I spent about a dozen hours on each of the scripts for the retrospectives, trying to make them as enjoyable to listen to as possible. Your comment makes me happy I spent that much time tweaking them. Thank you so much for the feedback!
You're exactly right, this is exactly why I loved Bastok's path. But all of the paths let you learn about so many familiar characters though. Thanks for your feedback on these videos. It's always great to hear from a veteran player!
@@vicenarian340 Yep, my favorite was Windurst but honestly Bastok with everyone you meet blows my mind like how almost dark it truly gets. If new players think Bastok in the present is dark wait till you hit the past lol its a whole other level
Prior to Wings of the Goddess, I had spent years in the ruins of Garlaige Citadel and the Crawlers' Nest. When I got to visit these places in Wings of the Goddess (20 years in the past), and seeing them when they were full of life, it was very humbling.
Absolutely marvelous review. As a lifelong FF fan who has always ignored XI until mid 2023, and who has since gradually found it to be my favorite FF game of all time, everything about this review connected with me. The conclusion at the end was stunning and brought a few tears to my eyes. Thank you for this. Edit: Would also like to add that I did in fact find WotG to be some of the best content the game had to offer, especially in story and music.
@@vicenarian340 np! Great video and sums up a lot of my feelings on the xpac. I think it's probably my favorite, and was at the time, but it's a weird little mini Era of its own!
@@PoliceTelephoneBoxyeah really misunderstood at first. My HNMLS had a dancer main who would tank (dnc/nin) occasionally for notorious monsters we could take down with small groups of 6. I believe it was the first time we had a healing job or subjob that wasn't mage stat dependent for it's heals. Another important note, dual wield jobs in this game has the advantage of equipping two different weapons with different effects or stats. Dual wield weapons were not a single weapon and used the sun weapon slot.
@@PoliceTelephoneBox Pup they didn't understand at all. I was a 75 pup and people even in merit parties didn't understand I could cure V with my automation and use flash etc by changing attachments
One thing to note about the mass exodus for Wings of the Goddess, was at the end of January of 2009, a mass of endgame players across all servers were permanently banned due to the "Salvage Dupe" exploit that was kept from SE for several months. I was an officer of a budding HNM LS and the bans happened when I was without power for 2 weeks due to a blizzard collapsing the grid. When I finally logged in, I was met with a dead pearl and a great purge of many of the most prominent endgame players of my server. It was a wild time.
Fantastic video. I'm working on a retrospective video of Final Fantasy XI (all expansions) and your channel came across my feed. I love the work you've done in your vids and am going to give you a shoutout in my video when it's done. Your thesis at the end was excellent, and for my money, Wings is the best Final Fantasy XI expansion.
Thank you so much! I'm surprised seeing you here, I just found your channel the other day. I appreciate the feedback, and I look forward to seeing your video on FFXI. Not nearly enough content is made for this game.
@@vicenarian340 I fully agree. One thing I loved about doing my Final Fantasy Ranking videos ( not sure if you've seen those) was giving FFXI a chance to fully shine alongside the other main series entries, but after doing those vids I realized there really wasn't anything on TH-cam going over all of XI's expansions. Of course right after I finish the script for my video I find your channel, but luckily it looks like we are taking different enough approaches in our videos where they will cover enough different ground. Definitely looking forward to more from you. I subbed and hit like on basically every video. You're doing the Resonant Arc boys proud. Keep up the good work and maybe we'll do a collab podcast or chat sometime about the perspective of two new players (I beat XI in 2022) approaching the game's content.
@@PaulMonroe I'll be making a pit stop, but not to abyssea lol. I'm also going to do reviews for SoA and RoV too. So I've still got a bit of FFXI content ahead of me
Actually, you can do all three of the nations' war questlines at the same time, without having to change factions; one time when I was doing Windurst's quests, I accidentally started Bastok's questline when I zoned into the latter.
I've been getting these reviews in my recommended recently, and they've convinced me to eventually try out XI. I was already sorta on the edge because I loved XIV, but these sorta made me realize how much I think I would enjoy XI as well-- not in spite of the differences from XIV but because of the differences (XIV has been getting stale for me as of late). I've been too busy to dedicate too much time to an mmo recently, but once everything clears up I'm definitely planning on trying it out.
That's awesome! I will warn you, the learning curve for this game is brutal. The menus are unintuitive, the quest and mission structure feels clunky, and there are so many systems in the game to acclimate to in order to save yourself time. But if you get past those first few hours and stick with it, you'll be treated with all the incredible things I've mentioned in the reviews so far.
@@vicenarian340 I’m fine with large learning curves when starting an MMO. It’s part of the fun, even. I love the feeling of starting a new game and being completely overwhelmed with all the stuff I have to learn, and that phase of playing a game always gives me the fondest memories of the games. And even though it might get tedious, the prospect of exploring a brand new (to me) final fantasy is far too great for me to pass up on. I’ll only ever get that chance once a decade at the rate that FF games are coming out nowadays (with the exception of XIV expansions, which while I do enjoy, they just don’t feel nearly as fun as when I first start a FF). So I think I’ll be fine starting out.
Here’s (and this is my opinion) what you need to answer in order to know whether or not you should play XI: 1-Do you cherish the gameplay loop and worlds/lore of Final Fantasy I-XII? Not just enjoy, not just like some/hate some, possibly not just even love. 2-Are you willing to put in 300 hours just to enjoy a fresh FF story/world, and possibly 2000+ hours if you want to continue doing battle content? If the answers to both of these questions are “Yes”, you’re in for the treat of your life. I’m not an MMO person, and had to be convinced to play this, but once I did, I don’t want to stop playing it.
there's a new year old private server called HorizonXI that is currently in the era of the first two expansions with the third one approaching soon. It blows the other private servers out of the water in terms of dev team size and functional content as well as population. it's a free way to try XI in the good-ol-days era.@@riggedgame1189
I loved wings. I did it as it was being released so 3 years to finish. I was always excited when a new update hit thus allowed me to continue the missions. I would updated log on and first thing I did was missions. 75 cap most of the missions were easy with basic party set up but there were times it was hard to get people for a mission unless you did them instantly. when ACP came out I did that first instead of wings. it took me few months to find a group to do latest wings fights that update -.-
That's amazing to hear. I have only talked to a few people who enjoyed the expansion in its own era, and your perspectives on the game are always fascinating. Thanks for the comment!
You nailed it. I was a hardcore FFXI player, co-founding the Excellence LS with Stanislav, who later went on to create Discord. WoW has always been the reason for the mass exodus. It killed all other MMO's. FFXI was dragging, and everyone had a friend that played WoW. Entire LS's were transferring to WoW. Even Blue Gartr. This was what finally got me off of FFXI and I was playing from day 1 NA release
I'm glad to hear that you agree. When I wrote the script, I hadn't heard any classic players attributing FFXI's fall off to WoW, but the same thing was happening everywhere too. So I gambled with that section haha. It's crazy to hear that entire link shells were moving over too.
Wow didn't kill FF pretty much level cap increase did. I played from a few months after NA release till the first Abyssea release and it was a shit show. Really felt like all it was at the time was a level cap increase with a repainted old zone it wasn't till hit 99 it started to come together a little again and made it manageable. I remember leveling from 75>80/85 forget what the first level cap raise was to after 75 and everyone just being like okay now what.
Great Video! The Crystal War was the opening cinematic for FFXI so it was really promising to get to actually play it in WOTG. As someone who played this in realtime, You could see where the drop off was from when WOTG came out and the transition of the devs over to XIV was happening. Content to complete WOTG was so slow that people lost interest. If the story wasn't dragged for so long it probably would have been enjoyed more, as I hope it is for someone like you who got to play it right through in its entirety. There was also the Summoner debacle where new summons were promised but the dev team was having such a hard time adapting them to the game that they just weren't exciting anymore by the time they were added. The music, as with all of the expansions is amazing and memorable. I still feel they missed the opportunity to do a helms deep like battle of a certain city that players really wanted, and they could have done a time compression transition from XI to the XIV world as Lilith was pretty on par with being XI's version of Ultimecia. I really thought for a moment it was going to go in that direction and that your XI character would get to be in Eorzea 🤣
I was so pumped when it was announced and came out. But it felt forced. Like it wasn't created with love and care like the rest of the game. So much potential too. It could have been a whole new game.
I played WoTG and playing through my second character just for the sake of nostalgia. For me was one of the best stories. I remember playing all the nations, and that was a good decision, since it gave me a different perspective of the events that occurred during the crystal war
I want to mention at this point I had all jobs 75 thanks to the increased EXP rate and efficiency that ToAU brought us. I don't consider Abyssea or Voidwatch apart of, or anything to do with, Wings of the Goddess. They were simply just add-ons after the fact. WoTG was a great story. Absolutely loved it. The content however didn't add anything worth repeating. There was zero end game content added worth doing, since they didn't add any armor or items worth getting. It felt more like a story to end the game completely. If you were SMN it was cool having Caitsith but not really useful or used at the time. Dancer was a huge deal because it removed the exclusivity of soloing content from only being RDM and NIN. Now, most DD jobs could sub dancer and solo the same content as RDM or NIN could. But it was balanced in a way that didn't allow for much extra content to be solo'd which was good. SCH was broken because it now could be overall a better healer than WHM with having access to enough white magic while having ways to get back great amounts of MP, which WHM did not have access to. It could also easily replace a BLM in a group and have more overall sustained DPS thanks to the MP regain it had access to. SCH was simply too good at being a WHM and a BLM, but not both roles at once. It was later balanced when the level cap increased, and even more so with AF armors getting the 119 treatment. Mostly because WHM and BLM just became that much better. Not that SCH was nerfed. Don't get me started on how GEO destroys the difficulty of the current era. The game didn't really add items and armor worth your time until Abyssea released. Some people say that Abyssea destroyed the game. Actually, after Vision of Abyssea it was very rough. I would say the game was at its worst it ever was when the level cap went to 80 and Vision released. This is for many reasons which I could go on forever about, but what many many people missed out on was the conclusion of Abyssea. Heroes Of Abyssea was one of the best things that ever happened to the game and endgame up to that point. It addressed all the complaints people were having at the time. Once level 90 ALL the end game content could now be done with 1 party of 6 players. Players were wanting this implemented for YEARS. There was a shift from the difficulty it was to gather the 18 players at the same time for a full alliance >>>>>>> towards gathering 5 of your closest friends to accomplish the same things. That's what people wanted at the time, and that's what they delivered perfectly. There was all new Empyrean armor to obtain, which was great armor, but it didn't make all the old content obsolete. Obtaining said armor was a fantastic system. They added Ultimate weapons with slightly lesser versions, which had more realistic achievement timelines. If you were the min/maxer equip swapper (most people do equip swaps in this game), there was still content from every expansion that had relevant items and armor. ZM Sky gods still had armor you needed, but now they could be done by 6 talented players. CoP Limbus still had armor you needed, but now it could be done by 6 talented players. ToAU content still had items to acquire by.... 6 players. WoTG never had items to acquire, lol. Yes, at 90 cap the large 18 player raid type content was dead, but the game was exactly what so many players were asking for and so many people sadly missed out because of the horrible launch that Vision was. In conclusion. 90 cap era was an amazing thing to be a part of and IMO is only rivalled by what we have today, and the original 75 cap era. I think those 3 times are the best times the game ever experienced. Fortunately for everyone, we are in one of those 3 eras. So get on and play.
I appreciate this write up and all of your other comments too! It is fascinating to read feedback from someone with your amount of experience with the game.
I think the thing here is while people complain about WotG, most people are upset that small group leveling was destroyed around this time, and they dont know how to verbalize it and attack the content. A lot of people really enjoyed that game play loop and it was central to the games feel.
Thank you. I've always thought that there was a shortage of video essay content for FFXI, despite every other FF entry (including the FFXIV expansions) having plenty of video essays. I got tired of complaining though, so I decided to make some myself lol.
omg i was NOT prepared for that revelation at the end of the video.. but i think you hit the nail on the head. FFXI is my fave FF, but i also mod the finalfantasy reddit and the comments about the game you get there are very disheartening.. sigh. also love that you went in depth into the 4 paradoxes you mentioned about this expansion. good analysis of the 3 nation questlines - i think they were really going for different storytelling approaches for all 3. windy was flashy and cool, bastok was political and full of suspense, and sandy's had youthful innocence and camaraderie - which ultimately became my fave because of that emotional pull. thanks for featuring my fave music track in FFXI, as well as my charts and my reddit comment :p i'm really loving your perspectives and knowing that it isnt just nostalgia/stockholm syndrome that has led me and many others to love FFXI as much as we do. i'm hopeful that more will get to try and enjoy this game too after watching videos like this
No need to thank me, you've been a huge part of these videos. The NM charts were a huge help to me too while I was trying to get into each one. I saw that you're doing your own essay, and I can't wait! By the way, which is your favorite music track?
