I agree pretty much with what's already been said. I don't understand how you can review an MMO a week after launch and feel confident it will be accurate even after the first update.
I think most of us came from an FFXI background, and if you were like me who played the game before CoP was released, and continued to play all the way up until (for me) Crystalline Prophecies, you'll know how many changes, how many hours worth of updates, maintenances, and tweaks the game has gone through. And some of them were quite major and reshaped the entire game play. (Mobs de-spawning at the zone, Paladins getting their own provoke, merit system, ect.ect.)
I think that's why I enjoy MMOs so much. Granted nowadays Console games do have patches here and there.. but they're not patches like an MMO patch. XIV is, and will continue to be, an ever-changing game. To review it at all is very difficult. And I wouldn't even bother to review it until at least 4 to 6 months after release, when all of the kinks and things have been worked out of it.
As far as them trying to beat-out Cataclysm.. Eh.. There's a difference between a game launch, and the release of an expansion pack. To me, if they were trying to compete with Cata, I think it's silly and ill-advised to push for an earlier release just to get it out there. However, if SE plays it right, they might have a decently comparable game come Cata release (in December or something..?)
Despite all this, I do think SE suffered some major brain-farts while deciding to release this game. I can live without the auction house, the chocobos ect.. what I don't understand, mainly, is the lack of configuration the game has, and the lack of just..common "DURR" things that should have been fixed. (chat text limit, certain configuration options like font colors, chat tabs, window style ect.ect.)
As far as the game being "console-made".. I really don't see it. Honestly. Granted, I played FFXI for years on the PS2 and then switched over to 360 (I didn't have the computer I have now at the time) I'm sort of biased when it comes to controllers anyway. And yes, the 2nd day I had XIV I ran to BestBuy and bought myself a USB controller. However.. From what I saw while playing, the interface is..pretty...similar.. to XI's PC interface, though I only had the chance to play on PC a handful of times, so I could be incredibly wrong. But everything seemed to be the same buttons I remember using.. because if they hadn't been, trust me I would have been really stupid with the game. ("WHERE'S THE MENU BUTTON!? AAHH")
I don't really know why SE didn't start XIV off with at least most if not all of XI's features to begin with. If I were going to make a sequel MMO to one of the MMO's I've been perfecting for years and years and years, I think the best starting point would be exactly where we left off. I dunno though, I'm not a game developer, so who knows they may have run into complications or some other excuse that prevented them from implementing these features right away.. but.. I'm still sort of grumbling to myself at certain things like everyone else.
I tell my friends this often about FFXI-- If there's one thing it taught me in life, it's how to be patient...
I think most of us came from an FFXI background, and if you were like me who played the game before CoP was released, and continued to play all the way up until (for me) Crystalline Prophecies, you'll know how many changes, how many hours worth of updates, maintenances, and tweaks the game has gone through. And some of them were quite major and reshaped the entire game play. (Mobs de-spawning at the zone, Paladins getting their own provoke, merit system, ect.ect.)
I think that's why I enjoy MMOs so much. Granted nowadays Console games do have patches here and there.. but they're not patches like an MMO patch. XIV is, and will continue to be, an ever-changing game. To review it at all is very difficult. And I wouldn't even bother to review it until at least 4 to 6 months after release, when all of the kinks and things have been worked out of it.
As far as them trying to beat-out Cataclysm.. Eh.. There's a difference between a game launch, and the release of an expansion pack. To me, if they were trying to compete with Cata, I think it's silly and ill-advised to push for an earlier release just to get it out there. However, if SE plays it right, they might have a decently comparable game come Cata release (in December or something..?)
Despite all this, I do think SE suffered some major brain-farts while deciding to release this game. I can live without the auction house, the chocobos ect.. what I don't understand, mainly, is the lack of configuration the game has, and the lack of just..common "DURR" things that should have been fixed. (chat text limit, certain configuration options like font colors, chat tabs, window style ect.ect.)
As far as the game being "console-made".. I really don't see it. Honestly. Granted, I played FFXI for years on the PS2 and then switched over to 360 (I didn't have the computer I have now at the time) I'm sort of biased when it comes to controllers anyway. And yes, the 2nd day I had XIV I ran to BestBuy and bought myself a USB controller. However.. From what I saw while playing, the interface is..pretty...similar.. to XI's PC interface, though I only had the chance to play on PC a handful of times, so I could be incredibly wrong. But everything seemed to be the same buttons I remember using.. because if they hadn't been, trust me I would have been really stupid with the game. ("WHERE'S THE MENU BUTTON!? AAHH")
I don't really know why SE didn't start XIV off with at least most if not all of XI's features to begin with. If I were going to make a sequel MMO to one of the MMO's I've been perfecting for years and years and years, I think the best starting point would be exactly where we left off. I dunno though, I'm not a game developer, so who knows they may have run into complications or some other excuse that prevented them from implementing these features right away.. but.. I'm still sort of grumbling to myself at certain things like everyone else.
I tell my friends this often about FFXI-- If there's one thing it taught me in life, it's how to be patient...
