The new FFXI

I figure that since there are a quite a few people actually reading this who are no longer playing FFXI that I should put up a post summarizing the changes to the game. If you left or cut down on playing FFXI before the latest series of "Abyssea" expansions, I think you'd be in for a huge culture shock if you ever started playing the game again.

The new level cap
The highest you can go now is level 85. Now remember that most of the original hard mobs were around level 85 or so back when the level cap was 75 and you'll see the problem. Basically, all the old content has become easy. Just about anyone can low-man or solo older stuff, anything released pre-abyssea. Missions of all sorts, including the previous 3 expansions (Shantotto, Moogle, etc.) are now a joke instead of being a challenge. As long as there is no level cap on the fight, you almost always duo or solo it do it.

Exp
There is no more exp outside of Abyssea. You may see a few people out doing some FoV, or some random sub-30 parties around, but basically, Abyssea has taken over everything, and with good reason. Since you can easily get around 50-80k, maybe 100k+/hour with the proper setup, exping outside of Abyssea is just plain inefficient. You can enter Abyssea starting at level 30, so once you hit 30, you can start going in to "leech" exp. However, even leechers have a purpose, that is, to open chests that the people doing the real work of killing mobs can't do. For an exp alliance of 13-18 people, you might have 1-2 leechers just along for the ride.

Exp has also changed from a "get together a party and go at it" for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, to a "the longer you're at it, the better the reward" endurance session of at least 3-4+ hours. Our typical exp session on Sunday mornings (yes, mornings... people are setting alarm clocks JUST for exp) runs from around 9am - 3pm at the very least, 6 hours of exp, and that is followed by a couple of hours of NM hunting. Near the end of the session, the exp rate does easily hit 100k/hour, but that is also around the time that people are hitting both level cap, and merit cap

Soooooooo... for people entering Abyssea at level 80, they can expect to leave at 85 plus capped merits after a full session. Many people have leeched jobs from sub-60 easily to 85 in a couple of sessions. And yes, exping that quickly means that you leave a session with horribly underleveled skills no matter how much you put in it.

Colibri camps have never been more open for skillups.

Older content
Old content is obsolete. There is no real reason to go do anything that isn't Abyssea anymore. Dynamis, Limbus, Sea, Sky, Einherjar, all the old content is neither a challenge, nor is it rewarding. We took a group in to Dynamis last Thursday, barely 14 people and completely wiped the zone... twice. Relic armor is a joke and basically everything went freelot. I guess there are some people still working on relic weapons since the coins still sell, which is kinda amusing since the relic weapon trials to upgrade those relics is something only an insane person would do.

About the only thing that SE added to make old content somewhat relevant was that they reward people who completed the mission stories, that is, the expansion stories, the original 3 nation quests, and the various expansions like CoP, Zilart and Aht Urghan, with "atmas" which can be used in Abyssea

Abyssea & Atmas
Atmas are "power ups" that you can earn inside Abyssea. You can get them through quests, killing certain NMs, finishing mission lines, etc. They can give you power-ups like extra strength (+50), extra HP & MP(my PLD has over 3000 HP), or gives you certain things like Refresh(+10/tick), Regain and others.

And the way you get Atmas are from doing certain things to NMs in a certain way. For instance, using specific elemental weaponskills on NMs depending on the day, under very specific conditions (mob must not be casting or doing TP skills). You can also increase the drop rate by casting specific elemental magics on the mob as well. (rendering TH obsolete to an extent?)

Now we have a random assortment of jobs being brought into Abyssea simply for the reason of using their elemental weaponskills, or casting elemental magics of various kinds. I'm not just talking about BLMs here to nuke, but we also need to bring BLUs for their (lol)magical spells, SCHs for their Helixes, etc. I'm amused that they haven't found a way to work PUP into things, and I'm wondering if the COR Quick Draw cards might come into play here.

Soooo... Abyssea has broken the crown of the usual SAM+BRD combination and people are essentially free to bring whatever they please if they aren't part of the core group of WHMs, RDMs and to an extent, PLDs.

Abyssea NM fights
With all the atma buffs, as well as exp being a joke to get these days (you actually GET exp from killing NMs, anywhere from 500-5000 per kill), most NM fights become a free-for-all where everyone just goes all out. If a DD gets killed, it's no big deal, throw a Raise out there and put him on the bench for 5 minutes. All the buffs out there makes it pretty hard for a PLD to keep hate unless the DDs hold back. There aren't many fights that actually require PLDs now, only the zone bosses and a few tough NMs. I'm sure by the time we're level 90(or higher since SE said that 99 would be the final cap), these would be easily low-manned by a group of DDs.

