Willingness to Evolve
Final Fantasy XI was a huge success, don’t get us wrong, but it had a few glaring issues which prevented it from ever beating out a game like World of Warcraft. Its biggest flaw was probably its reliance on party play.
Back in its heyday, very few jobs could effectively solo, and you were essentially forced to wait for a group to form to get anything meaningful done. Also, FFXI’s balance was chaotic, and if your job wasn’t desired, you had better be proactive in making your own groups or friends or else you could go days without ever seeing an invite to something. While job balance in FFXI is still quite chaotic, the FFXI development team has shown over recent years that they are realistic about the issues the game has had, and what their current player base wants.
Nothing stops you from grouping up with friends to level up and get to end game, but you also now have the option to create your own party of powerful NPC characters from the storylines to level up if you’re by yourself. A smart move considering how top heavy the player base likely is at this point. Nearly all of the story content can be cleared solo if you wish, and even the most recent ones that likely require a group, aren’t as stingy with job roles as some high-end story line fights were in the past.
Finally, while top tier end game events still have jobs that are in favor over others, older or more casual end game activities can essentially be done on any job. Plus, a newly added event called Ambuscade rotates its boss fights each month and forces players to come up with new strategies and use different jobs depending on what the fight calls for.
