Posts Tagged ‘ MMORPG ’

Growing Up Gaming: World of Warcraft

I took a break from MMORPGs after Final Fantasy XI, but it wasn’t too long until I heard about a new game: World of Warcraft. Some notable EverQuest alumni were involved and I found myself checking out details on the website. The description sounded interesting enough and I really liked the way the site described the survival specialization for the hunter class. Setting traps, then drawing enemies into them with a mix of both melee and ranged attacks with a pet companion. Of course, the melee turned out to be minimal in practice, but I didn’t know that just yet.

I bit the bullet and bought the game in January, activating my free month on 1/29/2005. This proved to be good, akin to my EverQuest experience, as starting near the beginning of an MMO’s release puts players on equal footing in awe and wonder and a good dose of uncertainty. I had settled on playing that survival hunter and chose to play a night elf rather than a dwarf. I named the character Faroth from my Tolkien Elvish Dictionary instead (yep, I’m a nerd).

Starting WoW was quite an experience after the past two MMORPGs I had played. The clear ! indication over NPCs for quests was a nice guide and I read every word of text as I began my adventures in Teldrassil. I quickly learned that WoW was not designed as vicious as EverQuest when I had my first scare by seeing an Ancient Protector on my way out of the starting area and on to the first small town. I freaked out, expecting it to be a high level enemy about to crush me. Though it was max level, it was friendly and not there to crush me. I quickly learned that there were no randomly high level enemies roaming zones to slaughter players.

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I thought this was going to crush me the first time I saw it.

I moved on to Darnassus, the night elf capital, and beyond. Now, I could have stayed in the next zone on the continent of Kalimdor, but I wanted to learn to use one-handed swords. So, as many players did, I stocked up on food for my Nightsaber (a large cat) pet, Aratiel, and headed for the Eastern Kingdoms. Per my EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI training, this would surely be an arduous journey.

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The entrance to the center of Darnassus, night elf capital.

I arrived in the Wetlands of the continent in the east, the Eastern Kingdoms and started down the road for the dwarf city of Ironforge. This was the most EQ-like experience as I ran from mobs many levels higher than me, often only rescued by sending my pet after them first and racing past them until the pet despawned due to distance or was killed by the high level enemy. Either of these options, or even dismissing the pet, resulted in me having to either resummon or revive her and then having to feed her. Originally, hunter pets had a happiness status. At full happiness, they did extra damage, but if they were unhappy for too long, they would abandon you!

Eventually I made it through the Wetlands, Loch Modan, Dun Morogh, Ironforge, and to Stormwind to learn to use swords and returned home to continue questing. As I leveled, I upgraded to new cat models for Aratiel, but always favored the dark striped ones similar to her original model and kept the name as I changed them. She became a lifelong companion for my hunter and I still have her today with the model of an elite named cat from Stranglethorn Vale.

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Faithful companion for over a decade

The world seemed vast as I explored every zone, doing every quest, the conveniences of the hearthstone and flight paths helping, but not eliminating travel while the thought of a base speed mount was far away due to the high cost. I was probably five or more levels above the requirement when I could finally afford my first racial mount.

For me, endgame content consisted of running dungeons for my dungeon set, particularly Stratholme Baron runs, which refused to drop the Beaststalker Pants for months on end. I never got into really raiding in Classic WoW, but one day my guild asked if I had the leaf from Molten Core. I was attuned to enter the raid, but had never set foot inside. They pulled me in and let me loot it rather than let it rot. As I thanked them again and again, not fully knowing the quest it led to, I was told I was staying for the Ragnaros fight. With only my dungeon set. And no fire resist gear. Oh boy.

I died, but saw the raid’s victory and returned once in a while as a substitute for missing members, acquiring pieces of the hideous Giantstalker armor set. Primarily, I turned my attention to completing the quest from the Ancient Leaf my guild had gifted me. It required the player to really master different aspects of the hunter class and ultimately granted me the weapon Rhok’delar, a bow, and Lhok’delar, a staff.

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Rhok’delar!

I never really did much more 40 man raiding other than Onyxia, but I joined a 15 man my guild formed and ran Zul’Gurub with them weekly. We never saw the tiger or panther mounts drop, though. We were still farming it when the next 40 and 15 man raids came with Anh’Qiraj. The opening of these raids was definitely interesting as the story began with a war effort in preparation for the gates to open. Entire servers were farming materials to donate to the war effort, gathering leather, making bandages, and such. I wasn’t in the raid group itself, but I was able to participate in the final step’s fight in Moonglade on the Feathermoon server that acquired the final component to open the gates.

Once the gates opened, lag consumed all. However, I still managed to fight enemies in other zones away from the raid opening itself. As classic WoW drew to a close with the final raid, Naxxramas, I had started my first alt by recreating my EverQuest paladin, Feneril. I managed to get him to 50 with a bit of gear just a week or two before the first expansion: The Burning Crusade.

As fond as my memories of roleplaying in EverQuest are, I’d say WoW is more where I really stretched my legs. I was on a RP server in a RP guild with players who really developed their characters and focused on their views on the world, the game’s current stories of raids and events, and their place in the guild rather than focusing on personal character relationship drama. Much like EverQuest, I have fond memories of my friends and guildmates and our adventures together. Hanstall, Tziva, Lapheer, Alhena, Zaria, Rautrix and Lochlaen, Cynvia, and many more.

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Guild gathered in a tavern

Faroth was fleshed out into his own character, as was Azeroth’s version of Feneril. Over time, I went on to create six more alts, all with their own character concepts, personalities, and focus when playing them. One was a sort of homage to an EverQuest guild member in my dwarf warrior.

WoW’s first expansion was a lot of fun and introduced flying, though it was a pretty big achievement, much like epic speed riding. Although Faroth remained my main, I got Feneril up more quickly and wound up with both getting into raiding and their roles slowly reversing in the process. I always thought the expansion had a good pacing of gearing up from faction reps, dungeon drops, and then heroic dungeons before raiding. I actually have some really fun memories due to survival hunter’s design at the time.

The first was in Hellfire Ramparts where a pull went wrong. I activated my pet’s growl (a taunt to get enemy attention) to hold one target while I kept mend pet up to heal  the pet and kept a second enemy frozen in a trap while I held a third myself. It was enough to impress the guildmate I was with, a rogue, after so many bad experiences with bad hunters.

