Top 40 FFXI Players Of All Time

I nominate. Ahalee, penwig and destroyah from bahamut

What about my boy Draylo. At least he actually likes this game.

Also lets not forget Aikar.

The Best Players are Ruaumoko, Xolla/kagara(Team), Aramith(Team), Mischief(team), lonekent(Team), Logical, Velner(spreads good cat vibes).

Said it in 2016 when this thread started, but I'll say it again.
This thread only amounts to "your favorite players". Someone making youtube videos doesn't make them a good player. Someone making or using bots doesn't make them a good player either. Some objective criteria regarding what I consider a good player would be:
-firm understanding of underlying game mechanics
-ability to coordinate groups of players successfully
-ability to innovate new strategies
-ability to play your own character to it's fullest is a prerequisite, but this is very low on the list with how low FFXIs APM is.. there are hundreds of players who fit this criteria if not thousands

Ruaumoko is likable and has a good voice. He's never been at the top of the game during any difficult period, he's never invented a new strategy, he's never demonstrated any exceptional leadership ability. I don't dislike him, but he's not a 'best player'.

Logical is a mid tier player at best, and people are only aware of him because he makes youtube videos of noob content. Again, nothing exceptional. I do dislike him because of the way he stole people's work for his HD video, so bias accepted.

Ejin is a mid to upper tier player that relies heavily on bots, more people are aware of him because he helped a lot of others get into botting. His multiboxing has always been years behind anyone who can code, it's just more public. He's probably caused more indirect damage to the game than any other single player by teaching so many others how to play with mules instead of friends.

I would not put any of these anywhere near the list. With that in mind, I see some clear standouts from the early era and one group from the current era.

Kaeko - Provided immense amounts of testing that we still rely on today, over 15 years later. Combined this with participation in one of the best linkshells of the era, several unique solos, and outlining pinning[which revolutionized numerous RDM fights]. Everything Avesta gets made out to be, and then some. Gets my #1, easily.

Sinus - Got results. Led what was widely accepted to be the most infamous shell in FFXI's history, got the first AV and first pandemonium warden kills. There are arguments that can be made about what portion of these was his contribution, but it's undeniable that Apathy got world firsts on both of the two hardest bosses in the game's history.

Mischief(and group) - Undeniably the best NA group of current era. Shown this repeatedly with results, had the good will to share and outline their strategies in a readable way so others could follow after.

Pchan - Lowmanned effectively everything with just one buddy and exemplified the strategy of efficiently making money and ignoring social connections. Continued this through multiple eras of the game, demonstrating a firm ability to optimize for low #s and succeed regardless. Not a very liked person, but got results with minimal time invested and showed a clear understanding of the game's inner systems (despite everyone's attempts to put him down every chance they got).

BUUUKIIIII WRAPPED
<3

Also Avesta.

Odoro #1

My first audible "lol" of the day, well played.

I'm sorry to tell you, that you are not a favorite or best player to anyone that I know.

Had a much longer, detailed post on each player, but it got deleted somehow so just gonna drop some names of memorable, upper-tier players that I considered influential in shaping my FFXI experience (Mostly from Seraph):

Rukenshin
Keichan
Muteki
Vann
Mythe
Namakemono
Cappie
Farore
Lokillo

Bias aside, definitely agree with nominations of the Martels and Mischiefs of the world, really can't thank people like this enough for their contribution to our understanding of the game and detailed experiences and strats shared with the community for current endgame.

While "Best Player" is pretty subjective, I like the "Most Influential" idea better, and to that end, I likely wouldn't have come back in 2018/2019 had it not been for Ruaumoko's YT vids popping up in my feed and making me fiend.

I consider a best player to be someone who can competently and consistently execute on any job, in any role, on the hardest content available. The only person I personally know that could do this to a high degree, on literally every single job, was Wfoadambbp.

Logical and Ruaumoko are great people, and helpful to the community of the game.

I would say one of the best players I came across was Rykoshet, he lead a very well respected shell, rewarded people fairly in it, was well liked by his friends and was generally just a nice guy to everyone.

Silly NA players... Top 40 is JP only...

JP players hated the NA invasion so much, lots of them quit either straight away or within the following year.

Square didn't make that same mistake with XIV, JP players demanded split servers straight off and got them.

For most influential:

#1. Atomos - Has done by far the most reverse engineering of the game. His work has found it's way into dozens of windower addons and plugins and the core, he wrote Ashita, he's made immense contributions to the stability and knowledge behind private servers. I wouldn't consider FFACE/EliteAPI positive things, but they still shape a considerable portion of the game these days and he maintained FFACE for years and EliteAPI it's entire lifespan. I don't think any single person has had half as much influence on the third party scene as he has, and while this doesn't directly impact every current player it does have a huge influence on the potential for private servers to eventually replace retail in the future.

#2. Stanislav - Ran a large and successful linkshell, created guildwork, and co-founded discord. Not so sure that guildwork was a good thing overall, and a lot of people have a sour taste from it. But, I'd wager discord had a pretty substantial impact on most players. So, for better or worse, he is still very influential.

#3, #4: Aikar, Byrth - Spellcast then Gearswap complete redefined the way the game is played for thousands of people. I don't mean to cut it short, but I think the concept is self-explanatory. Just about everyone knows how these have effected them. Byrth's work on packet lib has made dozens of addons possible for people that would otherwise never have had the know-how to create them.

Rest in no particular order:

Arcon, Iryoku, past windower devs - I don't think windower itself has been as meaningful as many of the addons and tools that sprang from it. But, they wouldn't exist without the initial effort, so everyone involved has had considerable influence as well.

Cliff, Rooks - This site has been a pillar of the community for as long as it's existed. Not much more needs to be said there.

