Forming a party is an essential part of Final Fantasy XI. A maximum of 6 players can be in a party, 1 leader and 5 members. During the game, your party may team up with other parties to form an alliance. You can team up with a maximum of 2 other parties, to have 18 players total. Some enemies are practically impossible to defeat without an alliance.
You can choose from "item pool" or "master pool" when deciding how items will be dealt with. When "item pool" is chosen, everybody has access to the items that are dropped. When "master pool" is chosen, the leader may choose a responsible member to have full control in the retrieval and distribution of items. You could also trade your items with other players.
You can switch the chat mode in the menu or by typing certain words in your keyboard. Say [/s] allows you to talk to people around you. Shout [/sh] allows you to talk to people in distance. Tell [/t player] allows you to talk to a certain player, no matter how far he or she is. Party [/p] allows you to talk to people in your party or alliance. Linkshell [/l] allows you to talk to certain groups of people at once.
There are also a number of emotional expressions. You can type them to make your character act out the expression. There is such a large number of these, I am not even going to bother listing them all. Some examples are: /wave, /bow, /panic, /salute, /angry, and /point.
