Final Fantasy XI

"THEY SHOULD HAVE CALLED IT FINAL FANTASY ONLINE!" They did.

Describe Final Fantasy XI here.

OK, but I've got Dynamis Abyssea in a few.

The eleventh entry in the pinky-pullingly popular Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy XI is the first MMORPG created by Square Enix, and the first MMO in the Final Fantasy franchise, released in Japan in May 2002, with a North American release in October 2003, followed by a European release in September 2004. It is also the first MMORPG to be released both for home consoles (Playstation 2 and Xbox 360) and the PC. The game even mixes all these players together, as no world is region or console specific.

While allowing the game to be as open-ended as possible, being a Final Fantasy game, an incredible emphasis on story remains, which is rarely done well in MMOs. There are 10(!) different main storylines (Missions), one for each of the starting nations (Bastok, San d'Oria, and Windurst), as well as one for each expansion (Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, and Wings of the Goddess), plus multiple "Mini Expansions". There are also countless side stories that come from smaller quests.

The game also allows a character to change their job class (to any of the 20, provided they are unlocked) at any time without the need to make a new character, as well as set a "Support Job"—a secondary, weaker job, typically chosen to complement the main job—to further enhance your character. With enough time and effort, you can experience everything the game has to offer on only one character! (Whether you can store all your gear on that one character is another thing, entirely... fortunately, due to a per-character fee, FFXI is one of the few MMOs that allows muling. SE has also provided limited NPC-based storage options to further alleviate that burden.)

There is also a sometimes distressing issue of Player versus Player options. At this time, there are only 4 modes of PvP: Ballista, Brenner, Chocobo Racing, and Pankration (or you can try and get charmed by the Lamia during Besieged so they'll make you attack other players). Brenner and Chocobo Racing are rarely used at all, and Pankration has recently gotten some interest again (thanks to new NMs that can be spawned only though selling photos, when you can only buy photo equipment with Pankration jettons), while the amount of players involved in Ballista is based on the world. It also possesses a definite amount of Level Grinding, like most MMORPGs. Add in a necessity to party for a majority of the game's content, difficult Bonus Bosses (two formerly Nigh Invulnerable; now one is beatable and the other is basically impossible to kill before the media-backlash-induced arbitrary time limit), and all sorts of other stuff designed to challenge you, and you've got an MMO that's Nintendo Hard (It's ridiculous. It's not even funny.). And then there's the fact that most things in the game require a time investment of 2 hours or more, so casual players may be a bit put off. The difficulty has been eased through updates, but many people still avoid the game and tend to jump to casual-friendly MMOs.

This does not mean, however, that the game does not enjoy success. Final Fantasy XI has over 500,000 subscribers, with nearly 2 million characters playing. It should go without saying that making millions a month makes this a sort of Cash Cow.

The game now has a a 14-day trial for new players to try the game without devoting to it.

Tropes used in Final Fantasy XI include:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: One in San d'Oria, one in Tavnazia, and one in Windurst.
• Abusive Precursors: The Zilart seem to fit the bill here, given that the 'Rise of the Zilart' expansion involves you trying to stop two of the surviving members from wiping out all life on Vana'diel.
• After the End: Abyssea is an alernate version of the events following the Chains of Promathia story. In Abyssea, your character, Prishe, and Selh'teus challenged Promathia and failed. After absorbing your Abyssea alternate and Selh'teus, Promathia grows stronger, turns the skies of Abyssea blood red, and sends endless hordes of fiends to extinguish all life on the planet.
• AI Roulette
• The Alliance: The Allied Forces of Altana during the Crystal War. The nations are still allied in the present, but they don't seem to have such a nice name anymore.
• All Trolls Are Different: Trolls are big, bad, and on Moblin employ.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Besieged, Wings of the Goddess Mission "Nation on the Brink" has a 'direct reference from an NPC!
• Another Dimension: Several exist.
  • Dynamis is an alternate world where the Shadow Lord's armies won the Crystal War, which explains the cities being full of beastmen.
  • The Astral Realm is the place where avatars reside, powerfull elemental beings that can be enslaved for labor by summoners.
  • The capital of the Zilart, Al'Taieu, was displaced into a pocket dimension, where the laws of physics don't fully apply. (Water is solid, although native species still move through it like water.)
  • Promyvion is a realm of memories, in the process of degrading and eaten away by Emptiness, small patches of eroded land and buildings haunted by the physical remains of thoughts.
  • The Wings of the Goddess expansion deals with a past version of Vana'diel, and attempts are made by different factions to change it.
  • The Abyssea mini-expansions take place in an Alternate Dimension version of Vana'diel, where alien beings invaded, slaughtered more sentient beings and turned the skies blood red.
  • Both this past world and the alternate world can be reached through Cavernous Maws, which are fragments of the trans-dimensional and trans-time being Atomos. Walk of Echos is the garbage dump of Atomos, a pocket dimension between dimensions.
• Exclusively Evil: It's certainly seems the beastmen are like this in the game, but then you find out what motivates them, and the world becomes a lot more gray... except the Orcs. They're pretty much just a nasty warrior race.
• An Adventurer Is You: Warped somewhat by a heaping dose of theory vs. practice.
• Arc Words: Memoria de la S^tona.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Played straight with Archduke Kam'lanaut, although technically he should be a Grand Duke. Averted with most other nobles/royals, although they sometimes tease at it.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: The nation storyline missions will have you fighting alongside Captain Volker, Prince Trion, and Minister Ajido-Marujido. Also, generals in Campaign are much more powerful than entire groups of players, and generals in Besieged would easily reach Game Breaker status if they fought normal enemies. A well-geared player getting charmed hits General Rughadjeen for insignificant damage and gets hit for 1/3 to 1/2 of their max HP in return.
  • Averted somewhat by the fact that the actual leaders of those countries (President Karst, King Destin, Star Sybil) are generally pacifist weaklings.
    • Although it was played straight with Bastok's President Prion in the Wings of the Goddess expansion. He personally leads the Bastokan troops during the Battle of Xarcabard.
  • Averted in Volker's case by his defense being comparable to that of a wet paper bag when you actually fight alongside him. Of course, he was up against Zeid, who would have Volker's position if he hadn't left Bastok to wander Vana'diel.
