FFXI is quitting me

In Soviet MMOs... MMO quits you!

Just got this in the morning:
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Dear Ascule,

Thank you for using the Square Enix Account Management System.

Due to a processing error with your payment method, all continuous options for the following service account have been cancelled. The details are as follows.

Date: 12/30/2011
Payment Method: ClickandBuy Account
Service Account Name: PlayOnline / FINAL FANTASY XI
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I'm kinda amused by this turn of events. I figured that I'd stay on FFXI for events, especially since Voidwatch actually needs a full alliance and we're having trouble even with full mule turnouts. I was going to stay with FFXI at least until I get a picture of how SWTOR would be like at level 50.

I guess SE made that decision for me. I was dreading having to go through their website and figure out how to suspend the account. Their website is very needlessly complicated, with too many different, unnecessary things. What's an "option service"? How do you activate an account? How do you pay? What is Crysta? ClickAndBuy? Square-Enix Member? Do I need a PlayOnline subscription?

So... anyway, this kinda makes it a lot easier for me since I don't have to login to cancel anymore. I'm still debating whether I should bother trying to reactivate. On one hand, I think the Linkshell probably needs the manpower... maybe... on the other hand, there really isn't that much to do in XI right now except grind through skinner box events.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far far away...
Photo time!

The team after beating Flashpoint: Athiss

Havoc squad gets things done!

The Hutts really do have more fun. Girls playing in the fountain at the mall :o

Yay, go go Corso! (Romance is in the game! This is my smuggler alt being seduced by her companion)

Mayday! mayday!

I'll take the droid... that's not in pieces!

Other ways to exp!

Fast update with some recent impressions and more pics!

PvP
Like most other MMOs, The Old Republic has an actual PvP system where players can face off against each other. You can find details about what the different PvP warfronts, or games are like online. They're basically a "capture the flag", a "attack & defend" type and a "take over bases" types of games available right now.

One thing I liked about this was the level scaling system for PvP, allowing people from all levels to play on a level playing field. What I remembered from WoW PvP was simply getting out there then getting smashed by a character designed specifically for PvP at exactly the level cap for it. It wasn't fun being a level 16 trying to figure things out getting totally smashed by a level 19.

On the other hand, TOR scales all players up to level 50 and lets them play on an even field. You won't have all the abilities that a higher level player will have, but you can at least fight evenly. This leads to a new level 13 Commando being able to pull off a bunch of kills and medals!

Medals, MVP votes and more

And... the best part is that you get exp, credits and commendations, which can be traded for gear. Rewarding and actually fun!

Starships
As part of the storyline, everyone gets their own ship. Supposedly this happens around level 16 or 17, but with all the PvPing I'd been doing (about 4 matches) and running flashpoints (twice on Ascy) I was level 19 by the time I was assigned my own ship.

FINALLY! A place to sit down!

Having a ship opens up a bunch of planets to fly to, but it also opens up the possibility of space combat! This is more of a StarFox type minigame where you fly around shooting things down. It's a nice diversion from the main game, but even funnier is that you can get exp & credits whole doing it. It can get pretty addictive. I went from level 19 to 20 doing pure space combat xD

You can also go onboard other people's ships and run around... It's like the Normandy in the Mass Effect games. Your companions will be around the ship and you can talk to them. What's funniest, in my opinion, is that if you are onboard someone else's ship while they start one of the space combat missions, you can't simply disembark through the airlock. You have to use the escape pod to bail out xD

Crafting
I've never actually gotten into crafting in any MMO. The big reason for this is that it's an activity that takes away from the fun parts of the game -- In both WoW & FFXI, you have to sit still and do the craft. WoW makes it easier since you can just queue up repeats of one craft and let your character work through the stack of materials.

In TOR, crafting can be done at any time, while running around or in flashpoint. Since your companions do the crafting for you, you just have to give them instructions on what to do. This is especially true when grouping up with others since chances are you won't be using your companions anyway. It's nice to be running through a flashpoint and getting money at the same time!

Crafting also takes off later as you get more companions. Each companion can be sent out to do crafts for you, so you can be doing up to 5 crafting things at the same time.

FFXI on the back burner
I'm officially putting FFXI on the back burner now. Similar to when I explored WoW a couple of years ago, I'll probably only pop into FFXI for major events that actually need me -- mainly Voidwatch since that event is lacking for manpower. There's really nothing to look forward in XI except grinding for gear. What's worse is that FFXI is really devolving into using pure Skinner Box techniques. All FFXI events are skinner boxes to a degree, but normally they try to hide it with a fight or task. The latest "event" known as the "Gobbie Mystery Box" is a pure skinner box. You can get a random reward, from anything from junk to a Novio Earring for simply logging in and checking. That's the very definition of a skinner box... and it's a literal box!  I'll let Kelhor tell those interested about the relic99 trials!

I'm still curious to see what else SE does... I'll keep my XI subscription going until I reach level 50 on 1-2 chars on TOR and see what happens then!

