Test Your Might - BETA WOMBAAAAAATS!

Howdy again folks. Introducting Faiyt:

So while we are on the topic of the remade Final Fantasy XIV, I figured I should write something, because I have many feelings, and that’s apparently what people do when they have feels.  For all intents and purposes, you can refer to me as Faiyt, because I’m a real creative guy and make the best handle names.  I’ve been a pretty avid MMO player for the past decade, but as with any personal exposition, there’s going to be some pretty heavily opinionated views, so feel free to disagree with my own experiences.  So sit a while and listen, and let’s explore this interesting remix of a game together.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and figure out how we got here in the first place.  When I was just a young lad, I was a huge JRPG fan.  A bit late to Sony party, who was undoubtedly the console RPG king, I picked up a PS2 a while after its release and immediately began working on expanding my RPG collection.  I started with the basics: anything Squaresoft was a must have.  And thus began my connection to the Final Fantasy series. 

I don’t remember what exactly initially drew me to into purchasing FFXI, I just remember seeing it at my local game store and thinking it would be another FF to conquest.    Looking back at it, I’m glad I decided to buy the game for PC instead of shelling out the additional $100 or whatever it cost to install the game on PS2, because I’ve grown into such an endearing and refined upper class PC gamer. *adjusts monocle*

Having never been a PC gamer aside from the occasional Starcraft of Warcraft III match, I skipped over the Everquest fad years prior.  This meant that my young mind barely had the notion of what an MMO was, which, in hindsight, is probably the only reason I stuck with XI for two or so years.  I’ll lay this out first and foremost: I was a terrible XI player.  Part of this had to do with the fact I was still using my mother’s tiny Dell desktop that I was forced to boot the game through a German hardware emulation program to force load texture and lighting settings, but hey, the game ran, even if it was sub 5 fps at all times.  The other part was just environmental factors on my part.  I was young and certainly more socially active than I have been in recent years.  I’d quit for months at a time, come back and level a new job, and repeat.  In fact, I never actually level capped a single job, so I wouldn’t be able to give you a legitimate opinion of anything end game.  I did however, still put plenty of man hours into the game, so if I can say anything about it now with all the years of experience in other departments under my belt, it would be this: that game really sucked.  Controls were awful on the PC, you needed to hook up a ps2 controller via USB port to even play properly.  There were no action bars like traditional MMOs, everything was handled through macros.  Almost all loot leveling up was not bound so the only way to get gear was to just use the auction house as people resold their old crap.  Quests were random and there was no real (good) tracker, you just kind of had to know where you were going beforehand.  And don’t get me started on leveling.  Being unable to kill a dune bunny at level 12 without a full 5 man group was just painful and slow.  I could go on and on about the technical and design flaws that made the game not nearly as enjoyable as it could have been, but we might need a whole dedicated blog entry for that.  (For what it’s worth, I’ve heard the game has undergone dramatic changes since I stopped in 2005.)

So why did I play a game for so long that I said was terrible?  Well, the easiest explanation I have for this is simply that I didn’t know any better.  The game came out almost 10 years ago, I took a lot more for granted in games back then because games were made with a lot tighter restrictions on what could be done.  I also had no idea on how an MMO should play.  So I blindly logged on every day, made an effort to level up and to keep going forward, pushing out to the next grinding area or new zone.  The time investment didn’t bother me.  I traditionally enjoyed RPGs that gave me 60+ hours so having a lot of gameplay was something I enjoyed.  After another one of my longer breaks from the game, I finally scrounged together enough cash as a poor high school student to build my own first gaming computer.  This is what led to either the best or worst decision I’ve ever made in my life: buying World of Warcraft.

I don’t want to say too much about WoW.  Only that I raided HEAVILY from Vanilla until the end of Cataclysm.  Over my years, I was the GM and raid leader of multiple top US guilds.  There was a time when you could probably only find a few dozen other people who were as dedicated to the game as I was.  I went hard.

I actually still play WoW, although not on nearly such grand scale, having “graduated” into the real world, my priorities and desires with WoW have shifted.  I currently raid with the original Elitist Jerks on Mal’ganis, which allows me to still experience the endgame, which is what arguably sets WoW apart from all other MMOs, on my own schedule. –end guild plug-

her eyes are closed because the green is so terrible

So what about the game that this blog is actually about?  Is this not why you are here?  Well, in the effort not making the first post some ridiculous standard to always live up to, I’ll just leave it with my precursor story.  Guess you’ll just have to wait until next time to find out about the game.

