Final Fantasy 14 is going to be an MMO :)

[Ellay]

Woot Final Fantasy 14 is an MMO, PS3 and PC. Hopefully multiboxable, looks like it's coming out next year.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-final-fantasy/50330

[Enndo]

Ive never played FF but those graphics look really nice.

[falsfire3401]

Those graphics make me cry. Dunno if my poor system can handle it!

Intel Core2Duo E7400 @ 2.8GHz
nForce 610 chipset m/b
GeForce 9600GSO 768MB PCI-Ex 2.0 grafx
4GB single-channel DDR2-800 RAM (damn cheap mobo won't run dual-channel)
Win7 x64 (cry, stuck on this OS unless I do a full format/reinstall of my old XP32)

[Ellay]

I don't think that was actual gameplay just a shiny CGI movie, FF 11 had a lot of movies throughout the game.

[MiRai]

Out-effing-standing. Been wondering if I should go back to FFXI....this answers it. I'll just wait until FFXIV comes out. Square-Enix is making this difficult, I now have to pay attention which roman numerals I'm typing these days.

[Zal]

if the gameplay is awesome its worth quitting wow for.

[Redbeard]

If theyre releasing this for PC I hope they take some time and make it actually flow well with the PC. I hate playing a ported game when its obvious the control schemes are just rehashed console controls (which sucks for a keyboard).

Hope its great, long live FF! (When I was younger and my mom used to buy me Final fantasy games shed be like "I Thought you just played that? How can there be another final fantasy if the last one was the FINAL fantasy?"

Good times =P

[David]

I rather see SW the old republi first tho this looks interesting.
But untill then: JUMPGATE

[mmcookies]

gameplay

[Multibocks]

If it plays anything like the current FF MMO then no thanks.

[algol]

If it plays anything like the current FF MMO then no thanks.This...

[Ridere]

I'm at work, and unfortunately a lot of websites are blocked by our proxy server, but there are sites out there that have information from a Q&A session that square-enix did yesterday about the game.

I think you can find a forum on allakazham about it.

They addressed the issue of solo content, and the developers said they do want the game to be more casual friendly. They want to have options for you to both have solo play and group play, depending on your preferences. So that's good news. Looks like it won't be a 2 hours LFM White Mage fest in Vulkurm Dunes anymore.

Other notable mentions:

The fight scene on the boat in that trailer is actually of in-game graphics, so the quality looks good. The airship scene and probably the cliff overlooking the valley are probably cutscene type movies.

The job system won't be identical to FFXI, but it does look like they're going to continue with the idea of one char being able to play as all "classes/jobs" in whatever system they come up with.

You can't transfer FFXI chars to FFXIV. This was a dumb thing to assume, anyway, but lots were hoping for that. So thankfully for us who would start anew, we don't need to worry about high levels tweaking the market to their liking. We all start off from scratch.

The FFXI characters, while looking similar to the characters seen in the movie, will be different. The similar look is mainly to not upset people who are transitioning from FFXI to FFXIV. I think that's probably a cop-out answer used instead of just saying "We didn't want to completely retool character design from the ground level." Doesn't matter much to me, since I liked Tarutarus :D

They're focusing a lot of "natural character progression" no clue what that means, though. Could be the exp system, could be simply fleshing out your character's storyline/history, could be customizing your character with scars and such. Who knows. But it seems to be an emphasis.

They admitted that they learned a lot from FFXI, and while they don't want to be a WoW clone, they are working to cater FFXIV to a broader audience by not requiring you to find five friends to do simple tasks, like going to the bathroom :P

Looks promising!

I'm hoping that by 2010 they mean like Q1 or Q2. I'd hate to wait until November/December 2010 to get this game.

Let's also hope we can box it!

[Duese]

I hate playing a ported game when its obvious the control schemes are just rehashed console controls (which sucks for a keyboard).

They have controllers for PC too. =)

And since it's coming out for PS3, they are either going to require a mouse/keyboard or they are going to make it functional to controller only gameplay like FFXI currently is.