@@vicenarian340 I’m quite surprised they’re still useful today tbh haha but it’s a happy thing to know. as for my fave music track, it’s flowers on the battlefield 💐
My experience with CoP was a huge epic storyline and punishing NM that required the whole linkshell to help on the strategy. My WotG experience mostly was attacking walls to get points in the war, and EVERY zone connection being locked. It's easy to see why memory doesn't hold the expansion well. You have me excited to work on this story content though!
13:07 ive never seen what others see in ff7 and the whole cloud vs sephiroth thing... mainly cause the comp of ff7 came out before i finished 7 (2010) and i only saw sephiroth as the embarrassing "Marketing boy" hes become. he'll never be a memory cause they keep shoehorning him in
I quit around the time WotG was announced. I still remember the song of the trailer (which you played in the review), as well as all the speculations around Scholar and Dancer. The hype was insane as ToAU had advanced the game so much in the right direction back then. I ended up not finishing ToAU or going through this. So these reviews are a great way for me to learn a bit about what I missed out on. Looking forward to your next review!
Splitting people to three paths randomly killed statics. The nations' specific missions are not soloable and forced people to play with strangers. But SCH and DNC are great jobs. They're great as both main jobs and sub jobs. NIN/DNC was fun to play solo.
@@vicenarian340 I played since NA release in Nov 2003 until about May 2010. Many of my friends quit during Wings of the Goddess and I never beat the story at that time. I returned to the game around 2012 but I couldnt recover my old account so I created a completely new account and replayed all the expansions until I beat Rhapsodies in 2015. It was then I stopped playing FFXI and started FFXIV but I still log in to FFXI when theres a free login campaign
Awesome video. I also only came across WotG's story after it was all finished. Dethroned Chrono Trigger for my fave SE time travel story for me personally. But I also had heard how awful the patch cadence was for this all to release way back when. As you mentioned, it was really cool to see the Nation mission NPCs earning their scars in the war. My first storyline in WotG was Sandoria, the story broke me when ut didnt pull its punches lol especially since it ties into things like the DRG AF questline from RotZ and the like. Definitely the exception to my aversion to child characters in RPG stories. Tough needle to thread. Heck, I still need to go back and finish Bastok and Windurst's Shadowreign Era missions though. But whenever I get around to it Ill be having a blast with my bros Zeid and Robel Akbel. The SCH Questline in particular really wowed me when I played through it. Nor can I forget the first time entering the Walk of Echoes. Theres some interesting lore in a cutscene there if you ever make a "Replica" Empyrean Weapon. The -1 version that can unlock the Empy WS for general use (like Mythic WS can be unlocked without having the genuine weapon built). But I enjoy any chance to learn about Dynamis as a concept. I think what I enjoyed the most was how WotG recontextualizes XIs overall story and builds upon all the prior expansions despite people often saying after CoP the story isnt as cohesive which is true during ToAU (I believe its a rather understated that thread connects CoP and ToAU) but then WotG's storyline is like the ither shoe that drops, building on what ToAU added the world building. Thank you again for this retrospective of the expansion that brought us the irreplaceable Time Traveling Duo Future Fabulous 🤩 I look forward to your future uploads. Hope this finds you and yours doing well. Edit: Oh and thank you so much for including footage of Lilisette going ham on those Orcs for B roll. It was so refreshing to see a young lady of the world be depicted as strong and capable, while also having her moments of relatability in the quieter moments. Can really tell they built off of Aphmau as far as creating relatable Expansion partners. I rank Lilisette pretty highly as far as XI expansion buddies go. They're all great though, and show how the writing just kept improving as the years went on. Anyways, sorry for the long ass comment lmao.
Thank you for the write up! I do love the way this expansion integrations so much out-of-game lore back then. I'm also a big fan of Lilisette's arc. I'm glad you enjoyed!
@@friedmattato2158 That's great to hear! A lot of people prefer SoA, but it's a very different story from anything before. Let me know what you think after finishing it if you don't mind!
Your videos on this games are awesome man. You strangely make me feel nostalgic about a game I never played ! The more you post, the more I see myself experiencing the game in chronological order just like you and not with ROV at the begining. I just wait for the game to be in sale, I’ll have plenty of time to tackle that project. Just a question about that : Did you make research on « how not to start the starting cutscenes of an expansion too early ? » or « NPC not to talk to now because it’ s a trust I haven’t met in the main story yet » Is it realistic to avoid those kind of things or am I doomed ? (Sorry if my english is not great)
You can't avoid starting expansions early. But what you can do is, if you're going to play an expansion that you have already started, you can rewatch the opening cutscenes. The only expansion where this happened to me was Chains of Promathia though. So, you'll only have to do it once. I'll offer the same quick warning. This game is hard to start. It has so many systems that you have to learn (fast travel, currency accumulation, etc) that it is easy for new players to give up. But if you stick with it, and you learn how to use the guides (BG wiki and FFXIclopedia), you'll get to experience all the great things I've been talking about. Thank you so much for the comments, and good luck when you decide to start the game!
Binged all your videos, gonna grab some food and have fun with your new review. keep up the amazing work. Also, any idea how you're gonna continue once you're done with ff11 expansions?
I'm really glad to hear that! I don't plan on posting after the FFXI reviews to be honest. I may though if I find a topic I want to cover. Any suggestions?
@@vicenarian340 I’m a FFXIV player and I just discovered your channel and even if I’ve never played FFXI watching your videos has been very fun and interesting. Would you consider doing a similar series for FFXIV expansions once you’ve finished your FFXI series?
@@vicenarian340 With the way you write your script, your editing and simply the way you talk, i would watch anything you'd decide to do. Can't really suggest anything in specific. As long as you're passionate about it ig?
I did wings of the goddess years after it came out but it was absolutely the best of them ALL! I spammed through most the others but actually engaged in this wonderful story
I don't think I'll be able to. I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm trying to finish all the reviews before a schedule shift in my work. I currently have three more planned, and I'm not sure I'll be able to do a fourth for the add-ons. I apologize!
Your best review yet. Totally new perspective on this expansion. And I already had it as my favorite! A similarity we share as new players. I am baffled it took 3 years to release. I didn't know this and to be honest I can't blame any OG player who would be angry with that. MMOs adding content over expansion life cycles is obviously normal but this seems like an insane extreme. I am inclined to agree with your final takeaway because in my own reading and research I saw so many veteran players mention the highs of the 75 ToA era or CoP. Those were the best endgame supposedly. And this one is when we started getting a lot of the QoL to ease new players just wanting the story. That new/old player spit really does feel like one of many parallels with the overall FF fanbase. I will say music wise it was amazing but zone wise it was a downgrade from ToA for obvious time travel reasons. Not that seeing places and people in the past wasn't awesome in it's own right. I need to sit down and watch the other city stories. I knew they were good but you talked very highly of them. Windurst was my pick since I started there and I loved Lehko as much as any of the main characters throughout the expansions. I struggle between Prishe and Lilisette for my favorite character in the whole game. I'm interested to hear you thoughts, if any, on the fact there's always a heroine every expansion. Idk what the player base demographic was. I'm not going to assume primarily male. But it seems like a deliberate choice. An interesting one regardless. Beyond the killer story and music, something I must mention that you didn't is the improved cutscene animation quality. It was an instantly noticeable improvement. It didn't really fit into your video thesis so I see why you didn't mention it. They had to have upgraded to mocap right?Characters are so expressive and move in ways we've never seen in prior expansions. Everyone from our leads, to the city mission specific characters, to the side characters are made even more memorable because of this. It's the icing on the cake for me. My biggest personal gripe with this expansion is how many times I had to travel back to the back of Grauberg (S) to interact with that damn Veridical Conflux 😂
The trek back to Grauberg killed me too haha. I didn't want to tackle voidwatch until after the story, so I never gained access to any fast travel options faster than hoofing it through the entire zone. You brought up a phenomenal point on the improved character animations too! Lady Lilith is a great example, they went through the process of modelling her wings in far more detail than any other wing model in the game. The Dancer job would not have been possible without this improved animation too. As far as the heroine topic, according to general MMO stats, the player base was no doubt overwhelmingly male. Given this, it wouldn't surprise me if the female main character thing has some fanservice-esq element. I'm usually quite averse to fan service as I feel it is a cheap form of writing. If a writer doesn't know how to make a character interesting, they slap some fan service on them. In the case of FFXI, it didn't bother me though, because of how well written all of the heroines are. There aren't any traces of lazy writing that usually accompanies fan service heroines. I don't have anything at all against male main characters, but I also appreciated seeing how the writers of FFXI approached writing multiple female main characters while taking care to make each one elaborate and different from the others. I really appreciate all of these comments. Thank you for taking the time to offer thoughtful feedback on all these videos, I know it wasn't a small task!
@@vicenarian340 your footage of Lilisette weaving though those orcs gah I love that scene. My jaw first dropped when I saw Lekho come riding in on a Chocobo for the save. And yeah despite the constant stream of female heroines I never once rolled my eyes. And I've played a lot of single player jrpgs that make me want to beat my head against the wall with how they handle that sort of thing. That demographic doesn't surprise me but I know some MMOs are little more evenly split. Little doubt as to the reason behind the decision in XI then but they were all handled well. I believe any player would have little trouble making a strong connection with several of the girls. No, thank you for the responses! It's all passion for discussing games. And I don't get to discuss XI often because well not many FF fans play it. Especially completely new players who don't give up part way through. Looking forward to the last few. Idk if you'll cover the Voracious Resurgence. I finished RoV before it was done. I'm kind of interested to go back for it but idk what the gear requirements will be so I'm hesitant for fear of a big time sink before I can do the story. Also not that I have expectations for you to play XIV let alone make videos for it. Don't want you creating because it's expected and not because you want to. I was just curious if you'll play XIV because iirc you mentioned you hadn't played it either yet.
@@sonicbacon123 Back when I started FFXI, I finished the Shadow Lord arc, and switched to FFXIV. I got bogged down in ARR and just came back to FFXI to play through its expansions. So I haven't really played much of FFXIV. Everyone says that the story is great, but I can't say given my lack of experience with experience with FFXIV. Since you've played both, how does the story of FFXIV (up till Dawntrail) compare to FFXI (up til RoV)?
@@vicenarian340 they're very different experiences. After the slower ARR with it's larger amount of tedious fetch questing it becomes very focused on telling it's story. It feels like a party based FF game. A core group you adventure with and come back to even when the larger cast expands. While which members of the group you spend time with and the mood, themes and backdrops change with each expansion, you're always coming back to them. Everytime I come back for a patch update story or new expansion I'm excited to see any of them again. Like family I haven't seen since the last holiday. Almost TV show like with how everytime I come back to it I'm excited to sit down and just listen, watch and read what happens next. Regardless of whether the gameplay bits are exciting or dull in between. Plus it's very clearly a power Fantasy. You're the guy. The warrior of light. You're at the center of a lot of stories. Meanwhile XI, in many ways you view a lot of stories from the side. Sure you take down some major threats. But often I feel like I'm making friends with the main characters. Also despite having a release order it let's you tackle almost all the stories in any order you want. Because they all have their own casts. I think the XI heroines are just as strong characters as the Scions in XIV. You're just getting multiple singular character focus as opposed to recurring focus on a set of characters. And both are really only possible in games of this size. What FF casts let's you journey with them for 10 years straight or gives you so many journeys to go on with so many different characters? Of course FFXIV has the presentation advantages I mentioned over XI (textbox UI and voice acting) that makes it more accessible. But both games have stories that made me cry. I think both have stories worth experiencing. Which I personally think means more often than not, what causes a player to quit is whether they find enjoyment/can tolerate the gameplay. Because XI is so open ended and guide reliant it can be exhilarating for some and too much for others. Whereas XIV can be too slow early on with the options available to you or too samey with the horizontal progression. But now I'm opening a completely different can of worms haha
This expansion was unfortunately where I stopped. Personally I enjoyed many moments in this expansion, but I had to move on as the story didn't conclude in time for me, as you opened up with in the beginning of this video. I thank you for this primer into what followed and where we left.
