RMT Bots Have Won...

Can you kill a level 9-10 NM with a level 1 character with only Indi-Poison? Are you just kiting for 15 minutes until it dies from Indi-Poison, hoping it never catches you? What is your preferred subjob for this endeavor? How often do you feel the need to do this that we should redesign the game for this?

I have...so many questions...

I'll get to work and report back ;)

I freaking wish I could do that, really want to re-experience lots of the old stuff, just more casually with modern day QoL fixes.


Most think they want to re-experience "hard core" 75 era end game, while only remembering the good parts. Our brains have this funny ability to grey out past bad memories while emphasizing good ones, it takes something traumatic to actually stick out. What people don't seem to remember is having a small number of LS's completely monopolize a servers HNM scene and if you weren't "in good" with those groups you were SoL. Want to fight sky gods, you better get a group to farm those pops whenever the big groups aren't around. Want that E Body, good luck with that, the HNMLS's girl friend is getting it before you. You had to do what other people wanted, when they wanted and how they wanted or go find a new game.

Those private servers are like that except the admins are leaders of their own HNMLS's and run them like a fiefdom with them as the untouchable King.

I'd take SE's benign neglect over a dedicated tyrant any day.

Well just XPed on secret beach with trusts and got level 25 SAM. Camped Leeping Lizzy for a little bit on my way to the dunes and walked off with a new pair of lizard skin boots. Next stop might be Zi'Tah or Jugnir, was tired of doing Quifim. Also this time gonna do the Jungles for my 30's.

Private server admin, the ultimate power fantasy O.O

Pretty much what the 75 era should have been.

It might come as a shocker to you guys but nobody on Horizon XI's Discord is talking ***about retail

The *** they aren’t. I’ve been on there and they take pot shots at retail all the time. The common word they use for retail is “garbage”.

Guys, please...Retail vs Private? Who cares? The only thing that really matters is that we're all the same religion.

This wasn’t a private vs retail. Someone said something factually incorrect, nothing more. Read first

Jenova's Witness

On Facebook the private server boys always talk ***about retail regarding how they ruined the game or something and then mentioning if they made a classic server they would come back in an instant.

They all boil down to one of three "old man" argument tactics.....pretty much everything idiot dudes on the internet complain about boils down to one of these three things:

1. Back In My Day. Easily the most familiar and most prevalent. I'm as guilty of it as any of us, and this argument can range from simple nostalgia to fear of anything new. And anything can be squeezed into this argument, from things to entertainment to people themselves.

2. Get Off My Lawn. Also common, typically more enraged of an argument, there really isn't a "tame' version of this common bitching. Strangely though, I find this one more in younger bitching males than older ones...likely because the older generation tried to say "well, this is what I believe/think/feel" and their dad just slapped the individual outta him.

3. Money Ruins Everything. The argument of the have-nots against the haves, old as time, and finding second life in moments like this. There's a kernel of truth to the argument, however the primary use for this is just to give those "have-nots" a head start to become the next town/game/industry's "haves". Its just jealousy at the end of the day that blinds those who fall back on this argument...go ahead, go off the grid, live free, not under the thumb of The Man....til you get that inheritance from some crazy Uncle and all of a sudden its bust out the Tesla and sign me up for the HOA.

I'm just again so sad for those trapped playing a 20 year old game in 20year old mode....and I think at times I'm stuck in a rut still playing XI, but at least I can manage the updates.

Most of the complaints I hear from Horizon or nostalgia huffers boil down to: retail is too easy/there is no difficult content, can be entirely soloed, and there is no community since everyone buys everything. This is a common subject on Reddit.

None of this is true, of course, and if you press them then you'll find most haven't played retail in years and are just echoing what they hear others say. The /r/ffxi subreddit is particularly bad about this, I'm not on any of the 11 FB groups (FB is a cesspool to begin with). They get really toxic anytime you point out flaws in 75-cap or that current retail isn't like they perceive it. Every era has had its flaws, but 75-cap seems to be viewed as some sort of golden era (in some ways it was) that was a perfect experience (it wasn't) by many.