Essentially, everything now is either a simple free-for-all that is done in less than 5 minutes (with a few random people dying along the way) or a kite fight where it's mainly on the nukers (BLM, SCH, and even RDM). Rarely do we actually need to bring out real tanks. People not paying attention is the norm, judging on how many times we have to shout on linkshell for people to actually do thing properly. (You'd think that they would pay attention since the objective IS to get things for them... at least bidding has people's attention after a few people lost out on things that they wanted because they didn't bid properly in the 20 seconds and hopefully taken more seriously after Mday lost 2000 points bidding on a random item that nobody wanted)

Current Content
With all old content essentially obsolete, the new content is mainly focused inside of Abyssea itself. The only things I've seen people do in the old zones is either Magian Trials (the kill 2000-10,000 of various mob families under specific days/weather conditions/killshots/proccing of addititional effects stuff that takes months to do), or people doing missions specifically for atmas (Crystal prices are going for anywhere from 1500-3000/stack since nobody exps anymore -- there is a huge shortage of crystals since people are using them for rank points)

In Abyssea, the content is essentially quests, NMs, and popped NMs.

Quests
There are around 8-9 quests per Abyssea zone, some of which are repeatable for seals. This is the super-low seal drop rate method of getting seals required to upgrade the "AF3" armor to be useful. I estimate around a 5% drop rate, and you need 8 seals to do a single upgrade of a single piece. I spent 4 hours on Friday night to try to get just the final 2 seals I need for my DNC feet and the only thing I had to show for it was a loss of 4k exp.

This is the "solo" content that SE promised us. Yes, it's possible to solo. It's mind-numbingly boring. With a 5% drop rate, on average you'd have to do 20 repeats, or 160 repeats of the SAME quest in order to complete one of your AF3 pieces. If you're lucky like me and can actually repeat the quest in a reasonable time of around 5 minutes, that's only 13 hours of grinding a quest and on average, you'd be able to finish a piece. Of course, that only the average... I'm already waaaaay past the average for this quest.

And if you're not lucky and have a quest that requires items from IT mobs... well, I'll be surprised if you actually succeed with this method.

NMs
Around all the zones there are various NMs that drop some good items. Some drop seals for AF3, giving another method of obtaining them that doesn't involve mind-numbing grinding, while most drop some sort of gear that is useful, including various job-specific accessories, some crazy pieces like the mage piece that has +100 HP & MP, and gives Refresh & Regen. Most NMs also have Atma.

The respawn time of these NMs is actually fairly decent, around 30 minutes after they are last killed. The bad news is that with the drops being so desirable, people are low-manning them and taking forever to kill. Since dying isn't a big deal anymore, reraise, doing some damage, and getting killed isn't a big deal anymore so people are low-manning them and taking forever to do so... Glitching of the mob's paths is unfortunately common and requires a GM call every time.

Popped NMs
Most of the exp mobs drop pop items to pop various NMs that also drop seals and various items. The pop items themselves are pretty common, and can be sold on the AH. The good news is that the ??? that pops the NMs has a short, 3 minute repop. The bad news is that there are also tons of competition for these since, well, they are just about the only thing to do. It's fairly typical to walk up to a ??? area and find another group already doing it, or have another group barge in on you as you're working through pops. Most people are generally polite and either move on when they see another group there, or work in an alternating schedule so that people take turns to pop. However, there are lots of jackasses out there too who won't communicate or cooperate.

My blacklist is unfortunately full :( I need to talk to a GM about increasing it!

Oh, and the Abyssea "storyline" consists of... building to and fighting a high level NM(about the only time a serious alliance with a tank party is needed) and a bunch of crappy cutscenes.

Sooooooooo... that's FFXI right now. Quests, NMs, and occasional exp. Oh, one more thing. While a typical "old school" event like Dynamis would end up with people losing exp, the Abyssea mobs all have exp and give them out generously. 500 exp tends to be on the low side per kill, with 5000 exp being easily possible. Typically you'd leave an Abyssea NM hunting session with 4-6 merits, with the highest I've ever done was going in with absolutely 0 merits or limits and coming out fully capped.

With only 300 merits left to cap all my jobs, even the ones I never use... well, DO said it best that exp is no longer relevant.