Final Fantasy 14 is going to be an MMO :)

[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.

[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.