Free Campaign Is Active!

Not to beat a dead horse but I got interested so I looked at an interest calculator, put in 4% interest gained per year starting with $12.95 and put in 22 years and it looks like you'd have $30.69 after 22 years. Even with all wardrobes, FFXI is still cheaper today than it was when it came out, even if you only got a 4% raise every year since then.

A 12% annual raise without a promotion to a new role? In the corporate world? In 2023? That's, uh... not the norm. U.S. companies this year plan to give about a 4% increase on average, down from last year's 4.4%.

And especially in the tech world, there have been tons of layoffs in the past year, with no end in sight. CEOs thinking they can make money with less people + the unrealistic idea that AI is actually in a state to replace workers. And a spiteful revenge on the workers who were getting too much power, wanting remote work, etc.

But I digress... I agree with the point that not raising subscription fees for two decades is effectively a steady decrease in the monthly fee due to inflation. We obviously don't get as much new stuff as we used to for that monthly fee, but we are also a bit of a captive audience, with the very compelling factor of wanting to continue to play with the characters we've built up over all these years. That's enough to keep me locked in (but I'd bolt if I lost my characters and had to start from scratch).

A 12% annual raise without a promotion to a new role? In the corporate world? In 2023? That's, uh... not the norm. U.S. companies this year plan to give about a 4% increase on average, down from last year's 4.4%.

And especially in the tech world, there have been tons of layoffs in the past year, with no end in sight. CEOs thinking they can make money with less people + the unrealistic idea that AI is actually in a state to replace workers. And a spiteful revenge on the workers who were getting too much power, wanting remote work, etc.

But I digress... I agree with the point that not raising subscription fees for two decades is effectively a steady decrease in the monthly fee due to inflation. We obviously don't get as much new stuff as we used to for that monthly fee, but we are also a bit of a captive audience, with the very compelling factor of wanting to continue to play with the characters we've built up over all these years. That's enough to keep me locked in (but I'd bolt if I lost my characters and had to start from scratch).

If you only play one job, maybe 2, then ya sure this works. But assuming you want to play other jobs without gear overlap --- say Rng, War, Run, Sch, Dnc, or Pup --- GOOD LUCK doing so with only 2 Wardrobes.

Once you get into the REMA, JSE, and niche accessories these spaces start to become a huge issue.

Source:
- I tried to not pay for mog wardrobes on a near BiS Brd alt: Cure potency set, various gain-TP sets based on if using Naegling or dagger, FC set, spell potency set, various WS sets, m.acc set, song duration set (sleep), and pure -dt set. But then I wanted to play Paladin and Sam, and I basically had to buy more wardrobes.

Edit:
- Also gearing Bst 'for real' (not lol slime onry) faces similar issues of bad gear overlap.

Free access has started on some accounts.

Campaign Period
Friday, May 10, 2024, at 1:00 a.m. (PDT)
to Monday, May 20, 2024, at the same hour.
Eligibility (Account/Character Requirements)
To be eligible, you must meet the following requirements. You can check each of the requirements here.

1. Your PlayOnline account is transferred to Square Enix account.
2. You must have an active PlayOnline/FINAL FANTASY XI service account.
3. Character status under the inactive character options must be set to "Cancelled" status as of
Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. (PDT).


キャンペーン期間
2024年5月10日（金）17:00　～　5月20日（月）17:00

from jp Pol (starts in 17hr from this post)

maybe I might bother to login,

for the lazy people that don't want to check Pol

Wonder if my one character can get on when it expired on the 7th exactly.

Seems like it was 2022, friend worked at Jaguar Landrover.

If you have the addons set up to easily/quickly use porter moogles and gather your equipment from storage/locker/etc.. you can definitely play a wide variety of jobs with only 2 wardrobes and no compromises in equipment quality. Whether it's worth setting up the addons vs paying the extra is going to be a personal value decision though and will likely depend on how tech savvy you are and how many accounts you play. An extra $8 a month to save 2 minutes per job change is not that bad a tradeoff anyway if you play frequently, so I get it.

Just fulltime 5/5 nyame. It's good enough to get anything you'd be trying to do as a 3 weeks per year player.