Finally a WotG perspective. Gotta say I agree to majority of points u brought here & still is my most fave expansions. btw, just like base game, u can actually experience all 3 nation stories, albeit u can only switch nations once main WotG finished since the one u started kinda stuck with u due to how it related to main WotG story progression, or at least that's what I experience playing back on 2012. & yea, all 3 nation stories are great, even the less fave which is same as yours, Bastok, still does delivers amazing story on its own right. iirc, was starting mine with Bastok till WotG finishes, then moves to Windy, then saving Sandy last, was thinking how crappy their story on their base game, only to got blown by how amazing its stories & goosebumps I got when reaching its finale. Overall, it felt like experience things that gradually got way better, starting from Bastok stories, then Windy, & Sandy last. I am however currently back with Windy as my current nation since it's still my fave nation & sorta easier to navigate with important NPCs than other nations though. Honestly, when I started WotG, I did get annoyed on its early progression, & how that main theme kinda annoying to listen. But as I reached this expansion conclusion, found it so deep, even than main theme playing on start menu suddenly transformed into a very melancholy-touching theme that brings my tears out. It is really mind-boggling, & you 2nd point kinda really spot on with those feelings I experienced. :D
I played XI from NA release until a few months after CoP release. A few years ago I returned with a couple of friends just for fun. I didn't keep in touch with the game so was unaware of the reputation this expac had until this video actually. WotG story was an absolute trip for me. Typically one of the worst things a story can do is repeat the same story beat but WotG uses the same beat three times in some what different ways and it had me crying each time.
LOVE this video. Wings of the Goddess was my favorite story playing in 2022. I had no idea it was so controversial! I also had no idea it had such a rough roll out. Super interesting learning all this. I mained SAM due to how I wrote my character, but I FELL for Lilisette. And that made me want to sub DNC. Having a heal and sneak/invisible on hand was so helpful. I SAM/DNC the rest of the game. It made me want to try DNC in 14. (I just started Stormblood this week and I'm STILL bummed this game doesn't have a Sub-Job system. I miss that so much from 11) I did the Windust story in Wings and really enjoyed it. I streamed Wings a couple times, and even with only two streams, my chat fell in love with both Lilisette and Lilith. I almost cried at the ending. UHG still gets to me. Sorry for the late comment. I meant to say all this when the vid came out but i took to long and so i just rewatched it to remember what I was going to say lol
No need to apologize, and I'm glad you enjoyed! It's good to hear from you again, I remembered you saying that this was your favorite expansion, so I'm glad to hear your thoughts on the video. I haven't gotten too far in FFXIV, how would you say it's compared to FFXI so far?
@@vicenarian340 Its just night and day in terms of design philosophy. I know XI has made a lot of changes to make it more solo friendly, but you can still see its DNA was based around community play. Everything in XI was designed to encourage discourse and cooperation. And FFXIV certainly does not exclude the possibility for discourse and cooperation but its so incredibly solo friendly. I'm really having such a great time because of that fact. I play with friends pretty often and a couple veteran players as basically taking me in as a pet ( joke that I'm not a Sprout, I'm a house plant). But I don't have to coordinate my playtime with others. I can log in whenever I want and make progress in the MSQ or even knock a raid out with random people. I can see why most of the people I ran into 11 were veterans who don't like 14 (Or new players coming from 14 in search of something new). The games are so different there is no way 14 could replace 11 for everyone. I'm also just really glad I played 11 first. 11 was my first MMO and I knew to go in with patients due to its age. I think I'd have a hard time going back now that 14 has spoiled me with so many QOL advancements. (I will say I like the simplicity of 11's Style Lock over the convoluted Glamours of 14. That took some getting used to) But when playing 14 I'm the annoying one in Voice Chat telling my party every monster and reference from 11 we pass by lol
@@yeagercomics That's really fascinating, and I have no doubt, I'll be the one who doesn't shut up about FFXI references too when I make it further in the game haha. Are you excited for the Echoes of Vana'diel alliance?
@@vicenarian340 I am! I’m also hoping the bring back the Rhapsodies of the Maiden event soon too. It was apparently a crossover that saw Iroha appear in Eorzia to ask players to return to Vana’diel back when RoV first launched. They’ve run it a few times since and I really want to play it for myself.
thanks so much for covering all of the expansions of XI, brings back memories of when Voidwatch first appeared, I actually went farming for all the level 95-99 REMA upgrades materials every sunday, and made a lot of gil goin with PUGs, made some friends outside the linkshell and also managed to make enough cash to finish a relic weapon, so yeah! finally, do you plan on covering or talking about ambuscade? this content as well is bothj something I consider a quality of life and at the same time, it takes away much of the grind of making REMAs, but its pretty grindy and can get boring, even when they change the enemies you fight every month
I will talk about Ambuscade when I hit the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel review. It's a phenomenal piece of content that I look forward to covering too. I always love hearing WotG - post Abyssea era stories in particular. It seems like they vary widely compared to any other era. Thanks for sharing!
I don't know what people were thinking, but I had so much fun with wings of the goddess back then. I was doing campaign non stop. And although abyssea's rapid growth was problematic, but if you had absolutely endgame LS to play with, it was so much fun. The pacing of the story was definitely super slow though.
I've heard plenty of people say that too. I was too young to play FFXI at that time, so I hesitate to paint this era in either a positive light or a negative light.
As a couple others pointed out, DNC and SCH flipped the meta and while this xpac may not have been ideal, the utility those two jobs brought to the game was immensely significant. DNC giving melee self heals and utiliy and a legit alternative to /NIN, and SCH being a legit subjob and full job alternative for dedicated BLM & WHM players. In wake of how exciting the ToAU jobs were, DNC and SCH really motivated people to dust off those old jobs and get excited to play an older class again.
WoTG today is the best expansion in FFXI. It is so interesting that it took so long for the expansion to be appreciated. Perhaps that was its masterful design given what this expansion is about time travel.
After watching all your videos about XI makes me want to give it a try. But, unfortunately, I don't own a PC (always been a console girl 😅), so I'll just have to enjoy it 2nd hand through videos like yours.
This expansion was one I wanted to desperately play both on live and private servers. PSs haven't have this content enabled and the content was dead when I first started playing live in 2010. It really sucked that I never experienced it. They never made played older content intuitive and it clearly wasn't rewarding when all my guildies told me to skip it, rush max level, and join them in the endgame. =/
As someone whose a newer palyer too and just started rise of the zilart ive been loving these videos seeing what i have to look forward to and having something to listen to while leveling or questing would love to hear what windower plugins you use especially for the battle log cause mine is such a mess lol
I'm really glad to hear that you're jumping in! How are you liking it so far? And is there anything I could help you with? I'll have to get back to you on the plug-ins I use. I decided on the plug-ins I wanted pretty early on and forget what their names were lol. Feel free to ask again if I forget to get back to you on this.
@@vicenarian340 been loving it I got through almost all the way through the base game about a year ago and got burnt out when I had to go get the 3 crests for the 65 level cap quests and just started playing again a week ago and finished up the base game got to level 75 and am now in ROZ trying to figure out gearing for level 75 and am so lost in that lol
@@vicenarian340 but mostly just wanted to know the plugin for the battle log I liked how clean it was just showing the name and how much damage to who rather than a whole sentence for every single attack the flies by too fast to read most of the time
@@assassinofkeyblades I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I get back from a work trip. I'm glad to help you with any questions too, so don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.
@@vicenarian340 just trying to wrap my head around dynamis is a head ache maybe it'll be easier once I'm on the content but man it seems so complicated
Only thing I don’t feel is true is that WotG had the first hard Story Mission Boss. Chains of Promathia was much more unforgiving and Alexander in Treasures of Aht Urghan was very tough. But that’s maybe because today everything is nerved and the old difficulty is gone.
You're right. These reviews are mostly for the modern builds of the expansions, so much of the difficulty earlier on isn't there any more. Thanks for the feedback!
If you are counting abyssea as part of WoTG, then you are forgetting three add-on scenarios that were added before them in a Crystalline Prohecy, A Shantotto ascension, and a Moogle kupo'deta. They came out during the lifespan of the expansion. beyond that I think the main difference between what counts as WoTG or not is mainly perspective. for those of use that played through them, the addon scenarios and battle content of abyssea were described as seperate additions from WoTG. which was why some of us got annoyed while we were waiting for the main story to come out, all these other non-related additions were being made .
I'm not really counting Abyssea as WotG. I'm only talking about it insofar as it's relevant to the modern outlook and gameplay loop of WotG. I'd love to do a video on the 6 add-ons and their significance to the game. They deserve their own discourse in my opinion rather than simply being mentioned in an expansion review. I'm a bit pressed for time making these videos though. I'm trying to get through all the expansions before my work schedule changes lol.
I would say that Wings content is content you cannot access if you don't purchase the wings expansion. Same applies to the abyssea add ons. And yes, that means some content is both wings and abyssea if you cannot access it without both.
I spent hours reading through post discussions and posting on forums trying to get to some semblance of "community consensus" but I gave up and went with my own personal experience of the gameplay loop. I do find the topic interesting though, thanks for sharing!
@@vicenarian340 Oh, yes, I'm not saying your definitions are wrong. It isn't clear cut because the lifecycles overlapped, so there really just isn't a concrete answer, this is just my personal definition.
I don't put WotG and Abyssea together. WotG is one of my favorite expansions. Campaign battles are awesome. Abyssea, however, is at the bottom of the list.
I don't group the two together either. The original plan for the video was to focused exclusively on WotG stuff. I always talk to veterans of FFXI before finishing the scripts though, and almost all that I talked to disliked WotG because of Abyssea. While I don't think it's fair to dislike an expansion for the shortcomings of another expansion, I decided to address this hate that WotG gets in this video. Thanks for the feedback!
There is an issue with this review that almost makes it think you should redo this video. A LOT of what you talk about here is due to the Abyssea era stuff. And Abyssea =/= Wings of the Goddess. While yes it came out before WotG finished it was a different era of the game. To talk about your "included with the purchase of WotG" also doesn't hold water. As the Abyssea expansion was free to everyone. The only people who had to pay for it were the ones buying the Ultimate Edition. There are also things you didn't discuss which are the really big things that this expansion effected. First is the 2 new jobs. While you mention them briefly, they were actually the biggest things that effected the game. Dancer was the best subjob for every melee job in the game and enabled so may people the chance to solo content which they couldn't do before, this includes getting solo exp. Sch also enabled people to be able to beat Absolute Virtue without having to spend the crazy 14hr fight it used to be with their insane Klustra stacking which was the first time in the game that SE actually released a hot patch to fix in such a quick turn around. The other thing that came out were Fields of Valor. Between /dnc and Fields of Valor players could now log in for a few hours an solo progress their character which was something they never could before. This also enabled people to be able to travel around the world much easier with the ability to warp back to your home nation from any book. Arguably the biggest thing this expansion added was the introduction of the Level Sync system. Players now didn't have to look for jobs withing 3-4 levels of their current job to be able to put together a group. They could group with anyone lvl 10+. This revolutionized the leveling experience. You didn't touch on campaign battle either. This added an amazing way for people to travel around the world, get solo exp, the ability to afk skill up, and eventually gave some pretty good rewards. Another reason this story got so much hate was because how the story loop progressed. You couldn't just grind out missions. You had to do a few missions, then stop to do some nation quests. Then do more missions, then quests.. All of which had JP midnight wait times, and were beholden to if the NPC was stuck in a campaign battle or not. It was the hardest thing to actually progress through at the time it came out. Abyssea and Voidwatch was a separate thing that just happens to have come out before the final updates to the WotG storyline.
Thank you for this write up! I wanted to offer a few points to see what you think of them: 1. I read both on forums and on the FFXI history page of BG wiki that the Abyssea addons were $10 per addon. Is this accurate? 2. When writing the script for this video, I was faced with 2 options. 1) Discuss only WotG content. The problem with this is, out of the 4 years I've kept up with the game, and the 1.5 years I've been playing, I've encountered so much negativity surrounding WotG. This was no fault of its own, but rather because it just so happened to be the expansion when abyssea came out. So focusing on just WotG content would eliminate the scripts ability to address the negativity effectively. 2) Discuss abyssea and post abyssea eras extensively was my second option. This however, felt disingenuous because I would have spent more time talking about Abyssea than the expansion this review is dedicated to. I ultimately went with an awkward middle ground, where I referenced abyssea insofar as it's impact on the game bled into player perspectives of WotG. But I did take several moments throughout the video to point out that WotG and Abyssea are different content pieces. 3. Thanks for pointing out the modernizing efforts of WotG proper, like the new jobs changing some of the meta, the fields of valor teleport, and level sync. The FFXI players I discuss the scripts with claimed these efforts weren't enough to distinguish the expansion, but I'm happy to see a different viewpoint in your comment. These video essays are heavily narratively structured rather than being informative or comical. I hope this narrative structure makes the videos more accessible to non FFXI fans, but it's hard to fit a comprehensive informative conversation into a narrative video essay without jeopardizing the narrative structure of the videos. Having viewers like you point out the gaps in the informational side of the script as well as correct a few mistakes is a huge help! If you don't mind, I'll put some of this information in the description and credit you for it. Thanks again for this feedback! It means a lot that you care enough about the quality of this series to offer this comprehensive critique.