    • Justified since Volker is a Warrior. Unless a Warrior wears very specialized damage reduction gear, they generally don't have much more defense than your average paper bag, wet or dry.
  • Furthermore, while Ajido-Marujido hits very hard with his magic, he has less survivability than most mages his level.
• Awesome but Impractical: Blood Weapon, a Dark Knight's 2-Hour, and a few other 2-Hours, to a lesser degree. When combined with certain equipment and other abilities, it results in flatly obscene amounts of damage... but only once every 2 hours.
  • The Dragoon's old 2-Hour, Call Wyvern. As cool as the Wyvern was to look at, it had such low HP that nearly any mob with an AoE ability would kill it, and the only way of healing it involved resting which got rid of TP for the Dragoon. Waiting 2-Hours for it, even if it died in the first fight after it was summoned made it that much worse. This has since been changed.
  • Red Mages are known for being able to solo a ridiculous number of difficult fights, but only if they have top-notch gear, and a whole evening to kill. Some of the novice Red Mage solos are on the order of 2–3 hours long.
• Back Stab: A trademark ability of Thieves.
• Bandaged Face: Robel-Akbel
• Barbarian Tribe: Orcs, being nothing but Exclusively Evil Proud Warrior Race Guys (with a scant few exceptions to "evil"), qualify for this.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: Sort of averted by the Monk job. They fight with cesti, claws, hooks, katars, and other weapons which attach directly to the hands.
  • Well, you *can* fight as a Monk without weapons—and you will, if you start as one; Monk is the only one of the six starting classes to get no weapon as part of his starting outfit (you get a White Belt instead: +1 Strength). Unless you're getting help, you won't be able to afford a weapon for a few levels.
    • When the game initially launched in the US, Monks started with a pair of Onion Cesti, that increased the delay between attacks by 50% and increased damage by 10%. Bare-fisted was the way to go anyway.
• The Beast Master: Trope Namer, this game has four different pet job types, ranging from rabbits to Robots.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Many Notorious Monster species have a special Weapon Skill for people who have hate from behind; Behemoth with "Kick Out", Hydra with "Serpentine Tail", and Khimaira with "Plague Swipe". Of course the granddaddy of them all: Wyrms have Spike Flail. If you see a Wyrm attacking with its tail, prepare for the impending Instant Death Radius.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Several areas fit this, a few of them a result of the Crystal War.
• Bladder of Steel: Pandemonium Warden in particular, before being nerfed.
• Blade on a Stick: Polearms are used by Dragoons, obviously. Sometimes also used by Samurai and Warriors.
• Blond Guys Are Evil: Archduke Kam'lanaut and his younger older brother Eald'narche. Shantotto, too, in A Shantotto Ascension.
• Bonus Boss: Notorious Monsters are this, if they aren't related to a storyline.
• Boring but Practical: Many items that are extremely useful to a player are actually extremely common.
  • Some Red Mage strategies for soloing much harder NMs revolve around using a weapon that specifically does 0 damage to avoiding giving it TP to use its special attacks. This makes the fights much longer, but combining this with a series of enhancing spells that cause additional elemental damage every time their weapon hits, lets Red Mage kill some NMs that would otherwise be impossible.
  • And the biggest boost to your performance in the game? Your lunch. Food gives tremendous stat boosts.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Uragnites, which, at around level 30, take nearly 5 minutes to kill by a player at level 75 (The previous player cap).
• Boss Room: Burning Circles, as well as many other analogous battlefields in later expansions.
• Breakout Character: Shantotto.
• Breast Plate: While actual breastplates seem to avoid this, it is almost scientifically impossible for a Mithra to wear actual pants. More to the point, Female characters in general will occasionally find themselves wearing a bikini bottom when the same piece of equipment yields pants for males. However, this is not always the case.
• Call a Rabbit a Smeerp: Well, calling them Rarabs anyway, among other examples. To be fair, though, they are called rabbits or hares most of the time; Rarab seems to be a Windurstian colloquialism.
• Call a Smeerp a Rabbit: The "raptors".
• Camp Gay: Oh my dear Altana, Mayakov !
• Capture the Flag: Brenner fits this, but like all PvP here, it's not really used much.
• Cast From HP: A Red Mage's Convert ability swaps HP with MP, while a Scholar's Sublimation ability makes you gradually lose HP into a pool you can restore your MP with later, in both cases effectively using one's health to restore your magic. A different take on this trope, for sure.
• Catfolk: One of the playable races are Mithra, at Catgirl style Little Bit Beastly feline race; the playable portion is entirely made of females. There is precisely one male Mithra shown in the new expansion. There's a hilarious cutscene of whole units of the Mithran Mercenaries swooning over him.
• Character Blog: [GM]Dave. Read it. NOW.
  • Also Goblin Smithy, a blog by the same person as [GM]Dave written from the perspective of an enemy NPC.
• Chunky Updraft: BOOOOOOOST!
• Comet of Doom: Figures prominently in Wings of the Goddess. Actually, it's a manifestation of Atomos.
• Combat Tentacles: Many Krakenesque monsters are in the game, one of the most infamous being the Sea Horror.
• Compilation Rerelease: Three, each collecting everything published up to Aht Urhgan, Wings, and A Shantotto Ascension, respectively.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: *Insert horror story about Maat/mammets/Diabolos/Absolute Virtue/Pandemonium Warden here*
  • And the random number generator cheats as well. Spend 12 hours spawning something, 2 hours fighting it, and not get the drop? Fine. Repeat that 15 times more and still not have it drop? That's insane! Heck, I personally killed one NM over 300 times before it dropped the item I wanted, though thankfully it wasn't a 12 hour one.
    • Screw you, Leaping Lizzy! SCREW YOOOOU!
    • Fun fact, for some bosses, going 0/20+ on the drop is about the same probability as getting the drop the first time. So you're very lucky, just in the wrong direction.
    • ...I hate you, Jaggedy-eared Jack. I hate you so very very much...
• Counter Attack: Used by Monks (completely avoiding a physical attack sometimes), Warriors (retaliating after being attacked), and Blue Mages (like monks, if they set a couple of specific high-level spells). Colibri will parrot magic cast on them, as well.
