Do You Feel Old Yet?

Seekers of adoulin was released 10 years ago, and that reminded me that i have played it way too long after recognizing the last expansion not even from the day of Zilart prior to cop damn,,,.

What am i doing with my life.

Yeah many of the recent topics had made me think back on old events and LS shenanigans, and realize how old I was then... how long ago it was... and how old that makes me right now XD

I remember watching that live stream and the trailer came on for it and how happy I was. I remember the community sentiment around the time was doom and gloom, like usual, but after that announcement it really livened things up.

It was quite a surprise, probably the last big one, though it came with some hurdles since we had lvl99 bad 2.0 with ilvl introduction eliminating basically almost every weapon/main piece of armor, which came after SE "tried" to bring some of the popular 75 gear up to par with the synergy augments

Yeah I guess I do lol.

To me, I'm still so unfamiliar with Adoulin's city that it still feels like a brand new place to me. And that's with having done SoA storyline twice now lol.

I still love how it has two town themes.

I particularly dont feel old by remembering SoA is 10 years old.

What I feel old is when I see the huge backlog of games I never even touched while playing FFXI, then seeing Im kinda hyped by old news.

Like I playing NieR Automata and thinking this is awesome story, but its already like 8 years old. Or me never playing the highly praised Zelda Breath of the Wild, and its already 6 years!

Personally I started FFXI with my XBox, and since then, I never really moved on to the next generation consoles since. Gamecube, Wii, PS3, XBOX One simply dont exist for me.

Just recently picked PS4 and Switch. And while Im still grabbing the must have games of them, those platforms are already near end of life.

When I see this, is when I feel like there was some hole in my life.

11 years for SoA is quite old but, well, it was quite a road wasnt it?

I would hope enjoying it.

As to the title question... No, I feel old because I am old.

My first computer game was star trek. On a 8080. With a teletype for output. (Talk about framerate...) I was not young then.

Playing ffxi on dialup internet make me feel old.

It's wild to think what didn't exist when this game came out.

A while back I was looking on my iPhone trying to find YouTube footage of the old full alliance KB fights from the early days, only to realize King Behemoth predates both those things by years.

but yea, I feel old constantly and 40 really isn't THAT old. I felt like a geezer today trying to teach my kid to play Minecraft. I got motion sick and my hands went numb holding the controller, long gone are the 12 hour stints sitting in front of a TV.

I'm 47, I love this game. I wouldn't trade anything for all the good/bad times, playing for the 19 years until Square ***on the anniversary and murdered alliance play. There isn't anything I regret either, meeting so many cool people that I still consider great friends and keep in touch with. I feel like that's why people end up going to PS, but they'll never get the thrill of that first Dyna clear, first King, or making it through Besieged without your system crying in pain. Maybe one day it will get on the list of redo's (since it is a titled) <--- my copium.

I started seeing my father play this game with my uncle and his friends, I remember him making a mule named “Nathoo” and I wanted to play it so bad. When I hit fifth grade, I was allowed to play my character, and about my 7th grade my mom stole my Dalmy by grounding me for no reason. (We were on the same HNM LS). I was too busy playing this game to go out with people and do fun teen stuff & clubbing.

On the bright side: I met my soon to be husband on this game :)

reading through the comments just makes me feel like a baby compared to everyone else. I was just a teen when SoA released and still remember everyone dying to mobs and figuring out the whole reive thing. It was all euphoric really.


would have loved to seen something for the 20th.. a new zone with music, mobs, and side content would of been fine with alot of us here. dont think it would require alot of funding either to at least give us that if we couldnt have another expansion.

The website is mostly gone now, but I remember when this was happening and how excited everyone got from it.

http://wilddragonchase.blogspot.com/2012/06/ffxi-bgblog-mystery-of-rom9.html

The announcement did solidify the excitement, but it had been going for a while before that.

The comment by Odinz on this photo always made me
Feel old. My Apoc turns 17 in March lol.

https://www.ffxiah.com/screenshots/80725

Your Apoc can have a driving license now

What was the rom 9 mystery?

A bunch of hidden dats and zones clandestinely added that ended up being the future Adoulin zones.

Simpler times. I think back then I still thought that climate change wouldn't affect us in our lifetimes.

I'm just gonna quote that for emphasis because WOW, mom was ruthless!