There are exceptions, I know a few good people who went to play Horizon or do both, but reading the way these types talk about the game, most of them didn't make it that far during 75-cap and definitely didn't make it far in current endgame. My observation is that they liked the game then, because there was a lot the game offered on the way to endgame that they could participate in without a major commitment. Retail now is so endgame focused, content now has a lot of pre-requisites that are fairly trivial (but time consuming and were once hard content), and it requires more commitment, along with max level. The numerous endgame systems and exclusivity of sorts means it's easy to see how they login during free login or whatever and get that impression even though it's not true.

I believe most of it boils down to nostalgia. We had some good times back then. Because you had to do pretty much everything with others, names were known, so you met a lot of people vs other games where most people are just faces in the crowd.

Easy to forget the game was a product of it's time, especially what some would consider "classic". Part of me wants to say that I cannot see many people saying they actually liked sitting around for a long period waiting for a party invite or (my anecdote) taking 6 hours just to get a Hakutaku group going, 45 minutes to get everyone there only to wipe 3 times then disband.

There is no community is pretty accurate. Everything was too easy too. Pre-gaol. It's really only gaol at all that posses anything you could count as difficult. (most of that is losing rng)

The only perceived difficulty in any era was grouping, and trust kills a large part of that need. They want to play the mmo as the mmo is intended. Not one guy sixboxing and/or one guy with 5 AI.

oh no doubt, its almost completely nostalgia-fueled. I was more pointing out the different ways they try and defend that misplaced nostalgia- as was pointed out earlier by someone else, our brains have this wonderful capacity to blur over the bad and reminisce over the good.

I think people like private servers for a variety of reasons, including:
-Fairer game. Even the most lax private servers have much better enforcement on botting and cheating than retail. Most make efforts to prevent multiboxing, as well.
-Mandatory grouping. The lack of dual+ boxing means that when you want to do endgame, you need to make a group of real players. That means that people will actually make and keep these groups.
-More social environment. The need for cooperation creates a much greater feeling of community on servers like this. Many players on retail are largely isolated and only interact with a few friends and mercs.
-Ego. Doubt they'll admit it, but a ton of these people were either at the top of the real 75 era and want to feel that again, or were horrible in real 75 era and want to make up for it. This one's a little more sad than the rest, but c'est la vie.
-Emotional attachment/autism. It's comforting to do the same thing you know how to do over and over. Same reason people play retail, just a different path.

Obviously, anyone looking at it objectively knows that 75 era had trivial mechanics and the only reason anything was hard in real era was because it had not been fully figured out. Most content could be done with 6 or less, even if intended for alliance. The game played incredibly slowly. You can't put it next to any post-abyssea content and fairly say they're even close to equal in required coordination. That doesn't mean people can't enjoy it, or don't have reasons to prefer it, though.

At the end of the day, I only think these two points you make really hold up- anyone serious about their feelings of desiring that era can make the other aspects happen in current XI, and have a better balanced game with more to do. The exception being your mention of "enforcement", which I seriously wonder how long does that early hardcore enforcement last? How long til the admins/devs of such servers get bored themselves with bitchy 40 year olds whining someone is monopolizing Mysticmaker Profblix?

This is true but I'm on the fence about calling it necessarily "fairer". They do moderate astronomically more... but a lot of what I hear, they over-do it. I've read so many complaints of "banned because they thought..." or completely made up rules like a few months back, a guy was skilling up his shield in an empty place that "sometimes" people exp in. The reason given was that people could have been there.


Some of it, they hadn't figured out, for others, it was the lack of things like accuracy on a lot of gear. Sky gods were not difficult... but "miss miss miss miss miss" wasn't very fun. Pretty much needed sushi, once it finally became a thing.

After grinding two accounts to max in osrs, one an iron man the other an ultimate ironman, this grind doesn't seem that bad.