• Clock Roaches: The Cavernous Maws, which are how you get to the Crystal War era and back. These are actually manifestations of the Eldritch Abomination Atomos, whose job is to eat impossible futures out of existence and deposit them in the Walk of Echoes.
• Critical Existence Failure: During Wings of the Goddess, turns out Atomos couldn't swallow both futures without suffering one. It seems it bit off more than he could chew.
• Cute Monster Girl: Again, Mithra, overlapping with Catgirl.
• Dark World: Four areas fit this trope: The Crystal War era, Dynamis, Promyvion, and Abyssea. Is the devteam obsessed with this trope, or just lazy?
• Derelict Graveyard: Arrapago Reef, full of undead. And snake and fish women. Not exactly the pretty kind, either.
• Deal with the Devil: This is part of the ritual in becoming a Blue Mage. Fortunately, the order also takes precautions so that your soul is not lost to the beast, including special armor and trying to assassinate you when they believe you have become too powerful.
• Death Equals Redemption: Lady Lilith, once she realises that she's done for, gives to Lilisette a solution to save both futures
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In order for a Summoner to be able to summon one of the Celestial Avatars, they have to beat the crap out of that avatar. Usually with the help of other players, but you can even choose to do a version of the battle that makes you face said Avatar solo, with only a radioactive squirrel for help.
  • To be fair, it's explained that most of the avatars you fight (and summon) are just fragments of that actual being's power.
  • In the Wings of the Goddess quest, an NPC asks you if you had ever fought a god before. Sadly, since your character does not speak, the NPC does not get to learn the truth. Players who have done all of the missions, quests, and hunt Notorious Monsters have fought 21 gods.^[1] This does not count supremely powerful beings such as Pandemonium Warden, or beastmen leaders who call themselves gods but are just unusually strong for their species. The only two named gods in the game that players have not fought (yet?) are Phoenix and Altana.
• Downer Ending: The extension Wings of the Goddess, which ends with your future saved, but at the cost of Lilisette...
  • With a Sequel Hook that Lillesette has to stay there until the Cavernous Maws are frozen in stone, like he is in our present time. Maybe for an Apacalypse Nigh style quest, possible even more.
• Dual-Wielding: Was very much a Game Breaker for awhile. Only the ninja, dancer, blue mage, and thief job allows this (or dancer or ninja subjob), although hand-to-hand attacks involve both hands and occasionally feet.
• Duel Boss: There actually are a few fights like this, the best example being the final level cap quest.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: NPCs will send you to do mundane tasks even after you've saved the world. Some even act as if you've done nothing for them... even if you did. One NPC specifically tells you that doing random crap is "what adventurers are for."
• Dying Dream: Revealed in Wings of the Goddess : The Vana'diel you know ? Turns out to be a lie : the good guys never actually win the Crystal War, and the war is still ongoing. Oh, and this reality is trying to consume the dream you live in, because if it don't, it will disappear.
• Eldritch Abomination: Atomos, full stop.
• Elemental Crafting: Fantasy metals do exist, but precious metals like gold are used in alloys if the end result is anything but jewelery.
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: 2-Hours are always saved for boss fights.
• Elite Mooks: Ever go to Dynamis? Filled with the suckers.
• The Empire: Shantotto is set to have one of her own in a new expansion. Also, the Orcish Empire is a state to the north that invaded the San d'Oria region, so all the orcs in the game are just the expeditionary force of a larger empire.
  • Not to mention the Empire of Aht Urhgan, although this has some aspects of The Kingdom as well from a trope perspective.
• Enemy Summoner: And these guys are the cause of many a wipe in Dynamis. Oddly, they're pretty tame elsewhere.
• The End of the World as We Know It: Preventing this is the goal in every expansion thus far.
• Enough to Go Around: A few hundred thousand wyvern eggs does not equal rare. Let's not even get started on Delkfutt Keys. Or certain job-specific items.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Lightning-spewing raptors.
• Everything's Better with Penguins: Apkallu are penguins... from the Middle East.
  • Not that this is so unusual. There are 20 separate species of penguins, most of which do not live in cold climates. One species lives near the equator.
• Expy: Lady Lilith is a horned sorceress wearing a dress with a very deep V-cut who manipulates the flow of time. Sound familiar?
• Eye of Newt: A Ninjas ninjutsu requires tools to use.
• Fantastic Racism: Fairly light in the game itself, and light in the player base compared to World of Warcraft, but it exists. Some think Tarutaru are evil little demons hiding behind their cuteness, Elvaan are total jerks, etc. It should be noted that these are mainly restricted to their home cities, for instance, Galka in Aht Urhgan act and are treated pretty much the same as anyone else there.
  • Elvaan can be total jerks. Except Prince Trion, he's an idiot. Or a shining example of a righteous warrior, depending on how much worth you put on Gameplay and Story Segregation (gold armor as a disguise aside). Ashmea B Greinner, on the other hand...
  • San d'Orian Elvaan may act proud, but they don't actively oppress any other races, like the Humes did to the Galka, which is a major part of Bastok's storyline in the past. Tarutaru often hide contempt or evil intentions behind cutesy mannerisms and verbal tics.
  • There is a fairly prevalent theory as to why Mithra and Galka share the lowest Charisma score: they're closer to looking like the beastmen than the other races.
    • Mithras get handwaved due to them being a tribal society on their home continent. Galkas don't get off so lucky, though.
• Fate Worse Than Death: Oh dear Altana, have mercy of your children...
  • Raogrimm a.k.a the Shadowlord is forced to watch over Dynamis until hatred no longer exists. Hopefully, he's not alone.
  • Lilisette has no other choice but to leave her world behind, and replace her Evil Counterpart in her own world in order to close Atomos's maws and allow the two futures to survive. And her actions during the Crystal War are Ret-Gone, which means that only you remember her.
• The Federation: The Federation of Windurst. Also, the enemies during the Crystal War are referred to as the Beastmen Confederate, but they are organized more like a horde or The Empire, bowing to the Shadow Lord's power.
• Five-Bad Band: The Ark Angels.