@@vicenarian340 The $10 price tag is probably accurate, I remember it definitely not being a full expansion and so I might have forgotten about the small price.
@@vicenarian340 hopefully we’ll have toau soon! We just got a massive new balance patch with new end game content and they said toau should be next. Loved the other recaps you’ve done!
For me, Wings of the Goddess was both a good and a bad expansion, it was bad in the sense that a lot of my friends quit around this particular time, and while I was already a dual boxer as one of my friends had quit within the first year/year and a half of playing and left me their account, many of the friends who quit around this time also left me their accounts, and these were the people I usually static'd with, so I suddenly was without my static group, but had their accounts, and try as I might I was simply not able to do the fights with me multiboxing pretty much an entire party. It took a long time before I was finally able to get a new group going, primarily because outside of my static, a lot of drama happened in my linkshell when it turned out that the white mage who was married to the monk in the shell (in real life), was cheating on her with the red mage in the same shell (also in real life) and while the shell didn't exactly break apart, things were on edge for a long time, so I wasn't able to finish WOTG while it was relevant, which also meant I missed out on the end-game of WOTG (and yes, pretty much everything you talked about is what I would consider WOTG content). It wasn't before Abyssea that I finally got a somewhat stable group of friends together again, and then once Adoulin came out, I ended up quitting and stayed away from the game until a random youtube recommended video showed up in 2017 telling me about Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, curious to what this was I came back to the game then.
it would be a lot better, especially in modern day where most of the expansions have been made a lot easier to go through, if the nation missions were optional. Yeah you only have to do 1 of the 3, but instead of forcing you to do it just finish the main story, let you do it seperately so you can do it later when you beat the game and looking for extra scenarios to play through, would be a lot better received by players.
Oddly enough XIV's Endwalker almost took the same amount of time to conclude its story. Unless you count .55 as part of EW's story and not the branch that leads to Dawntrail. Anyways, tangent aside, this was an excellent video and review.
I’d be lying if I said XI isn’t my favorite game ever. But it took so much of my time as a kid that there’s tons of regret too. 99 cap I don’t consider to be real FFXI. It felt so different and silly.
Getting to lvl 99 might be trivial, but getting job mastery is quite a task. And getting to mlvl 50 is the craziest grind that FFXI has ever had. V25 Odyssey and the new master trial are some of the hardest content the game has ever had from what I understand too. Still a great game today. Thanks for the feedback!
I don't know how someone can peg the end of the golden age at FF XI, I understand FF XII can be controversial but it is undoubtably a good Final Fantasy, the combat may not be for everyone, it definitely is for my brain, but it is well thought out and designed and the story is incredibly well constructed. Its a good game. XIII has a lot of problems and I am much Harder pressed to defend but it is followed by XIV which while had a rough start did land on its feet. I really don't buy into the "gold age" idea, the franchises has a history of tumultuous periods and was opened with one.
SE created some really good content that all players could take part like Besieged and even Campaign was fun. IMO what ruined FFXi's persona was simple GREED and WHY that greed happened is anyone's guess.Was it simply a greedy board shareholders or top execs needing to show bigger profits?Or was it to help fund FFXIV because for several years development was failing badly and costing SE a lot of money.I did not have a problem with Wings but I did have a problem with the 3 mini expansions and Abyssea in general.
Alot of the negativity around WotG is that it is alot of players rushing to catch up to end-game and join their friends, and WotG took ALOT Of time and locked them out of significant end game until they completed it. I''ve always thought WotG was great.
under my experience from back then, wotg had a very nice story, but there was no endgame content at all, and since almost all lv75 gear was useless, was also pointless to farm in sky/sea/limbus/dynamis/einherjar. Since there wasn't yet any upgrades for relics neither. Also there was a TON of new zones added if we think on the past versions of zones that we had already in the game, but there was barely NOTHING to do in them, besides those battles that you had a sword near your nickname which were horribly designed, nobody wanted to do them. am talking about before abyssea was released. Veteran players that played for 4years plus farming daily, relentlessly ton of hours of grinding everyday, got very disapointed to find themselves with nothing to do after some weeks of the expansions release. Actually, after wotg the server where i was playing was half dead and never couldn't finish last expansion since there was barely anybody to do content anymore. very sad indeed. Gotta say though I had fun in Abyssea, the proc system was fun. Though I agree with you that the leveling system got ruined. I remember to level from 1 to 99 the Rune Fencer and still don't know nothing how it works and prolly never will.
That really is crazy to hear. For the first time in years, serious players didn't have anything to do. Thankfully, there might be just as much to do now in the end game as there was before.
Additionally, the cap raise took attention away from the expansion proper , literally sucked the air out of the room. You failed to mention 75 content of wings because it was immediately made pointless by level cap increase.
@@vicenarian340 meeble burrows was some of the final 75 cap content that had an incredibly short life span. You mentioned wrath of the lich king having an effect on FFXI, it goes deeper. The first major 3d fantasy MMO was EverQuest. FFXI was HEAVILY influenced and inspired by that game. In the process of making FFXI they already softened a ton of the harder edges of MMO design. Unfortunately, wow would come out in the cop era and completely wreck the player base. So FFXI though it was an amazing game, always was in the shadow of that more financially successful game.
That's really fascinating! Back 2 years ago when started looking into FFXI, everyone trashed the expansion. FFXIMath, another FFXI TH-camr put WotG close to bottom tier. Twinfinite ranked it as the worst FF expansion (this included worse than all the FFXIV expansions). There have also been a half dozen forum rankings putting this expansion on the bottom. It's awesome that this negativity isn't as palpable to everyone though! I'm really happy to hear that you did not have the same experience as mine.
@@vicenarian340 I think people that add Abby to WoTG and they are different things. They came out in the midst of each other but they are not the same.
From a new player's perspective, Abyssea seemed like such a strange time. The people I've talked to who never quit during the abyssea era say that it was one of the best additions to the game. Meanwhile, many others wound up quitting due to abyssea. Thanks for sharing!
@@vicenarian340 Anytime! It's like you mentioned in the video; the more dedicated players saw it as a slap in the face to their years of achievements, and the players who weren't able to dedicate as much time saw it as an opportunity to finally experience what they couldn't before.
WotG had an epilogue quest and final boss? I don't remember if I beat that, was it the crystal dragon that you needed 24 people for? My take is, Abyssea was a needed shakeup. Before, you had a very strict meta that more than half the jobs many Linkshells would. not. allow. in endgame content. PLD couldn't join parties to farm merit points because their DPS compared to say, WAR was sub par. XI had horrid job balance that they never really did much to address. SAM was a very favored job, until content became so hard RNG became meta with some SAM with a relic bow hanging on. Oh, and if you didn't dual-box/no-life a relic/empyrian/mythic you might as well unsub because once again, nerd gatekeepers won't let you do content without them. "Easy" is subjective when people practically lived in that game. Got to the point where despite having well geared non-meta jobs I was considered useless, also didn't have the time to grind relics anymore which hurt. Adoulin came out and it was more of the same grind with lack of help from the playerbase I quietly ducked out and never looked back. It's for the best, XIV became such a better and more accessible game over time.
The boss you're thinking about is provenance watcher. The final boss of the epilogue quest are the two dark being creatures in the walk of echoes. I've heard many say what you mentioned about Abyssea. While I can't chime in on how it impacted the game at the time, I can say that thanks to abyssea and the subsequent changes, players like me with limited time can enjoy this game's content. So I'm grateful for those changes.
I will admit, this is my LEAST favorite expansion. It's bloated, stretched thin, and needlessly complicated. It was ambitious in its complexity and concept, but I can't help but feel like the story of "the old war" was best left untold. It was more interesting when the events of the war were a mystery, rather than trying and failing to fill in the gaps. The gameplay loops here were TERRIBLE, and this is coming from someone who only recently went back and solo'ed this expansion (I quit after ToAU). I started a fresh character and went back and played Zilart and CoP AFTER finishing Goddess, and it was so refreshing to go back to that classic storytelling. I just could not get onboard with anything Goddess was trying to do, it felt completely hollow to me.
Thanks for the comment! There are a couple follow-up questions I would like to hear your thoughts on. 1. What aspects of the expansion did you feel were bloat, and which areas did you feel were stretched thin? 2. When you talk about how bad the gameplay loops are, are you referring to the narrative gameplay loop (while playing the story) or the gameplay loop of the side content (battle content, rec. content, etc)? Thanks in advance!
You're among the players that I based the Wow section on then. I don't blame you either! It's difficult to know what SE was thinking at the time, and I also have plenty of family who made the same jump.
I only agree for the Remake version of him, lol. The 1997 version was better in his presentation than his actuality, so your enjoyment of him will heavily depend on how much you know about him going into the OG FF7.
I honestly blame WoW for making MMO's more single-player. We lost so many players when WoW was released. WoTG was a great expansion and Abyssea was just as fun, but yes the experience leveling was bad for many didn't have the time to lv so they lved by getting powered leveled, but then again people these days don't have enough time as we get older the responsibilities grew things had to change for us players.
I agree on the WoW point, which is why it confused me when no one in the FFXI talked about WoW's potential impact on the game in the Abyssea era. Thanks for the feedback!
I wasn't playing at that time so I hesitate to voice my opinion. However, I do think that the section on why the game changed might be my personal perspective on the topic. Thanks for the feedback!
@@vicenarian340 yeah definitely a personal thing, alit of is at the time felt that the expansion changed the game too drastically and removed that grind we all played through! Though I don’t think I’d ever want to do that grind again
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I apologize about the fried audio. I don't have access to the same recording set-up that I had for the last few reviews.
Bro, your writing and story-telling is phenomenal. You deserve way more followers here!
I spent about a dozen hours on each of the scripts for the retrospectives, trying to make them as enjoyable to listen to as possible. Your comment makes me happy I spent that much time tweaking them. Thank you so much for the feedback!
@@vicenarian340 I've seen all of your reviews at least twice just because of the way you present the content. Really great work!
What I enjoyed about WoTG is that it gave me far more insight into the characters you meet in the present and how things got to the way they are now.
You're exactly right, this is exactly why I loved Bastok's path. But all of the paths let you learn about so many familiar characters though.
Thanks for your feedback on these videos. It's always great to hear from a veteran player!
@@vicenarian340 Yep, my favorite was Windurst but honestly Bastok with everyone you meet blows my mind like how almost dark it truly gets. If new players think Bastok in the present is dark wait till you hit the past lol its a whole other level
Prior to Wings of the Goddess, I had spent years in the ruins of Garlaige Citadel and the Crawlers' Nest. When I got to visit these places in Wings of the Goddess (20 years in the past), and seeing them when they were full of life, it was very humbling.
Absolutely marvelous review. As a lifelong FF fan who has always ignored XI until mid 2023, and who has since gradually found it to be my favorite FF game of all time, everything about this review connected with me. The conclusion at the end was stunning and brought a few tears to my eyes. Thank you for this.
Edit: Would also like to add that I did in fact find WotG to be some of the best content the game had to offer, especially in story and music.
I'm glad to hear this from a fellow new player, and I'm glad you enjoyed!
thank you for playing!
One note--DNC changed the meta really, really heavily in terms of jobs. It gave melees a no-compromise version of healing, sneak/invisible, etc.
Thanks for the clarification!
@@vicenarian340 np! Great video and sums up a lot of my feelings on the xpac. I think it's probably my favorite, and was at the time, but it's a weird little mini Era of its own!
People at the time didn't really understand Dnc as a job.
@@PoliceTelephoneBoxyeah really misunderstood at first. My HNMLS had a dancer main who would tank (dnc/nin) occasionally for notorious monsters we could take down with small groups of 6. I believe it was the first time we had a healing job or subjob that wasn't mage stat dependent for it's heals.
Another important note, dual wield jobs in this game has the advantage of equipping two different weapons with different effects or stats. Dual wield weapons were not a single weapon and used the sun weapon slot.
@@PoliceTelephoneBox Pup they didn't understand at all. I was a 75 pup and people even in merit parties didn't understand I could cure V with my automation and use flash etc by changing attachments
You are the 🐐
Still my favourite expansion. Windy story is an amazing continuation and the main storyline is in my eyes the best FFXI has to offer.
