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Rank: Warden
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I am playing this game, at least until it grows boring. There is a free trial period if you are interested. I bought the basic game and didn't realize the trial was still going or that there is a "trilogy" that you can buy that gets you the original game plus first two expansions at a much-reduced price.
Anyway so far the game is gentle and pretty easy, but I am second level only. There is a "hard" mode for veterans. The game creates an instance for your party whenever you leave the common area so you will not run into others out in the field. I am not sure I like that as much as more social games, but it does remove camping. There is PvP possible but the game is set up to separate PvP from roleplaying characters which I like. We shall see.
Anyway I am logging onto vent while playing in case anyone wants to chat.
It has been a long time.
Games/characters:
Final Fantasy XIV
Release date: September 30, 2010
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WYI I'm not playing anything for 3 more weeks. Still trying to get this 40K army painted.
Baku Draconis Sarsar Kherid-Din  
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Rank: Warden
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Warhammer miniatures? You have some big battle planned or something?
Games/characters:
Final Fantasy XIV
Release date: September 30, 2010
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Rank: COR GM
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Posts: 658
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Location: College Station, Texas
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Big tournament I'm going to in Austin on the 31th. http://www.wargamescon.com/
Baku Draconis Sarsar Kherid-Din
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Rank: Warden
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So far Guild Wars is fun, but after playing for a couple of weeks on and off I would say that it is not a long time thing for me. The game has definit limits that make it play much simpler than other games (only 8 skill slots and skills not swappable in the field, no crafting in the familiar sense, no mounts, etc). I started as a healer class and have had a couple of guild invites already. That is sorta funny. I don't see a large number of Monks (healers) around in the common areas.
I hate to say it but so far EQ2 still remains my gold standard for comparing cooperative online games.
Games/characters:
Final Fantasy XIV
Release date: September 30, 2010
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Thats to each their own pops. You love the crafting and what I see as the "fluff" aspect of the game..mounts etc.. WoW would probably interest you with all of the achievements etc to get..but we already had that conversation about wow so won't rehash it. EQ2 had its ups and its down, I dont see any one game as a gold standard. They each have their peaks and valleys.
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Rank: Warden
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There is more to a good game and a game world than hacking through hordes of foes and jumping up and down on other players. One person's "fluff" is another person's game I suppose. The reason why EQ2 is my gold standard is that I consider it to have been, at least up to and including the first expansion, the most immersive online game experience I have had. I thought Fallen Earth was pretty good too but the sameness of the environments and the story elements became apparent after a couple of months of play and I lost interest. Guild wars has very little emphasis on exploration, no swimming or underwater movement and no jumping (!). Slight elevation differences and/or ledges block movement and require finding a path along a slope. There is no finding of items in the environment other than chests that open using purchased or dropped keys, and very little armor and weapon customization. After the newbie zone, the environments become rather stark and samey. A character build consists of your few skill progressions and a very small number (8) skill slots at a time.
I have to admit that what finally turned me off to EQ2 was that the emphasis on crafting was removed and the skill and perseverance required to be a successful crafter were "dumbed down" in several successive steps (Baku disagreed with me on this for some reason which I cannot remember now). Emphasis was placed instead on marathon raiding sessions that required as much or more time to organize than perform and the crafting economy fell apart.
I just took a bit of a look at FFXIV which might turn out to be pretty good. I played FFXI from release in the USA until EQ2 came out and it was a fun game.
Games/characters:
Final Fantasy XIV
Release date: September 30, 2010
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Only thing I didn't like from the original crafting was it was dependent on others to do. For example originally the sage had to get paper from a woodworker and ink from an alchemist. Maybe it was just that one profession but it made it so it cost you more in materials then you would make selling them to players. Laos this leads to something SWG had a problem with, if you population goes down and there are no player craters, then the economy just total implodes. On the other had I totally agree MMO's in general have gotten to dumbed down and easy. It is just a leveling tread mill with not much draw into the world and story, and the leveling tread mills have gotten shorter and much easier as MMOs have developed. Not saying I want to go back to how had EQ1 was, but there has to be a happy medium.
Baku Draconis Sarsar Kherid-Din
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I think I was happy with the original crafting system because I my second guild (first group that came with me from FFXI went away fast) was really cooperative at questing and crafting. We would go out and run quests, farm out all the nodes in the zone, and then trade stuff and make the ingredients and the crafted items for each other. Incidentally people like Frostbeard and Squidster were originally in that guild (VX9 - still around and being run by BigDawg AFAIK and doing other games too). Pops was an alchemist which made me the central guy for everything. I made extra stacks of whatever we needed for the guild and sold them. I also had the idea that Pops was a crazy old fart alchemist - the original character concept. I had accumulated a huge stash of the basic herbs and stuff that we needed (all useless when the crafting changes happened) and designed my house to look like a crazy alchemist/wizard lab inside. So anyway the whole roleplaying thing was a little better, at least in my imagination. It slowly fizzled away to a more combat-centric game.
We will see what will happen with FFXIV. The crafting system in FFXI was okay. However what I am hoping won't happen is that the character development suffers the same simplification as in FFXIII versus FFXII or FFX.
Games/characters:
Final Fantasy XIV
Release date: September 30, 2010
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See that's the point though. Those systems work great if you have the people doing it. Like SWG was at first. There were tons of people crafting and player cities with merchants to go buy stuff. Then when people started leaving it became a barren wasteland, and you couldn't find a player made fork to save your life, let alone a starship.
Baku Draconis Sarsar Kherid-Din
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Rank: COR Goat Herder
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AO
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Rank: Warden
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Joined: 1/15/2008
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??
Games/characters: Final Fantasy XIV Release date: September 30, 2010
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Anarchy online
Also known as: Lysira, Veeci, Silverblade
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