After playing FFXI for over 4 years, I will definitely be picking up FFXIVIIXIVLOLXI or whatever number it is now.


If it plays anything like the current FF MMO then no thanks.
You can stick with WoW then. =) I'll go with the non-button mashing game.

[algol]

If it plays anything like the current FF MMO then no thanks.
You can stick with WoW then. =) I'll go with the non-button mashing game.Right now, EVE and later, potentially Aion. Got bored with WoW a while back.

The only reason you can't mash buttons in FFXI is because they did an awful job of porting it to Windows, and that has very little to do with what's wrong with the game. This is a chance for them to learn from their first MMO and fix the more obvious problems...we'll see whether they do. At the least, they seem to be planning a simultaneous launch this time.

Doesn't help that the environment for FFXI & FFXII are by far my least favorite of all the FFs. The races are off too - bunny girls just look weird, the elven males all look gay, the elven females all look butch, and the taru look like sunburned...somethings. They're too worried about pulling players from their existing property when they should be worried about getting new people to play. The extreme cases will keep playing XI or will try XIV regardless.

I'm open to an FF MMO...but FFXI had tons of issues and had their least-attractive world. My degree of interest in FFXIV will be directly affected by how much it is or is not an FFXI clone with newer graphics.

[Ridere]

I think it being a world-wide release itself is just a major benefit.

New players in FFXI back in the day were completely at the whim of the japanese players in terms of what they needed to pay on the AH for basically what were consider job requirements.

I think everyone starting from level 1 together would be a huge benefit. Even if the game still requires heavily on group partying. I don't see what the big deal with that is, anyway. It basically gives us (Boxers) a major benefit. Think if you were boxing FFXI when it first started. Compared to your other NA cohorts, you would have blown through levels, not needing to worry about LFG, or finding a tank/healer, or worrying about extended AFK breaks where you waited around for them, simply because the thought of finding a replacement was even worst.

I'd totally be okay if leveling was still challenging. That being said, I'd like there to be more options for leveling, so that 120 people are cramped in a single zone, competing for monsters. I'd also like gear progression to be a bit more friendly. The 4+ year time sink trying to upgrade your relic weapons in Dynamis, for instance, was absolutely absurd.

I'm hoping for a mix somewhere between FFXI and WoW. I absolutely loved the environment in FFXI, and the community was way better than WoW. I think needing to rely so heavily on other people made your personal reputation matter to more people, so as a result, less people were likely to act like douchebags. There were bad apples, of course, but nothing like WoW's battle.net community.

I'm pretty optimistic about this. I really enjoyed FFXI back in the day, up until I reached the point where I was hounded (as a WHM) to start farming Sky/Sea/HNMs all the time and it turned into a bit of a job. I'd avoid doing that again (Just like I avoid hardcore raiding in WoW), so throwing in the fact that I'd also Box it (if supported), I am pretty confident I'd enjoy this...

Besides, who would love seing 6 taru tarus running around? :D

[Pikey]

Jeff srsly... <3

You'll find me and my 40 Asian friends from FFXI reunited when this comes out :D

[Armyofarty2]

No freaken way. I've watched it like 10 times and still dont believe it. I cant wait, 2010 cant come fast enough now. I just hope i dont have to go thought playonline 5 times just to get on the game. Sweet :D

[Duese]

The only reason you can't mash buttons in FFXI is because they did an awful job of porting it to Windows, and that has very little to do with what's wrong with the game.

I don't understand this, how did they do an awful job of porting it to windows? You can't button mash in the game because the abilities themselves are not all instants without cooldowns that get spammed after a 1.5 second global cooldown. That has nothing to do with how it was ported to windows. Seriously, I hate it when people take a game design and call it a flaw. If you don't like the design, that's fine, but just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it's wrong.

I would have no problems with FFXIV being designed with this concept of ability CHOICE being more important than just spamming buttons.

[Ridere]

I don't understand this, how did they do an awful job of porting it to windows?

