Below are basic descriptions of the gameplay stats each race possesses. All other features, such as face, hair and size are strictly cosmetic.

Black Mage(BLM)

Warrior(WAR)

Monk(MNK)

Thief(THF)

Red Mage(RDM)

White Mage (WHM)

That's right, FFXI has its own nations and nationalities! On the two main continents of Quon and Mindartia there are four nations, the Federation of Windurst, the Kingdom of San d'Oria, the Republic of Bastok and the Grand Duchy of Jeuno

When you first create your character you will be given a choice to ally yourself with one of the first three nations. Each nation has a populous comprising mainly of one or two native races;

Windurst

Windurst is the only nation on the Mindartia continent, located at the southern most point. It is considered the 'Mage' nation, being the nation who first discovered and begin to utilize magic, its population is largely made up of native Tarutaru, although the Tarutaru here also share their nation with a small Mithran community, who originated from Kazham located on an island south east or Windurst. Windurst is a wise choice for anyone starting their career as a mage class (BLM, WHM, RDM and so on.) Every Tarutaru and Mithra who ally themselves to Windurst when they enter the game will receive a Windurstian Ring.

This nation is home to the Fisherman's Guild, Weavers Guild, Boneworks Guild and Culinarians Guild.

Bastok

Bastok is located along the south east coast of Quon, it is considered the home of technology and is the birth place of the industrial revolution of Vana'diel. This was owed to the brilliant war-time (and current) engineer, Cid. Bastok is home to a large Hume community, and also houses a small Galkan populous. Bastok is best equipped for those choosing heavy set fighters as their opening job in the adventuring world (WAR, THF) but also has facilities for other fighting role jobs, to a lesser extent perhaps RDM or MNK. Galkas and Humes who patriate to Bastok are rewarded with the Bastokan Ring

Bastok boasts ownership of an Alchemists Guild, Blacksmiths Guild and Goldsmiths Guild.

San d'Oria

San d'Oria is located on the norther half of Quon, it is a chivalrous, proud and profoundly religious nation, and is home almost exclusively to the Elvaan. The Elvaan are a traditional people, they learned to utilize many forms of both magic and weaponry, and as such tends to be a jack-of-all-trades nation, though still strongly catering for prestigious roles (such as MNK, WAR and perhaps WHM?) if you are an Elvaan, you can't really go wrong starting in this nation. Elvaans who do choose tradition when it comes to nationality are graced with the San d'Orian Ring.

San d'Oria proudly contains a Tanners Guild, Carpenters Guild and a Blacksmiths Guild.

Well, everyone needs to start somewhere, we might as well start with what you can do to control your character and its actions in the game, We'll start with a basic description of each control and then show you how to perform them.

Move Character

Plain and simple, this is how your character will move around, this is a 3D game, but your character cannot jump (your character can however, fall down holes). In this game there are two modes of view which will be defined later, each mode of view adjusts the movement actions of your character. 3rd person view (looking down on the character) makes any movement of the control move your character in that particular direction, whereas the 1st person view (looking from the eyes of your character) will make you move forward and backwards with the respective keys, and pivot left and right.

Action/Select closest target

In this game everything that can be interacted with will usually fall under the category of 'target', which selects that object/character for further actions, some targets such as doors will only have one function, when the action key is hit, the door will open. However when a character is targeted and the action key is pressed, a whole host of other options are available.

Cancel

Plain and simple, Use cancel to un-target, close menus and other windows, and even exit a chat dialog (when interacting with a NPC).

Open Chat Input Window

This simple little button activates the text input box on things that require text input, such as macro boxes, chat, and so on. It prepares the game to receive the next text input, and after that is ready, the action key will input that text into the field.

Move Camera

This is what lets you see the wonderful world of Vana'Diel. The controls differ in each camera mode: in 3rd person view the camera will turn in that direction, in 3rd person view the camera will pivot from the axis which is the position of your character's head.

Auto-run

This is a very useful function, specially if you need to get somewhere in a hurry and someone starts talking to you. Auto-run, when activated, forces your character to continue moving in the direction you were moving in when it was pressed, and that movement could be either running or walking. While in auto-run you can move left, right, and of course stop. To stop while in auto-run, either hit the auto-run button again, or press backwards to whatever direction you are moving in.

Toggle Walk/Run

This is a simple function which toggles walk on/off. Your character's default movement on foot and while riding a chocobo is running; hitting this key will make you, or your chocobo, walk!

Lock on / Heal

Healing is most important in this game, specially for characters with MP, and early leveling. Healing is an action which regenerates your HP and MP over a period of time, however healing without signet active will reduce your TP by 10% with every regeneration (tick) of your HP/MP. Lock on is a feature which moves the camera over the shoulder when focused on a target, of course you need to be targeting something first in order to use Lock On. When lock on is active you will constantly face the target, any movement in any direction will only move you to the point where you are still facing the target (forward and backward will move slowly to and from the target, left and right will strafe around the target). Lock on has a limited range, and will deactivate when the target is out of range.

Select Active Window / Options Settings

This is handy for keeping up with conversations, with this you can keep track of everything that has been in the chat box; you can also use the same key to filter the chat box for specific chat channels for even less confusion! Isn't that handy? The same button is used to access the little options box on the right upper of the menu screen, its used to sort items and macros, basically whenever you see that little box in the top right corner you can use this button to access it!

Menu

This is how you access the game's finer functions, the menu will be described in detail further down; for now I'll simply state that this button accesses the menu, and when tapped again it'll access the secondary menu. To exit the menu, press cancel.

Switch Target

This is a handy little function, specially in a party situation. This function basically lets you scroll through all available targets on screen from left to right, this is perfect when hunting for chests or mining points.

Zoom In

Zooms the camera in, only available in the 3rd person camera mode.

Zoom Out

Zooms the camera out, only available in the 3rd person camera mode.

Hide All Windows

This simple function removes all visible function boxes and menus from the screen, so that you are left with a complete view of the game world from whatever perspective you're using.

Strafe

This key combined with left or right in 1st person camera mode will strafe the character left or right, instead of pivoting it on the spot. Strafe is common to other 1st person view games, but here it simply adds to the functionality of this camera mode.

Fixed Third Person View

This function simply centers your character in the middle of the screen and is a lot more rigid and set-in than the dynamic 3rd person view, this function is helpful indoors.

Snapshot

Say Cheese! This button takes a picture of the game screen and saves it to your photo album, which is accessed through the PlayOnline Viewer. You can only take a snapshot when "hide all windows" is active.

List of controls

In addition to those basic controls there are a number of quick "shortcut controls" to save time with menu navigation, these are only available to those using a keyboard, and are displayed in the Purple Box. In the yellow box there are a number of useful target shortcuts and what not, particularly handy in battle situations.