An evening of two MMOs

Interesting night last night... playing two MMOs one after another. FFXI just released the latest update with the level 99 cap increase. I figure I'd talk a bit about the FFXI update, content and some TOR progress.

Downloading
According to SE's very own website at http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news21190.shtml, this latest update is 137.1MB for the Windows version and should take 15 minutes. Actual experience: About 2+ hours, and it took 3 attempts before the FFXI client would check my files, and another 4 before the actual download started. In contrast, the TOR's entire game client is about 20GB and took about 3 hours to download from scratch on a AT&T U-Verse connection without interruption. I guess after all these years SE is still stuck on DSL?

FFXI Update Content
Feels like FFXI is going back to the old days... The FFXI content update consists of:

- More trials and item collection to get +2 relic gear (Yes, the gear from Dynamis )
- More exp & griding... Level cap raised to 20, more merits can be put into HP/MP, and a new category of merit-unlocked weapon skills
- More battlefields - Walk of Echos is expanded...
- Some minor, but expected gameplay enhancements... like higher tier spells, most jug pets for BSTs
- Waiting time between Chocobo races is now reduced from 24 hours to 20 hours (Does ANYONE other than Talint do Chocobo racing?)
- Major updates to the UI -- high quality fonts, change of the look of the macro palette on the top of the screen

Overall not too big of an update. The big things for content are the level cap increase to 99, and the new weaponskill merits. The WS merits are quested + merited, so you have to do some sort of quest once you reach level 96+ and reach a certain skill level. I haven't explored this yet as I haven't reached level 96! (more on this later) You can max out up to 3 different weapon skills with the limits that are placed here, so figure out your favorite jobs!

The UI upgrades are... well, I'm still having trouble parsing the fact that SE, after so many years, is finally enhancing the UI for PCs! I'm not sure what to think of this... on one hand I do like the idea of the fonts FINALLY being in a higher quality, and that the macro palette bar being updated so that it is both larger and can display the full title of the macro. On the other hand, the change is very jarring and it's taking time to get used to. I'll stare at my macro bar trying to figure out which bar I'm on, looking for the abbreviations that I've grown used to over the years. The worst part of the UI update is that the UI is back to the ugly FFXI fonts, menu items and icons again. I hate the look & feel and I've been using XI View (http://forums.windower.net/topic/11510-xi-view-v110-user-interface-9262011/) I guess I'll have to put up with it until XI View updates.

Level 99 limit break
Recently, SE developers had a few interesting comments on the Abyssea add-ons: "It became something a little different than what longtime FFXI players were used to. On the one hand, it was great that people enjoyed it, but there is also the loss of game balance to consider. Now we are going back into existing content to re-establish some balance."

Well, with the latest level cap break fight, it feels like SE is definitely going back to the old ways. Here are some examples:
- Ex item that drops from certain mobs to qualify for the fight... I've never seen Kuftal Tunnel so crowded before! More players than mobs!
- Remember mismelts, anima, and all those special items that you have to spend hours to farm up for a single fight to weaken the mob enough to make it possible to win? This one has it too.
- Remember the Maat fight and how people used to go 0/20 on it on some jobs, getting one-shot by Asuran Fists and coming up with all sorts of crazy strategies to tackle it? Where it is partly luck whether Maat would go Chainspell Dia or Chainspell Aero III on you? It's baaaaaaaack, and this time it's on a party scale instead of for individuals!
- And remember the lag from having 40 players in one BCNM trying to get in? The laaaaaaaag!

To be fair, I actually didn't have to do most of the farming. Since I'm on the west coast, AND since even after I got home, I had to wait 2 hours to download just over 100MB, by the time I actually GOT onto FFXI, Kelhor(Rooks), Ohemgee, Blutantaru and Rizon had already farmed up all their Ex items, and Kel had even farmed up two of the items to weaken the enemy, having spent hours on it. To quote Kel: "this item for the genkai is quit-worthy so far".

After I got on, Kel & I went to get one last Ex item for me... most of that time was spent actually waiting for a stupid rock to go down in Kuftal tunnel so that we could actually get to the mobs that dropped the item. The basement of Kuftal was a mess, with so many people running around that I could barely figure out who we were fighting, but we managed to get the drop in about 3 mobs.

The fight itself was... stupid, in my opinion. Using the weakening item makes the mob run around in random patterns, making it impossible to WS on as a melee fighter. I made the mistake of taking hate for one second and he one-shot me (on DNC) through full shadows. His WSs take Kelhor's PLD down to the double-digit HP range. Weaponskills do under 100 damage normally... and yes, this is Empyrean weapons too. It was an easy loss.

After doing some research, I found that this fight, like most of the other SE fights, isn't about skill but more about finding out the "tricks" to the fight. This is what I've found so far:
- The mob normally takes minimal damage. Weapon skill damage is hugely reduced as well to a cap of maybe 100 per hit. Multi-hit weapon skills might help, as do dual-wield + en-spells
- When you use the weakening item, damage is returned to normal, BUT the stupid mob is running all over the place, making it hard to even hit, much less weapon skill on. (Mob is too far away anyone?)
- And yes, his weapon skills will pretty much one-shot anyone except a really good PLD. For PLDs, he'll self-skillchain to two-shot!