I agree with the above comment not making much sense. In regards to how they did a poor job at porting the game over to PC, well... FFXI is a resource hog. I think that's the real reason behind their initial full screen only, no tabbing system they had set up. The game sucked up so much CPU time that they were probably too embarrassed to have it be realized. They, of course, then claimed it was by design since, "PS2 players can't alt tab to look up information online." Well, you're right. They dont' alt-tab to look up info online, they just pivot their chair over to their PC to do it.

Of course, years later, after hardware specs got a bit better and better computers were most likely used to run FFXI, they finally bit the bullet and opened up a Windowed option. Of course, even then the implemention of the officlal Windower was less efficient than the Windowers made by 3rd parties. haha

All that being said, I still miss FFXI! And while I doubt I'll ever play it again, I definitely will pick up FFXIV. I just hope it's earlier 2010 and not later 2010. Probably won't be 'til Q3 or Q4, though. :(

[Duese]

In regards to how they did a poor job at porting the game over to PC, well... FFXI is a resource hog.

This I agree with. Standing in the middle of no where, cpu usage 100%. Standing in the middle of a busy town, cpu usage 100%. Running 3x copies of the game on the same pc, cpu usage 100%.

When the devs would actually release a statement (which was few and far between) regarding the concerns of the players and the most common response was "ps2 limitations", it did get kind of annoying. I ran one of my copies of the game on Ps2 and it was the biggest pain in the ass I've ever had to deal with. My PS2 was old as hell and the CD rom on it was barely spinning. Anytime their was an update, it was usually 2-3 hours of trial and error running the install disk. Worst thing about it was that you could no longer even buy the non-micro version of the Ps2 and since the micro versions didn't support the hard drive, you were SOL.

I'm hoping that they don't run into the same issues that they did with Ps2 "limitations". Granted the Ps3 is a little bit more of a beast than the ps2, but that's now and not in 5-7 years later like FFXI is.

[Vicker]

It would be nice if they actually showed some gameplay footage in their trailer. If I wanted to watch movies, I'd have spent my money on a big tv instead of a nice computer.

[Marious]

I am actually looking forward to this, I enjoyed my time on FFXI a lot with my friend and I did leave it cause of WoW but if I wont mind going back to a FF game and if its an improvement and not just a rehash of FFXI then it should be enjoyable. Some of the times I wish that WoW had some of the things FFXI had like the chain/burst sytem in there battle system I really enjoyed that, this would make it so people actually looked at the battle and paid attention can you imagine a chain of tank starting off, ->rogue->Enh Shaman->Retardin->Mage, I can just see it now.... And everyone a crit to boot and then adding a debuff to the mob if the chain was completed successfully, like if you got 2 chains right then a movement debuff, chain to burst some other kind of debuff. Would be kind of cool to see that in the new FFXIV.

[mactabilis]

I wish i could've multi-boxed back when I was playing ffxi. Actually, wish i knew how to multi-box period. Lately, i've been browsing the forums trying to get more info on multiboxing. I really want to try it out on FFXIV. So far all the searches for multiboxing is for WoW. Anyone know if FFXIV will be mutli-boxable?

[Duese]

It would be nice if they actually showed some gameplay footage in their trailer. If I wanted to watch movies, I'd have spent my money on a big tv instead of a nice computer.

That is in game footage. They are doing the same thing they did in FFXI for their "movie" footage where they use the in game graphics engine to generate their cutscenes. It was one of the really unique things they did in FFXI that allowed them to really develop a storyline rather than solely rely on reading a chat window or a quest log to progress the story, albeit their was still a lot of chat log reading.

[mactabilis]

One part of the trailer was from actual game engine, I believe the fight on the ship.

[Duese]

I wish i could've multi-boxed back when I was playing ffxi.

I wish I wouldn't have been so reserved when it came to my multi-boxing in that game. I 2-boxed, then 3-boxed. The thought of 5 or 6 boxing never crossed my mind as even being possible.

