Are You Playing In FFXI-HORIZON Server?

I have some friends playing it and they're having fun, so good for them. I'm not looking to start over and all so I'll stick to retail. My relationship to this game comes and goes all the time anyway.

s'just a game and all

It low-key bothers me that it has such a population, but who am I to judge how people have fun?

Let them get to Kazham and exp in the jungle. Watch it die down around there. Or once people realize that they have to stay home on Friday night to go to Dynamis only for no gear to come from it. *** that. No thanks.

Although this may be a minority of the population, but almost all the streams I have watcbed are already on advanced jobs with some that are almost 70+.

That's kinda the what'll happen.

1-74 is fun, you get to do stuff. Then 75 it's your job, that's where it dies. Back to dynamis calendar and waiting behind 10 bards for haidate.

Contemplating joining the discord just for the shitstorm that the first HNM will be.

First dring banned for botting. First ridill banned for botting. Then the devs start passing out ridills to friends and everyone else goes wellfuckthis. It just took longer than I thought it would.

It's what makes the game suck now. 5 minutes to get 119 then just endgame like your life depends on it.

People have this idea that private servers are just for fun, in reality one or more of the people running it could be in it for other reasons. Or everyone working on it now might be genuine but months from now someone joins that isn't.

They could be creating and selling gil to their players via gil selling sites, there are already people selling gil now and there is no reason they could not be the suppliers. Why not? they are doing all this work for free, would you begrudge them making money to pay the server fees?

They could be installing things on peoples computers to harvest passwords 6-12 months from now, keyloggers or whatever (when the smart people who check, stop playing and checking), many people who could be playing this may have retail accounts with a lot of moneys worth of currency on them. Worth remembering the people who do this kind of theft don't do it right away they could store this stuff for months or even years and then start cashing out, on your stuff.

We already had 8-10 FFXIAH forum accounts randomly hacked a few days ago and they were spamming crypto links, why did that happen.

It's not just the people working on the server either you have to trust, they might have poor security and others be able to hack in and cause all kinds of problems that will impact the players. They are under no legal obligation to protect users data or anything, they are just farting around. They didn't even do the majority of the work on this thing, that was done by some guy 6-7 years ago that put all this stuff for free out for anyone to use.

Not even counting that all the effort your putting can be for nothing, cause they can be shut down at any moment. These servers are Amazon hosted, all it will take is one phone call and they are gone. Amazon will just check what is on the server and remove it if asked to do so.

I've also said this before but I do not trust their sea all numbers either. They can faf that up as much as they want, I think those numbers are total bs and have been since the start. Common sense dictates they are too, especially at launch when all those 4 thousand players were all going to be in the exact same few zones.

Was thinking about playing on horizons. But nah I will never again start a new character. Takes way to much time that I don't have anymore

In a sense, the rebuild a new character from zero can be applied to every new game you start.

But at least restarting in a known game sabes you time to relearn all mechanics, and can follow a more optimized growth.

That said, i would totally be fine with restarting a new character if i had a good linkshell and my pocket mule.

But honestly i didnt need to go to private server for that, as even retail would provide linkshell experience. Though, i believe it would be extremelly rare finding companions with same interests i retail.

And finally, im not sure im as sociable as i was back when i started, so i feel like theory differs practice at the end of the day

This is just silly. If you don't have any evidence it's happening, then all you're saying is that it's possible. It's possible a SE employee could do the same, fyi. That doesn't mean either is.

This is also true of windower, ashita, etc. If you're downloading automatic updates on anything, you're implicitly trusting that the people providing those updates aren't out to get you. Again, fearmongering. Means nothing unless there's evidence any of this is happening, and there isn't.

This is true of retail too. You think the servers will be online forever..? If you hate horizon so much, and you actually believe AWS will kick them off, go for it. Keep in mind they aren't distributing ffxi files through AWS and the server codebase isn't derived from SE's own code, so it's very much in the grey area and hard to enforce.


They have over 7000 people in their discord right now. It's not a stretch to believe half of them logged in when the game first launched. They had to add massive amounts of custom mob spawns to starter areas because there were nowhere near enough(and they managed that in short order, too!).

The chip on your shoulder is ridiculous.

