defiantly not for everyone but if you are prepared to put in the time it could be the best MMO for you.
User Rating: 8.9 | Final Fantasy XI PC
when you start in the world of final fantasy XI you are quite literally just chucked in the deep end. i know when i started i had no idea what i was doing and was actually quite frustrated due to the hours and hours spend installing registering and updating. after you get over the " i have no idea what i'm doing " stage the game starts off slow. you head out and start to fight, and at lower levels this seems tedious but should keep you entertained just enough to get you to the group content which is much more eventful. when your level 10 or so garb a group and start the smacking. group combat is (for me) the highlight of the game. as you progress you will gain weaponskills which allow you to do special attacks which are assigned an element. when two weaponskills are used close together a skillchain may happen if the elements of the weaponskills are of a certain type. this skillchain will deal extra damage. can be made into higher level skillchains and can allow the mages of the game to deal extra damage when they use a spell which corresponds with the new element of the skillchain. if any of you didn't understand my rant about skillchains, put it this way, skillchains makes combat interesting and different from the usual MMO.
the further you progress the more diverse your groups will be and the more fun you will have. the combat system apart from skillchains is extremly basic. instead of the usual "bar" which you can place items or skills on you have the classic final fantasy layout which allows you to chose "attack, abilities, items" etc. that being said you can make macros to make selecting abilities to use slightly easier. that being said this is not like WoW where you gain skills every 2 levels. it is usually every 5, there are less skills than WoW but... it seems like they are not needed in final fantasy XI.
the world is vast and sometimes can be a huge annoyance due to the size of it.
this would seem to be more of a rant of the combat system but it seems to be the highlight for me due to the weaponskill system but that being said this is not the game for everyone. huge amounts of time are usually required before any benefit can be gained. the more you play the better jobs you will unlock, the more diverse your groups will be and the more fun you will have. proceed with caution fellow adventurers 