[Diwa]

I like FF in console since NES days to the point of dreaming to work in Square Enix. But for some reason when an MMO is based in non English content like Korea and Japan, they tend to be the same old grindfest, update patches are too long to be implemented (like in Korea patch 10 then US stil in patch 2), hard to understand quest description plus low EXP on it, imbalance gameplay due to auction house (the more $ you spend the more powerful you are regardless of your skills), Bot, Lag, Spam..etc.. Consolation is Eye candy graphics. Problem with outsourced MMO is company based in the US can't do anything until the MMO provider gave a solution to the problem.

[Sychosys]

I saw this and a few other trailers from SE at E3 this year; they were ungodly stingy with the in-game content. It was mostly just their rendered Vids, which are always awesome :) I dunno, I always keep my WoW accounts active just because I never know when I am going to play em again, but it would be nice to have something other than WoW to play. War is fun but doesnt hold my interest all that long since RvR is all there really is in it right now once ya hit 40... which is pretty easy to do). And Honestly I think War is fun simply because its a fairly well put together game that is NOT WoW, hehe. Been burned with too many MMOs though, they better offer a trial game

[TheBigBB]

I tried to play FFXI a little while back, and walked away thinking it was the worst game I ever played. It was so unfriendly to a new player and the interface was absolutely horrible. The game gave me no indication of what I should have been doing or whether I'd be able to handle a particular dungeon at my skill level. You had to rely almost entirely on help from the community to figure out what you were doing. It played clunky and wasn't the least bit fun. I can understand that maybe people who played it from day 1 and got into a good group might have had a totally different experience, and maybe the endgame was entertaining, but as a new person trying to get into it years later, I couldn't have been more put off.

OH, to stay on topic, I am 100% open to the idea that FF 14 will be a decent game despite how I feel about 11. I just hope they give it a much more clear system to hand out tasks, quests, etc, and give you direction about where to go. It doesn't have to be like WoW in terms of gameplay or anything.

[Bigfish]

I have no hope for FFXIV. Maybe I'm just contrary to the whole process, but I don't see SE learning THAT much from XI. My take on the market is thus:

At this point WoW is the undisputed king, and through cunning trivialization of their early game content, they more or less ensure every new player can hit cap with a fair degree of ease. It is actually moderately intriguing the amount of obsolete content they have in the game. But that is beside the point from the fact that they keep their end game content relatively fresh. With a small investment of time, you can be hob-nobbing it around with all the other level 80s.

Other MMOs are able to more or less maintain their subscription base through sheer force of addiction, but you just don't see anyone really starting anything but WoW because every other MMO more or less retains the notion that you have to spend as much time getting to cap and gearing up as the people who started half a decade ago, which is a real turn off.

FFXIV will almost certainly get a good start, but I imagine its going to go down the same path of all the things that turned people off XI: Limited UI, PS2(3) limitations, a lack of empathy with the fan base, and an inability to implement forward looking design to make the game that people want to play instead of copying the big dog MMO of the time.

That's just my 2 cents though.

[TheBigBB]

I have no hope for FFXIV. Maybe I'm just contrary to the whole process, but I don't see SE learning THAT much from XI. My take on the market is thus:

At this point WoW is the undisputed king, and through cunning trivialization of their early game content, they more or less ensure every new player can hit cap with a fair degree of ease. It is actually moderately intriguing the amount of obsolete content they have in the game. But that is beside the point from the fact that they keep their end game content relatively fresh. With a small investment of time, you can be hob-nobbing it around with all the other level 80s.

Other MMOs are able to more or less maintain their subscription base through sheer force of addiction, but you just don't see anyone really starting anything but WoW because every other MMO more or less retains the notion that you have to spend as much time getting to cap and gearing up as the people who started half a decade ago, which is a real turn off.

FFXIV will almost certainly get a good start, but I imagine its going to go down the same path of all the things that turned people off XI: Limited UI, PS2(3) limitations, a lack of empathy with the fan base, and an inability to implement forward looking design to make the game that people want to play instead of copying the big dog MMO of the time.