From the forums, known strategies to work are:
- 5x BST, 1x WHM -- Pets tank, can probably sub SMNs for some BSTs.
- O-Chain + Almace PLD, 4x DDs, WHM -- Yes, make sure you get a PLD with an Empy shield. Wonder if Aegis would work?
- SMN, 4xDD, BRD, or SMN 3x DD, BRD, COR -- All out zerg -- Soul Voice, SMN uses Perfect Defense and hope you win, or hope that the COR's Wild Card resets 2-hrs to let you survive. DDs should be MNKs using Hundred Fists or Kraken Club DRKs.
- SCH, SMN, 4xDD -- Fast DDs either dual-wielders or MNKs. En-spells to actually do damage, SMN for Perfect Defense again... SCH's new 2-hr spell can do a lot of damage too.

Mostly zerg strategies. I'm also thinking that one possible way to do it would be if *everyone* has one of those stupid items that makes the mob run around in circles and does not attack, and everyone brings a ranged DD (BLM or RNG) Of course, this will take hours and hours of farming and hoping that the 5 minute fight will go well.

We're back to the old days of FFXI.

Personal thoughts on FFXI
Last night I logged after losing the fight and went over to play The Old Republic. I'm not sure when, or even IF people want to try the fight again. It's so frustrating and time consuming. It no longer feels like playing a game but actually more like doing chores.

Speaking of chores, with this latest level cap raise, your new homework & assignments are:
- Go exp your jobs for 4 more levels. The more jobs you have, the more you have to do! Though, this really doesn't take THAT long and it's fairly mindless. Fuuji likes to watch Korean or Japanese Dramas. We put entertainment in your entertainment so that you can be entertained while you play FFXI!
- Go grind out merits. You'll need them for more HP/MP merits and those new weapon skills
- Go quest the new weapon skills...

Pretty grindy... that's not counting the new dynamis grinding you have to do if you want the new +2 gear either. Dynamis is limited to between 1-2 hours per day though, and you need something like 30 drops to upgrade piece of relic, so that should keep you busy for the next 2-3 years.

Val might have read me right... since finishing my Twasthar and completing the WotG storyline, I haven't really been motivated to play. Now that we've essentially finished the basic EW for the entire ProScientia(ForScience) linkshell, and that Voidwatch is such a pain (hello 3 straight weeks of losses!) it's hard to want to log in to FFXI. Especially when in order to make it to weekday events I basically have to triple my commute time due to commuting during rush-hour traffic(and even then I'm late over half the time!)

The Old Republic -- Finished with Ord Mantell
TOR in contrast was very relaxing compared to FFXI. I'm surprised at how smoothly this launch is going. Among the things they are getting right are:

- Spreading out people among the various servers. You can choose the server you want to go to, but in TOR, there was a feature where you could set up your guild ahead of time and be assigned to a server together with the people you wanted to play with. I couldn't take advantage of this since 3/4 of the people who decided to come to TOR made that choice only after the guild signup period was over, but I'm betting that this is preventing any one server from being too congested.
- Instanced starter zones. I remember when I started FFXI during launch... You'd have 3-4 players going after every single rabbit or tunnel worm. This is still the case even now when FFXI has a content update which sends people after specific things. TOR has the ability to split off zones into multiple instances so the starter zones were not crowded at all. There are people running around, but you never feel like you have to go fight with someone over claim of a mob. I never saw my instance or Ord Mantell go over 150 people on the entire planet. I also saw that there were 3 instances of this planet on this server.
- No lag, no queuing, no network disconnects... Did I mention that it took 3 tries before I was able to start downloading the FFXI update?

Yesterday Ghiren got his TOR early-access invite. He pre-ordered back in September, so they are moving fast through the invites. I'm guessing everyone who pre-ordered, even those who only just pre-ordered this week, will be in by this weekend. We got together for some questing together on Ord Mantell. This is the starter zone for the Republic Trooper & Smuggler classes. I have to say, as much fun as it is playing TOR solo (which *is* a lot of fun, just like playing Mass Effect or Dragon Age), it's a lot more fun with a partner. Downtime went from minimal (maybe 15 seconds between major engagements) to none and it became more of a running & gunning affair. Taking on large groups of between 5-10 mobs with AoE attacks, group knockbacks, stuns and then mopping up the remainder is fun. Not to say that there aren't challenges -- there are plenty of elite mobs that take a pounding to take down, and "Heroic" quests which are designed for 2 or more people.

The best part of playing with someone else is the multi-player conversations. It's pretty funny to watch different people have different reactions. In this case, I'm the straight shooter Trooper who is loyal to the Republic, trying to do the best for the people and I'm partnered with a money grubbing sleezebag who's always looking for credits! Pretty sure there'll be funny moments like this: http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20111214-ef1ed.png

Another side effect is that by grouping up, you can enter the other class-specific areas and help out in those missions. You'll get to see the cutscenes from a different class, and see the conversations that your friend is doing. It's kinda like watching a movie, but you'll also get to shoot things up!

