Yesterday I found an article by way of Joystiq that asked the simple question "How Long is Too Long?" On June 9th Square Enix (SE) added a NM (Notorious Monster) system to Final Fantasy XI's Treasures of Aht Urhgan region. These ZNMs (Zeni Notorious Monsters) are tier based; beat all the monsters in one to unlock the next. Tier 5 is the Pandemoium Warden.

This past weekend a LS (linkshell) on Seraph by the name of Beyond the Limitation BtL fought the Pandemonium Warden for 18 hours, through 20 transformations, before having to give up. One member of BtL explained the retreat saying, "People were passing out and getting physically ill."
Source: PetFoodAlpha [ more info ]

My brain wiggled when I read that these folks had essentially fought one boss mob for 18 hours before being forced to give up. The idea was to do a comic where one of the versions of the transformation was paying cards with one of the other NM's while people poked at him ineffectively. The problem was, I struggled to find clear images of the Pandemonium Wardens various forms. And, unlike the other MMOs I've played, these forms weren't super sized. They looked to be no bigger than the characters attacking them, making my plans for the comic useless. But even after all the reading I did, I can't say this for certain.

I'm not certain how many people were attacking the mob. I don't know how long the pauses between transformations were. Was there any downtime? Could people fight in shifts to make future attempts easier? Are 8 or more hour boss fights common? I just don't know. I've never played FFXI and almost every aspect of the articles, posts, and conversations I read sounded somewhat foreign to me.

What I did take away from the information I did manage to collect was this: 18 hours is not okay. Many of the participants denigrated SE for making the Pandemonium Warden excessively difficult for no better reason than to make him nearly impossible to beat. Granted the other side of the argument was that this kind of thing has happened in the past; an NM has taken hours upon hours to beat, but as members geared up and strategy solidified the time to bring the boss down dwindled to something infinitely more manageable. And if players don't want to spend 18 hours trying to beat a boss then they just shouldn't.

What I will say in defense of BtL's ordeal is this, they probably went into the fight expecting 7-10 hours to bring the Pandemonium Warden down. And, as each extra hour ticked by they probably figured "just a bit longer". But, when people started getting "physically ill" and the LS had no idea how much longer they might be involved in the fight, they had to back out for the sake of their members.

Ultimately, I applaud BtL's effort even if I don't fully understand it. I just hope I did their story some justice despite not being knowledgable about the game in which they struggle.

--- Editted to Add ---
One of the members of the Pandemonium 18 hour Attempt, has posted a two part dissertation on the fight, strategy, experience, and publicity surrounding the event. It's a long read, but very informative and should help people understand the situation as it occured.

Part One
Part Two

Eighteen hours? Wow. Good on 'em. I wouldn't fancy doing that myself. I struggle to stay at my PC for three or four hours. I've never payed FFXI myself either, so half of that newspost seemed like gobbledygook to me. Nevertheless, eighteen hours is a tremendous effort. Assuming they started, at around 10am for instance, that'd mean they quit at about 4am, the next morning. That's insane. Imagine if there were no loo breaks, haha :S.

And you thought EverQuest and WoW were raid heavy games. :P
I'm not sure about this specific encounter, not sure if its single group or alliance target, but the largest alliance in the game is of 18 players (3 groups of 6.)

The small roster size does not mean they are casual by any standard.

Know what would [not] funny? Tomorrow some one finding out that you just had to take X or Y action to make sure the boss never changed forms and died in 54 minutes.

Edit to add:
Was reading the linked article and noticed this:

We’ve recently learned from the Premier Site Summit that Sage Sundi believes the Absolute Virtue fight to take eighteen hours (or less if you’re lucky).

So, there ARE already other encounters that actually take 18 hours, and people that are willing to beat them.

I used to play FFXI a while ago and almost everything about it took long, from moving to the next zone, to leveling up, to getting enough gil to purchase an item that was essentially needed to be decent in a group for a certain class. The best parts about the game on the other hand were the detail that went into the graphics even though they weren't at some insane poly count and the crafting system along with the economy. That's what really peeved me, because I loved those parts of the game so much, but I couldn't solo at all past level 15, 20 at the most. It was just pretty much impossible. The game was built to be grouped and sometimes, just sometimes you want to solo and feel like you have actually accomplished something other than 12 exp a mob when you need a few thousand to next level.

