8 > 18

Two heads are better than one. There is strength in numbers. The more the merrier, etc. etc.

Sayings like these are meant to strengthen the belief that it is always better to have more people when performing tasks. In a lot of cases, this is true. There are just some things that are easier to get through when you don't have to go it alone. Moving, divorce, childbirth, orgies, and other things are better with more people.

In the world of gaming, this still holds true. Usually. Enter Abyssea.

I was hanging out in Port Jeuno because I was bored and wanted something to do. I'm not sure why Jeuno is becoming the hangout for the unoccupied, but that's where I usually find myself. I guess it's because Whitegate has started crashing people and the shout drama is getting stale. Who knows, I spend most of my time in the sandbox anyway.

There was an alliance shout for a farming run that caught my attention. I sent a tell and asked if he wanted a Corsair. I was just in the mood to spin some cards and shoot things in the face. He gladly accepted the request and I went to change. Now, I'm a /RNG kind of Corsair. I don't do that /WHM stuff. No offense to all you COR/WHMs out there but, if anyone expects me to show up to an event wielding a loaded gun and think I'm only going to spin cards and spam cures / erase, you can kiss my ass. I'm there to buff the party and kill shit. That's just how I "roll".

So anyway, I'm geared up and ready to go. We have a full party and then the leader decides to run to Whitegate and grab more people. I'm still fairly new to Abyssea, but it's my understanding that an alliance can clean house in there, and it ends up being better overall for everyone. That works for me, so I just lounged around and watched people running through the zone. The party we aligned with wanted to fight an NM out there first and then use the rest of the time to farm. Admittedly, this concerned me.

Now that we were after an NM instead of just farming, it job assignments started becoming more specific. In a normal party, this isn't so bad. Adjusting the jobs of random people in an alliance; however, is a bit more complex. First, these people want to just get out there, farm the exp, and hopefully get some nifty items. When you start telling them that we're taking time out to kill an NM that has nothing to do with them and they probably won't get any share of the drops, you can imagine that they aren't going to be chomping at the bit to do the fight.

Still, everyone stuck together and decided to go do this to help this other party out. They mentioned a fight strategy and then they said they killed it last time with only 8 people. A fairly simple fight, according to them. So the original party leader mentioned that if they killed it with 8, then we should destroy it with 18.

Famous last goddamn words.

After an hour or so of waiting in Port Jeuno, we take off and get to the maw. As a side note, screw you Square-Enix. What the hell is with the skyrocketing Chocobo rentals? I'll rant about that later though. We get to the maw and not everyone was ready. On top of that, they wanted a White Mage, so we waited a bit longer. More specifically, an hour longer. I love pickup groups.

We finally enter the zone and get started. We find the spawn area and track down the NM. We fight a couple of regular enemies and then someone aggros a mimic. We get to a semi-open area and go over the fight tactic. Things start off smoothly for the first twenty seconds or so.


Shortly after the pull, we get a link. The leader says to pull it away from the babies and move back. Nothing happens. He repeats the instructions. Nothing happens. Someone dies. We get more aggro.

You can guess what's coming, but let me spare you the story details and sum it up with a picture:


Everyone raised and we tried the NM again. We ended up winning, but the THF who was supposed to be our TH person ended up dying during the fight and didn't hit the NM again. So when it was all said and done, we fought it without TH and nothing dropped. I thanked the group, but figured it was time to go. Better to save some of my time for another run than waste the little time I had left.

An interesting thing though. Before we left, one of the members made a statement just after that "we should destroy this NM" comment. His statement was "8 smart people is better than 18 dumbasses."

Statistically speaking and mathematically accurate, more is usually better. In the case of FFXI NM fighting though, 8 is definitely greater than 18. Especially 18 random people.