I remember first hearing about FFXI. FFX had just come out but I could only play it at a friend's house because I didn't own a playstation. I was excited because THIS final fantasy was for the computer, which I did own. Finally, I could play a final fantasy at my own home. Somehow I managed to make a trip to warwick in the early winter to compusa and bought the game. Little did I know how important this game would become to me.
When I installed the game (which took 5 CDs and over an hour) I quickly discovered that I needed to be online to play it. At the time we had AOL dial-up which we basiclly had for free because my parents used an AOL credit card to pay AOL off with the points they recieved for using it. Unfortunatly, my parents did not approve of paying a monthly fee for an online game. I even suggested selling my remaining video games and only playing this one for 12.95 a month using the money I would recieve from my other games. Again they said no. Nevertheless, I would occasionally log into FFXI at night and update the game to the recent patch just incase I could play in the near future for some reason. In the spring my hopes because reality.
The same friend who had owned FFX (and basiclly every other RPG for playstation that was worth playing) had also purchased FFXI and had convinced his mom to credit the monthly charge. All I heard about from him was how great the game was, all the adventures he had, and how great it would be if I could play with him. Sometimes he would let me borrow his account ID and password and let me play on his account when he wasn't playing (which was almost never). After much discussion we decided to make my account charged on his mom's credit card while I paid him the monthly fee to give to his mom. Finally I was able to play.
It took three characters but I finally made my first character that I stuck with for a few months. His name was Kataln. I adventured with him as a white mage (the hardest of the six starting classes to begin with) and loved ever second of it. The world was so vast, so many monsters and challenges, and you met so many people that the game never got boring. I had troubles playing at night though because my mom would wake up late at night and see the ringer off the hook in her room and know I was "online". I got in trouble quite a few times for that.
Before school ended, my friend got in trouble for having two accounts on his mom's credit card and I lost my account. I had just reached lvl 16 white mage and had completely destroyed the entire party by trying out my new higher level cure, causing my death and the rest of the party as well. I never logged in again with that account to bring Kataln back to life.
During the summer I managed to convince my parents to let me play FFXI online over the summer because I had nothing better to do. I had to rebuy FFXI because my friend, in the process of canceling the credit card charge, deleted my account and Kataln. I remember sitting at the computer, creating the account I had now and wondering what I was going to name my character. After about 30 minutes of playing around with names I came up with Katun. He had longer hair than Kataln did and looked more boyish, but I thought that he was awesome. Again I started as white mage and had to work hard to recover the ground I had lost. Luckily, white mage is an important job to have in a party so I got lots of group invites and leveled up quickly.
Around this time my brother started to notice I was spending a lot more time on the computer than usual. He would peek in on my game playing and rat on me if i was playing FFXI when I wasn't suppose to. One day, I decided to let him try it. I only let him play for a little while, but he really wanted to play after that first high I guess. Around this time my friend had abandoned FFXI and didn't want to play anymore. I was hurt by this because I had started playing to play online with him in the first place. I convinced him to give me the account information and transformed it into my brother's account.
As time passed my character grew stronger and my brother, who seemed to play twice as much as I did, caught up to me in no time. WIth me on my laptop and him at the PC the week after christmas, I finally unlocked the hidden job summoner. It was my ultimate goal to recieve this job because this was my favorite of all the jobs in the game. In any final fantasy, summoner is always my favorite. It was difficult to unlock but I managed with the help of my friends Kreos and Sadrith. I had made friends with them while unable to play with my RL friend who stopped playing.
For a long time I was on and off final fantasy after that. Either I didn't have enough time to play, was too stressed with school and drama to play, or it was too hard to progress farther in the game. My brother didn't stop though. He managed to reach my level with 3 different jobs and unlock almost every hidden job in the game. After canceling my subscription 3 times and reactivating it each time, I finally decided to start playing again.
By this time Sadrith and Kreos were WAY beyond my level and I had a hard time playing with them. My brother and I started playing more often together because our levels were closer. While I was on and off the game he had convinced a guy named Fuma that he was a girl and was using him to get all the items and quests he needed finished. It was really funny. At one point they were suppose to be married, but I think it was called off for some reason.
During college Fuma and my brother were fighting and were in an on and off relationship that ended up finally ending with Fuma unable to log into FFXI because his ISP was canceled. Sadrith and Kreos quit the game I think because they are never online anymore. I should search the world for them, but then I think about all those times I searched for my old friend who had made me begin playing the game when I was a newbie. It's times like that when I can say that the fun in this game really comes from playing the person who I can physically see next to me. My brother.
We've fought a lot over the years. A LOT. We've drawn blood on numerous occasions and made 'bad' children look angelic. Somehow though, dispite our differences in music, friends, and lifestyles, we can always sit down together and play FFXI and not fight over simple things. Over the years of us playing together, I think we've acctually grown closer because of FFXI. I don't really know if that's the case or if we've just 'grown up'. Either way, this game is amazing and is only for those who want a life changing experience. As with most Final Fantasy's, this is a game only for hard-core gamers looking for a real challenge. At least that's what I say. You can say otherwise if you want.
Either way, I'll still be logging in with my brother the next chance I get.