Aside from that I think I might return to the game once more . . .

EDIT: oh and almost forgot the worst part of the whole game . . . you could not jump . . . that was annoying . . . well, unless you were a dragoon, but that's not the jump I'm talking about . . .

Ive only played FFXI a little bit but still 18 hours is a a lot. I've done all day/night hunting / raiding sessions but i think the longest raid i was on took about 5 hours but there was a lot of downtime. the only thing i could think as to why it to 18 hours is perhaps > and i mean this with all due respect for the LS doing their best efforts and i do applaud them for those efforts< the mob has some kind of regenerate timer or something or its one of those "puzzle" mobs where you have to do an exact thing to kill it and until they do that one little task he'd be impossible to stop. but im not to sure honestly after 18 hours of raiding I'd be /petition flooding trying to figure out why it wont die especially if my ppl were getting sick or other wise in danger

but anyways good on those that were making the attempt. i wouldn't mind hearing how someone managed to kill him >and i'll hope its not something that takes 24 hours to kill<
the only other way to beat a mob like this is to have a multi raid and do it in waves where they have ppl in the staging area and then cycle out every so often as needed


speaking of interesting mobs anyone remember the sleeper on EQ

18 hours? Holy Jesus!

I start to get antsy during a 4 hour clear of Black Temple in WoW. And that's KNOWING we'll beat nine bosses.

18 hours for ONE!? And not even knowing if you'll defeat it? I just can't see the enjoyment in that. At all.

4-5 hours is my max for raiding. After that I would start falling asleep.

The longest I ever played a game was 12 hrs.

Holy crap! I think the longest I've ever been on a Raid is the first time my guild in WoW cleared Kara as most of us were learning it as we took down each boss. I think it was about 7 hours with plenty of downtime for Bio and food.

Originally Posted by Zonaree:

speaking of interesting mobs anyone remember the sleeper on EQ

I've heard the stories about that mob...

From what I understand, the thing was designed to be relatively unbeatable and each server only got one shot at it. Failure actually triggered a world event, and the mob disappears afterwards. Apparently it was a big to-do when a group of people finally killed the thing.
Source: MMOCrunch [ more info ]

The info on the Sleeper is at the bottom.

Sorry, once you reach 8 hours for one fight and you're OKAY with that...how can you complain about 18...I mean seriously...when you have to time tank transitions when main has to take a poo break, it's already too long.

In any case...there's gotta be something wrong with the game mechanics themselves for a battle to even be able to go 18 hours without wiping OR winning. WoW and other games definitely have ways to extend a battle beyond your regular mana/hp stores, but the longest boss fight I've seen was still less than one hour.

I'm a long time reader and now first time poster and I play FFXI and will answer some of Woody's Questions.

First they had about probably 40+ people on the mob but at most 18 people can attack Pandemonium Warden. But with each form he also Spawns 8 Pandemonium Lamps that are a different type of mob then the real Warden. Now in order to progress through the fight you must kill all the lamps which have about 25000 HP (hitpoints). Then you can kill the Pandemonium Warden in the current form he is in. If you don't kill the lamps and go out and kill the Warden, once he dies, the same form repops.

Now to answer the next question Woody has about downtime between forms. There is none, once the form your currently on dies, the final form pops for like 2 Seconds does an AoE Stun, disappears and the next form pops with a whole new set of lamps. And BtL had no downtime, during the entire time. Few of the members did fall asleep at the desk or floor because they were tired.

Are 8hr boss fights common? No they aren't, Longest fight in the game is maybe 3hrs and 30 minutes and that is just roaming around and killing mobs and not a boss. So if you want to say boss fight, longest is about 2hrs. Absolute Virtue another mob that hasn't been defeated a lot, SE has said that if your lucky that might be a 10hr fight but more then likely it will be an 18hr fight.

I hope all this will clarify the things people are probably wondering when they look at this comic. I'm off to work and will check forums once I get back to see what people think

Tenki
Caitsith Server on FFXI