Private FFXI Servers

This may not be the best place for this post, and it may even be a topic that is no longer allowed to be discussed on ffxiah. Therefore, apologies in advance on both counts.

However, if it is ok to discuss- I wanted to know of any private servers that people might recommend. I would prefer 75 cap content, but just looking at something to help get my son's feet wet in FFXI without the hassle of paying for a month for my old two accounts.

I just missed the login campaign where my son expressed interest in some sort of role playing. We were going to use "classes" in Dark Souls but the concept of duoing in FFXI seemed like it would work better.

I have used (extremely briefly) Era in the past, but it seemingly fell off the map with its forum completely bare and I can't seem to find working links to dl the updates nor get my character logged in any more.

Any direction would be wonderful, and if it's something not allowed on here or without fruit, I guess worst case I'll breakdown and re-dl the clients on mine and my wife's laptops and burn a month login just to show my son around and see if he takes to it.

I don't see how any young person (no idea your sons age) these days would EVER want to play old style FFXI. The current game would be a lot more friendly and forgiving with trusts and all the QoL adjustments they've added... Why play on a buggy crap private server when he can play the official game and have more fun.

Although sometimes they run out of codes, you can try the Free Trial (14 days) of retail FFXI: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Free_Trial

They made a new client installer that is much quicker to get going. See the install guide here for help: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Install_Guide

If you choose Crysta as your currency then you do not need to put in a credit card. Some people are anal about that, but they do not realize that not many free trials of subscription services are OK with you not entering a credit card.

If you still want a 75 cap server, just google it and im sure you can find what you want.

I think you have to be 18 to create an account or have your parents do it. I remember lying about my age to create my first account lol.

Yes I don't think kids would be interested in XI, sadly they are into Fornite and minecraft or whatever crap they play these days. It's like mobile gaming has taken over.

A couple of things: I cannot stand the Lv99 content nor the change in pace after WotG, personally. I'd prefer something akin to what I grew up playing.

My son has thoroughly beaten all the souls series, nioh, etc. I am not using that as some litmus for skill nor elitism, but he, like me, is fine with a game that has challenge and slow pacing.

The retail version of the game, with all current expansions has definitely made levelling and early gearing less grindy, but really the relaxing duo of levelling is what we're looking for here. This is where a private server would serve us for a number of reasons. 1. We may not play often enough to justify two accounts monthly service. 2. Some private servers have other types of QoL adjustments that are geared for this very play-style. 3. Many of the meta weapons and armor for each level grouping have been altered to non rare/ex for the sake of less player count, making a start-from-scratch experience easier on both of us. 4. The servers are probably more quiet leaving NMs and good level/farming zones with less competition. I am unaware of just how dead retail servers are so this final point may be moot.

Thank you for your input.

Thank you so much for this info. The free trials still floating around is awesome.

A new installer that's easier and less prone to fail is wonderful. So glad this got an update.

Exactly why I'd love to find an easy way to jump into the action and check to see if he enjoys it enough to pursue further or long term.

He is 13, whether he'll enjoy the game and its quirkiness is something I'd love to test.

I have an itch to play it a bit and I know an old friend would jump on as well if we decided to play long term. Also, we tried having a tank/dd, range, and healer on Dark Souls with myself and my two children and there just really wasn't enough flexibility in the systems for it to really be sustainable without doing a gear run then trying it in NG+, and even then it just wasn't working and we've beaten DS to death over the last couple of years.

It's been a long time since I've been active on here, sorry for the multiple replies in a row instead of grouping them altogether in one post.

I managed to find a good place to check on servers on reddit. I'm going to give one of them a try most likely. If my son takes any interest in it we'll probably do a set of those 14 day trials Funkworkz liniked to see if the current retail is something we'd enjoy.


Thanks all for any current input and I'll be checking for any further recommendations or concerns.

The level 99 content? It's almost the same setup as 75 content but with more freedom. Everything that you had in 75 content is still there, including long grindy session for XP/merits in the form of job points. What change in pace after WotG? That expansion had the heaviest amount of drought in content this game has ever seen. I can't believe how backwards the people stuck in the 75 era mindset are.

The only thing that has changed is more freedom, less wait times and bigger numbers on damage lol. Leveling is not less grindy, it just starts at 99 where you have to do job points. You can buy it just like you could have bought merits or SMN burns in the 75 days but the option is there.

I get not wanting to spend money if you don't plan to play a lot, but I just have to mention most private servers are pure garbage. They are filled with bugs like being able to break mechanics such as casting slow on Titan and they are filled with all favorites of the server admins that they award items to unfairly. It is a different beast in itself and not worth the effort. I would rather play retail and lock myself at lv75 for no reason than step foot on a private server.