That's just my 2 cents though.Good point. I can't see myself enjoying a MMO which doesn't have a plan to help new players years down the line catch up. I can't always be playing the same game, so I want a reasonable chance to catch up. The fun should be the experience, not the satisfaction of others being unable to catch up to you in gear and level.

[Lyonheart]

I have no hope for FFXIV. Maybe I'm just contrary to the whole process, but I don't see SE learning THAT much from XI. My take on the market is thus:

At this point WoW is the undisputed king, and through cunning trivialization of their early game content, they more or less ensure every new player can hit cap with a fair degree of ease. It is actually moderately intriguing the amount of obsolete content they have in the game. But that is beside the point from the fact that they keep their end game content relatively fresh. With a small investment of time, you can be hob-nobbing it around with all the other level 80s.

Other MMOs are able to more or less maintain their subscription base through sheer force of addiction, but you just don't see anyone really starting anything but WoW because every other MMO more or less retains the notion that you have to spend as much time getting to cap and gearing up as the people who started half a decade ago, which is a real turn off.

FFXIV will almost certainly get a good start, but I imagine its going to go down the same path of all the things that turned people off XI: Limited UI, PS2(3) limitations, a lack of empathy with the fan base, and an inability to implement forward looking design to make the game that people want to play instead of copying the big dog MMO of the time.

That's just my 2 cents though.Good point. I can't see myself enjoying a MMO which doesn't have a plan to help new players years down the line catch up. I can't always be playing the same game, so I want a reasonable chance to catch up. The fun should be the experience, not the satisfaction of others being unable to catch up to you in gear and level.

EQ2 has RaF and even without RaF leveling from 1-70 has been made easy. 70-80 is slow, but it should be, and is still not too slow.

[Duese]

The fun should be the experience, not the satisfaction of others being unable to catch up to you in gear and level.

And by skipping a majority of the content you are making the "experience" better?

Fitting that this is an FFXI thread and all since they came up with a nifty way to deal with it rather than just "here, have lvl 75." Rather than boost the level of the new players, they gave the ability to lower the experienced player down to the same level as the new player and allowed the experienced player get the same rewards. The Level Sync feature really was a neat feature for that game, especially with the amount of level capped content. It really made grouping a lot more fun and accessible, not to mention it got rid of a lot of crowding issues on overcamped xp zones.

Also, through the use of experience rings, you benefited from shorter xp sessions on multiple different days, rather than just straight out grind fests. It's kind of like rested xp except you don't spend your entire lvl'ing life under the effects. (Seriously, I lvl'd 70-80 in less then 2 weeks and never ran out of rested xp in WoW.)

WTB more anniversary rings though. =)

[TheBigBB]

The fun should be the experience, not the satisfaction of others being unable to catch up to you in gear and level. And by skipping a majority of the content you are making the "experience" better? I didn't say anything about skipping content. You're talking to a guy who did collection quests across two separate 5-man groups to 80. I'm just saying that if I took a 5 month break to play some other games (I did) I shouldn't have to come back and be unable to catch up. WoW does a great job of stopping that from happening. I've heard that other MMOs don't. I had a bad experience with FFXI. I hope that they consider the new guys who might start 1,2,3 years after release.

[TheBigBB]

(Seriously, I lvl'd 70-80 in less then 2 weeks and never ran out of rested xp in WoW.)
Also, I call BS. It takes 10 days to get 1.5 levels worth of rested experience, as far as I know. You got 10 levels on rested in under 14 days? Unless you got 8 levels worth of quest turn-in experience, that's not even possible. Do you really need to be so insecure about your argument that you resort to lying about a mechanic just to make your point stronger? It's okay to like the FFXI rings system. No one's going to attack you just for that.

[Bigfish]

Fitting that this is an FFXI thread and all since they came up with a nifty way to deal with it rather than just "here, have lvl 75." Rather than boost the level of the new players, they gave the ability to lower the experienced player down to the same level as the new player and allowed the experienced player get the same rewards. The Level Sync feature really was a neat feature for that game, especially with the amount of level capped content. It really made grouping a lot more fun and accessible, not to mention it got rid of a lot of crowding issues on overcamped xp zones.

