There's certain key details in life that make me nostalgic. One of them is Evan. Another is the orange sun as it sets, shining through the window of my car and making it impossible to drive. Also, fall makes me nostalgic. I'm not really sure what it is about the cool, windy days, the grey clouds, or the masses of leaves that I tromp through like a child, enjoying the crunch under my shoes. Something about all of it makes me feel like I want to go back in time. And something about it makes me remember the days in which I played Final Fantasy XI.
My experience in the realm of MMOs has been much slimmer than many I've met. I enjoyed a sparse six months of Ultima Online before Final Fantasy XI came out, and as Square-Enix has captured my soul and plenty of dollars with their addicting series, I couldn't help but pad their pocketbooks more by spending two years in FFXI.
Today was one of those days where the studio was gloomy despite the lighting, and all I had to do was close my eyes to see an adorable pigtailed Mithra waltz her way through my vision and beckon me to go cut monsters in half with her ridiculous scythe. Of course, it's not as if it ever worked that way.
I played my Mithra with a slew of friends, some of them known face to face and others lost to the oblivion of the internet, but all near and dear to my heart one way or another. The trouble is that you had to play FFXI with a group or else you couldn't do anything with it. Granted, don't quote me on it now as I'm aware that I've missed a couple expansions, the game has changed, and I'm no longer partaking in the joys of girly men, adorable midget Tarutaru, and cute cat girls. But, when I played FFXI... now doesn't that sound nostalgic?
When I started playing FFXI, I was taken away by the breathtaking beauty of the game. The world is so vivid and comes to life right before you. The monsters are nothing if not adorable, and I still dream of having a goblin plushy or a mandragora to snuggle up with at night. Who knows, Nick might even get replaced by it. Okay, not really. He'd want one, too.
This breathtaking awe continues until level 10. Level 10 is the point in which you must, and I do reiterate must, level with a party every moment of every day to get anywhere in the game. And I do mean anywhere. There's no such thing as soloing in FFXI. And really, why should you need to solo to get ahead in a game? Well, let me tell you. Just because I play MMOs does not mean that I want to spend every moment of every day wallowing in the company of idiots who don't know their classes so that I can try to slit my own throat with my scythe and hope my blood offering to the gods of MMO moves me ahead rather than backwards on the experience scale. Because, as anyone who plays (or has played) FFXI knows, there's nothing like leveling to continually... set you back in level.
Despite all of this, I considered reopening my account a few weeks back. After another brief two-month long stint in Age of Conan, I weasled my way back into World of Warcraft, forsaking all my friends to play the dreaded Alliance (This is akin to a bad word in my group), and pondered how much I really wanted to continue playing WoW since half my friends left and the other half were... around. Somewhere. So, yeah, I considered committing the rest of my life to going backwards in leveling in FFXI, if for nothing else than just to see cat ears again. No one in WoW gets cat ears. Horns, hooves, cow tails. Okay, druids get cat ears, but they get to turn into cats. This is not the same thing.
I decided against it, fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it. Cause, really, I'm sure that all my friends have left FFXI now, so I wouldn't even get to try and play with reasonable, sane, class-understanding people. I would be forced to always deal with idiots. And oh, the joy that would bring.
At least I can solo WoW.
But I may still need something to swallow down that nostalgia. Maybe I'll search the internet for cat-girls.
(Trivia Note: Pashhow Marshlands, a zone in FFXI)