I agree draylo

But this isn't the thread to belittle people in...

He is asking a specific question and I would rather him google for it (it comes up in one search) then mentions those ***shows

What belittling? He's entirely correct. Except for one bit: there aren't as many available large group events.

I tried Nasomi and Eden, I recommend the latter.

Both of them have their own bugs, most private servers are based off the Darkstar Project emulator and it's difficult to accurately replicate retail.

Navmesh was different on Nasomi by mobs following very closely, even within normal melee distance, they try to creep closer. Close-talker mobs.

You can kite forever on Eden and if there's a wall nearby, completely avoid aggro. It's in the rules to avoid doing it on purpose, I wasn't even aware of it and it was recommended to me for mining. Lv25WHM casting sneak infront of a bomb with no aggro? I made a fortune. :D

Anyway, an inaccurate replicate of the navmesh took away the feel of the game. Sure, you have to seek for party, ride chocobos and airships, but it doesn't feel the same. Even the way monsters spawn isn't the same.

What -is- the same? The same old ***.

WHM lyfe.

I just never understand the desire for the '75 way of life'. That was just...really slow travel and grinding. Now we have...fast travel and grinding. Hell, there's more grinding now, because you don't just have a TP set and WS set, you have a TP set, idle set, WS set for 1-5 WS, PDT set, MDT set, FC set...and for every job. There's so much more to do and that you can do. 75 days was just...let me go kill crabs for a few hours, so we can move to this other camp and kill bats for a few hours, so we can move to this other camp and kill crabs for a few hours...over and over again.

It hit me the other day why I (and maybe other people) like 75

It didn't cost a billion gil to START playing a job. I kinda miss that. It was perfectly fine to run NQ gear, because HQ was +1 attack or +1 Evasion. Who cares. You didn't have to wonder if the next update would wipe out ridill or ebody or dalmatica. You didn't have to spend every minute of every day doing dailys and trying for augments. (pre wotg etc) and the game didn't play itself with gearswap. And while everything was still sellable, it was more "standard" to actually earn stuff occasionally.

Everything else is ***from 75 though.

[rant]And it didn't have GEO. I *** hate GEO. It's warped the whole landscape of the game entirely. Nothing wrong with 4 DD rdm and whm but now it's 1 DD and 5 buffers for everything(when its not smn burned)[/rant]

You can run NQ gear nowdays just fine too, but people are picky about who joins that is the only issue.

As far as dailies, wat? You had Dynamis, Limbus, Salvage, Nyzul, Besiged, Assaults, Timed spawn NMs, you had to literally be glued to the game and hit every timer right. Remember HNM windows? What are you talking about.

Most gear isn't wiped out by an update... cmon now, we haven't had tons of meaningful updates and we still use gear like brutal earring or epona's ring. Gear that sees years of use.

The dailys have gotten exponentially worse.
I didn't do any of that ***daily. And I wasn't missing out by not doing it. Now every single minute is a debate whether you should do this to miss out on that. (ex: one day of statuecrusher event is more impactful than an entire month of dynamis limbus and salvage combined at 75)

HNM windows are specifically in the "everything else is ***" Category.

Most gear isn't "wiped out" but the fear is ever present.

Pretty sure that isn't what they meant by daily at all.

I made the statement, and it's what I meant, so yes, it was.

Literal Dailys.

There is a literal laundry list of ***you feel obligated to do all day long. And there are no excuses not to do them, you can just call trust and go do it.

You know, it's like, it was not an achievable goal to make all 16 relics, but now, why are you even playing if you aren't currently building something? you have zero excuses not to be always upgrading. and it's tedious as ***.

I played most of my ffxi on 75 cap. I would never go back to that. I doubt you will be able to find a server with enough people to do any end game content. Much better to just play the game at this point.

So you played with scrubs, so you enjoyed scrub life before you understood that was scrub life. Because you can still complete content with that "NQ" mindset, even plenty of "top tier" content. I'm sure every VD Ambuscade can be completed by people in NQ abjuration/JSE+1/non-REMA weapons gear perfectly fine.

But that mindset of you "You don't NEED x to do content" is only from the very early days. Once people got "established" at endgame it became VERY clique-y and if you didn't have certain weapons/gear level you would be discriminated against in a more pug scenario.

Brah. I'm the one that says every month "you can do it with sparks gear" I know full well what can and can't be done with NQ gear vs HQ gear. It's the mentality of the game Players, not the reality of the game.