I'm going to have to cite this as a prime example of SE's "too little too late" policy. I've been espousing that position for years. (How the hell do I know that word?) Basically, SE does some pretty awesome stuff. Problem is, it happens about 2-4 years after it should have been implemented.

Level sync is an awesome feature, doubly so in the effect that it lets you undertake the miriad level capped content without having to keep a second/third/fourth etc. set of gear on hand. Thing is, they should have done this back with CoP, when level capped stuff was more prominent.

Level sync and Fields of Valor somewhat alleviating party seek times aside, new players still have to do: Missions, Genkai, Zilart, and CoP before their characters can really get fleshed out, and that's just the grind to 75. Meripos add a whole new level of "grind grind grind" in to the mix. Now back when this stuff was cutting edge (or hell, just standard adge), it was fine. Starting fresh and playing catch-up is NOT a pleasant experience though, especially when you're looking at counting the time in months instead of weeks.

[Duese]

Also, I call BS. It takes 10 days to get 1.5 levels worth of rested experience, as far as I know. You got 10 levels on rested in under 14 days? Unless you got 8 levels worth of quest turn-in experience, that's not even possible.

Believe what you want, but group xp puts a huge knock into xp per kill unless you are in instances. Not doing instances and completing 6.5 zones worth of quests does yield quite a bit of quest xp. Oh and you assume that I didn't start with full rested xp.

All that beside the point, my initial argument still stands that "rested" xp is becoming the standard xp where it was initially designed as something to help casual players.


I'm going to have to cite this as a prime example of SE's "too little too late" policy.

I agree 100%. Would have been awesome to have this from the beginning. It did make crafting a little more worthwhile though. Making that lvl 30 shade gear or pally gear was pretty nice. They finally started adding a lot more gear to the game which definitely was a nice boost. I guess they got tired of all the Thief's and Ranger's wearing the same boots from lvl 7 to 75.

[Marious]

Dude those boots where great for thief's... let me guess those where off the rabbit NM. I camped that bastard a long time lol.

[Ridere]

Dude those boots where great for thief's... let me guess those where off the rabbit NM. I camped that bastard a long time lol.

Close!

Jaggedy-Eared Jack dropped a neck piece which improved your chance to steal.

Those boots dropped from Leaping Lizzy in South Gustaberg and were quite the hot item. haha

[Duese]

Close!

Jaggedy-Eared Jack dropped a neck piece which improved your chance to steal.

Those boots dropped from Leaping Lizzy in South Gustaberg and were quite the hot item. haha

Winner!

And their first idea to fix the problem was to change the drop from Leaping Boots to "Bounding Boots" with the same exact stats and make them Ra/Ex instead of actually adding new gear choices. That just jacked the price up on the non-Ra/Ex boots to ridiculous amounts and had everyone and their mother out camping Lizzy.

It was fun camping NM's though, especially if you *cough* modified the registry of the placeholders *cough*. One time I changed the registry for "Hill Lizard" to "Leaping Lizzy" on my friends computer. He kept freaking out saying "OMG! I tagged lizzy!" only to see 3 of them standing next to him. I loved screwing around with the image files and registries in that game. Someone created a megaman outfit for taru's that I wore around for like a month. To bad it only displayed that way on your computer and not everyone else's. It was pretty fitting seeing that my characters name was Superhero.

Edit:

Omg screenshots!

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9360/img20080612195850.png

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4942/sup080616214559a.jpg

[chaosultimamage]

^ lmao that's awesome. Little Taru Megaman

I'm not sure if I posted it or not, I don't think I did. i think I've debated posting in the thread several times.

But, whoever said "if it's anything like FFXI, I want no part in it", I agree 100%.