The next dungeon memory I love is from heroic Shadow Labyrinth. I think it was the first pull to start clearing the first boss’ room. I was able to double trap two enemies, pet tank a third, wyvern sting a fourth, and kite/temporarily tank a fourth while the group burned the fifth target. They would then move to the wyvern sting target just as it was about to wake up or right after it had. I would continue to kite while keeping my pet healed and re-trap the first ice trap just as it was about to wear off. Usually the second trap would break as they killed the second enemy. Once that was down, they’d pick up the pet’s target, then my kited, and finally we’d take down the remaining enemy in an ice trap. It was a lot of fun juggling all of that and it let skilled survival hunters show off a bit.

My first raid experience in TBC was fairly random. Someone was shouting in a zone about needing one more and I joined them. That became a static group that I continued to run Karazhan with on my hunter, where I made new friends in Errdo and Hayleybrianna. Being geared from that led me to Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon with members of my guild who had raided together since Classic along with other members gathered through the Molten Core Alliance. The raid was called MCA: Shrieky and I made two new friends here: Dulcea and Aryaltel, both of whom I’ve met in person and see a couple times a year.

MCA: Shrieky needed a tank later, so I ran Karazhan with members of that raid and found my paladin raid ready in all of two weeks. Over the course of Tier 5 and Tier 6 raiding, my paladin became my main raid character. We didn’t get through Sunwell, but we did take down Illidan not long before the next expansion.

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Feneril in his Tier 6 armor

Moving into the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW was at its peak in popularity. I was excited for the story, wrapping up one of the biggest stories in Warcraft’s history with Arthas, the Lich King. The questin/leveling experience was mostly the same, but with some new tools allowing for more immserive experiences as the story went on, such as phasing and the addition of cut scenes in game. Even the outdoor PvP zone proved pretty fun for players who didn’t often PvP.

This expansion really drew me in and had me writing fan fiction for myself to better piece together how I saw my characters fitting in with the big stories. I never liked the idea of my character defeating all the raids and threats or even playing a part in all of them, so I divided them up a bit with Faroth primarily involved in the dragon war against Malygos and Feneril involved in the Alliance’s efforts against the Scourge.

At end game, I raided with a 25 man in the start, but it dissolved in the second raid, Ulduar. I formed my own 10 man raid with Trial of the Crusader, largely with real life friends and their own guild mates. Once again raiding on my paladin, we cleared Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel to complete the expansion. We didn’t, however, really bother with the added Ruby Sanctum.

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Our first time defeating the Lich King

I admit with Cataclysm, I started to lose steam. I didn’t find the added 5 levels as interesting and the story was very disjointed as the 1-50 leveling experience tied into the overall story of the new war between Horde and Alliance as well as some information about the story dealing with Deathwing. I felt that the expansion offered the least new additions and features, likely due to how much effort went into redesigning the world for flying and reworking the leveling experience. Transmogrification, allowing players to customize their armor appearance, was the best feature after a long and hard fought debate. The feature had been requested for years and I was quite active on the forums in support of it. Due to a lack of things to do, though, this was the expansion that I got all eight of my alts to max level.

Next came my final full expansion: Mists of Pandaria. I had no issue with the pandaren race nor the Asian aesthetic of the expansion. The content was fun and I liked the story overall. Cut scenes were taken to a new level and voice acting was improved. I didn’t even mind the daily quests as I felt they gave players what they’d asked for in removing the gating of them and removing the daily limit. I think they probably should have kept the limit, but not had previous expansion daily quests count towards it.

I did feel the Alliance players got shafted in Cataclysm’s story and that continued heavily in Mists of Pandaria. Everything Alliance players experienced resulted in loss, failure, and being told even their victories were colossal failures as well. The major “fist pump” moment that Blizzard promised was immediately reprimanded by King Varian as the absolute worst thing we could have done. How being told you’ve ruined a major victory is a “fist pump” moment has never made sense to me. I could probably write a couple posts on where I felt Blizzard went wrong in these two expansions and what I think would have been a better balanced approach.

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Also, this is what happens when everyone is funneled into one zone on launch night.

I raided the expansion via Looking for Raid, or LFR, tool, which was not the most enjoyable experience due to the ridiculous ease of content along with player attitude. WoW had gotten a reputation for having a fairly toxic community by this point and LFR brought out the worst in those toxic players. Once I ran the final raid, Siege of Orgrimmar, once, I had no inclination to farm it for gear and the Timeless Isle addition felt like an EverQuest inspired grind fairly quickly. After nine continuous, uninterrupted, years of World of Warcraft, I cancelled my subscription.

Warlords of Draenor didn’t seem like a great idea story wise and the added $10 cost of the game didn’t draw me back, so I waited to pick up the Collector’s Edition on sale during Black Friday and Christmas sales. I didn’t resubscribe, however, until the following spring. I played for a month to see the zone stories, which I enjoyed, but was really irritated by the conclusion where Thrall takes all the glory for what the players have been working towards. After Cataclysm revolved around him and he had been the forefront of so many stories, I was tired of Thrall. For him to show up at the end of this expansion and take the victory was just disappointing. I never ran a single dungeon and never resubscribed to see the rest of the story, just following with information online.

When Blizzard announced Legion, it looked much better than Warlords of Draenor, but I was still uncertain. I waited until release and found the collector’s edition was sold out and appeared to be legitimate limited stock, but I fortunately managed to get one. I planned the same routine as Warlords – subscribe for a month to see the zone stories. What I found was, in my opinion, the best expansion since Wrath of the Lich King. The added features such as world quests replacing daily quests and the gear flow were welcome additions. Mythic dungeons brought back a sense of Heroics from Burning Crusade. I even found myself really liking the class order hall with Faroth where I expected to not like it at all. The story has been well done and Suramar is one of the best cities Blizzard had designed in the entire game (hopefully it becomes a player friendly city post-expansion). However, I don’t like the retcon they pulled in order to bring Illidan back as a hero. A redemption story I could deal with, but “everyone is stupid and Illidan is smart” didn’t hit the mark for me.

This post is definitely one of the longer in this series, but it spans over 10 years of gaming and has been a large part of my gaming life, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’m still playing World of Warcraft occasionally for a month here and there, though another MMO has the majority of my attention in that realm now. For a couple of expansions now, I’ve said it was likely my last and Legion looks like it might be wrapping up a lot of major plotlines. Will it be my final expansion? Or will I give the next one a shot for a month here and there? The latter is probably likely, but I suppose one can never be sure.

One thing is certain, though: It’s hard to walk away from characters you’ve come to know and love over a decade, because you’ve crafted them and come to know them. It’s like a good book series, except you’ve been a part of thee characters’ lives in a way no other media can offer. They’re a part of you.

Since this post took us all the way from 2005 to 2017, we’ll go back to where we were in the next post, which will be the final in this series as I go over my memories and experiences with the Playstation 3.