• Flaming Sword: Red Mages and Summoners can both imbue weapons with magic, while some weapons have a lesser effect on their own.
• Floating Continent: The Tu'Lia region. Don't expect it to fall.
• Friendly Fireproof: Played straight for the players and enemies, but some enemy attacks either hit you and your party... or absolutely every player near.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: "Grape juice" made by decaying grapes. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more.
• Fun with Acronyms: It seems that Windurstian kids don't think their group names through, as a string of Windurst quests involve the Star Onion Brigade. This seems to be a perpetual thing, since in the Wings of the Goddess, there is another group called the Windurstian Teen Force.
• The Gambler: Corsairs are gambler pirates who boost specific stats by random amounts, and use a blackjack-like mechanic to improve the results.
  • Also an example of Four Is Death—the "unlucky number" which gives the worst version of each Corsair buff is always exactly four more than the "lucky number" that gives the second best (11 always being the best—any higher and you "go bust", with predictable results).
    • In an interesting Inversion, the number four is actually the Lucky Number for about half of the EXP Party Rolls that Corsairs use on a regular basis, i.e. Ninja, Hunter, Chaos Rolls.
• Game Mod: DAT mods... and, uh, Windower.
• Gang Plank Galleon: The ninja-pirate and samurai-pirate town of Norg. Explained during the Samurai AF quests as Norg being the remnants of a kingdom that was wiped out, minus a few hundred people, mostly the fishermen.
• Geo Effects: Magic can be affected by the weather. And the day of the week.
  • Scholars can manipulate the weather at higher levels, granting party members favorable weather conditions.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: There are a few beasties in this game that pop up in storylines, one of which is the Snoll Tzar.
• Glass Cannon: Dark Knights. They can actually kill themselves with Souleater.
• The Goomba: Considering the look of Mario's first foe, it's not actually that odd to fight a walking, punching onion (Or flower, or whatever).
  • Mandragoras? They're only the 1st mob if you start in Windurst. Black mandragoras (called korrigans) are death on legs.
• Grim Up North: Xarcabard, the ever-cliche hangout of the Shadow Lord.
• Guide Dang It: So many quests are insanely difficult to do, or even know about, without using the internet. Quest givers are unlabeled, the steps are vague, the in-game quest log doesn't update with progress beyond initial opening and completion, and the rewards are usually unmentioned. Considering how many of the quests are all but required (Chocobo License, Advanced and Sub Jobs), checking the fan wiki or other guides is required.
  • For perspective as to how bad this can be, there are several quests where you are asked to bring an item to the quest giver. To be extra clear, he/she literally will not elaborate further than an "item".
• Hammerspace: Players either pull ranged weapons from their leg, like RoboCop... or their ass. Not to mention that somehow a bowl of soup and a bed take up the same inventory space.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Subverted by the fact that any challenge you beat is really done by a group of yourself and other players, and horribly averted by the NPC generals in Besieged and Campaign.
  • For instance, some generals (I'm looking at you, Valaineral) in campaign can defeat multiple enemy squads singlehandedly, including multiple overpowered enemy commanders that can take dozens of players twice as long to defeat. Cerane I Virgaut can take the collective beating of three or four whole enemy squads and her health will barely budge at all.
• Healing Factor: A White Mage's Auto-Regen fits this trope. Also obtainable by Blue Mages with a specific spell combination, earlier than White Mages - but any character can have this in Aht Urgan or past areas with Sanction or Sigil respectively. And the Regen spells.
• Helpful Mook: Pixies, if you don't attack them.
• Heroic Mime: Your Player Character.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Lion, at the end of Rise of Zilart. It doesn't stick.
  • Lilisette at the end of Wings of the Goddess.
• Hobbits: The Tarutaru, who are the best spellcasters in the game.
• Honest John's Dealership: Goblins are pretty much entirely like this.
  • "Us goblins, we don't like you, but we'll like you for a price."
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Absolute Virtue. Square intentionally tries to make the boss even more unbeatable if someone actually does beat it, then sometimes bans the players for exploiting glitches to do so.
  • No longer applies, Many groups have been beating Absolute Virtue consistently for a while now.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl : With regards to fanart, a subsect of artists have taken a fondness to pairing up Elvaan and Mithra ( or Tarutaru) on opposite ends of their size spectrum. It's very dramatic looking.
• 100% Heroism Rating
• Idiot Ball: Your Player Character carries this in the Treasures of Aht Urghan plot. The developers apparently did not consider the implications of this.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Lady Lilith does this to Lilisette, with her arm.
• In a Single Bound: One of the key abilities for a Dragoon is a set of Jump commands, one of which sheds all hate from an enemy.
• Infinity-1 Sword: Elemental staves and Magian-specific weapons.
• Infinity+1 Sword: Relic weapons and mythic weapons.
  • Oddly inverted, for many jobs (mainly mages) the Elemental Staves and Magian weapons are actually better than the Relic and Mythic Weapons. Relic Weapons are simply high-damage melee damage weapons that do nothing to help casting stats. Certain Mythic Weapons (WHM and BLM) are useful in certain situations, the SMN Mythic Weapon is clearly superior, but other Mythic Weapons (RDM, BRD, and SCH) should not be used for spells cast on enemies.
• Instant Death Radius: Most mobs are bad enough, but you do not mess with those Monk monsters.
  • Unless you're a Red Mage, who can cut down damage taken on a per-hit basis and also utilize spikes spells to return damage back to the enemy.
    • Paladin/Red Mage can also easily beat the crap out of Monk monsters.
  • There's also "Extremely Bad Breath", which is used by 3 specific Morbol NMs. It instantly kills anyone within a certain radius.
  • Odin's Zantetsuken is the best example of this; it is an AOE death effect.
• Interspecies Romance: Humes and Elvaan can canonically cross-breed; Mithra crossbreeding is less likely, but it is heavily implied (especially in Fanon... go figure) that members of any of the playable races can become involved with any other races. Yes, even Tarutaru.
• Invisibility Flicker: Opening a door is far too awesome for an Invisible spell.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Many, many NPCs are somehow undetectable by monsters... and don't get hurt by area attacks.
