Back in December 2003 I was a senior in High School. I was also around when an MMO called Final Fantasy XI came out. I was (and still am) a huge console RPG player and the Final Fantasy series was my favorite. So, I asked for FFXI for Christmas that year and I got it. I immediately started playing and was hooked. FFXI Gil was one of the biggest MMORPGs at the time (remember this was pre-WoW) and it showed it. For those of you that dont know anything about FFXI, it is a party game. This means that without the appropriate group, the only thing you can really do is craft. It didn't matter though, there were so many people you could find a group easily and start killing things and leveling up. And while you were partying you were making friends and having a good time running from goblins and "training" half of the zones. The game was all about the community, and I loved it.

And I continued to love it for over 10 hours a day 24/7 for the next 4 years.

It took me almost a year just to get my first job to level 75 (the max level). Right away I started doing end game content and joining 18 player alliances to take out bosses. I have played multiple MMORPGs since my hardcore FFXI gil days, and I can truthfully say it is the only game whose bosses live up to the word. To many gamers, a "boss" is just a monster a little harder than the rest. Many times it requires a few people to take down, or maybe it just gives better loot. FFXI gil had those too but they were just NMs (Notorious Monsters).

Tiamat. Vrtra. Kirin. Adamantoise. Fafnir. Cereberus.

Those were real bosses. The maximum people in an alliance was 18. If you tried to fight any boss with only 18 people though you would most likely fail. "Ah...other games have those. They're just called 'raid bosses'" you might say. But I disagree. Even with around 30 people, killing any of the affore mentioned monsters would take hours. HOURS. Not 10 minutes, not 30 minutes, not even just one hour. I remember fighting Tiamat for over 4 hours once, and that didn't include the 1-4 hours waiting for it to spawn.