Talk:Final Fantasy XI

I added some information on Item Crafting and the player based economy. I don't know how much is appropriate to add concerning crafting, so I may or may not add more later. Kobayashihikaru 1 July 2005 06:28 (UTC)

Also marked the Rise of the Zilart spoilers, because I felt they were rather glaring. >_> Kobayashihikaru 1 July 2005 06:31 (UTC)

Wider political issues in FFXI

Hi, I have been a long time player of Final Fantasy XI, and one of the most controversial issues of the game is the practice of "gil-selling" and gil-buying among players. Officialy this is known as RMT (Real Money Trade). In particular, gil-sellers who are mostly located in China are often described as a major problem by North American players thanks to the often illegitimate or unfair tactics they use. For example, botting at NM camps. They are also accused of contributing to the fractured economy. Whether gil-sellers are the prime cause of the inflation is disputed, but what is undisputable is that there has been a huge uniform rise in prices of many items on many of the 32 servers since gil-sellers came to prominence in the second half of 2004.

Also, gil-buying; that is, the practice of purchasing in game currency with real-life money is considered a taboo by much of the community. It could be said that the people who buy gil are more responsible for the problem since without those, there would be no gil-sellers.

Another key issue is the perceived inaction of Square-Enix in dealing with gil-sellers since it is stated in the game's TOS that Real Money Trade is illegal and may result in account deletion.

There is also a large degree of general hostility between English-speaking players and their Japanese counterparts. Examples include the refusal of Japanese players to party with english-speaking players and the domination of many end-game Hard Notorious Monsters by Japanese players. It can also be stated that Japanese players are considered to have an advantage when camping NM's due to their reduced latency (this is due to the Japanese players being physically located close to the game servers.) This has been dismissed by Square-Enix although many North American players believe they are indeed at a disadvantage.

There is also the issue of virtual currency trading in general. I read that if the economy of Everquest 2 was real, it would be the world's 33rd biggest economy.

I'm wondering, would it be okay to include a section on these issues in the article? That gil-sellers are a controversial is certainly not just my own POV, it is an opinion expressed by a large percentage of the North-American player community of FFXI. 172.202.65.38 23:48, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

well im a little late answering your post but here goes, I think u raise some interesting points about the game, if you can condense it and keep it npov noone should have a problem with it, we cant have 3-4 paragraphs understandably about gil selling but you can create a criticisms section to show another side of the game, if you do that then you would also need to add a praise type section to the article. if you want to avoid that then make a controversy section near to the bottom so it doesnt distract from the main article too much.EDIT: realized we have a controversy section in the main article, yeah just add to that-Tik

It might be worth mentioning gil selling here, but do not do it in a negative fashion. There are just as many people out there who support gil selling. In fact, there is an extremely large amount since that is a near 1 billion dollar per year industry. Iamblueman4 18:19, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Hey I made a small adjustment to your section on Gil selling -- I removed the bit about the Gil sellers stereotypically being Chinese. The phrase was both awkwardly formed and did not seem NPOV. Is it possible there is an article someone could link to, on real world trade, which discusses Chinese sweatshops?Or maybe a brief discussion of the Chinese sweatshops in the paragraph. However, the section as phrased seems better without this aside. Todfox 10:03, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I made some more changes, adding a link to MMORPG#farming in the Gil-selling section, restored a reference to Chinese sweatshops in a more NPOV fashion, and fixed some grammatical errors. The article probably needs some cleanup. Kit 23:08:56, 2005-08-01 (UTC)

An Idea

Wikipedia is a place that people look to for information on a variety of topics. Final Fantasy is a game widely played by millions of people. There are VERY limited sources for true information concerning FFXI. Almost anything about the game can be found at one of the thousand hits you could get on google when searching for game clan information. Information is sometimes different between these sources. Instead of information being spread so thin, it could be brought to one location to ease the suffering of those people looking for information about this incredibly complex game. Crafting, the economy, and party etiquette are just a few issues that could be documented for people to use. I believe that there could be enough interest to get a truly beneficial compilation of information that will be used by many. I'm very new to Wiki, but if I understand the idea of it correctly, this would be the perfect place to hold information about Final Fantasy XI and other popular MMORPG's alike. I realize that there are pages that define certain aspects of MMORPG's, but none go into the detail that somepeople really need. Gardening recipes, for example, in Final Fantasy XI are totally experimental. There is no official release from the developer about these recipes. Wikipedia would be a good place for that.

I guess what I'm saying is that Wikipedia should host pages with more detail about this very deep game genre.

Mikru - TaruTaru WHM
Companyofvalor
Midgardsormr

I'm not entirely sure I understand your point, but it's worth emphasizing that Wikipedia is not a game guide. Our purpose here is to provide a general overview of the game that can be useful to those who are not necessarily familiar with it or its genre. Closely detailed information doesn't really belong here for that reason. OTOH, there is a place for such information, and that's Wikibooks. There's also a couple of dedicated Final Fantasy wikis, two of which are linked from the main FF series article, that would likely be suitable for the sort of detail you're looking for. And there's certainly no problem with linking to either from this article. But this article itself should remain a general overview, IMO. – Seancdaug 10:15, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Awesome, I wasn't aware of the other wiki's. I guess you're right about the general concepts. This is an encyclopedia. Thanks for the info though.

Ill tell u where to go when you need this information, www.KillingIfrit.com, easily one of the best places for ff11 information on the internet. Message boards are very very popular and you will find guides to patches before they even come out sometimes, i recently learned about it and now i use it and only it. Sry i dont mean to sound like an advertisement but this is a site that has a lot of the info u were talking about -Tik

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Gil Sweatshops

To Todfox:

Thank you for fixing up my contribution, but you to be more specific on what you mean when you say "sweatshop". A 1up article said the same thing, but it made sure to mention it isn't the same type of sweatshop that people think of.

Do you have suggestions about what might make it clearer? How does it differ from other sweatshops? I believe the main MMORPG article also links to the sweatshop article so it might be something that needs fixing there too, unless this is FF11 specific.Kit 12:17:20, 2005-08-02 (UTC)

OK, I went and read the 1up article (it is linked off of MMORPG, but I don't see how the video game sweatshops differ from our normal use of the term in non-videogame environs. They may not be making Nike sneakers, but they we're talking about hundreds of warehoused workers working 14 hours days, some of them living at their office, and earning as little as 56 cents an hour. How does this not qualify as a sweatshop? To me, the 1up article makes it sound like the term is appropriate Kit 12:27:45, 2005-08-02 (UTC)

Cleanup

The controversy section needs to be cleaned up. It sounds like it was written by someone who has a very negative attitude towards companies that sell in-game currency. Perhaps a section that details the views of both sides would be appropriate. This article sounds like it is the opinion of someone, not something that is factual. Iamblueman4 04:09, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm

I agree wikipedia is not a game guide, but there should definitely be a mention of virtual currency trading in the main article, considering it is such an important issue for many players in the FFXI community. The goal of an encyclopedia is to inform, and in my opinion the article would not be doing its job if it did not mention the issue. I'll agree it needs editing for POV, but I'd certainly be opposed to any attempt to remove all mention of currency trading from the article. On the issue of Chinese "sweatshops" - I can't link to any website that specifically states most gilsellers operate in China because it is improbable such a site exists, but there is overwhelming evidence. The majority of gilsellers respond to messages in game in Chinese language - I personally asked a friend of mine to translate what they were saying and sure enough, it was all chinese (simplified). In many cases the sellers specifically stated they were located in PRC. Rdysn5