Oh and the staff are anti botting and hacks you say.

Interesting, lets see:

Offical video upload from the horizon devs:





oh yea

So, a Horizon dev has a ffxiv bot and that means they're ok with Horizon botting? Do you realize how desperate you sound?

I'm saying A) the guy is a botter running a server that is supposed to be anti botting and B) he is too stupid to even clean his deskstop on an offical video for the server.

For someone that doesn't play on the server you seem awfully protective of it.


When people download Ashita, they are putting faith in you. This server is run by random nobodies.

I'm not being protective, I'm calling out your fallacies. The server has all sorts of faults, but the things you're trying to attribute to it are downright false. Your little bit of detective work there shows:
-One Horizon dev has a bot for FFXIV installed on their machine.

It does not show:
-This Horizon dev is the only person using that PC and installed the bot themselves.
-This Horizon dev still pays for and uses that bot.
-This Horizon dev would use a bot for FFXI if given the chance.
-This Horizon dev is completely incapable of holding themselves to a different standard as a developer on a FFXI private server from their standard as a player on FFXIV.

I get it, you don't like the server. You don't want private servers to exist. Maybe you feel that in some way they're inhibiting the growth or potential of retail and that upsets you, I really have no idea. But, when you attack the server based on nonsense, you just come off as jaded and jealous.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Horizon. There's no need to invent imaginary ones just to put them down.

This is what I mean when I say you're being protective, I show you proof the people running it are botters and you do mental gymnastics to defend them. I'm sure his mommy actually is the botter in the house, he would never do that cause he's a good boy!

What you should of said is, yeah he seems to bot and that is that cause what you do you care if I called him out? However instead you seem to want to protect them and play defence for some reason.

Amazon also don't do any mental gymnastics either, if they see this is offering a pirate server it will be shut down. The only reason it's running is cause they have not asked for it to be taken down. That could change at any moment, one day you try login and it's gone.

Also I don't hate it at all, I'm just pointing out you're risking your account on some random download of a pirated server from people you don't know, they are fully allowed to lie about player numbers since it's not against the law to do so and benefits them in their drama argument with wings, they will never add any new content to it that's "new" cause they aren't developers, it's unstable, people do bot on it, people do multibox, people do cheat and abuse bugs. They had to beg the people who had lushangs to tell them how they did it, cause they had no idea.

But hey, people can make their own decisions I guess.

I was with you up till now Thorny but handwaving the FFXIV botting aside is foolish at best. And what a ridiculous defense too.

One can take a different role under different circumstances easily.

Play Sonic back in 1993 with a game genie means every game you ever played was with a game genie? No.

Come on now. That shits silly.

Hardly a fair example. People change a lot in 30 years, not in a few weeks.

And hell it may not be relevant, but there is no way to know it isn't. At face value, it comes off as "Do as I say, not as I do" and lowers their teams overall integrity.

There was a period shortly after the tsunami is Japan where it was very much in the air whether XI would come back online.

Thorny is right, too, it’s at worst a grey and since it’s a reverse engineering effort it’s more akin to an emulator than it is a “pirate server” given that it runs absolutely no pirated code.

Wasn’t there so many packet shenanigans you could do on XI? At some point you could underflow some packets to get relic weapons I believe. Retail is also a mess of bugs. They literally just broke a zone and I imagine they don’t actually know how.

I think Horizon is kinda dumb and I don’t like the direction they’re going but it’s a bit much calling it a pirate server

I've been on and off playing Horizon, lately just logging on the weekends when I have a few hours to devote to finding a party since free time during the week I'm banging my head against the wall for +2 earrings and v25.

Leveling as "content" is something that I always enjoyed. The journey through new gear, abilities, traits, skill ups. Good parties and bad parties. Travelling to 'new' camps. Meeting new people or joining a party and finding the guy you spent a couple hours exping with last night. Running back to town with a shiny new lv or two and smacking around easy prey on the way to see if you can notice your new found strength (lulz).. it is all the bread and butter of what made exping great for me and that kind of FFXI just doesn't exist in retail anymore.

I have to say the most fun I've had playing XI in a long time was finding an eco-warrior shout and the near full alliance of us running on down and through ordelles and emerging victorious for that sweet sweet 5k gil and a book. The feeling that there are adventures to be had is stronk.

