It's Pandemonium in Final Fantasy XI
by James Egan 
Aug 16th 2008 at 4:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Forums, Game mechanics, Guilds, Endgame, News items, PvE
News has spread of a grueling new enemy encounter in Final Fantasy XI. The Notorious Monster (NM) Pandemonium Warden is one of the strongest opponents players can face in the game. But it seems Square-Enix may have raised the bar too high, given the extremes to which players must go to defeat Pandemonium Warden.
A linkshell (guild) called Beyond the Limitation recently faced off against Pandemonium Warden over an 18 hour period, but the NM was still going strong. The NM shapeshifts into multiple forms, making it even more of a challenge to defeat; Beyond the Limitations fought Pandemonium Warden through twenty of his possible forms, some of which took hours to kill. Pet Food Alpha, a Final Fantasy XI community site, quotes a member of Beyond the Limitation stating: "People were passing out and getting physically ill. We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible new story about how video games ruin people's lives."
There is the argument that the particular endgame encounter is geared towards the most hardcore linkshells in FFXI, but it stands to reason that a linkshell powerful and knowledgeable enough to reach that point would take on Pandemonium Warden with optimal efficiency. A member of Beyond the Limitation, going by the name Rukenshin, has posted a definitive account of the event and specifically addresses the publicity drawn to their encounter, which is well worth a read.
What's your take on this? How long should it take for your guild or linkshell to collectively bring down a single enemy in Final Fantasy XI, or any MMO for that matter?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Syl said on 5:57PM 8-16-2008
When you read that, you wonder what did the game designers think about when they did this boss...
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BaronJuJu said on 6:33PM 8-16-2008
Freakin' Nuts is about the only words I can think of describing that. That is ridiculous to have a Boss that takes that amount of time to fight and not even kill it. Folks go in to have a good time, not turn ill and spend an entire day just trying to get one NPC.
Whats the point of having something in game like that?
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recursive said on 6:52PM 8-16-2008
Well.. it's not the length of the fight but the length of the attempt, so I'm not totally blown away.
18 hours is a lot, but I've seen more encounters which took a while to master, be it spread over 3-4 hour nights. Not sure how these go in FFXI, but it's possible for guilds in other games to take this long on certain bosses I guess. I'm more amazed about them lasting 18 hours on their first attempt.
An 18 hour boss fight (1 fight) though.. now that I'd like to see. From a distance. With breaks in between. And possibly a fast forward button.
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Rosalita said on 8:35PM 8-16-2008
Recursive -
Sure, AV attempts have lasted days, but that was because of the constant wiping. The fight itself isn't terribly long - he doesn't have a ton of HP.
This fight takes 18+ without wiping being an issue. Big difference.
recursive said on 9:04PM 8-16-2008
Well for just getting to know a fight it's not a lot, but what you are saying is that it does take that long, straight, to complete it? This fight alone? Like I said I'm not familiar with the system but eh heh.. I think a 2 hour fight is insane already.
I guess it helps give a boss an epic feel though, bet poor Illidan feels neglected now.
Colin Brennan said on 11:16AM 8-20-2008
Yeah chief, you're looking at an 18+ hour, straight, fight on just the Pandemonium Warden. No wiping no nothing else... just your party and him going at it for 18 hours because he takes that long and has that much HP.
recursive said on 5:56PM 8-20-2008
Just one word:
Why? :/ Seriously..
So what are the mechanics like?
Philip said on 8:40PM 8-16-2008
This is what passes for in-game encounters in FFXI. Funny thing is, people will act like this is something special, and all the first victor of this fight will get is a damn wind crystal.
Pathetic really, which is why I gave up FFXI 2 years ago. The best content Square ever made for it is over 4 years old.
Such a shame.
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Jeromai said on 10:23PM 8-16-2008
As far as I understand it, it's not even defeated after an 18 hour fight. Making a "complete" attempt even longer than 18 hours. With false starts, failed attempts, etc.
And even the designers have stated that the intent to have it be an 18 hour fight.
Which is insane. It's definitely unhealthy to be expected to do something like that more than once - skipping or snatching hasty bathroom or food breaks, sitting for that long in front of a computer.
In my younger days, I once participated in a MUD quest marathon that sent teams of 5-6 chasing clues and downing 30 raid-type bosses in a massive race to finish. We were the fastest group and it took us close to 9 hours, running on adrenaline. It was wild. But also unhealthy. Was trembling by the end of it, and I'm sure my team members also had the shakes. The last group finished after 11 hours, and they were probably near collapse.
18 hours BOGGLES the mind.