Bluegartr site/wiki admins - I don't want to try to look up their names offhand and end up leaving someone out or naming someone undeserving. It feels more disrespectful than failing to name them at all. But, bluegartr was obviously the premier forum for most of the early era and the wiki has continued to serve the community. Anyone who took a substantial part in it has had influence to match.

Ejin, Selindrile - I consider this negative influence, but the two of them almost certainly brought the most people over to botting/multiboxing of anyone.

Ruau, Logical - Influencers influence. It wouldn't make much sense to leave them out of a most influential list.

Mischief, Kaeko - Crossovers here. They were very good players, but they also had immense influence on others. It's likely that most Bumba V25 wins would not have happened for months or years longer without mischief's group sharing their strategy, and they set the de-facto strategies for many other fights by clearing them first and providing easy-to-follow writeups. Kaeko's testing data and methodologies are still in use today, and pinning remained relevant for years after he discovered it, enabling countless solos and duos that never would've happened otherwise.

I mean I expect Thorny & Byrth would be need the top of a list for anyone doing content that strongly benefits from the work they did to develop PacketFlow which improves the game play stability in instanced zones.

I just learned that from you that he's involved in that plugin, Amazing Plugin that they made for all FFXI players, however this thread is for top players not top devolopers.

Kind of the same point I was making in my post. Logical, Ruau, and Ejin are not objectively top players. They are popular for developing youtube content, not because they are anywhere near the top end of player ability.

I never said or implied I should be in the list, either. I just pointed out that most people are recommending based on who they like, not who is objectively good.

Taj should be #1. May he RIP.

Of course it's a contest of who they like the most.

The actual best players would never play with people who rank players in a list. Low class heathens.

The pool of players (you, any single person) interacted with was minuscule. You had/have no objective basis for reality. Only who you felt was cool. Of the few you knew.

You're collegiate class picking professional all-stars, *** silly.

I like how Rooks puts in on the first page

Ruaumoko and Logical deserved to be mention because the following:-

They are sharing from their first hand experience to other players about many content and jobs, they are not just sharing a research done by ChatGPT, their content made many players resub and play ffxi as Clint mentioned in he's post, Many players rather Watching a video on youtube than go through wiki or guide threads.

During late COP i was so tired after finishing Rise of zilart i didn't know what a static party was, i remamber than meeting a Japanese player named Wonsan, he was a rdm he made his own COP 6 man party and invited me to join we completed all of it THAT was back when pandemonium Existed after completing COP, someone told me to do the bahamut fight for the ethereal earring, so i started yelling and i asked him he said he would join, i kept shouting in aht urghan going to jeuno shouting in jeuno only had 5 ppl!!!

I *** solemnly Swear we did Bahamut with 5 man not even allaince, i remamber there was also a Galka Samurai named Youlbe who joined us, and i Literally Remamber who it was but am not gonna say who he is he he does stuff in bG wik sending me a tell that i wont find people for the Bahamut fight and we went with 5 man and *** nailed Bahamut onto the ground, i literally have not done much aside from Senitel to Invincible and hold aggro for 10 seconds, we had monk hundred fist last resort I think he had destroyers MY DOPAMINE RISED SO HIGH I FELT LIKE A KING for a MONTH, I DID NOT EVEN HAVE UTUESMI SCROLLS GOT MEGA CARRIED LOL
god damn i miss those days, i remamber dying at 40% than the sam Opened with his 2hr the other who joined idr them at all or what job lol could have been a bard idr having a whm\
Iv never felt that ever again in the game.

So yes my list

Wonsan
Youllbe galka sam
And that god damn random elvaan monk with shura togi and destroyers that idr his name, i never even thought of the idea of mnk/drk zerg

How old are we all now?

Most people here are nominating names who they either know on a personal basis or are/were fairly popular on a server. I would suggest a different criteria, similar to thorny, but instead of the community site admins and 3rd party tool designers I would nominate all the unsung heroes who spent countless hours of their time gathering and analyzing data to determine how game mechanics worked.

When you go to the wiki all the information available on weaponskill mechanics, game math, miscellaneous ability functions and hidden effects are all laid out for you. That information came from somewhere, and it's usually the result of people spending their time to research a particular subject and providing their findings to the community, often spurring further research and improving general knowledge. There are countless individuals who frequented the various job forms and provided useful information over the years to newbies learning the job. People who answered questions when they were asked, provided gearing and play suggestions, updated the wiki pages as new information was posted on the forms to make sure the knowledge contained on the 6th post of page 78 in job section X sticky is archived properly for future reference.

Many in game bugs were only ever discovered because people tested mechanics and found out that gear piece X or food Y isn't actually doing what it's supposed to do because we know what the intended interaction should be (which is itself a result of testing). This often resulted in the devs finding those bugs, going "oops sorry, our bad", and fixing them. I've contributed a small amount of data and information over the years that advanced knowledge in a few areas, but nowhere near as much as countless others, and it wouldn't do me justice to try and name names because I would miss out on too many. But we know things now that we never would have because of people who tested things, and that knowledge has been ingrained because it was repeated time and again where relevant on the forms. We refined strategies because people shared ideas on taking X job to Y fight, or alternate ways of doing Z thing which up to that point had mainly only been done one specific way.

So I would say thank you to everyone who has helped to make the community what it is today. We're all a part of this together.

A LOT of information came from the Japanese side, most of whom are unknown to the majority of English players.

Icingdeath's mule

Rhukha for making this video. (Didn't know him but this video always makes me smile)



PS: Miss you FFXI <3

Nailed it absolutely. I also wanna say developers are more important to this game than SE is. And Vyre + Rooks combo makes for a fantastic site.

GM Dave

Hey I nominated you.