Ok, I just got this game and I downloaded the PlayOnline thing and FFXI fine and I set up the whole payment thing. Now though when I go to play I need to update. Well there is alot of updates and usually sometime throughout the update it will either just stop moving or a message will come up saying I got disconnected. Anything I could do to help this?

Thanks.

Firstly, when you say you were 'disconnected', were you just disconnected from PlayOnline, or completely disconnected from the net? If it was the latter, it sounds like a connection timeout that your ISP has set - where your provider disconnects you from the net after a certain time has passed - quite a number of players have complained about this. There isn't really much that can be done about it, other than switching to another internet provider which doesn't have such connection limits.

If you're disconnected from PlayOnline though, I'm not sure what the problem could be, other than a case of high server traffic (a few days ago there as a new update made to the game and so there was a lot of people updating at the time). Try downloading the update again and see if it downloads properly this time.

Incidentally, it may seem like you'll have to start the download all over again, but in reality, when you attempt the update again it will pick up from where you left off earlier if you got disconnected, after PlayOnline Viewer completes the file check. It can still take a long time to complete the updates, especially if you're like me and stuck with using crappy dial-up internet (it took me the better part of three days to complete in total on dial-up - mind you my PC was constantly crashing at the time), but at least you'll get it all done, eventually.

I know that sometimes if you try to download updates whilst in windower mode the progress will just stop, as you described.