WoW vs. FFXI

Alright, so I haven't been doing... well, anything in FFXI for the last week and a half, just Limbus & ZNMs. The main reason for that is... erm... World of Warcraft xD

Two weeks ago, I was bugged by... let's say a friend... to go check out WoW. Sighing up with that new refer-a-friend trial, I decided to check out "the other side" to see how it is different, and why it has 10+ million subscribers, over 20x what FFXI fields. WoW has also been mentioned recently in a few business articles on leadership and management as an interesting place for research on raid & guild leaders.

First impressions
OMG... they have a... Mac client! And it actually runs well, doesn't crash like FFXI does, lets you run and switch between full-screen and window mode with a simple key combination. True, FFXI runs on various consoles, but anyone who has played FFXI on the 360 knows that you can't do Besieged, Campaign, or even a merit party without the 360 locking up or glitching on you. Having a Mac client just made trying WoW out that much easier since I didn't have to reboot or make space available on my Bootcamp XP. Also, their trial version is super-easy to setup... they actually stream the trial to you as you start playing, so more 4-hour install + patches before you get up and running. You're ready to go at once!

Regarding the UI, Blizzard actually actively encourages 3rd party addons. Compare that to FFXI's policy that disregards any 3rd party addon under the threat of banning >.> This means that there are a TON of addons for WoW, many of which are very, very useful and quite powerful. I've barely tried using a few of them myself, but the ones I have used are incredibly useful. For instance, there is one called QuestHelper which marks the locations of key places to visit to complete quests, and even plots a route so that you can easily go to all the necessary locations to gather things for your quests and turns them in. No more looking up information on a website and hoping that you don't forget something along the way!

Gameplay
WoW is significantly faster compared to FFXI in terms of gameplay. FFXI... you sit around, wait, think a little about what you have to do, and you have time to go through the menus to pick out the action and hit it at the right time. WoW is all about hitting your hotkeys fast. Battles in WoW go in for a few seconds, compared to a minute or more in FFXI. It's really a game oriented for twitch gamers... took me a while to get used to the controls and to figure out where everything is. This fast-paced gameplay has lead to many a death where I panic and hit the wrong button, whereas in FFXI I would have enough time to figure out what to do and anticipate what would happen.

No death penalty in WoW is awesome... you're up and running within a few minutes of a death. Compare that to FFXI where you're down for at LEAST 5 minutes just waiting for raise weakness, if not more from waiting for a raise, or HPing.

HP & MP regen is handled much better... Native Refresh & Regen, able to do it while running around instead of having to rest... action just never stops. Travelling is also much faster... No waiting for airships, just get on a bird and fly, and no zoning.

Finally... exp... in FFXI, exp is something you have to go out and get... basically, you're out there doing a job... grinding away for hour after hour, killing mob after mob. Once you have your exp, you can go out and do missions, quests, etc. In WoW, fighting is a side effect of the quests. You get the bulk of your exp from doing quests, and if the quests sends you somewhere where you have to fight, well, that's part of it!

Story
WoW has a bunch of different races, each with their own backstory. Each zone also has a bunch of different questlines that have their own unique story, though from what I've seen so far, the quests are pretty much the same... go here kill X, go there get Y, etc. There's tons of story out there, possibly more than FFXI, but the bad news is that the story is presented entirely in text format. It's a pretty world, but the cutscenes of FFXI, especially the more recent expansions, really makes the world seem more immersive. Trying to get the story of WoW is like reading a book (and actually, in some cases, IS reading a book)

So anyway, that's my impression of the two... I'm still doing FFXI stuff, and I'm not taking WoW *that* seriously. It's a nice distraction for the time being since I'm really bored of repeating the same things over and over again in FFXI, and I'm waiting for new content to be released in FFXI... for now, you'll probably see me playing with my Druid Night Elf for a while longer xD