Experience World of Warcraft in FFXI! (FFXI vs WoW)

Majeev 70 Hunter on Gurubashi PvP

Nooo its not bragging about my 1337 equipment! This is a review from a FFXI player about their WoW experience, in FFXI language!

I ding 70 around two weeks ago~ I was just um.. doing all sorts of stuff and busy with life so… didn’t really had the time to complete this post… but.

I didn’t want to write it earlier because it can be bias, but now that I’ve totally experience from beginning to the end of the grinding process, its time to give you an insights of WoW coming from a FFXI player.

A lot of us hates WoW if you play FFXI, and hates FFXI if you play WoW. Who doesn’t hold pride to what they play etc, I try to break that barrier and really go see it for myself before making a judgment, so here it is, I’ve experienced it and now going to judge this game.

I don’t mean to convert people from FFXI to WoW, its simply my insights about WoW. Since questing is a big part of WoW, I’ll start

Questing in WoW!

Unlike questing in FFXI, WoW’s questing is convenient, fast and fun. (well at least the first 100-500 quest you do). This is your way of exping up to 70!

Quests are scattered around the world of Azeroth and Outland (WoW’s Vanadiel). Unlike FFXI, they are always conveniently located near the objective. To illustrate this, here’s an example below.

All quests NPC in WoW have a yellow ! on top of their head. In this case, Maiev’s the NPC that’s giving out the quests. Clicking Maiev will promt you a quest log, explaining the objective, the reward and a little short story (or bs) about the whole thing behind this quests.

Quests are usually located near the objective. See the arrow? Aquarius is right there! All you have to do now is gather a party that’s enough to kill it, come back to me and I’ll give you the axe plus 20,000gil. Roughly 1000 exp will also be given when you turn in (complete) the quests. Its not a lot but if you do 10 quests, its a merit! So people in WoW go around boyahda tree, getting quests like “Slain 10 Robber Crab for me” or “obtain 5 leaves from the Onions”

For quests like this, no you don’t have to sit there for 3 kills if you get 3 party members. All you need is to “be there” for the kill, and the quest will count as complete. Some quests are better for soloing (like obtain 5 leaves), whereas others like “Slain 10 robber crab” would be better in groups.

The type of quests that you get includes

• Message Delivery (When you finish all quests in the dunes, a quest will tell you to deliver an item to Qufim, a way to introduce you to new/next level up areas)
• Killing of things (like Aquarius)
• Obtaining an item from monster (such as leaves from the Onions)
• Obtaining objects (such as click the ??? near Steelshell camp)
• Scouting (visiting the Dragon Aery)
• Performing a specific action (like gathering herbs around Boyahda Tree)
• Destroying enemy’s base
• Escort quests

There are other special quests, like…

• Controlling a robot to go steal stuff from enemy’s base
• Trauma Center (healing patients in order to advance pass Journeymen in a craft)
• Jumping off cliffs (yea lol… there is)
• Driving airplanes to drop bomb to the ground (lol yea, pretty fun)
• Stealing stuff in your opposing faction’s base (if I’m horde, its stealing stuff in the Alliance base, pretty crazy)
• There’s more…

But generally, that’s how you gain exp in WoW! You do quests, more quests, and more quests, and that’s how I got to 70 (mostly)!

So how long did it took?

It took literally… 21 days of playtime to get to 70. This includes…

• Crap load of PvPing…
• Moderate amount of Instances (treat it like Assaults, but you get exp in it)
• Moderate amount of Questing. (I ding into a flying mount)

In the FFXI Language… I actually paired it with a Dark Knight’s leveling speed.

Lv 1-70 for me = Lv 61-70 for this Dark Knight (average player, including seek time).

I actually dinged 70 in Alterac Valley (PvP minigame) lol…

So how does exp work in WoW?

Exping in WoW is divided into two types, soloing and partying. (FFXI only got the party options)

Soloing style:

It becomes repetitive. Think of it like this…

FFXI Missions Rank 1 – 10 gives lots of experience… you have to do that for each job (since you can’t change job in WoW), you have to do a lot of it, and that’s how you level up.

The content to most people would be fresh at start… but once you’ve done it once, it gets boring. I can’t personally level again… it is… really really boring…

Well to spice things up, Blizzard does make some “Quest” a group quest, meaning you got to find people to help you kill them. Of course you get tons of experience points both from the monster and the quest (when you complete a quest, you get experience points too) The screenshot on the left is one of the the group quest, got an invite so I just help kill it.

Party style:

I think its a bit more fun than FFXI, but then it depends… Think of it like this…

Castle Oztroja was turned into an assault zone (instanced). When you enter, the zone’s all to yourself. So you and your party member, kill your way up to the top floor. Some of the people there might be doing it for Experience, some might be here just to get the Rare/Ex O.Kote. Some might be here to complete a Rank 5 mission to get even more exp!

So… the difference between WoW and FFXI party style is, FFXI party gather solely for the purpose of “grinding exp”, whereas WoW can have multiple purposes.

Allow me to explain what’s going on in those screenshots.

Left Screenshot: In an instance call Scarlet Monastery.

Those X and Square are “Raid” icons, raid leaders (alliance leader in FFXI) can mark monster that everyone can see, so all I have to say is “BLM Sleep Square, PLD Tank X, everyone kill Skeleton” etc.. I’d say 50% of my instance party used em.

I was there solely for experience points.