  • To the point that we adventurers seem to be the weakest folks in the world. Unarmed children and the elderly often get to places by themselves that we need a dozen other players, and many brutal fights against deadly opponents, to reach. And they're always there FIRST!
• It's All Upstairs From Here: Delkfutt's Tower.
• Joke Item: A bunch of crafted clothing and fireworks.
  • Don't forget the Cheese Sandwich added because a fan asked during a Q&A at FFXI Fan Fest one year..
• Killer Rabbit: Pretty much every monster class, no matter how soft and fuzzy, has rather high-level Notorious Monster representatives. Hence the maxim: "No matter how powerful you are, somewhere in the world there is a rabbit that can kick your ass." Related, "There's a crab for every level."
  • Perhaps a humanoid example with Proffessor Shantotto, and the Tartaru race in general, they're only about 1"1/2 feet tops, and they're unbelievably powerful casters, so much so Shantotto, regarded as the strongest, can take over the world if she ever turned evil.
• Kiting: Kiting is broken up into normal kiting, where healers can be attacked if the kiters don't keep the mob's attention, and "super-kiting," where due to how the game's enmity system works, a kiter can be healed infinitely without having to do anything other than run. For obvious reasons, the latter doesn't work against many bosses.
• The Kingdom: All three of the joinable nations fall under this trope to some extent, although the Kingdom of San d'Oria is probably the straightest example because it's a monarchy as well. The Marquisate of Tavnazia and the Grand Duchy of Jeuno may also fall under this, but have certain mitigating factors what with the former being destroyed except for a hole in the ground and the latter being ruled by a secretly evil Archduke.
• Large and In Charge: While beastmen leaders can be larger than the others, any boss that isn't a monster or beastman will be only as big as a tall Galka, at best.
• Laughably Evil: Aquila from the Wings of The Goddess storyline is a amusingly childish sort of guy, but that doesn't make him any less of a jerk.
• Level Grinding: Quite a lot... a while back, though, it was worse.
  • Consider that out of 75 levels, you reach the halfway point (in terms of total exp) at level 66.
  • And then at VanaFest 2010, from the Developers themselves, the level cap is increased from 75, to 99.
  • The Abyssea mini-expansion seems to be working on averting this for higher level characters (Which is a good thing considering the increased cap with each Abyssea addon), as one can earn massive amounts of experience in a relatively short amount of time.
• Limit Break: Called Weaponskills in-game.
  • There are quests actually called limit breaks in the game; they raise your character's maximum level and make them subsequently much more powerful.
• Little People: The Tarutaru fit the cute factor to a T, perhaps a teeny-tiny, itty-bitty too much.
• Lost Forever: If you see a Paladin ranting about Bibiki Seashells, this is why.
• The Lost Woods: Jugner Forest, though there is a clear if winding path through it in the present. For very old growth style forest, there is The Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, filled with trees that reach beyond the draw distance, numerous roaving plantoids, bugs, walking mushrooms and tree tending creatures. There is also a dungeon within that zone called the Boyhada Tree.
  • For getting lost, The Great War era version of Jugner Forest has barricades blocking the usual routes, leading to new detours. Yhoator and Yuhtunga Jungle are better applications as the map only shows the aboveground paths, and it's up to the player to figure out which undergound paths link them. Caederva Mire can also apply, as the player doesn't even get a map to this place before jumping through a few hoops.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: A sample of relevant examples (beware of spoilers): https://web.archive.org/web/20130528034746/http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/ff11characters.shtml.
• Luck-Based Mission: Many, but An Empty Vessel, the unlock quest for Blue Mage, stands out. During it, you have to pay 1000 gold to have your fortune told through a personality test minigame—You need to get a specific fortune of all the other fortunes combined to start in on Blue Mage. The problem is whatever system the game uses to determine what result you get is unknown to the players—it apparently uses a combination of what levels you have, how many monsters you have killed, what jobs you have unlocked, and what tradeskills you have, but it's all just a guess on the playerbase's part. There's a specific one that some people finish the quest with; for others, well, you can try once an hour, for 1000 gil a pop, as it's essentially completely random.
• Magic Dance: Dancers can debuff, drain HP or MP, and even heal.
• Magic Knight: Four job classes fit this trope: Paladins, Red Mages, Blue Mages, and Dark Knights, although Dark Knights normally forget they qualify for this.
• Marathon Boss: Pandemonium Warden used to fit this trope. A whole party fought it for 18 hours straight and it was still standing.^[2] There was such a huge backlash that Square was forced to change things so that the Warden gets bored and leaves if you take too long to kill it.
• The Medic: Many job classes fit this, primarily White Mages, but Red Mages get preferred a lot more at higher levels, much to the dismay of quite a few of them (And all of the other jobs that normally heal.)
• Mega Manning: Blue Mages.
  • In order to learn a summon, the Summoner must defeat the creature before he or she may summon it.
• Metal Slime: You know this trope counts if you've ever seen Cactrot Rapido. There's a quest Notorious Monster with this name too.
  • A character is lucky if they can mod up to 2000 HP. Cactrot Rapido can use 10000 Needles, as opposed to normal cactaurs being limited to 1000 Needles.
• Murderous Mannequin: A few of these turned up as bosses eventually.
• Mythology Gag: References to characters and events from earlier games in the series; for example an escaping thief in San d'Oria calls a town guard a Spoony Bard.
• Necromancer: You can meet one living in a dungeon for a quest series. Necromancer was also one of the jobs discussed to be added in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion, but they decided against it since the job would be essentially useless during the day. We instead got Puppetmaster. Later, Puppetmaster got a few buffs.
• Nerf: There's a reason for the lolDRG joke. And what exactly did Sambas on pets do to you, Square Enix?
  • That said, there haven't been any real job-related nerfs for a while, and dragoon specifically has gotten quite some buffs in its own right. Lately, the nerfs seem more towards easy ways to make money to discourage RMTs, but which often just makes things harder for more casual players, and may actually drive business for RMTs.
  • Tends to be rarer than many MMOs because SE usually increases the strength of weaker classes to balance them rather than reduce stronger classes. Even the original Dragoon nerf was only indirect because it was a change to Weaponskill TP gain rather than any effect on the class itself.^[3]
    • While Dragoons feel that they were the most hurt by this change, it was actually Monks; prior to this patch, they got an 80% TP return from the Asuran Fists weaponskill, allowing them to just use Asuran Fists again after only one attack round..
