Treasures of Aht Urghan

Last Monday I got the new expansion pack for FFXI, namely Treasures of Aht Urghan. After installing (and going through the tedious update procedure), I’ve done some exploring. Some remarks:

• The missions are either well hidden, or not particularly significant at this point: this in my opinion is a regression from Chains of Promathia, which had an extremely nice storyline;

• The new areas are huge. Yesterday I’ve done some exploring in the Arrapago Reef area with Sechs, Eithin and Mercredi and we took more than two hours to get to our destination (including one death, and several fights inbetween);

• There are new jobs (Corsair and Puppetmaster). Aside everyone taking them now, I’m not interested in either;

• Assault missions can be fun, but require you to get to the staging points around, and that is the longest part (some aren’t really easy to reach);

• Besieged (namely beastmen attacking the town) is fun, but the novelty effect actually impairs it. I mean, last time there were about 400 people while the beastmen horde was around 30. It was so lagged that people didn’t see the monsters, nor they saw them die.

Overall, it’s fun, but not as challenging as Chains of Promathia, so far. I’ll have to see as I continue my exploration.