 

2017
04/02
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Growing Up Gaming – PS2 & GameCube

We now reach a milestone in my gaming experience as I entered a new phase of my life. The majority of my experiences with both GameCube and Playstation 2 is set at college where I had both consoles and continued to play EverQuest. I spent the first two years of college going to a 2 year (or junior or community) college and saved money by continuing to live with my parents. I don’t have any stark memories of these consoles during these 2 years as I still spent most of my time on the PC.

As I detailed previously, I was deeply into EverQuest, so a lot of my time was spent on that. I also played a fair bit of Diablo, but the bulk of my time was EverQuest with a little still spent on Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. My console time started up again the latter half of my college career when I went to a university. I lived in a technically on campus apartment complex with four small bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a living area with kitchen.

I was fortunate enough to share the apartment with three guys I knew from high school. One hooked up his Dreamcast in the living room and I provided the GameCube as these two were designed with four player hook ups. The Playstation 2 was in my bedroom. I remember two of the first games I got for PS2 were Dark Cloud and Ephemeral Fantasia. I didn’t get too far in Dark Cloud and although I really enjoyed Ephemeral Fantasia, I never finished it. I didn’t like the ticking clock mechanic for Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, but found it acceptable here for some reason.

The coolest part of Ephemeral Fantasia was, like Ocarina of Time, playing music. It was more challenging than the ocarina music and I seem to recall there was a free form option as well, but I may be wrong on that.

I had to use an online guide to get pointed in the right direction at times, but the game was fun. It is probably the one PS2 game I would most like to revisit and play through fully that I didn’t complete in the past. Even though it wasn’t reviewed terribly favorably, and is probably fairly average at best, I enjoyed it.

The next memorable game I’d note would be the first Spider-Man game based on the Sam Raimi film. The game itself was a decent game, and I played through it on normal, then on the harder difficulty and had a lot of fun… until a level chasing Green Goblin through the city. Oh the profanities that came from my room were of great entertainment to my roommates (one of whom equally entertained us with the same playing Dreamcast fighting games).

Spider-Man 2, however, was leaps and bounds above the first with the first open world New York City and actual web swinging physics. If there was no building for a web to theoretically attach to, you could shoot a web in the direction. Combined with button combinations to pull off acrobatics while web swinging, the game was fun to just swing around the city being the wall crawler. Speed was based on releasing your web at the right time, you dived off buildings rather than just jumped off, there was a lot of intricacies put into web swinging. Honestly, after they simplified web swinging in the next game, I don’t feel any have matched the feel of it since this one.

Of course I picked up Final Fantasy X, the first fully voice acted Final Fantasy game. I remember particularly liking the Sphere Grid leveling progression system and I never really felt the voice acting was terrible. Looking back, even Tidus’ horrid laugh doesn’t bother me too much. I feel in the context of the scene, it’s supposed to be cringeworthy and awkward. It’s a forced laugh, that’s the whole point of that scene. Nothing’s funny, nothing amusing has happened, he’s forcing a laugh for Yuna’s sake. But that’s just me, I suppose! To Zanarkand is also one of my favorite pieces of music from Final Fantasy as a series.

While people were getting their violence kicks in Grand Theft Auto games, I opted to be violent on The Punisher instead. Not the best game ever made, but still fairly solid and it had the over the top “execution” kills if you had an enemy at the right place when they were almost finished off.

Over on the GameCube, there are a few games I particularly enjoyed, but possibly not the first one would venture to guess. First and foremost is probably Hunter: The Reckoning. Based on the tabletop RPG by White Wolf, the video game was a four player isometric game akin to Diablo and with the four of us in the apartment, it was a lot of fun. We played through it a few times and I believe we beat it as a group on the hardest difficulty. An amusing memory was being surrounded by enemies everywhere and telling our friend playing the biker character to use the cleave ability to which he yelled back “What’s a cleave?!”

Similar to Hunter: The Reckoning, a one of the roommates and I played the GameCube Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. Hours upon hours were sunk into that game, playing late into the night, much to our roomate’s chagrin. Put away the torhces and pitchforks, though, as the same friend and I also played Baldur’s Gate on PC (though we never finished it….we got so close to the end and never knew it).

Continuing the trend of these isometric RPGs, X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II were a huge draw for the same friend that joined me on Baldur’s Gate. Playing as the X-Men and actually building a team that you could play off each other with combos was great. While Marvel: Ultimate Alliance came in the next generation, I’d love to see a new X-Men Legends game.

Similarly, there’s Champions of Norrath, a game set in EverQuest’s world of Norrath. While the game made absolutely no geographical sense for those who knew the world from the MMO, it was fun enough to play. With Daybreak Games shuttering EverQuest Next, I’d honestly love to see a new single player EverQuest game set in Norrath akin to the Champions titles or more like Dragon Age, The Witcher Series, Kingdoms of Amalur, or in an Elder Scrolls style.

I loyally continued with the Star Fox franchise as well, picking up both Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault. Surprising enough, I think I actually enjoyed Adventures more. I would have liked Krystal to have been a more active partner in the story rather than trapped in a crystal (har har), but having enjoyed Ocarina of Time, I liked Legend of Star Fox: Adventures in Time well enough as the game basically blended Zelda concepts and put Fox McCloud in place as the protagonist.

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“YOU STOLE MY GAME, FOX!”

Knowing the history of the game, even setting it in Star Fox universe, I’ll agree I’d have preferred Krystal to be the protagonist, perhaps rescuing the Star Fox team after being forced to land on Dinosaur Planet after a battle or the like. Star Fox Assault, on the other hand, seemed like a less than superb attempt to recapture Star Fox 64’s polish, but the dog fights never felt as hectic as they did on N64. The graphics were certainly a nice step up from N64, though.

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As always, Slippy. As always.

I had been thrilled with Resident Evil 2 through Code Veronica, so when the original was remade on GameCube, I picked it up. I believe I may have played only part of Playstation’s version and after finishing GameCube, I went back to play it again fully. I also enjoyed Resident Evil 0. Does anyone ever wonder what happened to Billy after all these years? In the same vein as Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was a great game as well.

Another game I can’t recall which I played first, spanning both consoles, is Metal Gear Solid. I don’t recall if I played the original on Playstation or if I went back to play it after Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on GameCube. Meanwhile, Playstation 2 had Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and later Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, all of which I played as they released and thoroughly enjoyed. Well, maybe less so on Metal Gear Solid 2. Sorry, Raiden, but I’m not a fan of yours.

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I don’t remember all the details, but I was a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer prior to college, so I did pick up the game “Chaos Bleeds” on GameCube to play. Though I don’t remember much of the game, I remember I did like it overall both in story and gameplay. I seem to remember the combat wasn’t too bad.