I played FFXI for about 3 months after it'd been out for about a year in the US and I only got to level 20. It was retarded. That was playing several hours a night, every night. The requirement to have people to play with was just uncalled for and the fact that everything was just grinding...I can't stand just grinding. At least quests give you a goal, something to do other than just kill things, even if the quest is to kill stuff. Those are easy and you get a big amount of exp from the quest. I have similar issues with stuff like Ragnarok Online. I just cannot play these games as they are intended.

EDIT: Also, I will refuse to play this game, regardless, if they have experience loss on death.

[Gadzooks]

The only other person in my extended family who plays MMOs is my niece, who lost years of her life playing FF.

When she was actively playing, she had the usual MMO glazed look in her eyes - "Oh, it's awesome!" She spent ALL of her time doing it, while in college, and after. She was the cliche of the MMO world - crappy part time job, just enough to cover the bills, never attended family events, never e-mailed, called, all she did was go to class, later work, then go home and stay up all night in FF. She was very anti-WoW, as WoW stole a lot of their friends from FF.

Then, she broke up with her long-time boyfriend, who got her into the game...and woke up, and realized, in her words, "FF sucks ass".

I remember visiting, and sitting with her while she played, as I was curious about it, being a WoW player. She spent over an hour chatting, doing this little errand here, an errand there, but not really doing anything. It seemed that the game was more about chatting with friends, than it was doing anything. At that time, I was playing GTA a lot, and my PS2 died. When replacing it, I saw the HD model on sale with FF included, so I bought it, installed it, tried it, and gave up after a few hours. Just not my thing, it was so hard to even figure out what to do, I lost interest immediately. Blizzard has one thing down to a fine art, with beginning zones - compare the Draenii/Night Elf/DK starting zones with FF - it' a million miles apart.

She's curious about WoW still, but is still pretty bitter about MMOs in general, after realizing how much time she wasted (her entire college career) on a video game. She's now making up for lost time, having fun in NYC as a 20-something, and I'm glad for her. I've talked to her about how I've balanced game time with real life tasks, and how after playing WoW since release I have never felt like I wasted time, or missed out on anything, and have continued a well paying creative career with lots of freelance opportunities, girlfriends, friends, family, etc..., along with WoW. (Basically, if I have stuff to do, I don't log on). Even MBing, I balance it with the real world - the time most people spend in front of a TV watching crappy tv shows or dumb movies is the time I use to play - I don't have cable tv, anyway. :) And because I MB, if I want to just read a book, or play with Silo or zBrush or Photoshop, that's what I do, instead of my free time being under the control of a bunch of strangers in a raiding guild.

Okay, I'm rambling. TLDR version: Nice graphics, but FF isn't my thing. :D

[Ridere]

If there was a game that would benefit from MBing, it'd be FFXI.

The advantages you could get from boxing it would be great. Lots of complaints about forming parties and such. Odd complaints coming from a multiboxing forum. :P

I agree, the game was difficult. It did force you to work with others. And ultimately I did quit it, because it required too much of a commitment. But now that I box... dang, I wish I could roll back the clock and box FFXI. It would really rock. I'd also argue that the need of finding people to help out on things really helped foster friendships within the game. What you did mattered, and so it kept people a bit more honest and well-behaved.

Now, I know that there are immature people everywhere, but I've always missed the FFXI community more than I've missed the WoW one.

I look forward to FFXIV. Even if it's a retooled FFXI, I'll still enjoy it. I'm a boxer now, and I'll have major advantages over people in a party-based system.

I do think they are planning on making it a lot more casual-friendly, though, so maybe all hope isn't lost for people here.

[Helmer]

ffxi being my first mmo, i was unaware of how bad it was until i tried other mmos (namely wow). it's very much a grind and not solo friendly. i do miss it though and look forward to spending a couple months trying ffxiv when it releases (or at least trying the beta).

also! ffxiv is being built with the white engine, the same engine square is using for ffxiii... and although a lot of the trailer was pre-rendered, the fight scene on the boat was in-game.

[Duese]

Also, I will refuse to play this game, regardless, if they have experience loss on death.