I couldn't agree more. The Windust story is amazing for those who've finished the Rank 10 story too.
One thing to note about the mass exodus for Wings of the Goddess, was at the end of January of 2009, a mass of endgame players across all servers were permanently banned due to the "Salvage Dupe" exploit that was kept from SE for several months. I was an officer of a budding HNM LS and the bans happened when I was without power for 2 weeks due to a blizzard collapsing the grid. When I finally logged in, I was met with a dead pearl and a great purge of many of the most prominent endgame players of my server. It was a wild time.
Fantastic video. I'm working on a retrospective video of Final Fantasy XI (all expansions) and your channel came across my feed. I love the work you've done in your vids and am going to give you a shoutout in my video when it's done. Your thesis at the end was excellent, and for my money, Wings is the best Final Fantasy XI expansion.
Thank you so much! I'm surprised seeing you here, I just found your channel the other day. I appreciate the feedback, and I look forward to seeing your video on FFXI. Not nearly enough content is made for this game.
@@vicenarian340 I fully agree. One thing I loved about doing my Final Fantasy Ranking videos ( not sure if you've seen those) was giving FFXI a chance to fully shine alongside the other main series entries, but after doing those vids I realized there really wasn't anything on TH-cam going over all of XI's expansions. Of course right after I finish the script for my video I find your channel, but luckily it looks like we are taking different enough approaches in our videos where they will cover enough different ground. Definitely looking forward to more from you. I subbed and hit like on basically every video. You're doing the Resonant Arc boys proud. Keep up the good work and maybe we'll do a collab podcast or chat sometime about the perspective of two new players (I beat XI in 2022) approaching the game's content.
The duality of WotG's music was also you either heard that zone's music or you heard campaign music.
I can still hear the campaign music, even now while I'm not playing the game.
This was a fantastic, thoughtful review, and a wonderful watch from beginning to end!
Thank you, I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
@@vicenarian340 Will you be moving on to Seekers of Adoulin or perhaps making a pit stop to cover Abyssea?
@@PaulMonroe I'll be making a pit stop, but not to abyssea lol. I'm also going to do reviews for SoA and RoV too. So I've still got a bit of FFXI content ahead of me
man what a treat, thanks for your hard work, the videos are amazing
Thank you, I really appreciate the feedback!
Actually, you can do all three of the nations' war questlines at the same time, without having to change factions; one time when I was doing Windurst's quests, I accidentally started Bastok's questline when I zoned into the latter.
Thanks for the catch! I'll put some corrections on the description soon.
I've been getting these reviews in my recommended recently, and they've convinced me to eventually try out XI. I was already sorta on the edge because I loved XIV, but these sorta made me realize how much I think I would enjoy XI as well-- not in spite of the differences from XIV but because of the differences (XIV has been getting stale for me as of late). I've been too busy to dedicate too much time to an mmo recently, but once everything clears up I'm definitely planning on trying it out.
That's awesome! I will warn you, the learning curve for this game is brutal. The menus are unintuitive, the quest and mission structure feels clunky, and there are so many systems in the game to acclimate to in order to save yourself time.
But if you get past those first few hours and stick with it, you'll be treated with all the incredible things I've mentioned in the reviews so far.
@@vicenarian340 I’m fine with large learning curves when starting an MMO. It’s part of the fun, even. I love the feeling of starting a new game and being completely overwhelmed with all the stuff I have to learn, and that phase of playing a game always gives me the fondest memories of the games.
And even though it might get tedious, the prospect of exploring a brand new (to me) final fantasy is far too great for me to pass up on. I’ll only ever get that chance once a decade at the rate that FF games are coming out nowadays (with the exception of XIV expansions, which while I do enjoy, they just don’t feel nearly as fun as when I first start a FF). So I think I’ll be fine starting out.
If you ever need help my character is Iehudiel on Asura server.
Here’s (and this is my opinion) what you need to answer in order to know whether or not you should play XI:
1-Do you cherish the gameplay loop and worlds/lore of Final Fantasy I-XII? Not just enjoy, not just like some/hate some, possibly not just even love.
2-Are you willing to put in 300 hours just to enjoy a fresh FF story/world, and possibly 2000+ hours if you want to continue doing battle content?
If the answers to both of these questions are “Yes”, you’re in for the treat of your life. I’m not an MMO person, and had to be convinced to play this, but once I did, I don’t want to stop playing it.
there's a new year old private server called HorizonXI that is currently in the era of the first two expansions with the third one approaching soon. It blows the other private servers out of the water in terms of dev team size and functional content as well as population.
it's a free way to try XI in the good-ol-days era.@@riggedgame1189
Bro is Goated for this series
Thank you for watching the videos!
For Real! Fuccing flood of emotions!
Stop trying to make "gOaTeD" a thing
I loved wings. I did it as it was being released so 3 years to finish. I was always excited when a new update hit thus allowed me to continue the missions. I would updated log on and first thing I did was missions. 75 cap most of the missions were easy with basic party set up but there were times it was hard to get people for a mission unless you did them instantly. when ACP came out I did that first instead of wings. it took me few months to find a group to do latest wings fights that update -.-
That's amazing to hear. I have only talked to a few people who enjoyed the expansion in its own era, and your perspectives on the game are always fascinating. Thanks for the comment!
Agree with what you said about the Soundtrack. ✔️
I'm glad I'm not the only one!
It’s far less superior though
You nailed it. I was a hardcore FFXI player, co-founding the Excellence LS with Stanislav, who later went on to create Discord. WoW has always been the reason for the mass exodus. It killed all other MMO's. FFXI was dragging, and everyone had a friend that played WoW. Entire LS's were transferring to WoW. Even Blue Gartr. This was what finally got me off of FFXI and I was playing from day 1 NA release
I'm glad to hear that you agree. When I wrote the script, I hadn't heard any classic players attributing FFXI's fall off to WoW, but the same thing was happening everywhere too. So I gambled with that section haha. It's crazy to hear that entire link shells were moving over too.
Wow didn't kill FF pretty much level cap increase did. I played from a few months after NA release till the first Abyssea release and it was a shit show. Really felt like all it was at the time was a level cap increase with a repainted old zone it wasn't till hit 99 it started to come together a little again and made it manageable. I remember leveling from 75>80/85 forget what the first level cap raise was to after 75 and everyone just being like okay now what.
I agree with everything you said about this expansion. I love the story and ending
Thank you for the feedback, it's good to see another WotG fan!
Great Video! The Crystal War was the opening cinematic for FFXI so it was really promising to get to actually play it in WOTG. As someone who played this in realtime, You could see where the drop off was from when WOTG came out and the transition of the devs over to XIV was happening. Content to complete WOTG was so slow that people lost interest. If the story wasn't dragged for so long it probably would have been enjoyed more, as I hope it is for someone like you who got to play it right through in its entirety.
There was also the Summoner debacle where new summons were promised but the dev team was having such a hard time adapting them to the game that they just weren't exciting anymore by the time they were added. The music, as with all of the expansions is amazing and memorable. I still feel they missed the opportunity to do a helms deep like battle of a certain city that players really wanted, and they could have done a time compression transition from XI to the XIV world as Lilith was pretty on par with being XI's version of Ultimecia. I really thought for a moment it was going to go in that direction and that your XI character would get to be in Eorzea 🤣
Thanks for this write-up! It really saddens me to hear how the expansion was handled in its time.
I was so pumped when it was announced and came out. But it felt forced. Like it wasn't created with love and care like the rest of the game. So much potential too. It could have been a whole new game.
I played WoTG and playing through my second character just for the sake of nostalgia. For me was one of the best stories. I remember playing all the nations, and that was a good decision, since it gave me a different perspective of the events that occurred during the crystal war
Finding out this was possible after I beat the expansion, I wish I would have done the same thing!
I want to mention at this point I had all jobs 75 thanks to the increased EXP rate and efficiency that ToAU brought us. I don't consider Abyssea or Voidwatch apart of, or anything to do with, Wings of the Goddess. They were simply just add-ons after the fact. WoTG was a great story. Absolutely loved it. The content however didn't add anything worth repeating. There was zero end game content added worth doing, since they didn't add any armor or items worth getting. It felt more like a story to end the game completely. If you were SMN it was cool having Caitsith but not really useful or used at the time. Dancer was a huge deal because it removed the exclusivity of soloing content from only being RDM and NIN. Now, most DD jobs could sub dancer and solo the same content as RDM or NIN could. But it was balanced in a way that didn't allow for much extra content to be solo'd which was good. SCH was broken because it now could be overall a better healer than WHM with having access to enough white magic while having ways to get back great amounts of MP, which WHM did not have access to. It could also easily replace a BLM in a group and have more overall sustained DPS thanks to the MP regain it had access to. SCH was simply too good at being a WHM and a BLM, but not both roles at once. It was later balanced when the level cap increased, and even more so with AF armors getting the 119 treatment. Mostly because WHM and BLM just became that much better. Not that SCH was nerfed. Don't get me started on how GEO destroys the difficulty of the current era.
The game didn't really add items and armor worth your time until Abyssea released. Some people say that Abyssea destroyed the game. Actually, after Vision of Abyssea it was very rough. I would say the game was at its worst it ever was when the level cap went to 80 and Vision released. This is for many reasons which I could go on forever about, but what many many people missed out on was the conclusion of Abyssea. Heroes Of Abyssea was one of the best things that ever happened to the game and endgame up to that point. It addressed all the complaints people were having at the time. Once level 90 ALL the end game content could now be done with 1 party of 6 players. Players were wanting this implemented for YEARS. There was a shift from the difficulty it was to gather the 18 players at the same time for a full alliance >>>>>>> towards gathering 5 of your closest friends to accomplish the same things. That's what people wanted at the time, and that's what they delivered perfectly. There was all new Empyrean armor to obtain, which was great armor, but it didn't make all the old content obsolete. Obtaining said armor was a fantastic system. They added Ultimate weapons with slightly lesser versions, which had more realistic achievement timelines. If you were the min/maxer equip swapper (most people do equip swaps in this game), there was still content from every expansion that had relevant items and armor. ZM Sky gods still had armor you needed, but now they could be done by 6 talented players. CoP Limbus still had armor you needed, but now it could be done by 6 talented players. ToAU content still had items to acquire by.... 6 players. WoTG never had items to acquire, lol. Yes, at 90 cap the large 18 player raid type content was dead, but the game was exactly what so many players were asking for and so many people sadly missed out because of the horrible launch that Vision was. In conclusion. 90 cap era was an amazing thing to be a part of and IMO is only rivalled by what we have today, and the original 75 cap era. I think those 3 times are the best times the game ever experienced. Fortunately for everyone, we are in one of those 3 eras. So get on and play.
I appreciate this write up and all of your other comments too! It is fascinating to read feedback from someone with your amount of experience with the game.
Wow this almost describes the Private server fanbase perfectly.
If that's the case, it was completely accidental haha.
Thanks for these awesome videos! The intro song..... brought back soooo many memories.. thank you!~
It's one of my favorite pieces on the OST. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I think the thing here is while people complain about WotG, most people are upset that small group leveling was destroyed around this time, and they dont know how to verbalize it and attack the content. A lot of people really enjoyed that game play loop and it was central to the games feel.
Bravo, wonderful. This is the type of recollection videos FFXI Deserves.
Thank you. I've always thought that there was a shortage of video essay content for FFXI, despite every other FF entry (including the FFXIV expansions) having plenty of video essays. I got tired of complaining though, so I decided to make some myself lol.
omg i was NOT prepared for that revelation at the end of the video.. but i think you hit the nail on the head. FFXI is my fave FF, but i also mod the finalfantasy reddit and the comments about the game you get there are very disheartening.. sigh.
also love that you went in depth into the 4 paradoxes you mentioned about this expansion. good analysis of the 3 nation questlines - i think they were really going for different storytelling approaches for all 3. windy was flashy and cool, bastok was political and full of suspense, and sandy's had youthful innocence and camaraderie - which ultimately became my fave because of that emotional pull.
thanks for featuring my fave music track in FFXI, as well as my charts and my reddit comment :p i'm really loving your perspectives and knowing that it isnt just nostalgia/stockholm syndrome that has led me and many others to love FFXI as much as we do. i'm hopeful that more will get to try and enjoy this game too after watching videos like this
No need to thank me, you've been a huge part of these videos. The NM charts were a huge help to me too while I was trying to get into each one. I saw that you're doing your own essay, and I can't wait!