 (Spoilers: it will be worth it)

PANCHIRA! PANCHIRA! PANCHIRA!1!

Howdy!

After some self speculation and some brief time in beta phase 1 of Final Fantasy XIV, I decided to begin a blog about my general experiences playing said game. I personally want to tackle it not only as a player, but as someone who is eager and curious behind the design and mechanical development of this iteration of the series.

faiyt please, dis only da beta and u already in pantyflash mode

Whooo ok. Awesome. I'm not playing alone though, as Oriza has a super friend in Faiyt, another Mi'quote out to tank the world of Ezorea. His contributions will be featured in this blog from time to time.



FFXI:
I began XI right when it launched in North America. I was a complete fan of the FF series in general and I was willing to follow this foray into the MMO world for the first time. I'd have heard of other MMO's but had not desired to play one until I figured now I had to because I was eager to follow the series and give it a shot.

I spent three years of my time on there. I managed to reach an end game linkshell in a non popular class. The journey to level cap wasn't easy (and not much else of the game was either to be frank), but since it was my first MMO, I just went along with it, being reluctant to level a job that would have made it easier on me.

Because that game was so dependent on reputation and keeping good standing, a sort of unspoken code of conduct developed as the NA populace began to keep up with the JP counterparts on the server in terms of progress. It was an interesting MMO, but also incredibly frustrating.

Part of FFXI's many reasons for its failures in my eyes was the complete lack of communication and outright disregard for their NA community and many of our valid issues. To be fair though, from my understanding, the JP community managed to penetrate (heheheh) those extremely valid issues/concerns once in a great while to FFXI's dev team who would in turn fix the issue(s) about 3 patches later.

The whole community > developer relationship was non-existent back then. Well it did... sort of. I attended XI's very first Fan Festival in 2006 and I clearly remember the development Q&A was a waste and a joke. Good questions to the panel were rare and mostly met with with non-answers ("If you believe it's true then could be, maybe! BELIEVE!").''

"oh man elvaan f pantyshots are the best" said no one in ffxi ever

Yikes.

WoW:
My 628th Salvage trip through Treasures of Aht Urghan I decided I had enough. I made the jump fulltime into World of Warcraft. I had began it a few months earlier and I found myself logging on to FFXI less and less. When I first began WoW, and finally got into the swing of things, it was a very liberating experience, especially in terms of what WoW did great and what it didn't do in comparison to XI. I didn't lose experience when I die? I can resurrect at my body? I just have to walk there? Sweet! Not to mention the community was being actively engaged regularly by the development team and coming from a game where that didn't exist was pretty damn amazing.

I reached a good pinnacle of my raiding time in The Burning Crusade, managed to get full T6 twice, and reached a decent clear of Sunwell (up to M'uru) before it was hosed to the ground. After that expansion as far as I was concerned WoW began a steady decline for me personally. I could go on into the reasoning but I'll touch on it if/when necessary.

It's now 2013, and in the midst of Mists of Pandaria. I couldn't say that WoW holds my interest so much as before, I know Faiyt and I have become restless over Warcraft, even devoting some time into Diablo III (which warrants its own fail tribute... but tis another can of worms). I think we had both reached a point where nothing at Blizzard held our interest, not to mention the MMO's that came and went during WoW's stronghold grip over the market. 

FFXIV 1.0's Shutdown:

I took everyone's advice and avoided the game like the plague after its initial launch. I have no regrets, especially when my FFXI pals constantly lambasted it. 

When I heard the announcement that FFXIV's staff would be shitcanned I was in a bit of a shock. After thinking about it though, I shouldn't have been so surprised. It would only be a matter of time before this archaic stonewall and lack of utter communication towards the people that actually paid to play your game would ultimately catch up to them. The consensus was that Square Enix would rather not have a tarnished Final Fantasy game and understandably so. After all, there are so many devoted fans of the series. And SE apparently did not want a black mark on their record. 

I had not paid any attention to most of what was going on at this point because I had no reason to believe that they would learn from their mistakes in trying to re-boot the game. 

Until I read Letters from the Developer.

Could it be? Could Yoshi be the one man to pick up the pieces and make something awesome out of something blegh? It sure sounded like it the more of these letters I read. Every installment would be absolutely refreshing to read and I realized that if this ideal he had been building in his head could be pulled off in live... sparkle unicorns... everywhere.

Two weeks ago Faiyt and I received the first emails for the start of the beta phase. Thus began the first trip into the new world of Ezorea.