    • Scholar got a nasty one. When it was discovered Absolute Virtue could be epically owned by a party of Scholars stacking Modus Veritas, they nerfed it to the point normal mobs could resist it, let alone bosses.
• Nice Hat: As the Artifact Armor is the iconic look of each job class, many of them have a Nice Hat. Black Mage and Red Mage in particular have iconic hats,
• Ninja Looting: Being an MMORPG, there's always a chance for this. Linkshells normally deal with this quickly, however.
• No-Gear Level: Salvage strips players of the ability to use all gear upon entering (the excuse is something about psychowaves in the ruins). Special cells dropped by enemies can be used to lift the equipment restrictions, slot by slot.
• Old Master: Maat. Don't let the age fool you. He mastered most jobs in the game - but sticks to Monk when fighting in the past. He goes about as easily on the beastmen as he goes on players.
  • His good taste extends beyond his choice in caps and to his job class, it seems.
  • Oggbi also counts, as he's the man who teaches Monks the dreaded Asuran Fists weapon skill, and does not play around in Campaign battles.
• One-Gender Race: The Mithra are a playable race of catgirls. Word of God says that male Mithra do exist, but only one has been seen in the game,so far.^[4] The Galka fully play this straight, being an all male race that reproduce through a form of reincarnation.^[5]
• One-Hit Kill: Some monsters have Death spells, as well as Doom, not to mention horribly broken based on HP area attacks.
  • In Wings of the Goddess, done by Lady Lilith to Lilisette, while she was pretending to be defeated.
• One Size Fits All: How can a 7-foot Galka wear gear from a 2-and-a-half-foot Tarutaru? The world may never know.
  • Vana'diel is also one size fits all, in a manner of speaking. For instance, no "river" in the world is deeper than a few inches, because otherwise Tarutarus would be walking totally submerged.
    • Not true. There are many places a tarutaru can go where their entire body will be underwater. Which means, obviously, that tarus are amphibious.
• One-Winged Angel: Well, we are talking about a Final Fantasy game. It's pretty much expected.
• Our Demons Are Different: The Dark Kindred that serve the Shadowlord are of the summon-and-serve variety.
  • There are classic summon and kill everything demons, though only 3 of them exist of the Dvergr class.
• Our Elves Are Better: FFXI's version are the Elvaan, which seem to be a subversion of most elves. They're very tall with somewhat awkwardly long necks and large hands, very strong (stronger than the 8 foot tall wall of muscle that Galka are), and fairly poor with magic. However, they are ostensibly better at healing magic than other schools. They're terrible with bows though. Legolas they ain't.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The Fomors are restless spirits of the dead, some of which can be appeased.
• Our Giants Are Bigger
• Our Goblins Are Wickeder: Cute actually. There're goblin plushies!
• Our Liches Are Different: They are called Corses.
• Our Orcs Are Different: The game's Orcs are of the Tolkienian variety.
  • They are fat and have tails. And no noses or ears.
• Pay Evil Unto Evil: Do you really think most players would care about this?
• Perpetually Static: The developers try and spice it up, but it's still the same if you defeat any Big Bad or not. They do make continuity quite convenient, for example having "Duke Vicarious" Esha'ntarl take what would be Kam'lanaut's role in the Chains of Promathia story, because of what happens during Rise of the Zilart.
• Pick Up Group: Normally, these work out... On the other hand...
• Playing Possum : In Wings of the Goddess, just when You and Lilisette think they defeated Lady Lilith, Lilisette kneels in front of Lilith, showing compassion... Too bad Lilith literally pierces her with her arm and goes One-Winged Angel. Oh Crap.
• Poisoned Weapons: Yes, they exist, but having a 1 HP every 3 seconds lost status effect from a melee attack, that doesn't always proc, let alone stay on long enough? Not so useful.
• Portal to the Past: The original nine Cavernous Maws, from Wings Of The Goddess.
• Power Fist: Both Monks and Puppetmasters use hand-to-hand weapons the most.
• Power-Up Food: Food is powerful enough that it can equal the effect of several expensive pieces of equipment. For instance, many melee characters use equipment that boosts strength and attack, but leave most of the accuracy buffs to sushi.
• Praetorian Guard: Several of them. The most visible ones are in San d'Oria (the Royal Guard for the d'Oraguilles and the Temple Knights under the Church), Jueno's Ducal Guard, and Aht Urhgan's Immortals. Windurst also has two divisions: The Patriarch Protectors guard the Parliament of Patriarchs while the Sibyl Guards were formed from war orphans and protect the Star Sibyl. Bastok's Gold Musketeers may qualify as well, and all of these squads can be seen in actual combat except for the Sibyl and Ducal Guards, and they tend to kick butt compared to other units.
• Primal Stance: With Orcs being evil and whatnot, this was inevitable.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: While Orcs are less honorable and more crazy, and still fit the trope, a better example would be every other beastman in existance, who just as frequently are Warrior Poets. Even the demonic-seeming Kindred are an extremely honorable race who really would be just as fine living in peace. Tenzen also counts, from the heroes' side.
• Punctuation Shaker: Everything related to the Zilart has an apostrophe thrown in somewhere: Zi'Tah, Ru'Avitau, Al'Taieu, Archduke Kam'lanaut, Archduke Vicarious Esha'ntarl, etc.
  • Quadav names (Gu'Dha, Za'Dha, Di'Dha, De'Vyu, etc.) and some Elvaan family names (such as d'Oraguille), too.
  • With Lumorians, this actually serves some purpose. Ul prefaces the weakest in a family (such as Ul'Phuabo), Om the next tier up, and so on.
• Punch Clock Villain: Again, most beastmen fit this trope, but Goblins and Trolls especially.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: While FFXI is somewhat less prone to this than many MMOs, the page illustration used to be from it.
• Random Drop: expected, knowing the series.
  • Rare Random Drop: way too many of them, and cause of Loot Drama.