By the way, which is your favorite music track?
@@vicenarian340 I’m quite surprised they’re still useful today tbh haha but it’s a happy thing to know. as for my fave music track, it’s flowers on the battlefield 💐
when you say "it most certainly" i know you're about to drop the truest hottest takes known to man
My experience with CoP was a huge epic storyline and punishing NM that required the whole linkshell to help on the strategy. My WotG experience mostly was attacking walls to get points in the war, and EVERY zone connection being locked. It's easy to see why memory doesn't hold the expansion well.
You have me excited to work on this story content though!
13:07 ive never seen what others see in ff7 and the whole cloud vs sephiroth thing... mainly cause the comp of ff7 came out before i finished 7 (2010) and i only saw sephiroth as the embarrassing "Marketing boy" hes become. he'll never be a memory cause they keep shoehorning him in
I quit around the time WotG was announced. I still remember the song of the trailer (which you played in the review), as well as all the speculations around Scholar and Dancer. The hype was insane as ToAU had advanced the game so much in the right direction back then. I ended up not finishing ToAU or going through this. So these reviews are a great way for me to learn a bit about what I missed out on.
Looking forward to your next review!
Thank you! The next one will likely be another pit stop before heading to SoA. I hope you enjoy it by the time it comes out!
Splitting people to three paths randomly killed statics. The nations' specific missions are not soloable and forced people to play with strangers.
But SCH and DNC are great jobs. They're great as both main jobs and sub jobs. NIN/DNC was fun to play solo.
Thanks for the feedback! This makes perfect sense though. I take it, you're a veteran player?
@@vicenarian340 I played since NA release in Nov 2003 until about May 2010. Many of my friends quit during Wings of the Goddess and I never beat the story at that time.
I returned to the game around 2012 but I couldnt recover my old account so I created a completely new account and replayed all the expansions until I beat Rhapsodies in 2015. It was then I stopped playing FFXI and started FFXIV but I still log in to FFXI when theres a free login campaign
Awesome video. I also only came across WotG's story after it was all finished. Dethroned Chrono Trigger for my fave SE time travel story for me personally. But I also had heard how awful the patch cadence was for this all to release way back when.
As you mentioned, it was really cool to see the Nation mission NPCs earning their scars in the war.
My first storyline in WotG was Sandoria, the story broke me when ut didnt pull its punches lol especially since it ties into things like the DRG AF questline from RotZ and the like. Definitely the exception to my aversion to child characters in RPG stories. Tough needle to thread.
Heck, I still need to go back and finish Bastok and Windurst's Shadowreign Era missions though. But whenever I get around to it Ill be having a blast with my bros Zeid and Robel Akbel.
The SCH Questline in particular really wowed me when I played through it. Nor can I forget the first time entering the Walk of Echoes. Theres some interesting lore in a cutscene there if you ever make a "Replica" Empyrean Weapon. The -1 version that can unlock the Empy WS for general use (like Mythic WS can be unlocked without having the genuine weapon built). But I enjoy any chance to learn about Dynamis as a concept.
I think what I enjoyed the most was how WotG recontextualizes XIs overall story and builds upon all the prior expansions despite people often saying after CoP the story isnt as cohesive which is true during ToAU (I believe its a rather understated that thread connects CoP and ToAU) but then WotG's storyline is like the ither shoe that drops, building on what ToAU added the world building.
Thank you again for this retrospective of the expansion that brought us the irreplaceable Time Traveling Duo Future Fabulous 🤩
I look forward to your future uploads. Hope this finds you and yours doing well.
Edit: Oh and thank you so much for including footage of Lilisette going ham on those Orcs for B roll. It was so refreshing to see a young lady of the world be depicted as strong and capable, while also having her moments of relatability in the quieter moments. Can really tell they built off of Aphmau as far as creating relatable Expansion partners. I rank Lilisette pretty highly as far as XI expansion buddies go. They're all great though, and show how the writing just kept improving as the years went on. Anyways, sorry for the long ass comment lmao.
Thank you for the write up! I do love the way this expansion integrations so much out-of-game lore back then. I'm also a big fan of Lilisette's arc. I'm glad you enjoyed!
I just finished WotG last night, and its easily my favorite expansion thus far. Looking forward to Seekers of Adoulin and beyond.
@@friedmattato2158 That's great to hear! A lot of people prefer SoA, but it's a very different story from anything before. Let me know what you think after finishing it if you don't mind!
Your videos on this games are awesome man. You strangely make me feel nostalgic about a game I never played !
The more you post, the more I see myself experiencing the game in chronological order just like you and not with ROV at the begining. I just wait for the game to be in sale, I’ll have plenty of time to tackle that project.
Just a question about that : Did you make research on « how not to start the starting cutscenes of an expansion too early ? » or « NPC not to talk to now because it’ s a trust I haven’t met in the main story yet » Is it realistic to avoid those kind of things or am I doomed ?
(Sorry if my english is not great)
You can't avoid starting expansions early. But what you can do is, if you're going to play an expansion that you have already started, you can rewatch the opening cutscenes. The only expansion where this happened to me was Chains of Promathia though. So, you'll only have to do it once.
I'll offer the same quick warning. This game is hard to start. It has so many systems that you have to learn (fast travel, currency accumulation, etc) that it is easy for new players to give up.
But if you stick with it, and you learn how to use the guides (BG wiki and FFXIclopedia), you'll get to experience all the great things I've been talking about.
Thank you so much for the comments, and good luck when you decide to start the game!
Binged all your videos, gonna grab some food and have fun with your new review. keep up the amazing work.
Also, any idea how you're gonna continue once you're done with ff11 expansions?
I'm really glad to hear that! I don't plan on posting after the FFXI reviews to be honest. I may though if I find a topic I want to cover. Any suggestions?
@@vicenarian340 I’m a FFXIV player and I just discovered your channel and even if I’ve never played FFXI watching your videos has been very fun and interesting. Would you consider doing a similar series for FFXIV expansions once you’ve finished your FFXI series?
@@vicenarian340 With the way you write your script, your editing and simply the way you talk, i would watch anything you'd decide to do.
Can't really suggest anything in specific. As long as you're passionate about it ig?
I did wings of the goddess years after it came out but it was absolutely the best of them ALL!
I spammed through most the others but actually engaged in this wonderful story
Great videos! I hope you have time to tackle all the DLC’s as well.
I don't think I'll be able to. I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm trying to finish all the reviews before a schedule shift in my work. I currently have three more planned, and I'm not sure I'll be able to do a fourth for the add-ons. I apologize!
Your best review yet. Totally new perspective on this expansion. And I already had it as my favorite! A similarity we share as new players. I am baffled it took 3 years to release. I didn't know this and to be honest I can't blame any OG player who would be angry with that. MMOs adding content over expansion life cycles is obviously normal but this seems like an insane extreme. I am inclined to agree with your final takeaway because in my own reading and research I saw so many veteran players mention the highs of the 75 ToA era or CoP. Those were the best endgame supposedly. And this one is when we started getting a lot of the QoL to ease new players just wanting the story. That new/old player spit really does feel like one of many parallels with the overall FF fanbase. I will say music wise it was amazing but zone wise it was a downgrade from ToA for obvious time travel reasons. Not that seeing places and people in the past wasn't awesome in it's own right. I need to sit down and watch the other city stories. I knew they were good but you talked very highly of them. Windurst was my pick since I started there and I loved Lehko as much as any of the main characters throughout the expansions. I struggle between Prishe and Lilisette for my favorite character in the whole game. I'm interested to hear you thoughts, if any, on the fact there's always a heroine every expansion. Idk what the player base demographic was. I'm not going to assume primarily male. But it seems like a deliberate choice. An interesting one regardless. Beyond the killer story and music, something I must mention that you didn't is the improved cutscene animation quality. It was an instantly noticeable improvement. It didn't really fit into your video thesis so I see why you didn't mention it. They had to have upgraded to mocap right?Characters are so expressive and move in ways we've never seen in prior expansions. Everyone from our leads, to the city mission specific characters, to the side characters are made even more memorable because of this. It's the icing on the cake for me. My biggest personal gripe with this expansion is how many times I had to travel back to the back of Grauberg (S) to interact with that damn Veridical Conflux 😂
The trek back to Grauberg killed me too haha. I didn't want to tackle voidwatch until after the story, so I never gained access to any fast travel options faster than hoofing it through the entire zone.
You brought up a phenomenal point on the improved character animations too! Lady Lilith is a great example, they went through the process of modelling her wings in far more detail than any other wing model in the game. The Dancer job would not have been possible without this improved animation too.
As far as the heroine topic, according to general MMO stats, the player base was no doubt overwhelmingly male. Given this, it wouldn't surprise me if the female main character thing has some fanservice-esq element. I'm usually quite averse to fan service as I feel it is a cheap form of writing. If a writer doesn't know how to make a character interesting, they slap some fan service on them. In the case of FFXI, it didn't bother me though, because of how well written all of the heroines are. There aren't any traces of lazy writing that usually accompanies fan service heroines. I don't have anything at all against male main characters, but I also appreciated seeing how the writers of FFXI approached writing multiple female main characters while taking care to make each one elaborate and different from the others.
I really appreciate all of these comments. Thank you for taking the time to offer thoughtful feedback on all these videos, I know it wasn't a small task!
@@vicenarian340 your footage of Lilisette weaving though those orcs gah I love that scene. My jaw first dropped when I saw Lekho come riding in on a Chocobo for the save.
And yeah despite the constant stream of female heroines I never once rolled my eyes. And I've played a lot of single player jrpgs that make me want to beat my head against the wall with how they handle that sort of thing. That demographic doesn't surprise me but I know some MMOs are little more evenly split. Little doubt as to the reason behind the decision in XI then but they were all handled well. I believe any player would have little trouble making a strong connection with several of the girls.
No, thank you for the responses! It's all passion for discussing games. And I don't get to discuss XI often because well not many FF fans play it. Especially completely new players who don't give up part way through. Looking forward to the last few. Idk if you'll cover the Voracious Resurgence. I finished RoV before it was done. I'm kind of interested to go back for it but idk what the gear requirements will be so I'm hesitant for fear of a big time sink before I can do the story.
Also not that I have expectations for you to play XIV let alone make videos for it. Don't want you creating because it's expected and not because you want to. I was just curious if you'll play XIV because iirc you mentioned you hadn't played it either yet.
@@sonicbacon123 Back when I started FFXI, I finished the Shadow Lord arc, and switched to FFXIV. I got bogged down in ARR and just came back to FFXI to play through its expansions. So I haven't really played much of FFXIV.
Everyone says that the story is great, but I can't say given my lack of experience with experience with FFXIV. Since you've played both, how does the story of FFXIV (up till Dawntrail) compare to FFXI (up til RoV)?
@@vicenarian340 they're very different experiences. After the slower ARR with it's larger amount of tedious fetch questing it becomes very focused on telling it's story. It feels like a party based FF game. A core group you adventure with and come back to even when the larger cast expands. While which members of the group you spend time with and the mood, themes and backdrops change with each expansion, you're always coming back to them. Everytime I come back for a patch update story or new expansion I'm excited to see any of them again. Like family I haven't seen since the last holiday. Almost TV show like with how everytime I come back to it I'm excited to sit down and just listen, watch and read what happens next. Regardless of whether the gameplay bits are exciting or dull in between. Plus it's very clearly a power Fantasy. You're the guy. The warrior of light. You're at the center of a lot of stories.
Meanwhile XI, in many ways you view a lot of stories from the side. Sure you take down some major threats. But often I feel like I'm making friends with the main characters. Also despite having a release order it let's you tackle almost all the stories in any order you want. Because they all have their own casts. I think the XI heroines are just as strong characters as the Scions in XIV. You're just getting multiple singular character focus as opposed to recurring focus on a set of characters. And both are really only possible in games of this size. What FF casts let's you journey with them for 10 years straight or gives you so many journeys to go on with so many different characters?
Of course FFXIV has the presentation advantages I mentioned over XI (textbox UI and voice acting) that makes it more accessible. But both games have stories that made me cry. I think both have stories worth experiencing. Which I personally think means more often than not, what causes a player to quit is whether they find enjoyment/can tolerate the gameplay. Because XI is so open ended and guide reliant it can be exhilarating for some and too much for others. Whereas XIV can be too slow early on with the options available to you or too samey with the horizontal progression. But now I'm opening a completely different can of worms haha
This expansion was unfortunately where I stopped. Personally I enjoyed many moments in this expansion, but I had to move on as the story didn't conclude in time for me, as you opened up with in the beginning of this video. I thank you for this primer into what followed and where we left.