By the end of the evening, we had finished with our class quests and the optional side quests for Ord Mantell. By this time, you'll be level 10, have unlocked your first companion and be qualified for advanced class training, essentially the first specialization choice. Having companions also effectively fills in spots for a party so you can tackle larger challenges without having to find more people. At around level 10, you get to go up to the Republic fleet and take a shuttle to Courscant. This is also where crafting is taught, and you'll also get the first opportunities to take part in flashpoints and PvP battlefields.

Ascy with a big gun!

(I've been forgetting to take screenshots recently, so this post is light on pretty pics!)

For people joining later due to the early-access stuff... don't worry. I already have a ton of other characters made and will be playing a bunch of them too so there will almost be someone of the correct level to partner up with. So far I'm already thinking that my Jedi Knight is going to be aligned with the dark side xD

Problems with the TOR launch
Not every aspect of the launch is smooth... some of the problems are:

1. "OMG! I can't play yet!" People are raging about not being in the early-access yet as Bioware goes through the pre-orders. This leads to many thousands of pages of angry forum posts where people are raging that they haven't been permitted to play! I guess people want to rush to level cap? And... it leads to scary videos like this... http://www.swtorstrategies.com/2011/12/warning-cannot-be-unseen-francis-awaits.html

2. "OMG! My TOR playtime will be interrupted!" I find it pretty funny that people *in* early-access got upset that they would have to actually enter their product codes once the game officially goes live on the 20th to continue playing. People were upset that they might miss out on a few days (if not hours) of game time from between when the game launches and when they can pick up the game. This lead to a number of things... Amazon moved up their ship date for all pre-orders so that people will get them on the 16th instead of the 20th, and Bioware themselves just announced today that they are granting a 48-hour "grace period" for people to input their product keys (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=301753)

Final thoughts
FFXI has been on life support, at least for me for a while. We'll see how long TOR can keep my interest. Remember, I used to be hot on WoW but lost interest after about 40 levels... So far TOR looks interesting, but we'll have to see how long that lasts.

Meanwhile... Darkorphen doesn't know this yet, but... he'll probably have to run the show on ProScientia for a while :)

The Old Republic vs. Final Fantasy XI (and XIV, WoW, Rift, etc.)

Over the past two weekends, I've been taking part in the Star Wars: The Old Republic beta... well, more of a stress test and advertising campaign than a beta really! The game is finished, polished and has virtually no bugs. The gameplay is smooth, absolutely no lag and plays well with all graphics options turned on (unlike some other soon-to-be-pay-to-play MMOs)

I figured that I'd give my own impressions, mainly comparing TOR to FFXI and other MMOs I've played. During the beta period, I pretty much gave almost every class a try to get a feel of the class mechanics and inital storylines. I played two classes to level 10+, when you can choose an advanced class: the Republic Trooper and the Sith Warrior. Unfortunately, screenshots were not working when I played the Trooper so all the shots below are from the Sith Warrior.

Initial Impressions
Star Wars themed World of Warcraft clone. There's no way to avoid that initial impression. After you go through the initial setup of choosing a side, class, race and the initial opening movie, you're dumped right into an instanced starting area with an initial quest to get you started. Like WoW, the graphics lean towards the cartoony side (think Clone Wars) instead of trying to be realistic. Just like WoW, there is an action bar at the bottom, minimap to one side, and the chat box is pretty small to one corner unlike the text box that goes across the screen in FFXI. It's a game clearly designed for the PC.

Probe Droid! Do not want!

Not that there's anything wrong with this approach. Lots of other MMOs also use the same formula... Aion, Rift and my initial impression of FFXIV was that it was similar.

Exping, Quests
Like WoW and Rift, exping is done mainly in the form of quests instead of grinding mobs. You can still grind mobs for exp, but you'll get a lot faster progress (1.5-5k exp per quest vs. 50-500 exp per mob). Like WoW, quest giving NPCs are obvious with triangular symbols above their heads. Similarly, finding the NPCs to turn in the quest, or your next objective is very simple, with the minimap showing where to go. (I think WoW requires an add-on for this functionality). Unlike WoW, instead of having to pick up tons of quests whenever you enter a new area, you'll get a much smaller set. The quest givers do not have "Kill 6 mobs of XXX type" as quests, but will be sending you to accomplish objectives like "Activate this tower at this location". Instead, you get automatic "bonus quests" which start automatically when you kill mobs in different areas, giving you a nice little bonus for killing things that you will be fighting anyway. It's kinda like the FOV system in FFXI, but fully automatic so that it's a minor part of gameplay instead of something that you're concentrating on doing.

Exp pacing is decent as well. If you just follow the storyline and do all the quests, you'll be on the way to finish a zone at an appropriate level without having to grind extra mobs. By the time you finish with your starter planet (zone), you'll be level 10 even if you don't go out to fight extra mobs. I approve of this form of gameplay as it takes away from the pure grinding that other MMOs are famous for. For FFXI players, think of it this way... if you just worked on your nation quests when you started, and did various convenient quests along the way, you would have progressed through the starter city zone, all the way through to Jeuno for your rank 5 quest without having to spend (RL) days grinding outside Selbina!