• Real After All: A quest in Wings of The Goddess results in The Reveal of a ghost.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Prishe and Eald'narche both qualify—the former due to an encounter with a certain mysterious object that left her fixed at the age she was at during the encounter, and the latter because not only is he one of the last surviving Zilart, but he is actually older than his brother Kam'lanaut. Esha'ntarl for the same reasons as Eald'narche, too.
• Red Baron: Lilisette, the "Moonshade Butterfly," or as her friends jokingly refer to her, the "Moonshade Wolverine"
• The Red Mage: Guess which class qualifies?
• Repeatable Quest: There are numerous repeatable quests, ranging from the simple Fetch Quest for fame grinding to redoing major battles in Missions for a different end reward.
• Ret-Gone: Lilisette, since only you remember her at the end of Wings of the Goddess
• The Republic: The Republic of Bastok.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Professor Shantotto.
  • And far, far too many other Tarutaru.
    • She also only rhymes in the North American localization.
• Ribcage Ridge: Tahrongi Canyon and the Maze of Shakhrami have quite a few wyrm skeletons in them, to the extent one would almost expect to see that kind of dragon nerby often - however, since those are close to starter areas, they end up just hinting at Tiamat being in the nearby Attowa Chasm, which fortunately isn't easily reached by accident.
• Rings of Death: Chakrams are standard throwing weapons.
• Robot Buddy: Both Automatons and Cardians fit here, Cardians moreso, being capable of handling tasks a bit more independently (Although Aht Urhgan doesn't have an Automaton tutor...).
• Rule 34: If you combine the loads of this that Final Fantasy titles tend to spawn with the longevity of an MMO, you end up with a disturbingly large amount of it floating around.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Having male gods Shiva and Garuda be female.
• San Dimas Time: Applies only to Campaign Battles and in-game day of the week..
• Scratch Damage: The Status Buff Phalanx allows a full aversion of this trope.
• Script Breaking: You can have very different quest and missions active at the same time which can sometime share characters being in very different states - for example, getting a quest from Shantotto before or during her own expansion, and finishing it during or after it respectively (during her expansion story, the one you can visit is suppposed to be a fake in her absence whom can apparently pose as an ambassador in Aht Urghan and nuke a khimaira for thousands of damage, activating a quest that shows your NPC fellow in trouble at an enemy stronghold, have him help you with a fight for a different quest related to him, then go save him at the original dungeon later; Lion dying at the end of the Zilart missions, but if you change nations and do the new nation's missions you'll eventually meet her again as if nothing had happened. Can't blame the devs, there's a lot of story to keep track of and they keep adding more, but it can get odd at times.
• Secret AI Moves: Ninja Notorious Monsters don't die when they blow up, and it hits the whole party instead of one target. Some even get clones that fight alongside them when casting Utsusemi instead of just images that absorb an attack an disappear.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Often seen in dialogue with more formal speakers, especially Elvaan. This is presumably an artifact of translating very formal Japanese (Keigo) that a normal Japanese person would understand, but it often comes out like an SAT vocabulary test in more severe cases on the English side of things.
• Seven Heavenly Virtues: The seven bosses Jailers of the Sea/Jailers of Virtue. In order of kill, they are Jailer of: Temperance, Fortitude, Faith, Justice, Hope, Prudence, and Love.
• Shoot the Medic First: Averted. Due to the fact that groups of enemies are fought by putting the entire group to sleep and ganging up on one at a time, enemy White Mages are often targetted last because Benediction would wake up and fully heal every other enemy.
• Shoulder-Sized Dragon: Wyverns. Dragoons get them as pets.
• Shout-Out: The Ninja's Two Hour Ability of Mijin Gakure.
  • Far more than that. The monster and weapon list is loaded with them. Some examples include a trio of bats called the Black Triple Stars, Joyeuse, Durandal and Curtana, and numerous monsters named from Greek, Norse and many other mythologies.
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: Many, many enemies make a noise when they aggro you... except Fomors, which makes them even creepier than they already are, as they're undead versions of the player races. This can also lead to an ugly massacre if someone is depending on the sound of aggro to know when to stop running.
• Space Compression: The Vana'diel players have access to is only a portion of the entire planet, as only a quarter of the planet is currently accessible. Still, that would make the planet maybe the same size as Earth's Moon, if that, so the trope still applies.
• Stalking Mission: "All by Myself", even though it's stupidly hard to do it that way...
• Stat Sticks: Elemental staves.
• Status Buff: The combat system has a very large amount of buffs. Mages can spend several minutes straight doing nothing but buffing before a fight.
• Stealth Run: Try walking around in a high-level dungeon without Invisible and Sneak, and not get aggro... I DARE you. We'll just clean up the fine paste that is your corpse afterwards.
  • It's actually quite easy in many areas, as anything that will aggro you ignores Sneak and Invisible. This only changes the type of stealth required.
  • Avoiding things that aggro by sight tends to be easy, as all you need is for them to turn and leave some room behind them. Sound aggro memories basically run after anything within their radius, so sneaking past undead, bats, or slimes in tight passages without the use of the enchantment tends to be difficult.
• Steampunk: Bastok and Movalpolos.
• Sticks to the Back: Played iconically straight.
• Stone Wall: Paladins play it straight, while Ninjas are a hybrid of this and Fragile Speedster.
• Strange Salute: Windurstians have a rather odd salute, and people in Aht Urghan seem to draw moons with their hands a lot. Crescent moons, at least.
• Stripperiffic: Sadly, Subligar can do this for everyone.
  • That the Galka are this too is a potent Fetish Fuel for Fan Yay.
  • Of course, it's worst for Mithra - the quest for pants is a long and arduous one.
• Shipper on Deck: The Troupe Mayakov dancers towards Lilisette and the Player Character, at least if he's male. Also, pretty much everyone else who sees "Future Fabulous" together.
• Smash Mook: Acroliths. They tend to fall apart a bit, but they do nothing but smack things.
• Third-Person Seductress: Most female player models fit here... except Tarutaru. Of course, opinions vary on the other races (not EVERYONE has a catgirl fetish, for instance).
• Trippy Finale Syndrome: Chains of Promathia goes all the way to another dimension.
• Time Travel: How else are we supposed to go back to the Crystal War in Wings of the Goddess?