Loved another episode of this series! got me to resub again XD
That's awesome, welcome back! Are you replaying some story or picking up an old character?
@@vicenarian340 new character. my old toon had every job 99 and all the story done
Finally a WotG perspective. Gotta say I agree to majority of points u brought here & still is my most fave expansions. btw, just like base game, u can actually experience all 3 nation stories, albeit u can only switch nations once main WotG finished since the one u started kinda stuck with u due to how it related to main WotG story progression, or at least that's what I experience playing back on 2012. & yea, all 3 nation stories are great, even the less fave which is same as yours, Bastok, still does delivers amazing story on its own right. iirc, was starting mine with Bastok till WotG finishes, then moves to Windy, then saving Sandy last, was thinking how crappy their story on their base game, only to got blown by how amazing its stories & goosebumps I got when reaching its finale. Overall, it felt like experience things that gradually got way better, starting from Bastok stories, then Windy, & Sandy last. I am however currently back with Windy as my current nation since it's still my fave nation & sorta easier to navigate with important NPCs than other nations though.
Honestly, when I started WotG, I did get annoyed on its early progression, & how that main theme kinda annoying to listen. But as I reached this expansion conclusion, found it so deep, even than main theme playing on start menu suddenly transformed into a very melancholy-touching theme that brings my tears out. It is really mind-boggling, & you 2nd point kinda really spot on with those feelings I experienced. :D
I'm really glad to hear that some of the points resonated with you. This is definitely my favorite expansion, and I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
I played XI from NA release until a few months after CoP release. A few years ago I returned with a couple of friends just for fun. I didn't keep in touch with the game so was unaware of the reputation this expac had until this video actually. WotG story was an absolute trip for me. Typically one of the worst things a story can do is repeat the same story beat but WotG uses the same beat three times in some what different ways and it had me crying each time.
LOVE this video. Wings of the Goddess was my favorite story playing in 2022. I had no idea it was so controversial! I also had no idea it had such a rough roll out. Super interesting learning all this.
I mained SAM due to how I wrote my character, but I FELL for Lilisette. And that made me want to sub DNC. Having a heal and sneak/invisible on hand was so helpful. I SAM/DNC the rest of the game. It made me want to try DNC in 14. (I just started Stormblood this week and I'm STILL bummed this game doesn't have a Sub-Job system. I miss that so much from 11)
I did the Windust story in Wings and really enjoyed it. I streamed Wings a couple times, and even with only two streams, my chat fell in love with both Lilisette and Lilith. I almost cried at the ending. UHG still gets to me.
Sorry for the late comment. I meant to say all this when the vid came out but i took to long and so i just rewatched it to remember what I was going to say lol
No need to apologize, and I'm glad you enjoyed! It's good to hear from you again, I remembered you saying that this was your favorite expansion, so I'm glad to hear your thoughts on the video.
I haven't gotten too far in FFXIV, how would you say it's compared to FFXI so far?
@@vicenarian340 Its just night and day in terms of design philosophy. I know XI has made a lot of changes to make it more solo friendly, but you can still see its DNA was based around community play. Everything in XI was designed to encourage discourse and cooperation.
And FFXIV certainly does not exclude the possibility for discourse and cooperation but its so incredibly solo friendly. I'm really having such a great time because of that fact. I play with friends pretty often and a couple veteran players as basically taking me in as a pet ( joke that I'm not a Sprout, I'm a house plant). But I don't have to coordinate my playtime with others. I can log in whenever I want and make progress in the MSQ or even knock a raid out with random people.
I can see why most of the people I ran into 11 were veterans who don't like 14 (Or new players coming from 14 in search of something new). The games are so different there is no way 14 could replace 11 for everyone.
I'm also just really glad I played 11 first. 11 was my first MMO and I knew to go in with patients due to its age. I think I'd have a hard time going back now that 14 has spoiled me with so many QOL advancements.
(I will say I like the simplicity of 11's Style Lock over the convoluted Glamours of 14. That took some getting used to)
But when playing 14 I'm the annoying one in Voice Chat telling my party every monster and reference from 11 we pass by lol
@@yeagercomics That's really fascinating, and I have no doubt, I'll be the one who doesn't shut up about FFXI references too when I make it further in the game haha.
Are you excited for the Echoes of Vana'diel alliance?
@@vicenarian340 I am! I’m also hoping the bring back the Rhapsodies of the Maiden event soon too. It was apparently a crossover that saw Iroha appear in Eorzia to ask players to return to Vana’diel back when RoV first launched. They’ve run it a few times since and I really want to play it for myself.
thanks so much for covering all of the expansions of XI, brings back memories of when Voidwatch first appeared, I actually went farming for all the level 95-99 REMA upgrades materials every sunday, and made a lot of gil goin with PUGs, made some friends outside the linkshell and also managed to make enough cash to finish a relic weapon, so yeah!
finally, do you plan on covering or talking about ambuscade? this content as well is bothj something I consider a quality of life and at the same time, it takes away much of the grind of making REMAs, but its pretty grindy and can get boring, even when they change the enemies you fight every month
I will talk about Ambuscade when I hit the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel review. It's a phenomenal piece of content that I look forward to covering too.
I always love hearing WotG - post Abyssea era stories in particular. It seems like they vary widely compared to any other era. Thanks for sharing!
I don't know what people were thinking, but I had so much fun with wings of the goddess back then. I was doing campaign non stop. And although abyssea's rapid growth was problematic, but if you had absolutely endgame LS to play with, it was so much fun. The pacing of the story was definitely super slow though.
I've heard plenty of people say that too. I was too young to play FFXI at that time, so I hesitate to paint this era in either a positive light or a negative light.
As a couple others pointed out, DNC and SCH flipped the meta and while this xpac may not have been ideal, the utility those two jobs brought to the game was immensely significant. DNC giving melee self heals and utiliy and a legit alternative to /NIN, and SCH being a legit subjob and full job alternative for dedicated BLM & WHM players. In wake of how exciting the ToAU jobs were, DNC and SCH really motivated people to dust off those old jobs and get excited to play an older class again.
Sadly i missed WotG, but again with your broader statement. As much as i love ff8-9, XI is still my favorite FF of all time.
I'm glad to hear this coming from another FF fan. You should come back and finish up the story, It's really incredible.
WoTG today is the best expansion in FFXI. It is so interesting that it took so long for the expansion to be appreciated. Perhaps that was its masterful design given what this expansion is about time travel.
I doubt this was intentional, however, the parallel is really interesting!
After watching all your videos about XI makes me want to give it a try. But, unfortunately, I don't own a PC (always been a console girl 😅), so I'll just have to enjoy it 2nd hand through videos like yours.
That's perfectly understandable. I'm glad to share what I can of the FFXI experience to those without PCs, so welcome to the channel!
Does anyone know of any sheet music available for wings of the goddess.
Wings of the Goddess is my absolute favorite expansion. But I didn't play until a few years ago, lol. Fantastic story. Windurst was the best.
This expansion was one I wanted to desperately play both on live and private servers. PSs haven't have this content enabled and the content was dead when I first started playing live in 2010. It really sucked that I never experienced it. They never made played older content intuitive and it clearly wasn't rewarding when all my guildies told me to skip it, rush max level, and join them in the endgame.
=/
As someone whose a newer palyer too and just started rise of the zilart ive been loving these videos seeing what i have to look forward to and having something to listen to while leveling or questing would love to hear what windower plugins you use especially for the battle log cause mine is such a mess lol
I'm really glad to hear that you're jumping in! How are you liking it so far? And is there anything I could help you with?
I'll have to get back to you on the plug-ins I use. I decided on the plug-ins I wanted pretty early on and forget what their names were lol. Feel free to ask again if I forget to get back to you on this.
@@vicenarian340 been loving it I got through almost all the way through the base game about a year ago and got burnt out when I had to go get the 3 crests for the 65 level cap quests and just started playing again a week ago and finished up the base game got to level 75 and am now in ROZ trying to figure out gearing for level 75 and am so lost in that lol
@@vicenarian340 but mostly just wanted to know the plugin for the battle log I liked how clean it was just showing the name and how much damage to who rather than a whole sentence for every single attack the flies by too fast to read most of the time
@@assassinofkeyblades I'll be sure to let you know as soon as I get back from a work trip. I'm glad to help you with any questions too, so don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.
@@vicenarian340 just trying to wrap my head around dynamis is a head ache maybe it'll be easier once I'm on the content but man it seems so complicated
Amazing video!
Only thing I don’t feel is true is that WotG had the first hard Story Mission Boss. Chains of Promathia was much more unforgiving and Alexander in Treasures of Aht Urghan was very tough. But that’s maybe because today everything is nerved and the old difficulty is gone.
You're right. These reviews are mostly for the modern builds of the expansions, so much of the difficulty earlier on isn't there any more. Thanks for the feedback!
If you are counting abyssea as part of WoTG, then you are forgetting three add-on scenarios that were added before them in a Crystalline Prohecy, A Shantotto ascension, and a Moogle kupo'deta. They came out during the lifespan of the expansion. beyond that I think the main difference between what counts as WoTG or not is mainly perspective. for those of use that played through them, the addon scenarios and battle content of abyssea were described as seperate additions from WoTG. which was why some of us got annoyed while we were waiting for the main story to come out, all these other non-related additions were being made .
I'm not really counting Abyssea as WotG. I'm only talking about it insofar as it's relevant to the modern outlook and gameplay loop of WotG.
I'd love to do a video on the 6 add-ons and their significance to the game. They deserve their own discourse in my opinion rather than simply being mentioned in an expansion review. I'm a bit pressed for time making these videos though. I'm trying to get through all the expansions before my work schedule changes lol.
I would say that Wings content is content you cannot access if you don't purchase the wings expansion. Same applies to the abyssea add ons. And yes, that means some content is both wings and abyssea if you cannot access it without both.
I spent hours reading through post discussions and posting on forums trying to get to some semblance of "community consensus" but I gave up and went with my own personal experience of the gameplay loop. I do find the topic interesting though, thanks for sharing!
@@vicenarian340 Oh, yes, I'm not saying your definitions are wrong. It isn't clear cut because the lifecycles overlapped, so there really just isn't a concrete answer, this is just my personal definition.
@@ztdk I think you're exactly right. This is what conclusion I had come to also.
I don't put WotG and Abyssea together. WotG is one of my favorite expansions. Campaign battles are awesome. Abyssea, however, is at the bottom of the list.
I don't group the two together either. The original plan for the video was to focused exclusively on WotG stuff. I always talk to veterans of FFXI before finishing the scripts though, and almost all that I talked to disliked WotG because of Abyssea. While I don't think it's fair to dislike an expansion for the shortcomings of another expansion, I decided to address this hate that WotG gets in this video.
Thanks for the feedback!
There is an issue with this review that almost makes it think you should redo this video. A LOT of what you talk about here is due to the Abyssea era stuff. And Abyssea =/= Wings of the Goddess. While yes it came out before WotG finished it was a different era of the game. To talk about your "included with the purchase of WotG" also doesn't hold water. As the Abyssea expansion was free to everyone. The only people who had to pay for it were the ones buying the Ultimate Edition.
There are also things you didn't discuss which are the really big things that this expansion effected. First is the 2 new jobs. While you mention them briefly, they were actually the biggest things that effected the game. Dancer was the best subjob for every melee job in the game and enabled so may people the chance to solo content which they couldn't do before, this includes getting solo exp. Sch also enabled people to be able to beat Absolute Virtue without having to spend the crazy 14hr fight it used to be with their insane Klustra stacking which was the first time in the game that SE actually released a hot patch to fix in such a quick turn around.
The other thing that came out were Fields of Valor. Between /dnc and Fields of Valor players could now log in for a few hours an solo progress their character which was something they never could before. This also enabled people to be able to travel around the world much easier with the ability to warp back to your home nation from any book.
Arguably the biggest thing this expansion added was the introduction of the Level Sync system. Players now didn't have to look for jobs withing 3-4 levels of their current job to be able to put together a group. They could group with anyone lvl 10+. This revolutionized the leveling experience.
You didn't touch on campaign battle either. This added an amazing way for people to travel around the world, get solo exp, the ability to afk skill up, and eventually gave some pretty good rewards.
Another reason this story got so much hate was because how the story loop progressed. You couldn't just grind out missions. You had to do a few missions, then stop to do some nation quests. Then do more missions, then quests.. All of which had JP midnight wait times, and were beholden to if the NPC was stuck in a campaign battle or not. It was the hardest thing to actually progress through at the time it came out.