Lastly for these consoles, I’d note The Lord of the Rings movie tie ins, The Two Towers and Return of the King, the latter of which improved greatly over the former. For some reason, I played Two Towers on PS2 and Return of the King on GameCube, but I don’t think there’s much difference between the two to really warrant suggesting one system over the other. A bit of a smaller scale Dynasty Warriors combat with RPG character progression, the games followed the general story and were fun to play.

A few honorable mentions would probably be Okami on PS2, Enter the Matrix on GameCube (I liked it at the time), Star Wars: Rogue Leader & Rebel Strike in the Rogue Squadron series on GameCube while Jedi Starfighter was on PS2, Onimusha series on PS2, True Crime: Street of LA on PS2, and Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone on PS2 (why Wizards of the Coast hasn’t done a full Drizzt or Elminster game is beyond me).

I played Smash Bros. Melee a little, but we overall preferred the original on N64 more than the GameCube version in the apartment. I never did play Twilight Princess, though I’ve since picked it up and hope to eventually, though I’ll likely play the HD version on Wii U.

Moving on from college, though made for Playstation 2 it was brought to PC, where I played it. That game would be Final Fantasy XI. I had stopped playing EverQuest by this point and a friend of mine was excited for the Final Fantasy MMO finally coming to America. Three of us signed up and started it, but I didn’t last nearly as long as others did.

The Vana’diel March is still one of the most memorable pieces for me.

There were a few problems from the start, such as randomized server placement making us delete and recreate characters until luck put us on the same server. The only other option was a ridiculously cost prohibitive friend invite pass to bring another player to your server. I want to say it was 100,000 if not 1 million gil, which might have been reasonable for the Japanese players who had a year of economy going, but American players were started on the same servers with no gil and an economy already rife with inflation.

I fell behind my friends as they played up to 12 hours a day for a couple weeks when they were between jobs and eventually found myself spending more time shouting “Looking for group” to find a party than actually playing the game. Thus ended my stint in Final Fantasy XI. Now that the PS2 servers are down and I presume the PC servers will follow one day, it would be nice to see Square Enix create a single player version to keep the game alive in some form for the future. Perhaps the mobile edition they’ve mentioned is their intent to do so in a different format.

The last game I played on PS2 was Final Fantasy XII. I enjoyed it to some extent, but wasn’t a fan of the MMO grind in a single player game, perhaps partially because of my distaste for grinding after Final Fantasy XI. Still, I had every intention of continuing to play the game through to completion, but when the Playstation 3 came out, I sold my PS2 when I got a first gen PS3. The problem was the PS3 wanted to pump Final Fantasy XII through in 1080p and the game looked more pixelated and messy than a Playstation 1 game. As such, I’m eagerly looking forward to another chance with this title with the forthcoming HD remake.

Final Fantasy: Star Wars on Ivalice

That’s all for my trip down memory lane with the Playstation 2 and GameCube. I’d estimate there are only three posts left in this series and the next one will bring us right back to the world of MMOs with the one that changed the landscape forever: World of Warcraft.

2017
03/25
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Growing Up Gaming: EverQuest part 2

I’ve been getting behind on posting these regularly as I’ve been consumed by Horizon: Zero Dawn on Playstation 4. I finished with a platinum trophy, so it’s time to jump back into the retro reminiscing with more about EverQuest.

In the last post I went over memories on the Antonica continent, setting sail across the Sea of Tears to the continent of Faydwer. On the way there, the boat would stop at an island inhabited by the Sisters of Marr, who killed my friend’s shadow knight when he mistakenly stepped off thinking he’d arrived at his destination. Once the ship set sail again, however, you did arrive at Faydwer in the Butcherblock Mountains, which housed the dwarf capital of Kaladim. Beyond that you’d venture into Greater Faydark, the elf forest and home to both the high elf city of Felwithe and the wood elf city of Kelethin.

Felwithe – Truly an awe inspiring sight

Nearby was the infamous zone called Crushbone where one quickly learned about orcs and “trains to zone.” The zone boss that players camped was called Emperor Crush, who had a dark elf near him named Ambassador D’Vinn (this NPC has been given a nod in World of Warcraft Legion with a demon NPC named Ambassador D’vwinn).

When adds would respawn during a fight or extra enemies were accidentally grabbed in a fight, parties would have no choice but to flee the battle. EverQuest, unlike modern MMOs, had no leash mechanic on NPCs. Instead, they would keep chasing players until they were killed or until they reached the border of a zone, its zone line. The whole time, players were drawing attention of every enemy in their escape route, building a train of enemies chasing them to the zone, hence the warning shouts “train to zone” told others to beware of the incoming danger. Other zones that were notorious for trains wiping numerous parties were Unrest and Mistmoore Manor, home of the vampire Mayong Mistmoore (also referenced in the original release of World of Warcraft).

Trains could get pretty bad

Train death
Like…..really bad.

Lesser Faydark, a second zone that continued the massive forest of the continent, was home to another major GM event I remember hearing about by word of mouth, though this one happened when I was playing. It took place during the first expansion, the Ruins of Kunark, when the god of fear, Cazic Thule, appeared in the forest. Firiona Vie arrived to drive him back with Tunare’s blessing, but not before he was able to corrupt a unicorn that was known to wander the zone. The unicorn, Equestrielle, was a friendly NPC to good races. Firiona was forced to make a choice to save Equestrielle from corruption by killing her or risk corrupting her forever by cutting off her horn, though doing so would allow her to purify the forest of Cazic Thule’s corruption. If I recall, the unicorn asked her friend to save the forest and Equestrielle became the black horse, Corrupted Equestrielle, who would kill anyone on sight and was a very dangerous NPC wandering the forest from then on. She killed me and three friends once and our max level friend had a hard time getting our corpses dragged to the zone line without being killed herself.

Which is another point I’ve not touched on. Death was serious business in EverQuest. If you died, all your gear, your money, and your inventory was left at the point you died. You had to have players bind your soul to cities near where you’d be hunting so you would respawn there completely unequipped and run back to your corpse to reacquire your gear. Death also carried with it experience penalties and the possibility to lose levels (which could render you unable to wear armor you had on). Other players could drag your corpse for you and necromancers made money summoning corpses to them (sometimes the only way to get your corpse back). You had 24 or 48 hours (I forget which) of online time  or 1 week offline time to recover your corpse of it decayed and you lost everything on it.

This corruption of Equestrielle was just one chapter in a larger over arching story in Norrath that played out over time involving Firiona Vie and the return of her old nemesis, the Child of Hate Lanys T’Vyl. I remember Lanys went on a quest with numerous players that culminated in the Rathe Mountains with a sphynx or some such creature posing a riddle. The player that answered it was granted special armor from the GM playing Lanys and a special title, I believe something like “The Discerner.”

