There's one boss that stands above all others in Final Fantasy XI. Pandemonium Warden. Never seen it myself (never even played FFXI myself), but I'm assured he's a tough cookie. So tough, in fact, that when the guild BeyondTheLimitation tried to take him FFXI Gil on the other day, they ran into some problems. Namely, that it was taking hours to defeat just a single form of a monster that had already changed form 20 times. In the end, the guild had to call it quits, because after 18 hours of combat members of the party started throwing up and passing out from exhaustion. 18 hours? We get it Square, tough bosses are tough, but 18+ hours of combat isn't fun.When a computer game starts to affect your health and hygiene, that probably means you should take a look at your priorities.

I played World of Warcraft for a time when I was in college. I had a lot of fun. At first. Then came the times that I'd prepare for 3 hours to raid a FFXI Gil dungeon for 6 to 9 hours at a time. This happened a few times a week. Needless to say, I lasted in this atmosphere for about a month, and then I crashed and burned. I haven't seriously touched the game since.

There's been a great deal of talk about quality vs. quantity in FFXI Gil gaming lately, with offerings like Braid and Portal taking the masses by storm. The MMO camp seems to prefer doing the same thing, over and over again, with very little result. Isn't that close to the definition of insanity? It could be. But there are several people I know who are totally well adjusted, normal human beings who put a ton of time into a game like this, and still have a completely satisfying job and social life. They just have more shiny lootz than the rest of us.