It was in 2005 at the time of the final school exams.
My friends Chaosi and Mighto approached my friend Auroora and me and told us about this new “MMORPG” called Final Fantasy XI. It was released in Europe now but it was still completely in english. We talked a lot about it and I was completely hooked by what Chaosi and Mighto told us about it. Auroora and me decided to order the game but not play it before our final exams.
The game came with a small, printed game guide and I read about everything in it. Then, Auroora and me decided to start the game nevertheless just before my last exam in school which was in art class about history of art and interpreting pictures. As we used to write RPG stories about characters we had made up, we had already our characters and their background story completely planned out.
Lyron and Shiona were Elvaan who lived in Bastock. They were supposed to become a couple – what else would 17/18 year old girls make up as story! XD
I still remember the first time we entered the Valkurm Dunes and joined our first EXP party. The group was like: Do SC! Skill Chain! GOGOGO!
And we were like: What’s a skillchain? :O
Thanks to the Linkshell Rising Phoenix that we had been invited to by Chaosi’s and Mighto’s friends, we got to know what a Skill Chain is: Two weapon skills used about 2-3 seconds apart from different people – because you only gained TP slowly by auto-attacking.
It didn’t take long and Auro and me fell in love with Tarutaru or Miqo’te. So we created Yuuzuki and Auroora.
Ever since, we slowly stopped playing Lyron and Shiona and focused on our new characters.
RisingPhoenix was an LS that existed long before FFXI. It was a clan in some First Person Shooter game and the friends changed over to FFXI. They were mainly German but also some others from all over Europe.
Please note that in FFXI, you could only have one Linkshell active at a time, so you couldn’t chat in several ones at the same time.
One of these experienced players was Samtfpoetchen, or Samti. Samti was already level 72 when we started playing, so nearly max level 75! For me, this was like a really big thing to talk to a highlevel player! I had so much respect!
…had…
Samti loved to fish things. Which was actually really boring to me. <.<;
Due to the high level and several slightly leveled jobs, Samti could help us newbies out in time of need!
Dying was a gib deal in FFXI. You not only lost exp and could delevel if you were unlucky… If you decided to go back to you home point, you had to travel all the was to where you had been fighting. And if unlucky, this could include ships or airships which only came at fixed ingame times and it took them 5-15 minutes to travel from one to the other location… So you might spend 30 minutes just to get to the next town, then walking or using the Chocobo (at level 30+) to get to your leveling location… 1 hour wasted.
So Samti came around and raised me many times.
Samti would also look out for us newbies.
Not long after, Samti created a new character so he could level with us: Schnuckiputz! :D
As traveling was not only a time-consuming experience but also really dangerous, Mighto brought my Yuuzuki to the Valkurm Dunes one day. As Yuuzuki started in Windurst, it was an extremely long trip which included a boat trip.
If you aggroed an enemy (there was no indicater which enemy was hostile and which wasn’t), it followed you.
Forever.
Until you exited the zone.
It did not deaggro after a few steps like in FFXIV.
No, this was the real game.
So if you aggroed something, you had to kill it or pull a train behind you and hope you survive. Which you only do when you’re high enough in levels. Which I wasn’t.
They also had Mog Houses, a small room in your home town. It was instanced and if you opened it, anyone in your party could access it.
Everyone had a Mog House.
Everyone.
And it was completely free of charge.
First, I put Rusty Buckets into the room. It was the only thing I had obtained from fishing! It was a fun thing to do at the time and everyone would make fun of your rusty buckets.
But my room quickly improved:
They later added pretty cool figures for the house:
It was during my first days as White Mage where I ran through Port Windurst, got stuck on a wall and fell down into the water!
I was stuck there.
The good thing: I could walk on the ground of the river and ocean up to a light house in the distance.
The bad thing: I couldn’t get out.
None of my friends had learned a teleport spell to the teleports I had attuned to. Nobody had a Warp II spell with which you could warp party memebers to their home points. Only rarely, someone walked buy and they wouldn’t listen to my shouts of helping me out. XD
So I had to call a GM. I was super nervous and had to explain it to my mom who complained that I was playing too long again… <.<;
Another challenge was the Three mages gate. It was a gate in some ruins in Sarutabaruta and you needed a White mage, a Black mage and a Red mage to stand on the circles in order to open it.
Only later you could obtain a key item that enabled you to activate the seal yourself! But until then you always had to bring people. With the right job. You could only change your job in your Mog House by talking to your Moogle. So it all had to be planned in advance. it also took 20 minutes to get to the gate from the nearest town.
Our Rising Phoenix LS leader was Kushana with the alternative character Jadzia.
Once, Mighto, Schnuckiputz and me went to watch their Ballista match. It’s the PvP area of FFXI where you could reserve a slot and go in there with a pre-made group.
We followed our leader around and must have embarassed her in front of her japanese friends a lot. >.<;; I think. It was fun though! We couldn’t be attacked or anything, just watch the match.
This here is Kushana. Kushana always looked cool.
Kushana also used the most awesome angry symbol-character-things:
FFXI players had their own way how to deal with RMTs. RMTs would level through some awful software or fish fish at the coast. Players just MPK’ed them if they were in an area with monsters. Just pull enemies there, then warp away. The monsters would then aggro whoever is nearby. Mostly, the RMTs were low level so they died quick.
And this is how we stopped the RMT Qufim Area invation.
Riiko Rinkoko's Adventures 