Square Enix dates FFXI 2008 bundle

By Robert Purchese Published 1 May, 2008

All those expansions included.

Square Enix plans to release the 2008 Edition of Final Fantasy XI on 23rd May.

Inside are all four PC and 360 expansions released for the MMO so far. That means Rise of the Zilart (2004), Chains of Promathia (2004), Treasures of Aht Urghan (2006) and Wings of the Goddess (2007).

Much has changed since the game arrived in Europe on PC in 2004 and on Xbox 360 in 2006. Zilart added the Dragoon, Samurai and Ninja jobs; Promathia expanded the land with 40 fresh areas; Aht Urghan added Puppetmaster, Corsair and Blue Mage jobs, and Wings added large-scale Campaign battles, Dancer and Scholar jobs, plus various spells and job abilities.

Various areas, quests, monsters and all sorts were included in the expansions, too.

Final Fantasy XI is the only game where Xbox 360, PC and PS2 owners can play together online. It boasts a current community of 500,000 people and has ridable chickens.

Pop over to our Final Fantasy XI gamepages to catch up on the action.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • bdc #1 4 years ago

    RIDABLE CHICKENS

  • ZuluHero #2 4 years ago

    no. no. NO. I'm never going back. NEVER. You can't make me, no matter how much stuff you add. You almost ruined my life once, you're not gonna do it again! AGAIN!

    /sits huddled in corner rocking back and forth....

  • TriggerHippie #3 4 years ago

    No.

  • slivir #4 4 years ago

    You're not alone Zulu :p

  • viper_h #5 4 years ago

    This game was absolute toss.

  • SleepyMagpie #6 4 years ago

    No, actually, it was really pretty great.

    It got hard at the top tiers though, but I liked that.

    What ruined it was the damned chinese gil-sellers that came in and completely fucked up the game's economy, and the fact that people, who really liked the game, got nasty to each due to the scarcity and pricing of items which you needed to do well: See chinese gil-sellers.

    It's getting long in the tooth now though. But it still has tons of unique character, and some of the best MMORPG music EVER.

  • Headache #7 4 years ago

    There are sometimes I still think back to the great times I had in FFXI, interesting areas, challenging fights and great teams and guilds to play with. I think of these and am very tempted to return. Then I remember the aching loss of xp when you die and the fear of leveling down, the tedious grind for gil to be able to afford the spells, weapons and armour you really do need to have to be able to fight effectively and the time wasted sitting around 'LFG' and I know I'll never ever be able to sink the time I once did into Final Fantasy XI all over again.

    So long FFXI! I loved you then and a piece of me still does, however it will never be the same. I've played WoW since.

  • penhalion #8 4 years ago

    Had the PC version but, it was pretty annoying to loose so much when you died.

    @Sleepy_Magpie

    You are bang on about the music :)

  • Psiloc #9 4 years ago

    I reinstalled this about a month ago for the hell of it, and the place is completely dead.

    GG.

  • Xiaokiraa #10 4 years ago

    I used to play, but find little or no reward waiting for a party to get experience points who wont have you anyway if you're equipment is wrong.

  • DFawkes #11 4 years ago

    I tried it out, and it didn't run worth a chocobo even on lowest settings. My machine is by no means a gaming machine, but it's well over minimum spec and runs the likes of WoW, LotRO and HL2 fine.

    I think I'm still to set in my MMO ways to enjoy it properly, but I can see why others love it.

  • TriggerHippie #12 4 years ago

    I got it on the ps2 when it came out in the US and loved it. The reason i stopped playing was that all the best items dropped from rare mobs that were camped to death and the drops were sold for outrageous amounts on the auction house. This meant spending hours on end fishing or some other mindless pursuit trying to save enough Gil.

    I'd probably have gone back if they hadn't had an idiotic policy of deleting characters after 3 months abscence.

  • Kami #13 4 years ago

    I enjoyed my time in FFXI, but will I go back to my 75 White Mage? Hell no. Sorry FFXI, but other MMO's punish me far less for failing to have ten hours a day to make sure I'm up to date on all the missions, are more adaptive and easier to get into when you want a change, and most importantly than anything else, let me jump in and out and do some solo play as well without having to spend a year levelling classes to jig around to solo stuff.