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james said on 10:26PM 8-16-2008
18 hours is a long time but i was part of a whole guild who took over 2 days non-stop in fighting that boss...thats 48 hours+ we all gave up because in total we had done the first 12 hours solo but then it went batsh*t crazy we had friends taking over for us and we were doing it in shifts and when we gave up the boss dident even lose 1/20th of its health, when we all did a mass attack and it was all deflected soto speak we just gave up.
since then we never went back the guild is long dead and we have all moved on to other games.
some in rohan some in requien and the rest went to wow.
i swear they made a huge cluster puck when the boss takes from 18 -48+ hours and then maybe some more.
square need to address this problem because its just wrong
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pufonthis said on 1:29AM 8-17-2008
The guild attempting this is really.. REALLY the bottom of the barrel when it comes to our hobby.
It's moronic people like this that give playing MMOs a bad name. These are people who are obviously social drop-outs, stupid enough to actually think it would be fun to do this for 18 hours.
"But to me it is fun" - Um yea, and killing people was fun to Charles Manson but the rest of us know he was crazy. Just cause someone is dumb enough to believe what they are doing is fun doesn't make them any less a moron for doing it.
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breezer said on 1:53AM 8-17-2008
I don't think Absolute Virtue has been beaten yet and it's been the game for years. SE even did a demonstration to give the community "hints" at how to beat it, and still nobody could do it.
It was months and months before anyone beat Vrtra.
This is just how FFXI is... everything is INSANELY hard and even more insanely time consuming. 18 hours? At least they're fighting, and not just waiting for it to spawn. People wait 36 hours straight for an NM called Lord of Onzozo to spawn for basically their whole lives. When I played my LS (guild) and nearly every other endgame LS on my server spent up to 5 hours a night waiting for Fafnir/Nidhogg to spawn. And then only 1 LS gets to fight it. Every damn day. And then it's off to the next NM. King Behemoth. Adamantoise/Aspi, King Artho. Hurry up and wait.
It's not a game for real people. I have so many sad, messed up stories of people I met in FFXI. People who lost their jobs, kids, spouses. People who sleep twice a week, sometimes with the help of meth...
Square Enix is not in the business of making a fun game. They're in the business of consuming time and perpetuating addiction.
Zoot said on 12:42PM 8-17-2008
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and expect that you aren't a worthless troll. Please get your facts straight. We played the 18 hours not because we though it would be cool to do, or because it was really fun. We did it because it took weeks of effort to even get the trigger, and because we didn't actually know how long it would take.
We continued playing because after nine hours, or ten hours, we figured, what's another hour? Everyone had put so much effort into the fight, and we didn't want to give up. But at the end of the battle it was unanimously decided that we wouldn't attempt it again, and we were all outraged that the battle actually lasted this long. Our very first posts about this NM included the words, "Don't attempt this NM if you value your time."
Personally, I'm on hiatus from the game, because I don't like the fact that SE would conceive to create a boss like this as one of our main challenges. BtL has done most everything in the game, but we are not your typical hardcore LS. We are more social than anything, and we are all very close. We don't even camp 21-24 hour NM's anymore because none of us can play before 5:30pm on weekedays, besides the fact that we just don't think it's worth it. So I'll reiterate, this isn't typical of us as at all, as Ruke states in his Livejournal post. Nearly everyone in our shell goes to work Monday morning, myself included, and playing a video game for 18 hours straight may be something I have done once, but concentrating on the same boss for that amount of time without any breaks isn't something my body or lifestyle can take. I really wish you would have looked into this more before you made said something this accusing.
Bill said on 11:39AM 8-17-2008
The FFXI dev team has always been sadistic and hated the players. They refuse to answer the most basic questions about how anything works, and when they do let some hint slip out, it's so cryptic nobody understands it. Their interviews with Japanese media are long and in-depth, while their interviews with North American media are full of "I don't know" and "Figure that out for yourself". When you can't play 80 hours per week, it's hard to figure out moon phase effects or many other things that they outright refuse to explain or discuss.
The support system is built around annoying players. The GMs tell you to call the support center for help, the support center tells you to send email, and if the email actually gets read, the reply is either "the game is working as intended" or that you need to call or talk to a GM, starting the whole process over again. You might get really lucky and they'll tell you to speak to a supervisor, but there has never been one available. Just one more cockblock time sink from Square-Enix, it's just like playing ffxi.
After you spend 18-24 hours trying to kill this boss the chances of it dropping anything useful or wanted is .00001%. You're more likely to get a useless crystal or nothing at all. You'll need to fight this 30 or more times to get the item you want. Making the total time to fight warden to get anything at least 540 hours, not including time to farm the pop requirements.