In WoW, quests generally consist of... click NPC, read the background text on why you're being asked to do the quest, read objectives and do the quest. The objectives tend to be similar... kill X beast, collect Y items, go to Z and pop a mob to fight. After doing the same types of quests in WoW in a few different cities, you'll soon realize that the text is really meaningless and you'll just click through quickly and go off to finish the quest objectives.

In TOR, instead of getting a screenful of text to read, quest givers are fully voiced with decent dialog. You also have to interact with the quest givers and make dialog choices, exactly like Mass Effect and Dragon Age (after all, this is a Bioware game). Your choices do have consequences as well, light side and dark side points (paragon & renegade in Mass Effect) and can affect what you do. In one of the Sith cutscenes, I could decide if I wanted to kill one of the other acolytes (and enter combat right there in the city) or let them go. Of course, this doesn't have any major effect on the world as a whole, but it does affect your own small story.

In the middle of quest. Objective updated

The voice acting is done very well. I think a good 1/3 of the game install was dedicated to movies, and about as much to voice acting! Of course, they hired professionals to do the voice acting, including Jennifer Hale who did the female Commander Shepard for Mass Effect. She's the female Republic Trooper.

Instancing is done very seamlessly. To enter an instance, all you have to do is walk through a green "force field". There is no transition, just walking from the common area into an instance (like WoW). Other people can help you in your class-specific instances as well, and the best part is that when you're helping someone else, you get to see their cutscene and dialog choices as a spectator. Especially interesting if you're helping someone who is playing a different class!

Group Play
I've joked that WoW is a MMOSPG, Massively Multiplayer Online Single Player Game... it just seems that way to me in the time I played it that the exping part of the game was mostly single player, going from place to place and finishing quests, and that the multiplayer portion would only come about when you hit level cap and could take part in raids.

TOR is somewhat similar... a good portion of the quests are designed so that you can tackle them alone without grouping with anyone. The class-specific quests which advance your plot can definitely be handled alone as long as you're at the appropriate level, though it's easier and fun if you partner up with someone. However, there are specific things that are designed for grouping and they are clearly marked. There are "Heroics", quests which have harder mobs which one person can't handle. They are clearly marked and have recommended group numbers, i.e. "Heroic +2". These are quests that are short, but give good rewards for the level.

The other group event is called "flashpoints", which would be equal to a raid in WoW. Instanced areas in which a number of different objectives have to be done. At first I thought that a flashpoint would be fast, go in, do some fights, get out, but they are much more involved. Flashpoints have multi-person dialog options where you and the other players can make choices on what to do, how to act. For example, in the "Black Talon" flashpoint, there is a point where we can choose whether to let the captain of the ship we are on live(light side), or kill him(dark side). Depending on which we choose, the fights that follow can be easier or harder. Each member of the group can make a choice and depending on who wins the dice roll, the flashpoint can go one way or the other.

Cutscene closeup. Bad timing on the screenshot, but you can see the dialog dice roll area on the lower left corner

This makes flashpoints quite a lot of fun in my opinion. It's not merely going in to kill stuff, but rather taking part in another storyline. The flashpoint I did took almost 2 hours to complete, so they are quite involved as well. (though, to be honest, we were also undermanned with only two people)

Overall... gameplay feels very similar to Mass Effect. Flashpoints feel like various missions that you get sent on, you get similar dialog choices with the dialog wheel, you have people around you as you charge into enemy strongholds(though this time they are real people) and there's even the ethics system.

Combat
Combat is fast paced and feels like a mix of WoW & Mass Effect, at least to me. The force users (Jedi & Sith) tend to be close combat where they run & jump into the midst of the action, while the blaster users (Trooper, Agent, Bounty Hunter, Smuggler) were more hang back and shoot from a distance like Mass Effect. All classes have a lot of abilities, crowd control and more.

Combat is also designed to make you feel powerful. After all, you are the heroes! Combat is almost never one-on-one, and taking on groups of enemies with ease is the norm. None of this pulling enemies carefully and being afraid that a 2nd 'easy prey" will link! You want to charge in and take everyone out!

Combat can get chaotic! And yes, I'm dual-wielding lightsabers!

There is no auto-attack mechanic, so combat feels a lot faster compared to FFXI. You're always choosing between different abilities, and the animations are fast, between 1-3 seconds in length so you have to make fast decisions. It feels slightly slower than WoW & Rift, but still a decent pace with reaction abilities as well as timed ones.

The penalty for death in TOR is minimal. If you die, you can wait to be revived by a medical droid right where you died, or go back to a nearby bind point. Death only damages your gear which you can get repaired easily. The wait for a medical droid starts off short, under 10 seconds, but rapidly increases if you die too frequently. This is a huge improvement over FFXI (exp loss, 5 minute weakness, or having to travel all the way out again), or even WoW (running back to your corpse).

