Well, I'll give you a bit of my history and then explain my thoughts on FFXIV.
I've been MMO-gaming since 2002 and I have played pretty much every MMO there is. I have a few favorites and I have a few that I absolutely detest, one of which happens to be FFXI. I played that from launch until a few months in and then of course on and off over the years to see what they've done with the place.
Unfortunately I never got very far in the game because there were several things I just couldn't stand about it. I hated the fact that it took forever to tweak the graphics and that it was such a process and even then I couldn't make them look anywhere near as nice as some of the screenshots I've seen (and I've always played games on a top of the line machine). The keyboard controls, and I'm sure most will agree with me, were horrible and really hard to get used to. Last but not least the combat was mind numbingly slow. During the time it would take to kill a goat or a goblin, I could have popped out three kids. It was just not my type of game.
Then in comes FFXIV beta and of course since its a new MMO I had already pre-ordered the CE. It doesn't matter that I hated its predecessor, I feel I'm pretty open minded when it comes to games and I like to give them all their fair shot.
So far, I can tell you that from the minute I loaded up the game I was already liking it. I felt like the character creation (comparing of course only to FFXI) was such a better process. I love the fact that there are actually more than three looks per class and that you can customize your character a lot more than you could in the past. I've spent hours so far in character creation just checking out the different looks you can create.
Sidenote: More hairstyles, in my opinion, are desperately needed especially in the way of the Lalafell. Four hairstyles is simply not enough to distinguish ourselves from one and other. I'd prefer 8-10. Just my thoughts on that.
Graphics are visually stunning, especially compared to anything on the market right now. I feel that it gives AoC and LotRO a run for their money, big time.
Sidenote: I do have one annoying problem, maybe someone reading can tell me what the heck to do. I have an ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the darn game keeps tearing. It obviously needs Vsync & Triple Buffering but I have no idea (new to ATI) how to enable these for the game. It does not work the same way as it does for Nvidia cards.
This time I've hooked up an Xbox360 controller (after fiddling with the keyboard/mouse for a bit). That definitely improves gameplay by a good 99%. It makes it easier to move around, target, kill, etc. It just makes the entire experience so much better.
As far as combat goes this time around, I feel like it is vastly improved. It's much speedier than it was in FFXI and that will help me, personally, to stick with the game a heck of a lot longer than I did in FFXI. I feel like when I hit a skill its actually doing something and I don't feel like I'm waiting 10 years to hit the mob.
The cities are also really improved. Aside from the instancing into NPC dialog, I've really not experienced any form of instancing. I'm wondering, at this point, if there even is any? I would have to assume there is, but I have yet to stumble across any.
There is one major downside so far that I've noticed and thats the chat box. The chatbox is astronomically small and the print is way too big for such a small box. They really need to rework that, pronto. That is going to make RPing very agitating especially if more than one person is speaking at a time.
Overall, vast improvement over FFXI. I do think they've learned some things from their time making & managing that one.
There are definitely things that could use polishing and there are several issues here and there, but overall I think they have a solid product to work with and I'm very excited to see where they go from here.
My apologies for my book, but... well this is what I think!
I've been MMO-gaming since 2002 and I have played pretty much every MMO there is. I have a few favorites and I have a few that I absolutely detest, one of which happens to be FFXI. I played that from launch until a few months in and then of course on and off over the years to see what they've done with the place.
Unfortunately I never got very far in the game because there were several things I just couldn't stand about it. I hated the fact that it took forever to tweak the graphics and that it was such a process and even then I couldn't make them look anywhere near as nice as some of the screenshots I've seen (and I've always played games on a top of the line machine). The keyboard controls, and I'm sure most will agree with me, were horrible and really hard to get used to. Last but not least the combat was mind numbingly slow. During the time it would take to kill a goat or a goblin, I could have popped out three kids. It was just not my type of game.
Then in comes FFXIV beta and of course since its a new MMO I had already pre-ordered the CE. It doesn't matter that I hated its predecessor, I feel I'm pretty open minded when it comes to games and I like to give them all their fair shot.
So far, I can tell you that from the minute I loaded up the game I was already liking it. I felt like the character creation (comparing of course only to FFXI) was such a better process. I love the fact that there are actually more than three looks per class and that you can customize your character a lot more than you could in the past. I've spent hours so far in character creation just checking out the different looks you can create.
Sidenote: More hairstyles, in my opinion, are desperately needed especially in the way of the Lalafell. Four hairstyles is simply not enough to distinguish ourselves from one and other. I'd prefer 8-10. Just my thoughts on that.
Graphics are visually stunning, especially compared to anything on the market right now. I feel that it gives AoC and LotRO a run for their money, big time.
Sidenote: I do have one annoying problem, maybe someone reading can tell me what the heck to do. I have an ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the darn game keeps tearing. It obviously needs Vsync & Triple Buffering but I have no idea (new to ATI) how to enable these for the game. It does not work the same way as it does for Nvidia cards.
This time I've hooked up an Xbox360 controller (after fiddling with the keyboard/mouse for a bit). That definitely improves gameplay by a good 99%. It makes it easier to move around, target, kill, etc. It just makes the entire experience so much better.
As far as combat goes this time around, I feel like it is vastly improved. It's much speedier than it was in FFXI and that will help me, personally, to stick with the game a heck of a lot longer than I did in FFXI. I feel like when I hit a skill its actually doing something and I don't feel like I'm waiting 10 years to hit the mob.
The cities are also really improved. Aside from the instancing into NPC dialog, I've really not experienced any form of instancing. I'm wondering, at this point, if there even is any? I would have to assume there is, but I have yet to stumble across any.
There is one major downside so far that I've noticed and thats the chat box. The chatbox is astronomically small and the print is way too big for such a small box. They really need to rework that, pronto. That is going to make RPing very agitating especially if more than one person is speaking at a time.
Overall, vast improvement over FFXI. I do think they've learned some things from their time making & managing that one.
There are definitely things that could use polishing and there are several issues here and there, but overall I think they have a solid product to work with and I'm very excited to see where they go from here.
My apologies for my book, but... well this is what I think!