New To FFXIV Realm RebornFollow

Hello all! Nice to meet you. I didn't see an introduction area to post, so thought I would do so here in general discussion.
A little background information about me....

I have never played FFXIV yet. When I first heard about it, I was excited to try it, until I read the initial player reports and reviews. However, I have recently learned a Realm Reborn may be worth trying out on my shiny new PS4.

Back about a year after FFXI was released I created an account and played for about 4 years or so, on the PS2 at first and later an XBox 360. My character name was Thaddeus a Tarutaru from Windurst on the Shiva server.
I leveled BLM, PLD, BRD, NIN, BST, and RNG to 75. I quit the game before the level cap raise to 99. I also had a few capped out crafts, fishing, leather, cooking, and an avid gardnener.

Since then, I haven't played any mmo's, just a random game here and there, but mostly I have taken a break from gaming. I feel the time has come to return to this hobby for awhile :)
A few things have changed since my gaming hiatus, as in, I now have a family to take care of and other life, family duties aside from gaming. One of my biggest issues with mmo type games is the level of commitment sometimes required for the end game raids and content. I know this is something that cannot entirely be escaped but compared to WoW or FFXI, how much time a week does it require to have a solid avatar in FFXIV?
For example, in FFXI, it felt like a 2nd job. Sometimes I would spend hours, sometimes 40+ a week playing just this one game, but I was involved with a highly active endgame LS, and gil had to be made lol. Is it true that XIV is more "Casual" friendly?
I plan on making an account at beginning of October and buy a 2 month pass for starters.
Can I choose my own server or will one automatically be assigned? What classes/jobs/crafts are highest in demand and what is considered a lol-job, if there is such a thing? I like to be part of a group that is active together and to play in the roles I am most needed, so some advice would be greatly appreciated ;) Thanks all for viewing! Greetz

If XIV were not more casual friendly I wouldn't be playing it, my time has been drastically limited lately too with family responsibilities and such.

So yes you will find it much easier to pick up and put down as needed compared to FFXI, especially if you were in an HNMLS like I was.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2014 4:27pm by Hairspray

It's much easier to find parties for any of the content, you can effectively level in a group or solo, everyone has sprint, and everyone can teleport. Also much easier to make money.

Yes to the seasonal events. Halloween this year will have a witch theme.

Tanks are the most in demand job, but healers are right behind them. DPS classes are the most popular and thus the most common. (Who doesn't want to hit things?)

You can start out as a tank and like XI, if you change your mind you can just switch classes instead of starting over on a fresh character. So feel free to experiment. Only rule is that you have to get your first class to 10 and to the story line to that point to get permission to change classes. After that, you're free to switch any time.

From level 1 to 30, Conjurer is the big demand role since it's the only healer class. Arcanists can become healers once they reach level 30, so post level 30, tanks are the most in-demand.

They'll be adding the Rogue class and Ninja job soon, so expect it to be difficult to queue up in the Duty Finder as a DPS for awhile. On the other hand, it'll be a great time to level up a tank or healer role since you'll have no trouble getting a party.

Thanks. Good to know I probably won't need a mule.
I will probably end up leveling several different jobs but will start off as a tank/pld to speed up progression. When I started off in ffxi I began playing as a mage, while my preferred style, took me awhile to level my whm. I was hoping for a beastmaster type job but guess they have awhile to add everything else.

I noticed bards role seems changed in 14 since 11. Is bard any less or more useful now? Thanks for answering all my noob questions guys. Cheers!

Currently I'm lucky to have more than 2 nights a week where I can put 4+ hours to the game. Usually I log in, queue up a dungeon and log off.. roughly 30 min to 1 hour of play a day per week and since it's football season I get Sunday all afternoon to myself in the game room... If my team is playing I can't focus on XIV as much so I'll run dinky quests, FATES, or dailies during my prime time game. I'm not a top of the charts player by numbers, but I have a few classes maxed out and semi geared, and my main is over iLVL 100. You could catch up to me in less than a month playing the same way I do if you focused on a single class (and the requisite classes to get the most out of your main). I've also gone a few weeks without playing and caught back up for the most part. The only content I don't do is Coils, I don't have the time for a static, and it's still not safe to do with randoms when you don't have a lot of time to requeue. No biggie IMO, tons to do still.

Bard in XI is a song bi---uh--- damn filters! Can't say that. A person whose sole role was to sing songs, there we go. (I just got my 99 Gjallarhorn. +4 ALL THE SONGS!)

In XIV, bard is a fast paced ranged DPS who shoots arrows and just happens to know a little ditty or two. It's basically RNG/BRD, but without being as horrible as that sounds. They're one of the strongest and most versatile DPS in the game.

