A Wonderful Game
This game is a wonderful game, I have been playing it for nearly 4 years now and I am no kid... what is wonderful about the game is it teaches about life in general. You must do things to earn money to buy food and buy items for your character... just like in real life... you are free to barter and to do all sorts of enterprizing things to make your character geared to the max.

And just like in real life, there are those that take advantage of each other by hiking prices and giving bad advice, etc.. but these too are life building skills... learning how to deal with them teaches kids as well how to 'out fox' and rise above those types.

This game teaches about team work for the majority of the "monsters" you kill require more then one player and groups called "Linkshells" are formed of people that work together to accomplish many of the great features and quests in this game... also, the "monsters" you kill are made up ones that do not resemble people... so unlike games that teach violence against people, this game focuses on killing made up "mobs" and not human forms. This is great for us parents that worry about the de-sensitizing for our children againsts crimes of violence in the real world.

I know many parents that play with their children in this game, I know if my daughter or granddaughter were interested I would be delighted.

Sure there are other games with better graphics, and games that are more realistic out there, (I play some of those too), but overall, I find that the FFXI game has many fine qualities that teach about life.

Re-repackaged Old Game
For those of you who don't already play this game there is no reason to jump in now. It came in in 2002 and although it was a decent game for the time there have been no improvements made to the game. Two additional expansion packs have been released, however. They add new armor and story for devoted players, but these features will not initially be accessible to newbies. Also, this game has an incredibly high learning curve. You will feel very alienated when you first start and probably have a lot of trouble figuring out the convoluted world you're placed in. As for the actual game itself you required to invest a lot of time and effort for very little reward. The combat is good when you find a nice group of people, but by the time everything comes together for a battle, you've probably already spent 3-4 hours online. Graphically the game really shows its age as well. The 360 version does not improve on the PC, or even PS2, version of the game at all.