It isn't perfect, I don't think anybody expected it to be but as mentioned things are being addressed. The server is vibrant, always shouts for progression and lots of flags up, people are open and friendly and not just running around multi boxing things on their own. It's not 100% era XI but it sure as hell scratches my itch for those days gone by and that's the appeal for me even if only realized a couple hours a week.

i feel like you missed the mark on this one.

Oh man. I miss the Sega Channel. That's a monthly subscription I'd pay for!

Not really. One can easily bot in 14 and not in 11, literally simultaneously.

Hell you can bot in 11 and play vanilla 11 at the exact same time. Cheat on Asura and play legit on Shiva.

If you screencap my home screen you'll see Ashita, wanna guess how often I've used it or the last time I used it? Icon is still there though.

I think you are missing the point. Whether they do or not is irrelevant.

The optics are bad when they set these hard-line rules and then throw ambiguity in the air as to whether they themselves follow them.

It doesn't matter.

What they do in their role as a player is not what they do in their role as staff. It also doesn't matter how you feel about it or how you see it.

Well, BST gets ***like Tandem Blow, Bestial Loyalty, etc. DRK I have no idea.

Of course, they are all hypocrites. The majority of people running it were botters during the 75 era as well. Was that Kipling showing that?

That being said, I do agree with their approach on botting/multi boxing, its something SE never enforced or did so poorly.

Personally, I hate private servers and always have. They are filled with people who love to ***on retail and say outlandish things that are just untrue. Each era of FFXI had created jaded players, even before Abyssea. They all say the worst misinformed things without realizing they probably just fell out of love w/the game as it aged. The game is 20 years old.. its natural some wont want to play it that long. It bothers me a lot that they spit on current retail as they mostly helped put it in the spot it is today. They all quit thru various periods of the games life and dissuade anyone from trying or returning because they claim its "Dead" or "too EZ" or whatever negative descriptor.

The worst part is they all have XIV accounts w/multiple 90's, yet they somehow hate retail XI and bash it for having qualities (in their opinion at least, not mine) that are similar to XIV. Just truly the worst kind of hypocrites. I had been itching forever to debate on it with one of them because I truly feel they are wrong. None of them are willing to discuss it, they all resort to personal attacks and thinking I'm an "Abyssea baby" The amount of misinformation I've seen in youtube comments and then Reddit, is astonishing. They literally think we are in Abyssea still and are softies because we use trusts. Its like they hate XI for Abyssea and also think trusts came out in Abyssea too.

While they have a point on the botting/multi boxing being a huge detriment to retail, I disagree with the majority of what they think. Its such a shame how if even half those people had active subs to XI during the years, maybe we could have seen a different direction for the game w/an expansion.

Look, just because the person has a bot program for FF14, and set up an private server for FF11 doesn't actually mean they'd do anything dodgy in FF11, ok?

And the Olympic gold medal for mental gymnastics goes to...

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I don't hate private servers actually. FFXI won't run forever and I like the idea that a private server would keep the game going after it does.

But every single private server I've read about in the last 3-4 years seems to be run by shifty AF people.

Didn't the guy that did all the work figuring out the server data stop back in 2016 when he found out they were going to continue updating retail?

I don't think anyone hates private servers on principle, however the people running Horizon are cheeky as fk with their promotion of their server.

Every other private server had an under the radar approach, and their size reflected that.

We need to summon Bahamut on the Horizon server, put it out of it's misery.

I'm almost convinced theres some ad campaign going on behind their server. I dont know if its that Ninja guy that is paying for it or their devs but I see it being pushed everywhere. They have tons of "Streamers" who look like they would never even touch XI, are suddenly playing it. Anytime you search "FFXI" into youtube, this server is almost the only thing that comes up. Then you have people trying to actively recruit in youtube comments...





I did play Ragnarok Online private server ages ago, and I know theres the Star Wars Galaxies one that is the only way to play the game since its official ver is offline. I think private servers can be good, but maybe I'm a little biased given I care very much about XI and sometimes I see them with their misinformed opinions on current retail and it bothers me that our game isn't getting as much support because of all the people that quit and made it less profitable.