We prefer to be called "collectors"



I'm starting to like bard a lot. It is part DOT (damage over time), part self buff, part damage dealing, and part party buff, and it can move while attacking. That is important. You can literally run in a big circle and kite stuff while shooting. I didnt really play bard much before endgame, but I'm running it through second coil right now and its working pretty well. And thanks to the ability to glamour your items to make them look like any lower level item that you can equip, you no longer have to look like you are playing Peter Pan on Broadway (unless that's your thing and I don't judge).

When you get it to 50, try this macro in place of your heavy shot attack. Cast buffs, drop DOTs (Venomous Bite, Windbite) and then spam this until DOTs are up (until you are comfortable using things like repelling shot and blunt arrow in between the GCD). Rinse and repeat. Makes barding so much easier.

/macroicon "Heavy Shot"
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Heavy Shot" <t>

You can pick any world as long as it's not locked down for creation. That means you can pick most any one.


My Atma hunt begs to differ... as of last night I'm up to 88 fates in LLN without a drop. But as I said to someone last night, it still beats camping Leaping Lizzy.

Generally, though, I agree. It's massively less grindy. You don't need to spend 6 hours farming gil for every hour you actually "play" -- you don't really need to go out of your way to get gil unless you're saving for that optional something special. You get enough gil doing regular stuff.

Something that helps that out is in normal play, very few people use food. Where it was an essential in FFXI, and a massive gil sink (Tavnazian Tacos, I'm thinking of you!), you can kind of forget about it most of the time. (I don't, but coming from FFXI I feel guilty not eating at least something.)

And quests give experience, (and gil) and there's plenty of ways to level so you can pick the method you like. Personally I like to hammer out Guildleves and FATEs, and work the Challenge Log so I complete weekly challenges on the job that needs the bonus. OK, getting more complex there, but the gist is you don't have to sit in Jeuno on DRG for 6 hours trying to put together a party, you just get on with levelling and have fun doing it. (The jobs after the first don't have the main story quest exp, because you did them already, but once you have one high level job the others get an exp bonus to help compensate for that.)

And yes, it's much more suited to casual play. Much more so, in fact. Sure, you can Teamspeak your way through endgame if you want, but you don't have to do that to enjoy the game. I used to be an endgame DNC in pre-Adoulin XI (endgame enough that I main healed some Voidwatch runs on DNC), and primary 75-cap Dynamis PLD before that, and now I have just as much fun and I have time for all the things I had to miss in real life to have fun in XI.

Crafting is much more fun than FFXI. It progresses through regular experience advancement, not facing North and balancing the difficulty formula to min-max your random skillup chances. And Guildleves take most of the pain out of the high levels of crafting.

There are no loljobs. You can queue for the automatic party builder for dungeons and duties, and any combination that is randomly assigned by the tank, healer, dd, dd role method will work. The party plays differently as WAR, SCH, MNK, DRG than it would with PLD, WHM, BRD, BLM, but all that does is adds variety and interest, not hurt your chances of succeeding. Just like XI, Tanks and Healers are most in demand, but DPS gets in eventually too. And you don't have to do nothing while you wait -- you can go off and solo FATEs for example while in the queue, or you can switch to a crafting job while you wait and switch back when the queue gives you a party. So much better than getting bored in Jeuno!


Two weeks ago I would have said this too. Then, suddenly, random strangers I met in hunts, FATEs, and duties started talking and friending me, and chatting again on other occasions. For the past week or so it's been just like FFXI for me.

And if you want to hang out with me, Catwho, Illsaide, and Valkayree, we're on Lamia and you'd be welcome in our Free Company. You can even reminisce about FFXI in FC chat and we don't mind!

I will third the invite to Lamia! We're pretty relaxed in Swarm.

As to your question of lol-jobs, there really aren't any, in my opinion. There are some which are a bit trickier to pick up and play well, but they can all do very well in the hands of a capable player. Personally, I'd put the melee dps jobs as being a bit more difficult to master than the others, but not by a lot.

I might do that! My ps4 arrives this Thursday and by next Friday I should have a copy of FFXIV in hand, downloaded and hopefully playing by Saturday, October 4th. Until then, all I have to play is Trials Fusion and demos lol.
Thank you all for the welcomes and for the info on the differences between mmos. So far, it sounds like many of the issues that drove me to quit playing XI were addressed and perhaps remedied. Bard sounds like something I might want to have a hand in sometime down the road, more interesting role, but surely not any less busy. Cheers!

Do remember that you can skip the atma entirely and now basically you can enter ST and get your unidentified allagan tomestone, cap soldiery for three weeks, and do about 33 or so A rank hunts over those 3 weeks and get a sands (or get a sands in your second week of ST) and congratulations, you just received a lvl 110 weapon =D