Nizzt's Journal: FF XI and EverQuest

I've recently been playing everquest on the PS2 again. I really started this again after reading about FF XI. One of the reasons for this is that FF XI supports 'Soloing' and 'Grouping'. I really just had to go through EQ soloing and grouping to reinforce exactly what it is that I dislike about EQ.

Soloing is when you play without a group, or just by your self. EverQuest was designed for you to group with other players. You gain XP with a multipler when in a group, so playing solo requires you to take a lot more time to get XP. I think it took me about 20 hours to get to level 10.

Grouping is when you group with other players for Quests, XP, etc. Many of the quests are designed to be played with others in a group.
Unfortunatly I've found too often that the other players are annoing, and those that you might want to play with are possibly offline... Which is another thing that annoys me, EQ encourages you to play all the time.

And FF XI which is currently in beta testing, seems to me is going to be much better. I have some expectations that I expect, such as FF having always been a good RPG. And SquareSoft is a strong developer.

And the expectations I have that I'm not sure if I will see. I don't expect to see a lot of boreing tasks such as running for 10 minutes to get anywhere. Actual story lines, like those you got with traditional RPG's. Not having to do a lot of work to get anywhere. Being able to explore, maybe without having to run around invisible.

I expect to see alot of the EQ platers online, but I'm hopeing to see some new players that don't like EQ and are looking for a different experince. I guess I'll just have to wait...