One interesting thing is that I *believe* that Bioware has decided to instance some zones. When you play, there is a population counter in the upper left side of the screen. I never saw this exceed 200 even though I know there were a ton of players in the starter zones. It appears that they are spreading the starting zones in different instances so that you will always have mobs to fight instead of having to fight for 'claim' (http://torwars.com/2011/09/09/zoeller-on-launch-day-world-instancing-dealing-with-gankers/). There were a ton of people playing and I saw lots of people running around, but it never felt crowded.

Gear
One of the nice things about questing to exp is that you get rewards along the way. most of the basic gear you need is basically handed to you as part of your quests. You can choose armor appropriate for your class and what you want as gear rewards.

Choices choices...

In this picture, you can see that I've just turned in one quest. As part of the quest, I can choose between a few different rewards, one for my class, one for another class, and another "commendation" that can be saved up and later turned in for even bigger rewards. One nice thing that TOR does is that it has a built-in comparison system to make it easier to figure out which piece of gear is better. All you have to do is mouse-over what you are comparing and it'll bring up stats for you to see. I believe this was another thing that had to be done in an add-on in WoW. FFXI has the whole "secret stats" thing going on.

One other thing... according to the developers, the "item enhancement" system in the game is such that if you like the look of a specific piece of gear, you can basically upgrade it all the way to endgame instead of constantly switching beteen different pieces of gear. I've seen this in action with the weapons in the lower levels and it is pretty extensive, able to change almost all status and more.

Other things
There are a few things that are unique to TOR...

Companions -- If you played Mass Effect or Dragon Age, you'll remember the NPCs that you take on the missions with you. You had up to two companions with you, and you get to equip them and give them instructions. You can talk to them, take on quests for them, give them gifts. They will react to your dialog choices and you can gain or lose affection depending on your choices. For example, the Sith Warrior's first companion is a Twi'lek called Vette. She's a slave that you get when you are on the last quests of the starter zone. She hates authority so she'll agree with any decision that is rebelling against authority. She also has an affection towards slaves, so if you make decisions that result in the death of slaves, she'll hate you for it. Making choices isn't as easy as simply choosing the dark side or light side options. In combat, she plays as a dual-blaster damage dealer. Each class has their own sets of companions and you'll meet more as you play. Like other Bioware games, there are romance options with your companions as well. You can also send your companion off on tasks, like send them off to do crafting while you tackle quests, or send them off to sell the junk you've collected to vendors instead of having to make a trip to town.

Vette also does not like the Imperial capitol planet

Ships -- I never got to this level, but as part of your class quests, you'll eventually get a personal ship. I guess this is the "mog house" where you can keep your things, talk to companions, etc. There is also space combat and you can upgrade your ship, though from what I've seen, it's more of a "shooter on rails" type of thing like Starfox.

Advanced Classes -- At level 10, you can choose an advanced class. Basically specialize. Each class can specialize in two ways to take on different roles. For example, the Trooper can specialize into either a Command (heavy DD + healing) or a Vanguard (tank + DD). Like WoW, and unlike FFXI, your character is fixed in a single class & advanced class. You can't switch between them.

Final thoughts
I'm really liking TOR so far. I think of it more of... 8 Mass Effect games & storylines in one game instead of a MMO. I figure that about 7/10 of the content I've seen so far is solo, with the remaining 3/10 (flashpoints + heroics) as needing to group up to do. Unlike WoW or FFXI, I don't feel like I'm grinding away to get levels, more that I'm playing a game to unveil the plot. Exp in WoW & FFXI always felt mindless... especially in FFXI. No matter what form exp took (regular exp parties, FoV, Abyssea), it was always dumb grinding, not too much fun.

I'm definitely picking TOR up, and from what I've seen of the starting storylines... well... I'd want to play through all 8 stories. Lots of gameplay for one game, and admirable for a MMO!

Of course, that might change once you hit level cap and actually *finish* the different storylines... Who knows what endgame in TOR will be like... 1500 heavy metal plates anyone?

Long time no post, been busy

It's been a long time since my last post... I'm not sure anyone still reads this, but here goes :P

I've been pretty busy for the last few months with a lot of personal/work stuff. I've changed jobs, bought a house, did a lot of traveling and more over the last few months and haven't been playing FFXI much, if at all. I've picked up the bad habit again a couple of weeks ago so... I guess I'm back into it!

Meanwhile, it looks like I've missed out on a lot of content... I think almost everyone now has an Empyrean Weapon or two and it looks like everyone has leveled almost every single job to 90! People are coming out of the woodworks with jobs I never thought they'd have leveled... (Fuuji with BLU, Mendhall with DRG and more) There's new content that I don't quite understand yet, higher merit caps and more. Add to that a new level cap of 95 with today's update and even newer content... well, I guess I'm pretty far behind.