If youre gonna play for a week you don't need all your gear. You aren't going to do anything that those precious 2 seconds saved matter for.

If your nyame is in wardrobe 5 then just wear whatever the *** you can wear. It's not going to make a difference. And if you don't have it, then that's what you spend your week on.

This falls under the former.

Ended up caving in and getting Mog Wardrobe 3 & 4 before taking a break... Logged into the free campaign this morning and most of the equipment is locked in 3 & 4 lol...

It also depends if you want to do this while having all the gear for all your jobs in your wardrobes/inventory at the same time and never use any of the various storage options available.

If you use slips and (if you're really crazy) put gear into sack, satchel, case, etc. then you're absolutely not going to run out of space until you get into extreme levels of jobs and gear quality.

I get that it's not convenient to use that stuff and you can't instantly change from one job to the other from anywhere, but it's pretty practical if you don't mind a few minute wait when changing, especially if there are lower priority jobs you can get to slowly.

I got curious so I counted the gear for my BRD which I'd say is one of my most geared jobs. Including job-agnostic gear like Warp Ring, Reraise and Raise hats, etc. but not including crafting gear, I have 106 pieces of gear that I use for BRD total. That's a little over a single wardrobe and my BRD is not perfectly geared (cure precast, stoneskin, etc.), but not far off.

I'd say your first job is ~100 inventory, each job after that is +/- 50 pieces of gear, ~25 of which can be stored on slips.

I have 9 jobs geared to endgame level, I have 6 wardrobes (including the 2 free). I use 0 slips or any storage for any gear, including crafting gear, and I still have 55 open wardrobe spaces and 3/80 inventory space. In my situation I could easily drop down to 4 wardrobes (2 paid) with my 9 jobs by storing JSE and utilizing my inventory for gear instead of having it open. I also haven't gone through my wardrobes and cleared out gear I no longer use, especially ambu stuff, I really need to do that...

How do you change jobs without being in range of a moogle to collect gear?

Additionally, you can run organizer from anywhere and it will pull gear from sack/satch/case.

My wardrobes are:
Wardrobe 1: WHM BRD
Wardrobe 2: COR and lots of gear used on all jobs
Wardrobe 3: WAR+DRK+DRG & MNK+SAM+NIN (different characters)
Wardrobe 4: RDM SCH
Wardrobe 5: THF RNG
Wardrobe 6: Would use it for tank gear if I played tank

One reason I do it is so I can play BRD COR WHM during free to play, popular jobs shouted for.

?
I hope this is the usual "well if I ran the company I'd do it this way" and not an actual showcasing of the mental illness needed to be the customer base that feels like the developers owe it something for their buying the product. Nah, reddit's over there, and genuinely best of luck.

So it looks like I really only play 13/22 jobs.
I've never touched SMN BST PUP BLU
Barely touched BLM PLD RUN DNC GEO

I'll most likely login and see how fukd up the UI is and log the fk off prolly forever.

14 UI way better.

in 14 sucks can't swap gear or hunt mobs for abil gear but fk it.
it's a better game. suk it up. it is.

Im confused.. today is the 9th and it says may 10th 1PDT yet I have access to all my characters.... is it JP 10th?

It's an extremely slow process apparently. They start early and it rolls out to everyone by the advertised start.

It's an old database and system, they start activating the day before. It works the same at the end where it's +1

Also if you do anything in your account page that changes anything you'll lose any free characters on it.

They have to individually unlock every account using a batch process, and it takes a few hours, so they have to start early. Usually I get unlocked the morning before, but this time I had to wait a bit longer.

Ending tomorrow, get the mog marbles? I really hate how you have to zone or relog if you throw away marbles now and want to purchase new ones.

That was a fast 10 days.

10 days do go fast

Used to be 20

Lets demand SE to nerf even further the free login campaign.

Why ten days. Make it 24hrs. And you only get inventory, no wardrobes no satchel no case no sack no storage.

Also, make it so that none on free play can leave starter cities

And galkas cant leave the mines

Also make it Ironman mode. If you die free play is over.

Gotcha.