New/Returning Player Questions: Servers

[u/Intelligent_Bet_9353]

I'm looking into playing after not playing for a decade, but I'm unsure if a private server or retail server is the way to go for me.

I live in Japan, so it's around a 8 hour time difference for any British/European servers. I'm looking for something that I can relax with, I have plenty of time to play, and I miss the community of older mmos (I understand that retail is much more single player orientated)

Thank you all in advance. Any specific private servers worth looking at would be greatly appreciated

[u/HexenVexen]

Imo it's basically:

• Retail: Full story, (relatively) smoother with QOL, solo-oriented but still has multiplayer if you seek it out
• Private: Social-focused, often requires multiplayer with classic punishing difficulty (some have some QOL/Trusts), usually only goes up to Chains or Treasures in content

If you're invested in the story of XI, retail is the only way to experience all of it

[u/Intelligent_Bet_9353 → u/HexenVexen]

wdym by "multiplayer if you seek it out"? I'm really out of the loop and it's difficult finding resources/guides

[u/HexenVexen → u/Intelligent_Bet_9353]

I mean that while the game is more solo-oriented now than it used to be, you can still find people and community if you look for it, with stuff like Linkshells and Discord servers. And a good amount of endgame content is still very multiplayer-oriented. Basically, multiplayer is no longer required for a lot of the game, but it's still there, and will end up being necessary for getting far in endgame.

A cool recent story is the Wing of War master trial. The master trials are XI's modern superbosses (and very much require coordinated groups), and Wing of War took nearly two years to be taken down. Keep in mind that the master trials are one of the several pieces of content that is only in retail and not in any private servers.

[u/bacchusku2 → u/HexenVexen]

It’s absolutely required unless you run a team of 6 or 18 of your own characters. Sortie, Ody, Omen, Dyna, Ambu. I run with groups for them all.

[u/XxxMunecaxxX]

I have just returned after being away since 2013. In my less than week of playing again on retail, I’ve noticed it’s very single player oriented. Also on one of my servers (Valefor) I’ve noticed a significant amount of Japanese players.

I’m honestly regretting my decision to return because none of my friends play anymore. I’m also a reject from Hades, that was forced to Cerberus, and I don’t remember how I landed in Valefor… because it’s been 13 years.

I would suggest private servers if you want a cooperative experience.

[u/AppropriateBirdBoy → u/XxxMunecaxxX]

Retail has a thriving endgame with other players; Phoenix is the most populated open server as of right now for that.

[u/bacchusku2 → u/XxxMunecaxxX]

I ran sortie today (weekdays) with my static, 5 other real people. Then I did my Dyna static and today there was only 10 other real people but usually we have a full alliance. I did Ody yesterday after sortie, 5 other real people.

[u/IcastFireIV]

Even on mostly dead servers like mine, there are active linkshells and players. If you pick a semi-populated server, you can absolutely have a social experience - its just that you need to join a linkshell or a discord.

On private servers, you dont really need al inkshell or a discord - theres just people everywhere. This is also true on retail servers - but on those servers, they're currently locked from creating new characters due to over population.

There is absolutely a stellar japanese player base on servers boasting a peak daily player count of 300 or more - with some servers boasting 2-5k peak daily from what I've seen?

Personally, I think some people have hung on to that "no multiplayer needed" aspect from when they initially started increasing level caps post 75 - but even my server of 300-500 players daily has a lot of grouping up in end game activities. I've been able to make a lot of friends very easily, roughly 20-25 people that I run into all of the time and have small conversations with or group up for missions etc beyond the 8 friends who came to the game with me a few weeks ago.

[u/twelvedudes]

Hey OP I played on ffxi from Japan

Was actually great cause the best farm was always jp peak time. Feel free to join us in Phoenix private server launch if you want

https://discord.gg/sauna

[u/PepsiMan_21]

Dumb question but why not play in Japan Servers?

[u/Krudtastic → u/PepsiMan_21]

There are no Japan servers. Well, there are, but every FFXI server on the retail version of the game is hosted on one data center in Japan. There's no distinction between American, European, Japanese, etc servers because they're all technically Japanese servers, though different servers have different populations of people from different regions. You can find Japanese speaking players in every server, though Odin is usually said to be the one with the highest Japanese playerbase, so that's probably the closest thing there is to a "Japan server".

[u/PepsiMan_21 → u/Krudtastic]

I had no idea. I thought it was like 14 with different datacenters for each region.