Personally, I really don't know how people can juggle so many jobs... I've pretty much given up on most of my jobs as it takes too much organization to gear them up properly, update all the macros and... "macros". Plus all that gear was overwhelming in terms of space, so I've pretty much put most of my jobs into the new (old?) Porter Moogles and focused only on three jobs. The three jobs are DNC, SCH and... THF! Well, THF was cheating since it overlapped so much with DNC anyway. For everything else... well, let's face it, I'm pretty badly equipped in DRG, COR, BLU & WHM, and don't even have all the spells for BLU or WHM. My PLD is really out of date(though it's decent for level 75!) and unlike most people in the linkshell, I still don't have most of the Empyrean Armor for my other jobs. There are other people out there who can do the job better!

So anyway, since I've been back I've been trying to play catch up... I've been working on the Twashtar trials and made surprisingly fast progress through the NM trials. Thanks to Kelhor(Rooks) who helped me through the evil Black Triple Stars trial! I also ran into a ton of people camping NMs... I guess Empyrean Weapons are now farmed easily? /shrug. I also lucked our on Saturday with a group doing the VNMs and we managed to hammer all our requirements out in an extended morning/afternoon play session. I'm up to the item collection section now and getting discouraged from the huge requirements and... well, inability to really progress. I guess everyone has a supermule these days :(

Meanwhile, I've also started taking THF seriously and am trying to gear it up properly... which mainly consisted of making sure I got the Raider's Poulaines +2 so that I could have the max possible treasure hunter stat. I lucked out with the very last dynamis Xarcabard run and got a pair of Assassin's Armlets before we gave that event up for good!. Well, big thanks to Fuuji & Vanh as they helped me finish off the seals for the feet as well as the +2 items, so now my THF is actually ungimped and fully usable (who cares about the other gear or doing damage! TH, right?)

So... ya, that kinda catches things up to the world of FFXI.

Next up: A few completely random pic from a Walk of Echos run we did for fun.

Only one mob, somehow we managed to win after lots of kiting and I somehow got first place even though I was on DNC and running all over the place. Weird event... not sure if we did any more of it, but I liked it!

Oh ya... I guess this is old news but I finished my DNC +2 armor some time ago xD

Leave a comment if you still read this! Otherwise... this might be the last post!

The current state of end-of-life FFXI

I'd consider FFXI "end of life". There is a clear replacement game for it out right now (even if it does suck), the development team for FFXI was transferred to it, and there aren't any announcements or even hints of further content coming to FFXI. WoTG content is complete, Abyssea content is complete, there's nothing else coming down yet. Some people are saying that there will be another level cap raise to 99 since the devs promised so... but there isn't necessarily going to be any new content.

Furthermore, the game has been changed to be as new-player unfriendly as possible right now. A new player trying out WoW for the first time has more than enough content to be entertained solo for a good... 2-3 months at the very least, and a path to the level cap. A new player joining FFXI has enough solo content to reach level 10, after which will be completely stuck unless they know someone who can help them to level 30, most likely through 1-2 Astral burn sessions. Upon reaching level 30, the gameplay of FFXI will consist of opening chests and solo skilling up to the level cap.

Basically, there is no chance in hell FFXI will be getting any new players. The game was never newbie friendly, but with the changes that Abyssea made to the game, it locked any chance of someone brand new to the game of actually staying interested. That leaves existing players, and possibly returning players. The existing player base can only go down as people lose interest in the game and quit, sometimes with notice, and other times without. That leaves only the returning players. In this blog post, I will lay out what the current state of end-of-life FFXI and let those who have left comment on whether what they see is interesting.

Current gameplay / endgame mechanics
As I stated in many previous blog posts, Abyssea is the new endgame. Previous content (Dynamis, Einherjar, Salvage, Nyzul, etc.) is all obsolete and nobody ever does it anymore except as a break from doing Abyssea. With Abyssea, the following is true:

Gil is irrelevant
Almost everything worth getting in Abyssea is Rare/Ex. There aren't really any items that can be sold on AH that are worth anything. About the only reason why you would need gil is to buy pop items so that you can pop the NMs to get those rare/ex items instead of spending 5-500 minutes farming them. It even shows in crafters as there are fewer and fewer people actually crafting anymore. This is kinda amusing as it leads to expendables such as food and ninjitsu tools increasing in price, but it also means that they are less necessary. Food isn't needed anymore. Ninjitsu still is, and to an extent, Shihei is still needed, so any gil that I get from selling pop items basically goes into funding shihei.

You can low-man anything
Mobs in Abyssea are easy. You can low-man just about anything, which leads to lots of people doing so. A NIN + WHM, DNC + BRD, or BSTs & SMNs can take out any mob. I don't even use shihei on DNC/NIN unless it's a serious boss since I know that I will be generating enough TP to instantly cure myself up to max HP at any time, or be doing enough damage to a mob that no matter how much a WHM cure-bombs me, they won't pull hate. And for the mobs you can't low-man, you can simply use the cheat code of a Primeval Brew. This of course, leads to lots of people standing around waiting for an slow pair of people to finish a mob. Wiping is nearly unheard of now that you can get instant Reraise 3.