Not all GM events were grand stories, though. My friend and I were in a volcanic zone when the sky turned red and a goblin was shouting to the zone he was cold. We managed to find him and my friend gave him a high level item with cold resistance. The goblin despawned, but then appeared again and gave my friend a breastplate that only came from very high end raids.

I never got high in level, enjoying the game at a leisurely approach alongside my guild and roleplaying as if we were having a D&D night all along the way. I did complete the Armor of Ro quest as well as the paladin’s class weapon to get the 2 handed sword the Soulfire. I didn’t play too far into the Kunark expansion before the Scars of Velious expansion released. I was barely high enough to travel to the moon when the third expansion Shadow of Luclin released.

What impressed me with each expansion was how big the new continents seemed. Ruins of Kunark introduced the Iksar race and Shadows of Luclin introduced the Vah’shir. Each race started at level 1 on their newly released continent, making an expansion introduce enough zones for 1-50 if not higher without going back to old zones, though that was of course still an option. It made the game seem so vast and expansive that few players would ever spend any real time hunting and exploring every zone across the world, especially since soloing was rather rare. Of course, the camp-and-grind leveling made this easier than modern models with quests and story driven experiences.

The one last story I recall from EverQuest is not a GM event, but rather a player enacted one: The Battle against the Kerafyrm, or The Sleeper. This dragon was the forbidden product of a blue and red dragon mating. Lore stated if the Sleeper were to awaken, it would rampage across Norrath and bring about the end of the world. This was meant to be a far later storyline that would be explored, so the Kerafyrm was never intended to be fought and killed. It was also a one attempt per server fight. If they woke the Sleeper and failed to kill it, it would never be in the game to attempt again. But gamers like a challenge.

Kerafyrm, the Sleeper

Dozens of players, if not over one hundred individual players, gathered to take beat the unbeatable. They started the fight and anyone who died would run back to their corpse for their gear and jump back into the fight. One would think with 100+ players, this strategy now commonly known as zerging should have made short work of any enemy, but I’ve always heard it took hours for them to whittle the monster’s health down. Just before it died, though, a GM despawned the monster and denied them victory. Players took to the forums to decry the action and caused such an uproar that SOE eventually made a statement saying it was the wrong decision. They would reinstate the Kerafrym and allow players to try again, though as a non-canonical kill should they win. The players organized again, this time with 200 players, and managed to kill the dragon after four hours.

I stopped playing EverQuest during the Shadows of Luclin expansion, before even getting a horse. However, in many ways I still like aspects of EverQuest’s design philosophy more than what’s become commonplace in many MMOs today. The world felt so large, danger lurked around every corner, and players would form friendships over true fear of death. Bad or good behavior could build a reputation in the server community, allowing players to often police themselves more than is seen in modern MMOs. The guide program furthered that, allowing players to take on minor issues as mini-GMs in exchange for free game time. The level of socialization was simply above and beyond anything in the games today.

The story was not told in quests on set paths, it was a living part of the world. SOE would add things to the world in a patch without mentioning them in the patch notes. Players would then notice crates with a weird symbol had appeared in dark elf camps and orc camps, spurring speculation of a coming alliance and possibly war. When those crates appeared in High Hold pass, there was discussion on the forums of the possibility that High Hold was infiltrated and going to turn bad, cutting off access for good races to get to Qeynos without a lot of difficulty. Many stories and speculation sprang up, some proving to hit the mark on what later unfolded in GM events and stories, some being completely speculation, but it made the game’s story feel organic because players, like their characters, didn’t know every detail of what was going on in the behind the scenes politics of Norrath.

That’s not to say the genre hasn’t improved and EverQuest was the golden age, only that some aspects that made it so unique have been lost through the years of improving accessibility and faster experiences rather than expecting long hours of commitment. Norrath was a large world that you could take time to escape reality and live in, not just play a game and do a routine for loot. It was about adventure and comradery, stories told by the developers as well as by players, and a world that asked you to explore it. I hope someday these design concept comes back to MMOs and we see a true return to MMORPG rather than MMO Theme Park designs, but I personally don’t see this happening until we develop Virtual Reality to the levels we’ve dreamed of for years in sci-fi and anime.

Ironically, a machinima for World of Warcraft might give the best indication of what it’s like to remember EverQuest by those who started it from the beginning:
“I want to understand.”
“What we have suffered? It can not be understood by those that did not suffer it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2017
03/22
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EverQuest
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Growing Up Gaming – EverQuest part 1

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With Playstation and N64 in my bedroom as my consoles of the time, I found myself wandering into the land of PC. I was in my final years of high school and had a little experience playing Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II along with even less of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. I had played a few PC games a little bit in the past with Alone in the Dark and Quest for Glory: So You Want to Be a Hero, but a friend pulled me more fully into PC gaming by introducing me to EverQuest.

Just look at that cutting edge amazing game.

After playing RPGs on consoles, the breadth and scope of EverQuest, or EQ, was quite impressive. What set this game apart from RPGs I had played before was the notion of living in a fantasy world and finding your own adventure rather than just playing through a pre-determined story. I didn’t know of Ultima Online, so EQ was more of a revolutionary concept than a genre for me, but it certainly went on to cement itself as a, if not the, founder of the MMORPG genre of the next number of years.

I started on the server my friend was on: Erollisi Marr, which was still running last I looked. I created a human paladin named Feneril (Fin-er-ill) and started in Freeport. EverQuest is still, to me, the closest any game has gotten to best imitating a Dungeons & Dragons world in a video game.

Night was dark and humans couldn’t see in the dark without a light source such as a torch, lantern, or magical item. As a result, I found myself in the dark falling into the water at the Freeport docks. Now in the water and still unable to see, I didn’t know where to go, so I spent the game’s night cycle swimming against the wall of the docks, treading water and getting my swimming skill leveled up!

From Freeport killing rats, I journeyed to the Commonlands where a tunnel became the go-to location for player barter and trade. EverQuest didn’t have an “auction house” like most modern MMOs, so shouting to hock your wares was how the economy flowed in Norrath at the time. There were tales of people getting cheated during trades, but I didn’t know anyone who was myself. That the area became the accepted player market place is one of the early examples of emergent gameplay that made EverQuest unique at the time.

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Commonlands Tunnel Entrance

The Commonlands also had another…we’ll say feature that you don’t tend to find in MMOs anymore: ridiculously high level enemies that wandered into low level areas. While players were in their early teens coming into this zone, a level 36 griffin would wander about. The griffin would fly along and aggro (attack) players below. When they were spotted, players would alert others by using /shout to announce the sighting and players either ran from the area or would get indoors at a merchant’s shop for safety. The latter didn’t always work as the griffin would sometimes come through the ceiling or wall and attack anyway. Norrath was a dangerous world.

npc_a_griffin

The monster itself!

