FFXI would get my vote, any game that forces you to group up should be illegal. but then again if one doesnt like to group up, one shouldnt be playing MMORPGs.
FFXI is the worst.
First off, NO PVP!!!
It starts off not fun by how you have to keep re-making your character/account or whatever, until you land on the same server as your friends. They can buy you a ticket to hook up with them, but it is prohibitively expensive for lowbies, so unless you want to wait a few weeks you gotta keep remaking. Usually takes like 20 tries.
Game has a latency bias against americans. This is because all the servers are in japaneseland. It's not as bad as you'd think, as far as lag, but it's terrible in other ways. Anytime you try to compete with a person in japan for something, you lose 100% of the time.
When the game started, all the japanese were already very high level. You didn't want to auction anything for profit did you? Well too bad, because everything not max-level is worthless from day 1 and there's already 50 on the auction block.
Language barrier. There's a translator, but it's too hard for them to use. So you can talk to them, but alot of times they won't even bother to respond.
Good things: We nuked their asses good in WW2.
Leveling starts off not so bad. You slowly accumulate powers and whatnot as normal for mmos. You can solo just fine until 20ish, then grouping becomes better. By 30's soloing is much much slower and becomes very risky. Eventually I assume you must group to do anything, from what I've heard, and waiting for a group begins to take up 75-90% of your playtime. Having fun yet?
Also, the ammount of exp required to level doubles every level (I think, or just about doubles). Yet, the ammount of exp you gain per kill never increases. I seem to recall bonuses for fast chaining and being in a group, but it's pretty insignificant. When level 50 requires 10,000,000 times the exp required to reach level 25 and you still get the same 200 exp per kill. Dying causes exp loss, costing you hours.
You might spend 3 hours LFG, get in a group, kill shit for an hour, wipe a few times and lose 3 hours worth of exp. So you net -2hours exp. nice!
Because exp'ing is so risky, noone will even look at you to group if you dont' have the best gear for your level. Also, you better have good friends, because noone else is going to be willing to help you get those items which you will need to group with anyone.
There is also subjobs. Which basically require you to go back to level 1 as a new class, and do everything over again. If your subjob is not 1/2 your main class, you can forget about grouping with anyone.
And if you wanted your main class to be one of the "secret" classes, you end up having to level atleast 3 classes fairly high. The first 2 just to unlock the class you want. Then the third time as that class.