Right Screenshot: In an instance call Auchindoun (Shadow Labyrinth)

The boss yells “Time for fun”, but actually its equivalent to a Beastmaster NM in Dynamis. The boss charms everyone, and controls them to kill each other (everyone on screen is red / enemy to me). Its a bit smarter in AI, since the charm actually uses JA’s, so it can use weapon skills, your 2hr’s etc :o A bit more strategy is needed to kill this thing.

I was there solely for Karazhan Attune (kind of like Dynamis Xarcabard Key Item)

Left Screenshot: Zul Farrak (with my Mage)

See those bunch of minions, they are going to storm up and we have to kill them all. Its pretty fun, get to use those AoE spell (-ga’s) for once.

I was there solely for Experience Points.

Right Screenshot: Zul Farrak (with my Hunter)

Killing this boss for an item that increases mount speed (increasing Chocobo speed). See my bottom left corner? Says server’s shutting down, we are like trying to kill this thing before the server shuts down lol…

I was there solely for the Increase Mount Speed item.

My Opinion on the whole leveling up experience?

So like you see, you can be there for various reason, but that doesn’t matter, in the end we all get experience points. The experience I’d say… to a person like me would be… “okay”.

Before I give my opinion on WoW’s leveling up experience, I’ll tell you my current view on FFXI’s grinding experience.

FFXI: Meriting

Its pretty damn fun. First of all, I only merit with linkshells. Not being picky, but I don’t have a lot of merits (I only got merit buffer to cap) and Tazo (rl friend) wants me to spend time exping with her. She just ends up picking people from linkshell, then adds a few lfps if there’s open spots.

Exping in FFXI for me is playing with RL friends and just “having a good time”. Well good time comes with… everyone in the party trying their best in getting the maximum exp possible. Experience party in FFXI is about breaking new limits, more and higher chains, its thrilling and exciting, and you can even laugh on Ventrilo when someone dies!!~

FFXI exping can be shit though, like getting a bad party, having a paladin tank or lazy people that doesn’t try hard. We often here those rants from bloggers of FFXI. I obviously don’t get that anymore since Tazo makes my party so… my experience with FFXI grinding is… very good…

WoW Leveling Up:

So how does it compare? Its not very good… here’s a few reasons.

• Lower level instance party sucks in teamwork.WoW was design for both casual and hardcore players. WoW enable the “Soloing” option just so people who only have 1hr of their time can get a little bit of exping. This isn’t possible in FFXI.

  With this in mind, a lot of people are so used to soloing, when they are in a team, they don’t know how to work together. Although exping in an instance (fighting your way up to Castle Oztroja) can be fun, but if you are with some people who don’t know how to work together (break sleeps, binds), it can get pretty shitty. I’ve had quite a lot of those.

• Corpse Camping.I play on a PvP server, I love PvP but… when people does lame stuff like… camping a newbie’s corpse, its pretty annoying. Imagine you’re leveling in West Ronfaure and I go up to your face and Sidewinder (and your dead!) everytime you reraise up, I do that again. Although you don’t loose exp, but its very irritating.
• Lack of Commitment (Party Option)Everyone in FFXI know getting a party is damn hard, so most people are already used to the fact that, if you don’t have a few hours, you don’t go exping. Most people have 1-2 hours of time to commit when you join a party. In WoW this doesn’t exist. You can be like… 15 minutes into the instance and they will say “oh sorry have to go” and they disband. I see that a lot, and coming from FFXI, its very irritating.

  FFXI people are generally polite, will commit, and more skilled in teamwork. You learn to party from 10-75 in FFXI, you better know wtf you’re doing. You can go 1-70 in WoW without joining any instances, so someone could be Lv70 and don’t know how sleep and bind works.

• People aren’t that polite.

  I’m not really too concern, but if you are coming from FFXI, you might find it rude, sometimes offensive. People would join up, kill this NM then disband without saying a goodbye. People will disband party during an instance (exp grinding), without a word.

  The word “Thank You” rarely exists in WoW. and…

  People are generally more aggressive. Maybe its the type of server I play in, PvP is about killing your opponents. If I see alliance, I chase them, and kind of brings up the inner anger to the surface.. so can’t really blame people for being less polite, because we are all a bit aggressive.

There are good sides to it…. such as

• I can get some exp if I only had 30 minutes of time. I can pick up and leave where I left off instantly.
• I’m not stuck in the “Colibri Camp”, I actually move around killing different things around the area (instance)
• I might even get some nice Rare/Ex gear for my level. A level 10 instance drop a bounding boot and you can get one? pretty pimp!
• Less likely to be brain dead after exping, since you’re constantly in a changing environment within instances.

But… the good doesn’t out weight the bad imo… I can’t go back to exping, at least I need a break!

So who would like WoW’s Exp method.

• If you’re sick of waiting parties, or constantly getting crap parties, solo leveling up could be boring, but at least you are getting something done.
• You QQ a lot about how people suck in their jobs… well go WoW, if you’re good at it, you won’t get killed often in a PvP server, and you can have absolute control at your grinding rate.
• You hate grinding in the same camp, doing same mobs.
• You don’t like the friendly competition in grinding parties
• You like to AFK a lot.
• You don’t like to camp NM’s for a Leaping boots that you use for a few levels. Well leaping boots in WoW drops in instances, so if you do instances, you are always decently equipped.

Do I like WoW’s exping system in the end? Not really… playing with people is what I like. Not that WoW does a bad job at it, but due to my preferences, I like FFXI’s grinding over WoW.

Next writeup: Instances! I actually like doing instance to be honest… so yea, stay tuned.