    I love FFXI deeply, but it was an abusive relationship and I'm glad I got out when I did.

    edit; Triggerhippie, they have regular resurrection events for that, oh. And when I tried to jump back in, my white mage was still there, so they're not very rigid on that policy...
    Edited by 1 at 02/05/08 @ 00:06

  • Andytails #14 4 years ago

    Why bother with this? Anyone new to this game is going to have an awful time, low level parties aren't common at all and campaign has almost destroyed mid-to-high level parties, especially in European time. There just simply aren't enough European players anymore. If you have a nice group of people this game is easy but I don't think many new people stay for more than a week. Then again, I hate MMO's generally but I play this when I can be arsed just because of events and as a glorified chat room... I do love the core of the game and the story (Which MMO tend to lack), just wish there weren't so many dickheads on it... It also does take forever to do anything. I can't camp NM's that take longer than 2 hours because I want to break the game.

    Alright, it's awesome when things are going right (and you don't care to camp monsters that spawn once a week if Elvis is alive and only on a Tuesday between 4 and 4:01 am) but kicks your arse when something goes wrong. Though I suppose after doing two characters through Chains of Promathia before they made it stupid easy makes you resistant... Also, Exp loss is the stupidest idea ever.

    The latest smart idea from Square is a lottery that you have no chance of winning and will probably go to RMT or something. You can win one hundred million gil, some rare items etc. Moglottery or something stupid sounding with a mog-prefix.
    Edited by 1 at 02/05/08 @ 01:22

  • Ponsonby #15 4 years ago

    @ headache - said everything i wanted to there :)

    Strangely enough my 360 finally got the RROD a couple of weeks back so I bought myself a cheap PS2 just to play FFXII. Whilst playing this I couldn’t help but thinking that I'd end up getting of a airship to a crowded chat window with "/BM LFG lvl 52 ^^" all over the place. FFXI was a good fun game but trying to get a party to stay together for any length of time seemed to be impossible, having said that I really liked the Renkai (I think thats how its spelt) thing with chaining limit breaks - thought that was most cool, FFXII's implementation of that kind of reminds me of that.

  • actionfitz #16 4 years ago

    Tried this out on the PC and the xbox 360 demo.
    one of the worst game interfaces ive ever encountered.
    The most non user friendly, badly designed pieces of crap i ever put on a hard drive of mine.
    Had to use a 360 controller on the pc just to be able to get around and even then it was worse than the old resident evil games for ease of movement.
    The visuals seemed like the were very pretty once apon a time, but do still manage to retain a small slice of FF charm - if youre a fan, and i am.
    Finding groups was nearly impossible.
    At times it feels like the devs have deliberately made things difficult for players (and i dont mean monsters etc).

    A new player to FFXI is totally fucked imo.
    I mean no offense to you guys that played it back in the day and probably had each other for support while playing but that sort of thing is non existant now.

    and dont get me fucking started on that 'Play Online' bullshit. and the installation... zzz
    and having to buy extra fucking character slots.
    /wrists

  • viper_h #17 4 years ago

    Actionfitz brought up all my issues with the game. I tried it for a month a couple of years ago and just saw no appeal to the game whatsoever as a new player. Installation and updating was a chore, the Playonline was terribly complicated and the whole thing just felt like a PS2 port.

    Also, there didn't seem to be much to do, other than fight ridiculously overpowered monsters. You asses a monster which says you should be able to kill it easily, only to get owned by it. WTF?

    Not a patch on WoW, IMO.

  • SleepyMagpie #18 4 years ago

    FFXI is actually really hard. You really had to commit, and learn moves.

    But playing in a good team and being able to correctly time renkei (group moves) that in effect elevated the teams effectiveness many levels - and then be awarded with a Final Fantasy style pyrotechnics display as you wiped the floor with the monster was one of the all-time greats.

    Really good game, old, but unique. Lots to do, involved crafting system. The interface was really simple once you got the hang of it, with a fairly nifty short-hand for communicating with the Japanese players built in.

    But for todays, "I want it now, and I want it easy" generation, of course, this game is asking too much of them.

    Nothing gained easy is ever worth much.

    WoW! Pfft. WoW is the lowest common denominator among MMORPGs. WoW is for wimps.