Moving on was the first far-from-town outpost from Freeport where players gathered. It was basically a collection of stones, but druids would make money there offering the Spirit of the Wolf buff (SoW). This let players run faster and was sought after for the next leg of the journey to venture through the next zone of Kithicor Woods. Nobody wanted to get caught in Kithicor Woods at night.

EverQuest, particularly in its early days, had GM (Game Master) events where the game GMs would trigger and/or lead major events. These were often used for major story events that would impact what was happening in the world’s grander stage. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Battle of Bloody Kithicor. The whole event went down before I was playing, but EverQuest had these events only once rather than remaining available for all players to experience forever. As a result, these events passed on to stories that players would tell, which then became the stuff of legend much as the stories have in human history.

The way I read it was players were contacted by GMs posing as messengers of the gods with warnings of a great conflict to come in Kithicor Woods, but beyond that were fairly vague other than how many days they had until it would happen. Players then began to spread the word. One group of players gathered at the city of High Hold, expecting it to be the target. Two zones away in Neriak Forest, home of the dark elves, the dark elf character Lanys T’Vyll spawned under a GM’s control. After a speech, she started a march towards the Commonlands, gathering players who marched with her on the way to Kithicor Woods, resulting in a growing army.

On the other end of Kithicor Woods, the high elf princess Firiona Vie, EverQuest’s mascot character, appeared as well, also played by a GM. Players flocked to her as well, swelling an army to defend High Hold Pass.

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The result was a conflict of players against spawning mobs as well as players vs players. Emergent gameplay cropped up during the event as players from the dark elf army split away to invade the bordering zone of the Rivervale and to attack the halflings. Why? No particular reason, but they were still attacking “innocents,” so the defenders followed and the battle spilled into that zone as well.

The event ended with the sky going red (which became a hallmark of GM events) and the woods becoming cursed due to the bloodshed and hatred caused by the battle. After the event, Kithicor Woods remained a medium level zone by day, but became populated by large amounts of higher level undead at night, associated with the Plane of Hate.

Beyond Kithicor was High Hold Pass which led to the Plains of Karana and on to the city of Qeynos as well as the city of the barbarians, Halas. It was in the Karanas I fought gnolls and toward the Rathe Mountains to fight aviaks. Along the way, my friend that got me into the game brought me into their guild, The Champions of Marr.

Combat was quite different from today’s MMOs. Nothing was instanced, so leveling was done by forming a group and taking up a camping spot, then pulling enemies to the group to fight and kill them for experience, then wait for a respawn to repeat the process. The advantage this gave was downtime to chat and get to know other players, making EverQuest a very social game where friendships were formed and relationships began that were known to even lead to real world marriages. I still remember a number of my guild mates: Avaric, Esperanza, Lily, Kharne, Gorndax, and Ariell to name a few, though I’m not in touch with most of them anymore.

Another event, this time in the Karanas, wasn’t so quickly resolved. The god of plague and disease had followers preparing to summon him into the mortal realm, causing polluted rain and diseased, rabid, animals through the plains. There was quite a bit of reported event activity in the city of Qeynos at the time, but I don’t remember all the details as I do with Kithicor’s retelling. I do remember once walking, not running, from Qeynos to Freeport just to do so.

On the opposite side of Freeport was the Desert of Ro where I spent some time leveling as well. There was a number of zones on the continent of Antonica that I never even explored. Instead, I headed for those Freeport docks once again where players could wait up to 30 minutes for a ship to arrive and carry them across the sea.

With the departure from Antonica, we’ll stop here for now. In my next post, I’ll discuss memories on the continent of Faydwer, and we haven’t even gotten out of the game’s initial release and started to explore the expansions yet!

 

 

2017
03/04
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10/4/14 Saturday Anime – Log Horizon

The first episode of the new season of Log Horizon aired today. Huzzah!  I’ve probably watched the first season of this show half a dozen times now and have been greatly looking forward to the new season to start.  I have a rather fond affection for the fantasy genre in books, film, and anime, which sadly is somewhat lacking in the last category in my opinion.  I was introduced to anime by the Sci-Fi channel when it was still known as Japanimation by us silly Americans, one of those titles being Record of Lodoss War.

I spent all day today watching the first season for that sixth(ish) time and watched the new episode twice to make sure I caught everything.  I learned there’s a lot I’m still catching for the first time in the first season, though I will say here I haven’t read the light novels (yet!).  I had missed the comment that the song played at the ball with Eastal was the title screen theme of the Elder Tales game.  I realized one time through that the Man With a Mission band members appear in the crowd when Rayneshia (Lenessia) is giving her speech.  Speaking of that speech, I still get goosebumps after she speaks and that silence is broken by the adventurers pounding their weapons and a group blows their war horns.  The speech itself and that scene is masterfully crafted.

Log Horizon is a fantastic entry into the growing “trapped in an MMO” genre.  I’m not going to delve into the comparisons many make with another current anime, nor with older ones (admittedly, I’ve not watched those older ones), but at the moment, Log Horizon is my favorite of them, primarily because of the detail that’s been put into building the world of the MMO Elder Tale rather than just the world of the anime once the game becomes reality.  Tying in game mechanics into lore is a nice touch – one that most actual MMOs don’t do.  The explanations of how the monster tribes came to be, where adventurers came from, how resurrection works as a concept rather than game mechanic, and even where enemies get gold from are nice touches.  On top of that, there’s the well details interdependence of classes that’s rather well designed (if perhaps not perfectly balanced for actual gameplay…we’ll leave that to game designers).

The next aspect Log Horizon explored that really drew me into this world was then the exploration of it as a new reality.  Gender swapping and player bodies feeling odd due to differences from normal bodies were touched on in the first season, though I think enough men play females in MMOs that there’s a lot that could be explored there for a series at some point.  The fact that players resorted to PKing not out of sadistic tendencies or malice so much as just boredom was a nice touch as well, as “just something to do” is a real driving motivation for many players in MMOs. They just find things to do “for the lulz” after all.  The discovery of how to make food that tastes good (though I have a hard time believing nobody else would have figured that out in all of Akihabara’s territory, but I let it slide), the use of game mechanics in a new world to establish a method of enforcing law and order, and the use of telepathic conferencing were nice touches.  The big thing I liked about the development of the new world they’re living in was that they actually did approach economy as a driving factor to everything.  Shiro needed money to enact his plan to enforce law, supply and demand drove higher costs of the Crescent Moon Refreshment Stand, new discoveries that weren’t in the game led to new demand, which led to demand for supplies, which led to work for adventurers.  It was nicely put together, I thought.

