
08-15-2008, 07:43 PM
Final Fantasy XI has always been an immense timesink - that's why I quit. However, I'm weary to say that there is still legitimately a raid battle in an MMORPG that takes a whole day - that sort of thing went the way of Everquest 1 in favor of more casual-friendly MMOs like WoW and EQ2. Square-Enix went through hoops to streamline their game and make it less of a timesink (after I quit), and it just seems odd that they would put something like this in.
At the same time, I could see Squeenix, putting something in for the players who literally never leave their bedrooms (it is/was a phenomenon in Japan for a while); but 18 hours straight seems to violate the whole "Don't play all day, it's bad for you." thing that most MMORPGs are going for. An 18 hour boss battle also seems like a huge legal liability: people getting sick and passing out is not that far off from people dropping over dead from playing nonstop.
It's kind of telling about FFXI that I could sort of see them putting a day-long raid into the game, but at the same time, there may have been other factors: Was the guild even that good to begin with? Were they doing the fight wrong? Maybe the guild fabricated the story, or did it on purpose to stir controversy or create the next Leroy Jenkins "hoax."
I remember a time when raids did last days. In everquest 1, in order to get the epic weapons, people would have to camp for 1 - 2 days waiting for a mob to spawn. Players would wait in shifts, and if the monster spawned, they would have to start calling all guildmates so they could come help kill the mob, regardless of what time it was. But I really feel like, with so many people up in arms about video games and MMOs destroying people's lives, that sort of thing is the past.
EDIT
I just spoke with a friend who still plays FFXI, and he says that the boss battle is a legitimate boss battle, and that people are nerdraging over it like they did with Absolute Virtue: a mob that reportedly was taking people 10+ hours to beat. However, it eventually came out that there was a trick to beating Absolute Virtue - when it uses a 2hr, you have to pop the same 2hr and it becomes easier to kill. So my friend and I are hypothesizing that there is a trick to PW, but (obviously) it hasn't been discovered yet.
Last edited by geishaberry; 08-15-2008 at 08:30 PM..
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