Best expansion of FFXI? So far this is it.
Treasures of Aht Urghan does quite well with that aside from terrible name it has.
This is the expansion that should've come out instead of previous expansion. Finally fans of Final Fantasy XI is getting three new jobs. However jobs are quite disappointing.
Blue mage is the first job that's included. This is very satisfying because it is the job fans wanted the most. Just about all Final Fantasy series had Blue Mage in some form and finally FFXI players can enjoy being Blue Mage with others. Blue Mage plays quite similar to what you would expect with having to learn enemy skills and all. What's unexpected and unique about Blue Mage is that you need to "Equip" the spells you learned and depending on what magic you equipped, you get different job traits and stat boost. Fun stuff.
Blue Mage is quite powerful, but not too powerful. For a game it is nearly impossible to solo beyond level 10, Blue Mage some what makes it optional to be able to solo, but not very encouraging. The way BLU plays is somewhat similar to RDM. There might be some spells that look overly powerful, but it isn't. For instance the spell 1000 needles. At first look players might think wow 1000 damage? even black mage using best spell barely gets over that damage! Unfortunately it goes 350 MP! Still it is quite useful spell to have but it is also high level spell. What does this all mean? Like usual, SquareEnix has the job well balanced. By far Blue Mage is most satisfying job out of three mostly because it is what fans begged for.
Second job to be included with this expansion is Corsair. Corsair might not sound familar at first, but it is quite familar job that has been in Final Fantasy before. Corsair is basically a gambler. You roll dice and randomly gets an effect. Corsair looks like it can be very powerful support job in high level, but it is really rare to seem them so it isn't 100% However it is pretty clear this is powerful job in party very much like bard. Another unique thing about corsair is that they use revolver. A unique weapon type just for them. This isn't satisfying as Blue Mage was, but still it is great job addition for the fans of FFXI and very nice to see another familar job. As usual, jobs are very well balanced.
Third job is the disappointing one. Puppeteer. What you get is a puppet and you control it. The unique thing about puppteer is that you can equip your puppet with various equipment you give it. It is like customized beast master sort of. This is the third pet type of job in Final Fantasy and I think it has some disappointing aspects of it.
Customizing puppet is nice and all, but you already have NPC partner you can summon and give equipments to. I think it could've been better if SE just improved that NPC aspect by using puppeteer idea and adding on to NPC you already have instead of creating whole new job for it. Also another negetive thing is that you can't customize how it looks. Everyone has same looking puppet which isn't that cute or cool. However, it is rather fun and unique job to play like other two jobs that's shown in this expansion. Although it is disappointing, it is still a good addition.
The most disappointing thing about jobs is the ones that DIDN"T come out. Many fans wanted different jobs such as Geomancer, Chemist, Squire, Dancer, and perhaps Calculator. Many of them are from Final Fantasy Tactics, but they also are well remembered and loved by the fans. Especially Geomancer, Chemist, and Dancer not making to the game is very disappointing because they could've been implemented so well. Geomancer could've been tank type of job or damage dealer that we have plenty of. Tank is needed badly in this game so they could've made it that way somehow. Like depending on terran your on you get different type of boost and effects. Perhaps refresh type of effect or regen type of effect. if you stand on rock? defense boost. stand on grass? regen. stand on water? refresh. How hard is that? Also Chemist could've been easily implemented as well. Could've been like ninja but instead of all those nice ninja skills, have more of curing type of skills that requirs tools. Ninja is like paladin without MP, so they can make chemist a white mage without MP or something. could've worked with some thought into it. Dancer could've been what it was before. Like bard but instead of boosting party, enfeeble the enemies. Not too hard.
Also new weapon type became hexagun, but what fans would want is whips! many final fantasies in past had whips, and especially for RDMs. RDMs in previous final fantasies often used whips so I say SE should add whips to this game. Although they added many contents in this expansion, there are still so many things fans want and don't have.
Jobs are the biggest selling point of this expansion, and biggest selling point of this entire MMORPG as well. Although they didn't completely satisfied the fans, but at least they provided enough for them. Also they came up with a whole new city. up until now, all the expansion just had new towns and very few of them, and now finally they added a large city. This has been lacking for too long and I'm really glad they finally did added it.
Also there are many more beautiful areas and monsters added with expansion. Most of them are for high level jobs but that's okay because people who are playing is already high levels. With new areas comes new items and quests and they all work well and much less difficult compared to their previous expansion Chain of Promithia. Stil these quests are still can be challenging and hardly soloable. Same goes with mission.
The biggest difference now is the addition of chocobo racing, raising, coluissium, besieged, and assault. Unfortunately, Chocobo racing, raising, and Coluissium isn't avaliable at the moment, but they should soon be added and very likely be interesting addition. Chocobo racing and raising is something they should've had when they first released the game, so releasing them now is way too late. Also it is announced that the chocobo you raise can only be used in racing which is terrible. players should be allowed to roam the world with the beloved chocobo they raise. Final Fantasy XI already have huge problem with traveling and this would've solved that problem. Unfortunately they still haven't addressed that issue properly and hopefully they will fix that by using chocobo raising in the future.
Economy is starting to settle in a bit thanks to SE taking care of gilsellers (the people who sells game money for dollars) Still, pricing is quite uneven and the problem people have over the Notorius Monsters that drops rare items and equipments is still serious. SE needs to make more of those monsters to spread the people around, or make it more random pop so people won't remember the time when spawn and start camping with nearly hundreds of other competition. Whatever they do, DONT MAKE IT MORE RARE. The players are already frustrated with getting the equipments they want and by far this is the game that is most difficult to get those equipments. There isn't much reason to make this game more difficult when it already requires so much time from players. Instead of keeping the players longer, that will only result them to leave this game for good.
Perhaps the big difference right now in Final Fantasy XI is Besieged and Assault. This is new type of gameplay mode introduced in expansion. Besieged is where monsters go rampage in new city and other areas. Currently, not many people are enjoying it as much. SE might have to make it far more intense. Assault is going through large number of monsters with small group of people. Haven't tried it yet, but from listening to description it sounds quite alike dynamis. I've been hearing mixed reaction about this, but not too many positives.
Overall, Treasures of Aht Urghan makes up for their previous expansion. Many of angry and disgrunted fans have became more quiet thanks to this expansion, but it clearly isn't enough. The world is still fairly small and needs to be much much bigger. It still gets too crowded in so many areas and current games such as Guild Wars and WoW is so much bigger. Making this game about twice bigger would be about right size. However that is unlikely to happen considering this is already old game and this might be the final expansion this game gets. Xbox 360 version doesn't seems to attract new players and most of the users seems to be old users who just recently bought xbox 360 version. If SE wants to attract new players, they need to come up with something bigger. Also it might be time to start merging some of these servers because the number of players playing each server is between 2500 to 7000 people. There isn't problem with population yet, but it might start happening soon if SE don't make more noise with this game. However, for now? this is plenty enough to satisfy all of FFXI players.