Abyssea and Voidwatch was a separate thing that just happens to have come out before the final updates to the WotG storyline.
Thank you for this write up! I wanted to offer a few points to see what you think of them:
1. I read both on forums and on the FFXI history page of BG wiki that the Abyssea addons were $10 per addon. Is this accurate?
2. When writing the script for this video, I was faced with 2 options. 1) Discuss only WotG content. The problem with this is, out of the 4 years I've kept up with the game, and the 1.5 years I've been playing, I've encountered so much negativity surrounding WotG. This was no fault of its own, but rather because it just so happened to be the expansion when abyssea came out. So focusing on just WotG content would eliminate the scripts ability to address the negativity effectively. 2) Discuss abyssea and post abyssea eras extensively was my second option. This however, felt disingenuous because I would have spent more time talking about Abyssea than the expansion this review is dedicated to.
I ultimately went with an awkward middle ground, where I referenced abyssea insofar as it's impact on the game bled into player perspectives of WotG. But I did take several moments throughout the video to point out that WotG and Abyssea are different content pieces.
3. Thanks for pointing out the modernizing efforts of WotG proper, like the new jobs changing some of the meta, the fields of valor teleport, and level sync. The FFXI players I discuss the scripts with claimed these efforts weren't enough to distinguish the expansion, but I'm happy to see a different viewpoint in your comment.
These video essays are heavily narratively structured rather than being informative or comical. I hope this narrative structure makes the videos more accessible to non FFXI fans, but it's hard to fit a comprehensive informative conversation into a narrative video essay without jeopardizing the narrative structure of the videos. Having viewers like you point out the gaps in the informational side of the script as well as correct a few mistakes is a huge help! If you don't mind, I'll put some of this information in the description and credit you for it.
Thanks again for this feedback! It means a lot that you care enough about the quality of this series to offer this comprehensive critique.
@@vicenarian340 The $10 price tag is probably accurate, I remember it definitely not being a full expansion and so I might have forgotten about the small price.
I can’t wait to watch this and the toau recap but I have to wait till horizon releases it first!
Have any idea when that's happening? I might not be playing Horizon, but I'm really stoked to see how that server develops.
@@vicenarian340 hopefully we’ll have toau soon! We just got a massive new balance patch with new end game content and they said toau should be next. Loved the other recaps you’ve done!
For me, Wings of the Goddess was both a good and a bad expansion, it was bad in the sense that a lot of my friends quit around this particular time, and while I was already a dual boxer as one of my friends had quit within the first year/year and a half of playing and left me their account, many of the friends who quit around this time also left me their accounts, and these were the people I usually static'd with, so I suddenly was without my static group, but had their accounts, and try as I might I was simply not able to do the fights with me multiboxing pretty much an entire party.
It took a long time before I was finally able to get a new group going, primarily because outside of my static, a lot of drama happened in my linkshell when it turned out that the white mage who was married to the monk in the shell (in real life), was cheating on her with the red mage in the same shell (also in real life) and while the shell didn't exactly break apart, things were on edge for a long time, so I wasn't able to finish WOTG while it was relevant, which also meant I missed out on the end-game of WOTG (and yes, pretty much everything you talked about is what I would consider WOTG content).
It wasn't before Abyssea that I finally got a somewhat stable group of friends together again, and then once Adoulin came out, I ended up quitting and stayed away from the game until a random youtube recommended video showed up in 2017 telling me about Rhapsodies of Vana'diel, curious to what this was I came back to the game then.
it would be a lot better, especially in modern day where most of the expansions have been made a lot easier to go through, if the nation missions were optional. Yeah you only have to do 1 of the 3, but instead of forcing you to do it just finish the main story, let you do it seperately so you can do it later when you beat the game and looking for extra scenarios to play through, would be a lot better received by players.
Oddly enough XIV's Endwalker almost took the same amount of time to conclude its story. Unless you count .55 as part of EW's story and not the branch that leads to Dawntrail. Anyways, tangent aside, this was an excellent video and review.
Thank you, I really appreciate it! I'm glad to see an FFXIV player watching too.
I’d be lying if I said XI isn’t my favorite game ever. But it took so much of my time as a kid that there’s tons of regret too.
99 cap I don’t consider to be real FFXI. It felt so different and silly.
Getting to lvl 99 might be trivial, but getting job mastery is quite a task. And getting to mlvl 50 is the craziest grind that FFXI has ever had. V25 Odyssey and the new master trial are some of the hardest content the game has ever had from what I understand too. Still a great game today.
Thanks for the feedback!
I don't know how someone can peg the end of the golden age at FF XI, I understand FF XII can be controversial but it is undoubtably a good Final Fantasy, the combat may not be for everyone, it definitely is for my brain, but it is well thought out and designed and the story is incredibly well constructed. Its a good game.
XIII has a lot of problems and I am much Harder pressed to defend but it is followed by XIV which while had a rough start did land on its feet.
I really don't buy into the "gold age" idea, the franchises has a history of tumultuous periods and was opened with one.
SE created some really good content that all players could take part like Besieged and even Campaign was fun.
IMO what ruined FFXi's persona was simple GREED and WHY that greed happened is anyone's guess.Was it simply a greedy board shareholders or top execs needing to show bigger profits?Or was it to help fund FFXIV because for several years development was failing badly and costing SE a lot of money.I did not have a problem with Wings but I did have a problem with the 3 mini expansions and Abyssea in general.
Your mic has waaaaaay too much bass on it and could use a volume boost after that
Alot of the negativity around WotG is that it is alot of players rushing to catch up to end-game and join their friends, and WotG took ALOT Of time and locked them out of significant end game until they completed it.
I''ve always thought WotG was great.
Re dowbloading the game as I watch!
Welcome back!
under my experience from back then, wotg had a very nice story, but there was no endgame content at all, and since almost all lv75 gear was useless, was also pointless to farm in sky/sea/limbus/dynamis/einherjar. Since there wasn't yet any upgrades for relics neither. Also there was a TON of new zones added if we think on the past versions of zones that we had already in the game, but there was barely NOTHING to do in them, besides those battles that you had a sword near your nickname which were horribly designed, nobody wanted to do them.
am talking about before abyssea was released. Veteran players that played for 4years plus farming daily, relentlessly ton of hours of grinding everyday, got very disapointed to find themselves with nothing to do after some weeks of the expansions release. Actually, after wotg the server where i was playing was half dead and never couldn't finish last expansion since there was barely anybody to do content anymore. very sad indeed. Gotta say though I had fun in Abyssea, the proc system was fun. Though I agree with you that the leveling system got ruined. I remember to level from 1 to 99 the Rune Fencer and still don't know nothing how it works and prolly never will.
That really is crazy to hear. For the first time in years, serious players didn't have anything to do. Thankfully, there might be just as much to do now in the end game as there was before.
Abyssea is cap 90 not 99, each tier raised levels by 5. Void watch came out for final cap raises to 95 and 99.
Additionally, the cap raise took attention away from the expansion proper , literally sucked the air out of the room. You failed to mention 75 content of wings because it was immediately made pointless by level cap increase.
Thank you for these corrections! I'll be sure to put this in the description.
Also, what content did I miss?
@@vicenarian340 meeble burrows was some of the final 75 cap content that had an incredibly short life span. You mentioned wrath of the lich king having an effect on FFXI, it goes deeper. The first major 3d fantasy MMO was EverQuest. FFXI was HEAVILY influenced and inspired by that game. In the process of making FFXI they already softened a ton of the harder edges of MMO design. Unfortunately, wow would come out in the cop era and completely wreck the player base. So FFXI though it was an amazing game, always was in the shadow of that more financially successful game.
is this online or offline games?
It's an online MMO. But, you can play through this expansion as is it were an offline game without grouping up with other players.
ok im less than 1min in and i have never heard of someone putting WoTG any less than #2 under CoP.
That's really fascinating! Back 2 years ago when started looking into FFXI, everyone trashed the expansion.
FFXIMath, another FFXI TH-camr put WotG close to bottom tier. Twinfinite ranked it as the worst FF expansion (this included worse than all the FFXIV expansions). There have also been a half dozen forum rankings putting this expansion on the bottom.
It's awesome that this negativity isn't as palpable to everyone though! I'm really happy to hear that you did not have the same experience as mine.
@@vicenarian340 I think people that add Abby to WoTG and they are different things. They came out in the midst of each other but they are not the same.
Oh man, why are you making me seriously consider reinstalling this game after like 15 years?
You should back, if not only for the story. It's an incredible game!
Abyssea is why I left the game. I started with Aht Urghan and left after the last Abyssea. Which is sad because I honestly liked Wings.
From a new player's perspective, Abyssea seemed like such a strange time. The people I've talked to who never quit during the abyssea era say that it was one of the best additions to the game. Meanwhile, many others wound up quitting due to abyssea.
Thanks for sharing!
@@vicenarian340 Anytime! It's like you mentioned in the video; the more dedicated players saw it as a slap in the face to their years of achievements, and the players who weren't able to dedicate as much time saw it as an opportunity to finally experience what they couldn't before.
WotG had an epilogue quest and final boss? I don't remember if I beat that, was it the crystal dragon that you needed 24 people for?
My take is, Abyssea was a needed shakeup. Before, you had a very strict meta that more than half the jobs many Linkshells would. not. allow. in endgame content. PLD couldn't join parties to farm merit points because their DPS compared to say, WAR was sub par. XI had horrid job balance that they never really did much to address. SAM was a very favored job, until content became so hard RNG became meta with some SAM with a relic bow hanging on. Oh, and if you didn't dual-box/no-life a relic/empyrian/mythic you might as well unsub because once again, nerd gatekeepers won't let you do content without them. "Easy" is subjective when people practically lived in that game.
Got to the point where despite having well geared non-meta jobs I was considered useless, also didn't have the time to grind relics anymore which hurt. Adoulin came out and it was more of the same grind with lack of help from the playerbase I quietly ducked out and never looked back. It's for the best, XIV became such a better and more accessible game over time.
The boss you're thinking about is provenance watcher. The final boss of the epilogue quest are the two dark being creatures in the walk of echoes.
I've heard many say what you mentioned about Abyssea. While I can't chime in on how it impacted the game at the time, I can say that thanks to abyssea and the subsequent changes, players like me with limited time can enjoy this game's content. So I'm grateful for those changes.
I will admit, this is my LEAST favorite expansion. It's bloated, stretched thin, and needlessly complicated. It was ambitious in its complexity and concept, but I can't help but feel like the story of "the old war" was best left untold. It was more interesting when the events of the war were a mystery, rather than trying and failing to fill in the gaps. The gameplay loops here were TERRIBLE, and this is coming from someone who only recently went back and solo'ed this expansion (I quit after ToAU). I started a fresh character and went back and played Zilart and CoP AFTER finishing Goddess, and it was so refreshing to go back to that classic storytelling. I just could not get onboard with anything Goddess was trying to do, it felt completely hollow to me.
Thanks for the comment! There are a couple follow-up questions I would like to hear your thoughts on.
1. What aspects of the expansion did you feel were bloat, and which areas did you feel were stretched thin?
2. When you talk about how bad the gameplay loops are, are you referring to the narrative gameplay loop (while playing the story) or the gameplay loop of the side content (battle content, rec. content, etc)?
Thanks in advance!
This expansion is when I finally quit ffxi and went to wow full time.
You're among the players that I based the Wow section on then. I don't blame you either! It's difficult to know what SE was thinking at the time, and I also have plenty of family who made the same jump.
@13:00 but Sephiroth is one of the worst villians in the FF series
I only agree for the Remake version of him, lol. The 1997 version was better in his presentation than his actuality, so your enjoyment of him will heavily depend on how much you know about him going into the OG FF7.
I honestly blame WoW for making MMO's more single-player. We lost so many players when WoW was released.
WoTG was a great expansion and Abyssea was just as fun, but yes the experience leveling was bad for many didn't have the time to lv so they lved by getting powered leveled, but then again people these days don't have enough time as we get older the responsibilities grew things had to change for us players.
I agree on the WoW point, which is why it confused me when no one in the FFXI talked about WoW's potential impact on the game in the Abyssea era. Thanks for the feedback!
Abyssea is the worst and it killed the game for the majority of the players.
I wasn't playing at that time so I hesitate to voice my opinion. However, I do think that the section on why the game changed might be my personal perspective on the topic. Thanks for the feedback!
@@vicenarian340 yeah definitely a personal thing, alit of is at the time felt that the expansion changed the game too drastically and removed that grind we all played through!
Though I don’t think I’d ever want to do that grind again
This is legit my favorite expansion, best story and characters hands down.