Finally, what I particularly appreciate is that Shiro, nor the others, are truly perfect characters that can handle everything alone.  Each supporting cast member has their own strengths and while Shiro is the main character and sometimes given a lot of lip service from others, in action all of the players have been shown to be quite strong in their own right.  I give a lot of respect Mamare Touno for making a support class character the main protagonist and I have really enjoyed seeing the story from the perspective of the strategist.  I find it quite fitting that a strategist would be nicknamed “villain in glasses” considering the strategist’s job will often require some choices that seem cruel, but are done to move pieces into a better position for the endgame.  While Shiro excels in planning and putting together the grand schemes, and has some convenient items at his disposal such as the gryphon whistle and appearance changing potion (to be fair, I’d have one to offer if this happened to me with FFXIV…I haven’t used mine), it’s believable things that a multi-year veteran of the MMO would have.

While Shiro is the protagonist and strategist, though, I think it’s safe to say he wouldn’t succeed without Naotsugu and Akatasuki.  For that matter, they may not have saved Serara without Nyanta’s presence, and they certainly wouldn’t have succeeded in saving the low level players, including Tohya and Minori, without the Crescent Moon guild’s work allying with Radio Market, Marine Agency, and Shopping Street 8.  And even still, Crusty is named as one of a handful of players who has commanded 100 players simultaneously, a feat that Shiro likely couldn’t do even if he could plan a strategy for the battle.  Plus, for all the praise Shiro is given, a level 20-ish Minori is already following in his footsteps as a strategist.

The first episode of the new season starts off with a quick glimpse at some characters in new armor, probably a look at fights we’ll catch up to later similar to how season 1 started.  We first see the leader of Silver Sword who we haven’t seen since he pulled out of the Round Table council.  We also see a few characters we don’t know, one of which is Kanami, former leader of the Debauchery Tea Party, who I’ve read was a swashbuckler in the flash backs we saw in season 1 though she dressed as a monk. With a new character on the new server after moving in real life, she’s not actually playing a monk. Despite me being a total boob guy (Naotsugu would be proud of me being an open pervert, right?), her appearance here was really over the top.  She’s bigger than her flash back appearances from season 1 and I’m hoping they tone her down a bit.  I’m also a bit grumpy she seems a lot like my own character for the comic/book I’ve been working on.  Dang world stealing my ideas…I really do need a tinfoil hat!

After that prologue scene, we get the new opening animation.  I’ve seen comments on Crunchy Roll and have to agree with them; it was the right call to keep Database as the opening theme.  The new animation, though?  Wow, that’s a lot of new characters.  I counted over 25 new faces I didn’t recognize (though I’ve read enough to recognize Kanami, as mentioned, and her TMNT-inspired companion Leonardo).

The first episode, and thus the new season, starts off fairly appropriately with a conflict to overcome that revolves solely around money and economy.  The Round Table has purchased not only the Guild Building in season one, but since added the Cathedral and the Trade Building as well as “several other facilities.”  Well, it actually starts off with a post-Halloween festival (good timing there on the release) and appropriately enough for this time of year…PUMPKINS PUMPKINS PUMPKINS! Gourds aside, though, we catch up with our established characters, many of whom are wearing different clothes.  Normally I don’t care for changes in character design, but I like that the changes and additions appear to be warmer clothing, fitting with the fact that it’s Autumn and October in the world.

But back to the main conflict.  Some spoilers ahead from this point onward.  You have been warned.

Seriously, heed the warning if you don’t like spoilers.  😛

The Round Table needs 10 million gold per month to keep up with everything they own now.  They’ve tried reaching out to the clan that runs the world’s banking system, but it’s revealed there’s no loan system in the world and no subclass for it either.  Shiroe has a plan, though, and leaves Akihabara with Naotsugu to meet with a representative of the Kunie Clan, the one that runs the banking system, in a cabin in the snowy mountains near their village, which he determined with the help of Regan, the Sage of Mirror Lake.  Shiro’s plan is to access a fountain of gold that lore claims is how gold is distributed to souls upon their reincarnation (in other words, the lore-explanation for why respawned monsters drop gold for players).  They’re told they’ll need a large group of companions to meet and the Kunie Clan’s decision to help will depend on how they meet the challenge ahead.  Rather cryptic just what exactly said Clan will offer and what exactly the representatives words mean.

All in all, the episode wasn’t action packed, but definitely set the stage to get things moving.  Log Horizon’s strengths is its ebb and tide with the story.  It builds up to a crescendo, then comes back down to prepare for another build up, so I’m not worried about a boring season by any means. The intro and what we’ve gleaned of Shiro’s plan, though, does raise questions for me.  If they were to succeed and get the 80 trillion gold they need (I’m guessing Shiro is calculating to have enough to cover the Round Table expenses for a length of time), what impact would that have on the world?  If they plunder the device that puts gold on monsters, will the device still function, and if it doesn’t, won’t that mean greater economic strife for all adventurers, and even all regions of the Japan, if not the world?  Could the master strategist’s plan actually do more harm than good this time?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and watch the next 23 (probably less for this first conflict to be resolved) episodes to find out. Or we could start reading the light novels.  I should get on that, but I still need about 6 million gil for our FC House in Final Fantasy XIV.

So until next week, I guess I’m living in the database….

Just say “whoa whoa whoa whoa.”

2014
10/05
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Animated Films or Series
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Final Fantasy XIV 2.38: The Great Land Grab

Final Fantasy XIV released Patch 2.38 this week to a bit of an uproar and backlash to some extent.  The big addition to the game was the introduction of personal housing which, to be honest, was not exactly what people were expecting.  To be fair, earlier this year, Yoshida did comment on player housing being much more affordable than Free Company Housing.  This, as it turns out, was not the case.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from personal housing, but I was looking forward to it.  The idea that it would be cheaper than Free Company housing made me think it would lack some of the functional features such as chocobo raising or gardening.  I expected it to primarily be a house you could decorate and have your own place to hang out, possibly with a summoning bell similar to the inn rooms.  But then Square put in the personal quarters in Free Company housing and that had most of the personal housing features I was expecting.  So what would player personal housing be?

As it turns out, Square chose to give players the option of owning their own private house completely identical to what Free Companies could buy and build with all the features and functionality.  Fairly interesting decision, but players were a bit confused that Square only added two new wards, a total of six new wards per server.  The small houses were sold out within hours, if that long, on many servers.  On our server, the most expensive plot in one ward has been purchased by an individual player for near 90 million gil.  The result was many players, and smaller Free Companies, left unable to purchase a house as things were scooped up fast. The combination of limited spaces and the reset to original plot prices resulted in limited accessibility.  A lot of players are unhappy.

