit of extra gil and such. However, you can finish this pretty fast and it also ends up leaving you with nothing to do until you land.

Well, that's my Airship rant of sorts. There will always be one memory that sticks in my head whenever I'm on an airship: Running off to the rim and getting stuck in the propeller~