And I didn't play with scrubs, I played with slaves. Slaves for crumbs. Slaves for "dkp". Slaves for nothing. (but it made them happy to be slaves) ((75 was bad, too))
(*point of clarity, slaves to a linkshell, not slaves to the game like now)

And it's not an assura thing, it's an accessibility thing. 75 with no Dring? Duh, it's kind of impossible to get. 99 with no Dring? why the *** not? you can literally buy shanks until it drops, you have absolutely no excuse. 75 with no SH+1 no ones going to notice because Vclaws don't just fall from the sky. 99 without Abjuration+1? why the *** not, it does literally just fall from the sky.

And Gain-Money. Nothing really needs be said about Gain-Money just that it's Gain-Money. It's double dynamis and 3 times a week. It's worse than any and everything in 75, even HNM windows.

Thank you for explaining (mostly) why I disliked the new content.

Since it's continued to come up I'll give some back story. I have well over a year of play time on my main character. I played from NA launch up until I nearly got divorced over my addiction to it. Took a year or so hiatus and then returned to the first level cap increase.

I was lost. My pretty darn good gear that I had spent so much time and effort obtaining was utter trash. The stats had deviated so much from what I knew that I really didn't even know where to start. A few old LS buddies took me under their wings and I tried to learn the new mob mechanics and leveled up, snagging some new entry level gear. I had been gone during the hyper inflation garnered by the new items, but the nerf on turning in those quests had already been patched in, so I could't quickly obtain millions of gil to fund any of my jobs.

I went to 2 boxing my mule and my main just farming and casually getting levels, but my farming was making me a couple hundred k per hour and I was millions upon millions in deficit to even remotely begin gearing my two characters higher level jobs. I also knew practically no one so didn't want to be a burden and just farm to hire merc parties or beg for assistance on events to start gearing.

I know I could technically skip all of that, but this is going to be as hit and miss as can be, most likely. It just doesn't make sense to drop $26 to "try" my son's hand at it and start over. I want to see if the glitchy, imperfect private servers are a close-enough experience to get my son's reaction and see if it's a game worth investing in. If he plays it with me 3-4x and thinks it's for him...we'll most likely be jumping back into my old characters to sell/trade some stuff for a head start then start fresh with 2 new characters on my quite old, well worn logins.

Thanks again all.

The entire purpose of end-game in any MMO is the upgrade/completionary aspect.

That is *NOT* where I and my son want to head towards. This game will destroy me if I go down that route again.

I just want to level up jobs, spend time with my kid, and maybe get a few nicer pieces of gear and enjoy the job/combat system with the amazingly vague, in-depth, uniqueness that was the quests/missions pre-wiki days. We like exploring, we like hitting our head on a wall and finding new paths around it or over it.

So, with that said, I would prefer 75 content because I knew it well enough to understand the scope of where we should strive, and where is beyond a middle-road commitment. When you get into WotG and beyond and above lv 75 I am lost because I just didn't get enough of it to feel comfortable in it.

Wouldn't that be more fun? You have like three(ish with abyssea/voidwatch, adoulin and ROV) expansions to progress through and everything would be new for you both. I'd think you would find it more fun because you have random NPCs to toy around with, I always wanted the idea of trusts since 75 cap. Hey, it is your time in the end but hope you got enough information.

Also maybe I'm privileged or something, but 26 dollars is what I pay for a take-out dinner.. not like its a lot for an entire months play time lol. Also as an FYI, you can still progress in the current FFXI through the old areas and do all of the old content. The only difference is a few changes in acc/dmg they added over the years and the EXP gain. You could level to 75 and not do the level cap quest and proceed like normal and pretend you're in 2005.

Anyone else find this contradictory?

That said, everything you stated is perfectly possible, and more, on a retail server. Including with retail server would be exploring WotG, exploring the 9 abyssea zones, exploring the final "full" expansion which revamped so much of the old game, experiencing the "wrap up" mini-expansion which pulls everything together, and then if you're still interested, you can basically get into the "post-game" content with the *** here.

If you don't want to use some of the new QoL stuff, you can choose not to. If you don't want to use the revamped Signet that lets you not get decimated by DC mobs when solo, don't use signet, I suppose. If that's how you want to play the game, have at it.

Everybody here is talking about Nasomi and Eden, the 75 cap servers... But what about the 99 cap custom content servers. Jova is a fantastic server with a really good community. I found the community on Nasomi to be pretty jerk-filled.

I recommend Jova, they're pushing out custom content all the time. I find myself going back there often when retail is boring me.

It's quite terrifying how the posters in this thread are trying to shove ffxi down OPs throat despite him saying he wants nothing to do with it.

Stop being so insecure with your game choice and let him do what he wants or don't answer his question at all. I can only imagine how you act at a restaurant when someone tells you they don't like french fries. Insufferable.

OP, Google nasomi or Eden. Both are what you're looking for.