Yoshida has already acknowledged the issue and has stated they are facing challenges with ensuring server stability as they continue to add wards, but they are making some strides and plan to double the number of wards with the 2.4 patch.  While the hope of getting a house with this patch may have resulted in dashed dreams, our group has seen it as an opportunity to continue to amass our gil in preparation for the plot we want, not just the plot we can grab.  If that means we spend more in another 15 days or get it at a lower price in 30 or even have to wait until 2.4, then so be it.

It’s actually a feature I’ve come to really like about Final Fantasy XIV: the lack of instant gratification.  It’s disappointing, but if you’re patient and keep working towards a goal, I feel like you will eventually get there.  For now, though, my friends and I continue to put our collective efforts into accumulating gil and making preparations for our future mansion.

2014
09/19
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Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – A Year in Review

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is celebrating its 1 year anniversary and it’s a year I’ve enjoyed quite a bit. Before we delve into my review of FF XIV’s first year, a little history on my MMO experience. My MMORPG “career” started in the 90s with EverQuest after a friend showed it to me. It was a mind blowing idea to be able to play a character in a living, breathing world, something I’d never seen in a game before. After a number of years in EverQuest, I finally hung up the armor and stepped away from Norrath, but not before I had pulled two new friends into the adventures. About a year after leaving EverQuest, these two friends, along with a new one, and I logged into Vana’diel together when Final Fantasy XI launched. I didn’t last long with that game. Two friends, who were roommates, were between jobs and leveled a good dozen levels without me. I found my warrior spending more time shouting for a group than actually playing the game. It didn’t take long for me to cancel.

Then came World of Warcraft. It took some time, but eventually the friends who joined me in EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI all started characters in Azeroth. For 9 years I played WoW and for most of that time one of the friends that came in with EverQuest played as well.  We made friends in WoW who we met in person and have become friends out of the game now as well.  This one friend that I pulled into Norrath, grouped with in Vana’diel, and adventured with for years in Azeroth convinced me that Eorzea was our next grand adventure.  I had pulled him into two worlds, EQ & WoW, and he had pulled me into one (FF XI), so I guess it was my turn to follow his lead.  And so on September 30, 2010 we had our Collector’s Edition in hand.

Things were already off to a bad start.  Final Fantasy XIV offered the worst collector’s edition I’ve ever purchased.  The only things it offered were some in-game items, a blank journal, an authenticator, and codes for adventurer’s certificates.  That was it.  No soundtrack, no art book, no mouse pad or physical items.  I’m sure everyone is rather aware of how poorly the game itself was received.  Combat was arguable (some did like it), zones were fairly uninteresting with reused assets and no change in scenery, but the biggest thing that grew so dull for me was the menus.  Menus, menus, and menus.  Final Fantasy XIV: Menu Screens would have been a fitting title.

Two years later and Square Enix knew the game was going to collapse.  It would go down as one of the most colossal failures in MMO history if not for the determination of Square Enix putting a team in place to turn the game around.  They kept things going for a while with FFXIV 1.0, a storyline building to a climax that may be the most epic conclusion to an MMO prior to an expansion.

The friend that convinced me to try XIV had continued to play off and on during the 1.0 wrap up between time in WoW.  He was again speaking highly of the plans for A Realm Reborn.  Considering I didn’t have to even buy the game and would even get some in game rewards simply for having the original Collector’s Edition, I decided to give it a fair shake.

Even if you don’t care for FFXIV: ARR, you have to admit it’s impressive how much Yoshida and his team have turned the game around.  The 16th best selling game of 2013 with over 2 million subscribers is no small feat after relaunching from what was named the worst MMO launch of all time.

When I first tried A Realm Reborn, my summary description was simple: “There’s nothing particularly new here, but it’s like the World of Warcraft of 2013.  It’s taken all the features that work well, polished them, and put them together in an extremely impressive package.”  I still stand by that description myself.  The questing is like WoW (and every WoW imitator), the combat is familiar, dungeons are instanced, there is raiding, progression is gear based.  A Realm Reborn strikes me a lot like the feeling from the Burning Crusade era of WoW with a few nice additions.

From the start, a major thing that stands out for FFXIV now is the crafting game. Where many MMOs treat crafting as a side activity, Square has an entire game built on crafting.  Crafting has its own full hot bars of actions requiring players to choose what’s best to use, and when, in order to improve the quality of their items. There’s a completely separate gear progression, with stat requirements and caps, for the crafting game.  If a player doesn’t care for traditional gameplay with dungeons and raids, one could conceivably focus all their time on gathering and crafting and still have a lot of things to do. Now, just so nobody jumps on me for ignorance, I’m not saying FFXIV is the only game to go in depth with crafting. Plenty of MMOs have done so. I’m just saying FFXIV is another that has done well with it.

Square has also treated the MMO as a traditional RPG. Taking notes from their success with FFXI, there is a main storyline quest chain that drives the overall main story of the game, complete with cut scenes.  Classes also have storyline quests with cut scenes.  All cut scenes are done with the game engine, which are rather impressive with the animations and expressiveness they’ve put into the models. Those same animations are often seen in various emotes as well.  Where other MMOs I’ve played have animations with their emotes, FFXIV has impressive ranges of facial expressions with theirs as well.

Yoshida and his team have also put in a good balance of content for “casual” and more dedicated approaches and have done a fantastic job implementing systems to prevent lower level content going dead as players reach max level.  Similar to WoW, FFXIV has bonuses offered for running dungeons per day, but they are broken down into Extreme (newest dungeons), Hard (high level), Low Level, Trials (single fight 8 man raids), and Main Scenario, which are various raids.  Players get bonuses for doing these, even the low level dungeons at max level, which syncs you down to the appropriate level.  There are 8 man raids in the Binding Coil of Bahamut, which push the difficulty and 24 man random group raids in the Crystal Tower entries, which release in alternating cycles. 

In addition to all this, there is Free Company (guild) housing, chocobo raising, gardening, Beast Tribe daily quests, Bounty Hunting, and the option to level every adventuring, gathering, and crafting classes on a single character.

After a year of playing Final Fantasy XI, it was a welcome change to be able to play solo in World of Warcraft, but as WoW became more and more solo focused and the story became less and less enjoyable, the nice balance of group and solo with a very cohesive and engaging story is a welcome change in Final Fantasy XIV.  WoW kept me engaged for 9 continuous years.  Final Fantasy XIV has kept me engaged for one year.  Here’s looking forward to the soon expected to be announced expansion and many years to enjoy.

 

2014
09/07
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