One of the best MMORPG's made in history.
Then the community: I have played ALOT of mmorpgs, and so far, no other mmorpg has been even close to this community, the people there is very very helpfull, and there is alot of mature players, so you wont see the typical: OMG LOLZ I ROXX0rZ OWN J00 LOLZ!, things you might find in other new mmorpgs.
There is alot of servers. and all is pretty populated, there is about 700 000 player accounts created.
Party system: Final fantasy XI is a VERY VERY time consuming game, if you want to get to a decent high level (there is 75 lvl's). Another problem is that when the japanese players are on, you will have a hard time to get a party if you dont know japanese. And yes, you need a party always to level.. you can solo up to level 12, but then you really should get a party until level 75 or whatever.
The party can consist of 6 players, and should always have someone who heals, and someone who deals the damage, buffs is also a good thing to have while in party. (Like for example, bard, who can cast spells that gradually restore hp and such.)
Job/Class system: FFXI Has a very unique job system and is built up like this: You start off choosing 1 of 6 jobs: Thief, Warrior, Black mage, Red mage, and white mage. After that, at level 30 you can choose to get a advanced job, there are alot f adv. jobs, and you have to quest to get one.
But over to the job system, at any time in the game, you can go into your Mog House (the place you live in, keep your stuff etc) and change the job into what you want! So if you chose white mage at level 1, and want to try out Thief instead, you can, just change the job. You can do this all the time, and there is no limit to how many times you can change. This also goes for adv. jobs, when you aquire them.
At level 17, you can get a sub job, wich works like a second job you have at the same time as your main job, so you can for example be a Whitemage with Black mage as a sub job. The white mage will be as strong as it would be at that level, but the black mage will be half the level of what the white mage is (you have to level the sub job too of course, cause you dont get exp for the black mage as you have it as sub job for the white mage).
Example: you have a level 20 white mage, and a level 13 black mage, so your job is Whitemage/Blackmage, the whitemage would be level 20, and the black mage would be level 10, because the black mage becomes capped to half the level of the white mage.
There are alot of other stuff to do in the game, for example fish, or craft items and become more proficient with that type of crafting.
There is also a auction house where you can auction items you have bought before. You also have a bazaar, wich is your own personal shop, wich people can buy straight from you.
Sadly, there isnt much PvP in this game, it has ballista, as it is called, but its not THAT fun. Altough pvp isnt really the core in this game at all, so it doesnt really matter.
I dont think there is alot else to say, except that this is definently the best mmorpg i have ever laid my hands on, and i still shake when i touch the box i once got many years ago :-)
(btw, i've played over 1200 hours now, thats a sign a game is good^^)
~Ebbe