SoA was honestly one of the best expansions. Completely turned everything on its head, Delve was incredible. The whole time period was just wild. Two new jobs.. new types of spells and everything. It was a little slow at the start with not much to do but it became really fleshed out as it went along. Only gripes I had were that you could tell they cut a lot of corners to make it, almost a vision of what was to come w/RoV and then TVR. Still bugs me that each Delve zone didn't get unique backdrops like fire or ice etc.

Absolutely. I'll always put ToAU as my first place expansion, but SOA is easily second place for me. And it's definitely the reason I think that period under Matsui's directorship was the maybe the best managed era of the game. Especially coming in the immediate aftermath of Tanaka returning from the FFXIV 1.0 disaster to unleash his revenge on the FFXI players with the Voidwatch and its straight up hateful drop rates (and Legion!), and then leaving again for good.

Delve was cool. It was wild to see such server cooperation with people regularly doing shouts for 18/18 Delve alliance. Hugely meaningful upgrades, challenging but also inclusive of players wanting to improve (earn personal plasm, buy good sets like the Manibozho gear). Fairly interesting NM mechanics.

The rest was great too. The city of Adoulin really felt like a strong new hub the likes of which we had only ever seen with Aht Urghan. The exploration focus really did give a sense of exploration, with people pushing out into the wilderness and taking rafts and climbing and beating through overgrown roots to make process. I found this period really cooperative too, lots of strangers on the server helping each other out with Reives, the server-wide silliness of some of the WKR fights (not all good memories, like the fools getting people murdered at Yumcax for hours). New jobs, new mob types, new music - after it looked like we wouldn't get a full-fledged expansion again.

Great upgrade ladders, starting with easily obtained gear from NPCs or Delve mini-NMs, or WKRs, leading up to full on ilevel 119 gear from difficult bosses that required you to keep improving in order to be a meaningful contributor to taking them down.

People complained a lot about ilevel bypassing their beloved old shinies, but that was absolutely necessary for the game to not become stagnant. And even that was smartly addressed with REM weapon upgrades keeping the ultimate weapons at the top of the heap. "But you need Oatixur to get an invite to the event that drops Oatixur" is not a legitimate complaint about the game design, that's more a complaint about obnoxious pickup party leaders who really didn't need to do that.

SOA extended the life of the game by many years, and felt just as fun to me as any time throughout FFXI.

I've felt old since music that came out when I was in high school started playing on the Oldies station.

Same. I glossed over 2 decades of games which I've barely touched. I praise Nier Automata as my 'game of the decade', but to be fair, I only played a few games that entire decade. Aside from FromSoft I've been completely disconnected from my favorite hobby. When people introduce me as the 'video game' guy that 'plays video games all day' and I have absolutely no idea what any of the games they're talking about are. I can't even carry a normal conversation with general FF fans because I haven't played any since 12.

But here I am, a few months away from uninstalling (really this time), excited to play brand new games like Kingdom Come Deliverance and Nioh.

Lol wtf you mean, "yet".

Literally my exact same experience, including playing Nier and Souls games after playing FFXI since I was 13. Just bought Kingdom Come last night and had Nioh 2 on my list after seeing people praise it. Is this the normal FFXI retiree playbook? lol

Much into my 20s I still considered myself a 'kid' due to my immaturity (didn't know how my car worked, make food beyond ramen noodles, continued to believe the myth that 'woman' on MMORGs were real, etc).

But when I had a 22 year old co-worker comment that I was a 'boomer' because I used Skype and Teamspeak in my youth --- that's when I felt old.

I liked KC:D, but just be prepared for the combat to be super clunky the first 1/4 of the game or so. It's supposed to be like that but it gets remarkably better after a little bit.

I've had a few discussions on this but I think it has to do with there being such a difficulty gap between how games were in the early days of XI vs now. Those of us that almost exclusively played XI for 15~20 years will find most modern games oversimplified and very easy in general. Games like Dark Souls and Nioh on the other hand are known for lack of handholding and unforgiving gameplay. Making tiny bits of progress for an enormous amount of effort and frustration, for many of us, just feels like home.

I'll never forget doing COP final fight Promanthia and being dragged off the computer by my dad during phase change and being forced to wash dishes.... I was angry for MONTHS!

I was 20 when I first started playing this game.

I'm 39 now.