The only reason people still care about old content is that the items from that content hardly ever drop. You could be doing the same raids for years and not see anything you could use. People think warden or AV are horrible because they take 18 hours. The cumulative time wasted on any single raid event (sky, dynamis, salvage, Einjerhar, etc) with players getting nothing out of it makes warden look easy.
FFXI isn't for the hard core, it's for the brain damaged. You can't attempt mobs like warden unless you find 18 or more of the best players with the best gear. Any single one of them sneezes or needs a 5 minute break and weeks of work getting the pop items is ruined. The casual player that doesn't have the ability to glue themselves in front of their computer for 8 hours every day or find 18 of the best players to hang out with, has little chance to see warden let alone fight him. I guess this is what casual player means to Square-Enix, because they said the Zeni NM system was for the casual player. Just like they said ToAU would have mid level and solo content.
Even if you want to grind xp, you're forced to deal with 200 players that are "JP PARTY ONLY". leaving you with 8 other NA or EU players to xp with, and their jobs don't work well with yours, making xp next to impossible. Those 300 players only exist on one overcrowded server. Other servers have 12 "JP PARTY ONLY" looking for exp, and no other NA or EU players.
The dev team forces users to bend over, without any lube, because it makes them feel better about designing a horribly sadistic and mind numbing grind of a game.
It's not going to improve. Square-Enix does not care about the players or their opinions, they've had 4+ years to do anything and all we got were more sadistic nms, low drop rates, and interviews with SageSundi saying "I don't know". The global producer for the game doesn't even know how things work. I bet Sundi doesn't even know what warden is. The only answer they'll give about warden will be "We'll investigate the issue".
There are better games out there, that aren't designed by sadists.
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Rhaegar said on 8:19PM 8-17-2008
DPS? Real MMOs benchmark offense in Damage per Hour!
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Roofus said on 3:45AM 8-18-2008
One reason after 4 years interest in the game is waning for me. For instance going 1/26 on Vali's Bow back in February is ridiculous for an item that is used on the rarely seen Ranger job these days.
That NM better drop 36 swords that are better than Ridill with a -10 enmity rate.
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Seedling said on 4:36AM 8-20-2008
The fight doesn't last 18+ hours. The attempt lasted 18+ hours.
Pandemonium Warden can be defeated within 4-5 hours, but that requires intimate knowledge of the battle and that information is currently NOT available. If each wave would take 10-15 minutes to clear, the fight is still long, but doable.
Every expansion has had optional bosses that were hard to trigger and impossible to fight, until players deciphered the battle script and developed tactics for it.
Rise of the Zilart brought us Kirin. He's difficult, because he summons the other 4 gods. This fight is well documented and most linkshells can defeat this one in 90 seconds - 2 hours.
Chains of Promathia has Absolute Virtue. Trouble with this guy is it's massive regeneration and being able to use 13 of the player 2-hour abilities... We know how to counter the regeneration.. but despite a Dev video, we still don't know how to counter the use of 2hr abilities (in particular Benediction, which heals it back to full HP).
Treasures of Aht Urhgan offers us Pandemonium Warden. 20 waves of a boss+8 pets... each wave different, and many are very nasty indeed.
Perhaps the Warden isn't a fight a single linkshell can handle. Perhaps 10-15 minute per wave is undoable. Perhaps SE thought that linkshells could put aside their enmity towards each other and fight this guy in shifts... Too many questions are still left unanswered at this point to make a conclusion about the mental state of SE devs... (except for the ones that work on automaton AI.. those guys must be in a state of permanent inebriation...)
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JP guevara said on 10:37PM 8-20-2008
18-20 hours for a single boss???
I used to play FF on Playstation, My memory cards reveal I played FF8 for 62 hours, FF9 72 hours, FF7 45 (i didn't finish)
I realized I wasted precious hours of my life and the end result would be for what???
Basically, nothing.
Whatever Square Enix's reasons for incorporating these NMs in the game is absolutely ridiculous. It's impossible to be fun anymore.
While I congratulate the Beyond the Limit guys for doing this, and realizing that they shouldn't attempt again, I guess it just isn't worth it.
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slackbheep said on 9:03AM 8-21-2008
My knee jerk reaction to this is that it's the most mindbogglingly sadistic thing they could do short of asking for a pound of flesh.
On the other hand, Many other games have had bosses that were nearly unbeatable. The first two that come to mind was the original Hibernian Dragon in DAoC, and the Sleeper in EQ. I actually like the idea of the nearly impossible boss with the secret strategy to defeat them, but on the other hand making them is probably considered a crime against humanity.
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