MogKnight: He Fights For His Friends: Vana'diel 2004 to Vana'diel now

Well, as we all know, the June 08 update to FFXI will occur in about... 7 hours as of this writing? I'm personally psyched for it and I can't wait to see what will be revealed in the update notes. With so many new things, I think this patch will be very huge (~110 MB if I recall) and I think we will be seeing some big changes and additions to FFXI, probably bigger than the WotG Patch.

But anyways, before we get into the update (which btw, I will make a blog post outlining the update along with putting my thoughts in it), I would like to take a few steps back into 6 years ago and talk a bit about how the game has progressed. Yeah, there are things in this new update that should have been fixed a long time ago... but I personally think that change is change, it happened and we should be happy it did, no matter how late it was introduced in the game because as far as I know, according to Back to the Future 2, we should be getting Hoverboards and a product called Pepsi Perfect... maybe with all the awesome sweetness and none of the diabetes.

Lets look at the original JP release (btw all this info can be found on FFXI Wiki), which very very few of us have played on. May 16th 2002 I believe. Back then, it was 50 cap, only 6 jobs can be used and all the beastmen were Orcs... I dunno why they would do such a thing, sounds more like a JP beta. But yeah, no crafting or airships or chocobos to get your butt around. The AH wasn't even introduced yet. In fact, in the beginning the AH could sell 8 of your items instead of 7... Probably some sort of server load thing, I can only imagine. As time went on, we started to see the development of the Synth system, a solidified battle system, and of course new monsters and gear.

Zilart came out on April 15th 2003 and the game was still JP exclusive. Did you know that Delkfutt's Tower was added in the Zilart expansion? :3 We got 4 new jobs, 3 required the expansion: SAM/DRG/NIN/SMN. Existing jobs got some new abilities too and RDM was actually buffed up a little when they got Refresh a patch prior to Zilart. Nomad Moogles existed but you had to pay to use them.... how much? I have no clue. Thank god you don't have to pay jack now.

Then came NA PC release. October 21st 2003. I remember when no one showed up to my programming class in college because FFXI was out. There are a lot of people that remember this day and heck, a few of those people are still playing FFXI even to this day. I, myself, did not join until PS2 release. Dynamis was eventually introduced and the cap stuck at 75. Then, around March 23rd 2004, the NA PS2 release came and Mogknight was created shortly after.

Ah... now I have a common ground to talk about...

I remember when I was such a little Taru, a BLM running around, nuking stuff and getting lost. At the time, the Easter Event was out and that's how I made some gil for myself. Eventually April hit and a new patch came out, which would be the first time I would see changes in the world of FFXI. Ballista came out, /recast was introduced, and all I really cared about at the time was /hurray and /toss, the only real things I benefited from the patch really at the time. Oh and the AH change where you can pick one item from an incomplete stack to sell.

Merits, some changes to TP gain and so on... then Sept 14th, 2004, CoP came out and the Europeans finally got a taste of Final Fantasy XI, for the PC only though. I remember I was just a BRD and the whole Etude change was nifty at best. This was also where NIN took a hit and instead of negating all hits with one shadow, it was possible for NIN to be stripped of all of their shadows. By the way... Promies were pretty hard and taxes on the AH weren't so bad... until they made it based on Seller Price.

At this time, I was a Taru with a sword and shield, which was nice because Shield was... gimped a bit. Fishing was also redone from hitting a single button to actually fighting the fish. People still think fishing was slow but back then, even if you botted, it would take SO LONG to skill up compared to now.

I remember the first huge "OMG I LUV SE" change involving NMs. Archer's Ring, Leaping Boots, Emperror Hairpin, and Peacock Charm were moved to BCNMs and Rare/EX versions now drop off of the previously existing mobs. We also got NPCs and that was awesome. We also got the MPK change where mobs would despawn if unaggroed and the amazing DRG 2hr change.

All this was nice... but it would be a year and a half later until we saw a new expansion... and this expansion changed the face of FFXI to whole different level.

April 18th 2006 would mark the first time an FF would see a release on the Xbox 360 console and also would be the first time EU users got to play FFXI on a console as the PS2 HDD never came out in Europe.

I'm going to stop at this point because I feel that this is where most of the players have "started" their own story in the huge book of Vana'diel tales. This is really just a brief talk about how FFXI has kinda grown in the... system side of things.

Looking back at this game back then and now, I feel old... I really do. So do many other people I assume. Thinking back, no one would have ever thought of "Burn" type parties. End game was strictly for the "elitists," whatever that meant back then. The busy cities of Bastok, Windurst, San d'Oria and Jeuno. The ever frustrating Genkai 1 quest and the AFs. The huge line of fisherpeople or fisher bots, most who were actual legit players actually looking for gil. The Rusty Caps that made great money....

*sigh*

Now, for the obligatory picture montage... Lets get some sort of music going, hmm?