When I found out Aerec used headlessxi to artificially inflate server numbers (Putting a lot of PCs stuffed in a zone in places like Adoulin--a zone thats still in a Private server but inaccessible by any means to the public), thats when it confirmed my suspicions that something was amiss. This was also the source of many crashes happening in certain zones like Lower Jeuno before they 'magically' fixed it aka just move the PCs to another zone.

At that point the server just felt like a theme park for adults. Very flashy with a lot of advertising built around it, but everything felt so hollow from the community (and their underhanded dealing) to how capricious the leaders were in their balancing.

The types of people on there were vastly different. Say what you will about Asura, but the people I met might as well be the types who's heads were stuck on Facebook/X and are currently going through a mid-life crisis. They should of named the server "Metaverse" at this point.

lol I'm not and it can be easily proven by going to the discord and searching for retail, nothing major comes up. Been playing there for a few months and nobody ever said anything about retail. Maybe before that? I don't know. But according to the current discussions on their discord, you are factually incorrect.

Edit just to clarify: I'm taking Discord as the benchmark because that's where the active players are hanging around, looking for exp pt, bcnm, COP missions and so on. It's actually a lively community. There are tons of active channels with people looking for group to clear content. Also a lot of active channels for each job where people exchange tips, gearsets and so on.

What are the most active topics here? LOL

I am to believe that no one on Horizon discord ***talks retail yet every month like clockwork someone from Horizon comes to ***talk retail and fellate Horizon??

You are out of your mind lmao
Whoever sold you what you're on, dont lose their number, because they clearly sold you the goooooooooooooooooood stuff

You don't need to believe me. Their discord is public. you can go take a look. Type retail in the search function and have fun finding any attack against retail like your boys here claim.

It's not Horizon's fault if you guys don't like retail anymore and have to vent your frustration here. People are having fun playing Horizon while it lives rent-free in your minds.

Horizon would have been bearable if the people running the place had all been on the same page, and weren't making up insane rules about things they didn't understand. I spent so much time trying to make sure I wasn't breaking their insane rules that I eventually decided to just not play. I appreciate that "it's my way or the highway" is a thing, but I generally like there to be some sane, reasonable, predictable rules that I can follow, instead of having to look up whether or not Mercury is in retrograde and what house Saturn is in before I flip ten pieces of buttered toast in a row to decide which kind of tea I'm going to read the leaves of to decide what the rules are today.

For reference, the straw that broke the camel's back was when I was told that I would get banned for adding an aftercast function to my luashitacast file, despite gearswap having aftercast.

Also, holy ***, the oak log racket on that server was serious *** business. There was this one guy who was so pissed that I wouldn't join his goddamned logging linkshell that he followed around a Dunes XP party I was in and just murdered everything around us to keep breaking our chains, and directly told me that he was doing this over goddamned logging.

Like, seriously, I could have an anxiety attack over getting myself and my BFF banned because someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed and today we're using a different definition of 'automation', while having to put up with admitted griefing that the GMs refused to take action on, or I could go insane grinding master levels for dopamine because haha number go up.

I like number go up. Pyrrhic Kleos go brrrr.

ITS Actually not bad to Level Sync PRE ML for Job points and just Cleave Dho gates

THE PEOPLE who run horizon are ***many people got banned, i even got banned for abusing the Gill Drop on a specific mob, lol anyway,
They legit over buffed The beachmaster and all of the gms played bst after they leveled and got everything they can with it, they nerfed it, and the changes they have done was a Step for them apparently everyone else has to find out but not them. On top of that there was alot of sexual harrassment apparently from one of the gm's am not calling names but just google lol,
and i have seen a RMT Yell last Week in Horizonxi, i think the Devs are the ones who sell gill and than they bann people they don't like afterwards as well.

Horizon in general is good but the Mods are *** retards, i remamber someone getting a lushang in day 2 or something as well LOL

No one was talking about private servers until someone showed up saying how private servers changed their life and made the world a better place and how no one playing them talks smack about retail unlike retail players that are always preoccupied about private servers.

Projecting much?