I kind of want to dive in for a month just to see if I remember anything about it. I played it on PC back when it dropped in 2003, so 22 years ago. It was the first MMO I really got into and so I would love to see if I remember the world at all if I set it up today.

[–] etchinghillside@reddthat.com 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I can’t in good conscience recommend this to an internet stranger - because the experience is quite brutal.

But if you do in fact hate yourself - you might look into https://horizonxi.com/

[–] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Thanks! What makes it so bad? Doesn't run well? I would absolutely like to try it if it means no monthly payment, and it's basically the same game. I just wanted to see it and mess around for a few hours.

[–] etchinghillside@reddthat.com 2 points 11 hours ago

It runs pretty well and everything and I think will scratch the itch.

It’s just a very jarring throwback to the times.

The game was more built around being ran with a controller, so mouse and keyboard is a little janky - I pretty much solely use a keyboard.

Map/travel is very old school. Alt tabbing for maps/routes, boats, etc.

Making a player level to 20, and then immediately starting over to level again for a sub job is an incredibly sadistic thing to ask from an MMO.

I could go on. But it regularly sees 2k+ players online so there must be some subset of people that enjoy it.

[–] moncharleskey@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Same. I spent about three months deep in the game, and then I realized how steep the grind was and stopped playing it. It was neat though, so it would be fun to check it out again and see what has changed in over 20 years.

[–] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I remember that as well. You absolutely needed to be in a complete party just to tackle regular areas. I saw in the notes they have been focusing on allowing single player runs work better since I'm sure finding a party is probably close to impossible these days.

[–] garretble@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

So I was on a personal mission to beat every mainline FF game a couple years ago. For 14 I considered "beat" to mean be up to date with the story (which I was doing anyway), and for 11 I wanted to at least complete the story that the game shipped with simply because I didn't want to sink TOO much time into it.

Anyway, you are able to get from 1-50 and kill the Shadowlord on your own now. I can attest to that. And after doing that I have now successfully finished FF1-16!

On my server there were still plenty of people. I don't know how many are gold bot farmers. But there was still lots of characters running around.