^^ what they said. And there is another choice.
4. Download the DLX-PXI server and run your own server, your way.
Every single currently running private FFXI server is buggy. All of them. Hell, even some of those are poorly ran by who-ever is running them.
Here is a story:
I remember this one time I joined someone's server and the gm kept bugging me. He showed up next to me, with his uber gear and just kept asking who I was and what I was doing. I didn't say anything to him. I just wanted to play and be left alone. Was that so much to ask? I mean it was a public server after all. Anyways, so I ran off to play and this jackass Warps me to him for no damn reason at all. I was greatly annoyed and I left.
Now that is poorly ran.
Then there was this one time, this group was killing chigoe's and this jackass host decided to give the chigoe's the 2hr ability for king behemoth. Which killed them. Now people like th... OH! wait.. that was me. :D
You won't see a server full of people playing/grouping because 90% of the people playing on private servers just want to be kinda left alone. They may bring a few friends in and others simply run multiple characters. But, some also feel the same way. The servers out there are just too buggy to bother with. Granted.. most of the bugs are Script related not many running the server will bother to fix those bugs. Like missions, npcs, events can be fixed.
Well that turned into a bit of a post. Anyways, at this time the best options are to play retail, run your own buggy server, or wait a good 6-8months till the Dark Star server is further along. We are working on it and doing tests with it every so often. Check the
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