The previous two mmo's that I played before WoW were FFXI and Asheron's Call. FFXI had xp loss on death. Asheron's Call gave you a Vitae Penalty lowering your stats when you died and you had to get XP to remove the penalty (not to mention dropping 8-10 pieces of high value items in your pack). When I got to WoW, I was amazed about how little people cared about dying. The first time I walked into AV, I died like 25 times. Coming from a pretty hardcore pvp'er in AC where you'd die maybe once or twice a night at most, this was a strange concept. WoW really has trivialized a death penalty to more of an minor annoyance instead of something to actively avoid.

It really is a different game though. In WoW, so much relies on your level being 80 that having xp loss wouldn't work. Delevel to lvl 79 and you are naked since you don't meet the requirements for any of your raided gear. In FFXI and Asheron's Call, you never really "stop" gaining xp so it works better in that area. Also, their is less of a reliance on being max level in those games as opposed to WoW. "Raiding" in FFXI starts as early as lvl 65 (MaxLvl is 75) with some classes and the rest of the classes between 72 and 75. I'd imagine it's less of a problem now, but when I played, it wasn't common for people to have multiple max level characters.

Maybe I'm a little strange, but I think dying should hold more weight than it currently does in WoW. Throwing out some pocket change for an entire night of wiping in ulduar (~200g) is nothing, especially considering that I probably paid twice that on consumables alone.

They are taking a step in the right direction with the Coliseum though. Rewards being lowered based on the amount of times you wipe should make things more interesting.

[Marious]

Been looking at there site and there is a lot of nice things to see, have you guys been looking at the beastiary and all that? I like what they have so far and looking forward to trying the game out, but dang it looks like release is at same time as Cataclysm. Not sure this is a smart move on there part, they should launch a bit earlier or at least a bit later to let the hype die down on Cataclysm.

[Ridere]

I'm definitely going to give FF14 a try. I'm not interested in that than in Cataclysm, to be sure. I really want to box it, though. S-E has a pretty lame track record when it comes to customer service now, though. Hopefully they get that fixed soon.

[TheBigBB]

FFXI turned me away by being so incredibly unfriendly to new players. The game feels clunky and it didn't seem possible to level up solo, although I wouldn't know because there was no tutorial or anything to help me out. WoW doesn't do the best job of helping new guys, but I never had this problem with it. I really hope they make FF14 easier to get into.

[Malekyth]

"Under the eldritch veil of a crimson shadow ..."

When fifteen year-old writers ATTACK!

[Bigfish]

FFXI wasn't bad if you could get past the initial hump. My only real compaints would be long ass "attunements" and expansions that initally offer very little, and then patch the content in later.

[Marious]

Yup have to agree on the whole rough to level part, one of the biggest reasons I went BST in FFXI was because it was one of the easier jobs to level Solo. Maybe who ever tries it out we can pick a realm where all the boxers are on and make a link shell with everyone in it. Will probably take a break from WoW when FFXIV comes out.

[Ridere]

It was tough to get started, yes, but it was my first MMO. I woudln't go into FF14 with the same trouble I had going into FF11. Even with the initial hump, I was still one of the first North American WHMs to hit 75, and in the linkshell that did pretty much all of the North American players only firsts. Japanese players cleared all the content first, naturally, since they had a year's head start, but it was fun doing it all for ourselves.

And all of the trouble with leveling wouldn't be an issue, if we were boxing at the time, too. haha.

i'm going to purchase one account for sure. If GMs/Developers are more responsive (e.g. wow Forums for blizzard and such), I would like to try boxing it. Given their current track record with ban accounts first and ask questions (sometimes) later, though, I'll probably wait until it's been confirmed that it's not a bannable offense.

I'd really love to make a pack of Lalafels (New name for Tarutarus). Here's hoping it gets a green light for boxing.

[Marious]

Come on you got to go with a Galka and a TaruTaru lol, I like you will do the same and wait to see what happens with this since yeah MBing it would be great.