As most are aware already, Final Fantasy 11 was released here in North America on October 28th. The release was extremely smooth (most likely due to the fact that this game was actually released in Japan over a year ago) Now, some people may be a bit afraid to jump into a game that has been out for some time, and already has established servers and communities -- but this has given Square-Enix a chance to polish the game, and they really used this time well.

So, on the 29th, I got my copy of the game. I opened the box, and thankfully, there WERE jewel cases for the CDs! I know its a small thing, but I hate getting a game and having the discs be scratched because of cardboard cases. Thumbs up to Square-Enix for this decision. The install also went very smoothly, though the patch afterwards was fairly large (it took me a little over an hour over my campus network to fully patch). Understandable, though, most MMORPGs have a huge patch the first day.