• Timed Mission: Assault, Salvage, Dynamis, BCNMs, escort quests, and several Campaign Ops are timed.
• Tomato Surprise: Let's just say there's more to Promathia than meets the eye. And no, he's not Unicron.
• Too Awesome to Use: Again, 2-hours. Even when its use would be justified, some people save them anyways.
• Twenty Bear Asses: While, for the most part, this only really happens at low levels in order to gain fame and unlock higher-level quests, getting the second-best fishing rod in the game requires catching no less than 10,000 carp.
• Underground Level: This game has a lot of underground tunnels.
• Verbal Tic: In the English localization, Tarutaru tend to replace any word-ending T with "taru" and tend to rhyme words as well in a childlike, "lucky wucky" kind of way, which is somewhat similar in the Japanese version. Mithra tend to have Trrrilling Rrrs instead in English, while in Japanese they usually end their sentences with -nya.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Being an MMO with actual storylines, the game actually has several of these.
• Video Game Stealing: Well, there is a Thief job. Thankfully, the things you can steal are things you can expect from that enemy... such as stealing a slice of hare meat from a rarab (hare) before it's dead.
• Weapon of Choice: Each job has one or two weapons that they are best at YOU MUST USE AT ALL TIMES, OR NOBODY WILL EVER EVER PARTY WITH YOU, EVER.
  • Considering melee damage dealers using A+ weapons need to equip +accuracy gear just to hit mobs reliably and the job weapon restrictions on the better weapons in any group, it is more a practical than elitism issue. Yes, Dragoon can use a sword, but they are barely going to hit anything, and are restricted to using weaker swords, which isn't really a great combination for a melee damage dealer.
    • The Warrior job tends to be the exception: as long as you're using a high-damage weapon, it doesn't really matter what you're using. Swords don't hit as hard as greatswords and greataxes, but hit more often, and miss isn't as punishing. This is generally true of most classes, in fact (using faster but weaker weapons), but many people will disagree.
  • This also doesn't preclude nonstandard weapons for specialized purposes, such as Samurai using daggers for the Saving Private Ryaaf assault.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: This goes for all beastmen, but especially Quadav, Goblins, Sahagin, and Qiqirn.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Moogles, Goblins, and Qiqirn are allowed to live with "people" and even start their own business or host a large-scale event. Everyone else? Killed on sight.
  • Sort of. When you consider how many allied Yagudo there are, it comes off like the Altana races are merely collectively racist. Also supporting this, the reason Galkas and Mithras have a lower charisma score than the other player races is that they look more like beastmen than the other races.
  • The beastmen races are not all evil. Originally, the Orcs were allies of the Elvaan, and the Yagudo were peaceful people who were invaded by the tarutaru, with no real opinion on the other races. The Quadav only become enemies because the Bastokans destroyed the Quadav nesting grounds to mine ore.
    • Though, the Aht Urghan beastmen are just evil. "Hey guys, they have a shiny thing! Let's kill them and take it!"
    • Actually, it's more like "Hey guys, they have the shiny thing that powered a massive doomsday machine that was used to subjugate almost an entire continent. Let's take it so they don't do that shit again. Give 'em some of their own medicine while we're at it." If Lamia/Merrow, add revenge for being created beings. If Trolls, add being mercs.
  • Tarutaru used to be are evil little bastards. In the game's backstory, they invaded and occupied what would become San d'Oria, subjugating the Elvaan for a very long time. They see themselves as having done nothing wrong, despite being clear aggressors and conquerors no different from the beastmen.
    • Even worse, the frog Beastman race, the Poroggos, saw themselves as kin to the Taru and learned their language and magic arts, the end result? The Taru tried to genocide them.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Arguably, Lady Lilith. Well, it's either her world or yours. Take a guess of which one she wants to save. However, in the end, thanks to Atomos Critical Existence Failure and the fact that she's going to die soon, she's the one who offers to Lilisette the way to save both futures.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Mayakov.
  • It's called a lisp.
• Wind Is Green: The wind elemental resistance symbol is green, the moon turns green on Windsday, the wind elemental summon is green, her constellation has a green star in it, air elementals are green, the wind element is associated with green rocks...
• You No Take Candle: The beastmen races speak mostly this to the players when understandable, although Lamia and Goblins have no problems speaking to the player. It's also messed around with in Wings of The Goddess. Badly.
  • Though the Lamia make sense when you find out they were created by the empire as biological weapons. They'd need to understand their orders.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Certain boss monsters, as well as the inevitable Chest Monster.
• Zerg Rush: Actually done by the players, in most cases. There are a fair number of quests and missions where massive numbers of mobs will attack players.
  • Two missions in Windurst's Wings of the Goddess plot have the beastmen doing a zerg rush. The second one has you defending the gates of the city from it. The first one has a hundred level 30ish enemies running down a tunnel to their target, and your party of 75+ players coming from behind to stop them.
• Zettai Ryouiki: Most of the female race's job related Artifact Armors, but the Mithra ones especially.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The Qutrub are a nasty bunch, actually turning themselves into zombies willingly.
  • Also, Fomors are undead versions of player character races, although they look less like zombies and more like shadowy versions of players with orange glowy eyes.

1. ↑ Ifirt, Shiva, Garuda, Titan, Ramuh, Levithan, Genbu, Seiryu, Suzaku, Byakko, Kirin, Fenrir, Diabolos, Bahamut, Promathia, Carbuncle, Odin, Alexander, Dark Ixion, Cait Sith Ceithir, and Atmos.
2. ↑ Square-Enix later noted that they weren't using an effective strategy
3. ↑ Prior to the nerf, weaponskills that were said to hit multiple times actually did, for the purposes of generating TP, and spears had a weaponskill that could hit up to eight times; if it did, it would generate enough TP to use the weaponskill again immediately, meaning Dragoons could use a Limit Break over and over again. The "nerf" made multi-hit weaponskills count as one hit for the purposes of TP generation
4. ↑ Lehko was apparently only brought to Windurst because the Tarutaru thought the all-female Mithra Mercenaries would follow orders better if the orders came from a man.
5. ↑ A mistranslation in the US instruction booklet said that Galka are asexual, but this was later corrected in interviews.