JP button is back.
Claiming NMs or the ability to pop NMs is all about latency. The sooner you see something pop on your screen, the faster you can claim something. It's back to the FFXI of erm...2004 I guess? Except this time you don't have 24 hours between windows so it doesn't seem as frustrating until you sit around for an hour waiting for that low-man NIN & WHM pair to finish fighting a mob that will take you ~3 minutes to kill. There are no more instanced areas where you can do things undisturbed, or unaffected by latency. Even the Shinryu fight, which is technically a BCNM, suffers from this as it only has a limited number a instances, and everyone wants to enter the fight during a specific time. The JP win claim even over BCNM zones.

Job discrimination is back.
Look at any forum. All you need now are the following jobs:
* NIN -- Tank, red proc, blue-proc, green-proc
* WAR -- Red-proc, blue-proc
* BLM -- Green-proc
* BRD -- Green-proc
* WHM -- Green-proc, healer
* BLU -- Green-proc
Let me explain a little about "proccing". In Abyssea, in order to increase drop rates of the items that people want, you have to perform specific actions on them. Each mob has a weakness to two different weapon skills, one elemental, one non-elemental, and one magic spell. The FFXI community has, through lots of trial & error, determined what the specific weapon skills and magic spells needed for these different procs.

If you really want more details, Rooks(Kelhor) has put together a nice chart at http://track.probablyworks.com/proc.html which details the various skills needed. The above jobs are exactly what you need to be successful.

The following jobs are completely obsolete and are no longer needed: COR, DRK, DRG, BST, SMN, PUP, SCH, SAM, RDM, PLD. The following jobs have some use, but aren't completely necessary -- DNC(properly equipped as a tank), THF(TH still comes into play, though the effectiveness is much diminished with proper procs), MNK(good tank due to high HP + Counterstance) and RNG(occassional blue-proc)

Battle mechanics have changed
I've described a bit about how the overall picture has changed. Let's say you win despite the JP button, or find a NM that isn't completely camped at the moment and manage to get claim or pop it. How has gameplay changed?

Well, now it's all about proccing, then killing. This is basically how combat goes now:
- Tank engages, holds hate (easily, it's not even a challenge now).
- One WHM might actually cure the tank, or if it's a DNC tank, simply haste the tank
- Depending on what we are after, the rest of the alliance will do the following:
  * BLM, BLU, NIN & BRDs -- Cast the appropriate spell as per the proc table on the mob and hope for a colored !! to appear on the mob
  * NIN, WAR, and if present, MNK, RNG, THF, DNC -- Perform the appropriate "blue-proc" weapon skills
- Keep in mind that proccing involves going in, casting or weapon skilling, then running out. You don't stay engaged to the mob as doing so will cause it to die too quickly. You don't even need to pull TP mobs due to the Regain atmas and abilities in the game. You can simply stand around and wait for your turn
- Once all the necessary procs are complete, go for a "red-proc". This will put the mob in a state of terror for 30 seconds where it cannot do anything. At this point, zerg the mob down and kill it.

So, battle mechanics is really reduced to
- Tank engages, fights
- Rest of you stand around and wait for TP
- Terror the mob, kill it.

There is almost no need for a stun rotation (in fact, stunning is frowned upon as it prevents proccing), no strategy requiring Bard rotations, or even for that matter, Bard buff really. Holding hate is no longer an issue. Everyone caps hate at some point, and if you pull hate, you simply become the tank and move up. With high hit points, BLMs are about the only ones who might be in risk of dying, and even then that rarely happens. Dying is a joke anyway since you'll cap exp with the next mob kill, especially with NMs giving anywhere from 1250 - 6000 exp per kill. Many people have been capped on limit points and exp for months already. Old strategies of kiting, or needing sac-pulls, or complicated things such as skillchains/magic bursts are completely unnecessary.

So, that's what gameplay is like in FFXI right now. What other MMOs have people been playing and how do they compare?


FFXI Content
I'll talk briefly about the actual content that exists. I generally think of FFXI content as being split into two different categories: Missions & Quest, and "Getting stuff"

Missions & Quests
Abyssea content has all been released. The actual plotline and cutscenes are pretty weak and basically ends up being an alternate ending to CoP. No big deal really. Abyssea finishes with the big Shinryu fight I covered in my last blog post.

WoTG has supposedly been completed, but so far nobody... I mean, seriously, nobody has really talked about going to do that. It'll be easy now at level 90, but nobody has really gone to the past zones in months except maybe to go after some VNMs. The stupid idea of splitting up the country questlines means that it is nearly impossible to get anyone together to do WoTG missions. Finally, there simply isn't any interest. The reward at the end is worthless compared to Abyssea gear, and the whole thing has taken so long to be released that people like me who like storylines have lost interest. I barely remember the premise behind WoTG anymore!

There was a very brief surge of interest in original nation missions after the release of the 2nd Abyssea expansion and people realized that there were rewards for completing missions. During that time, I managed to complete rank 10 in Bastok & Windurst. However, since then, interest has died down again as people have discovered that the rewards for finishing those nation missions is no longer relevant with new upgrades.

So.. basically there's really no interest in the remaining community to do missions and quests.

Getting stuff
Getting stuff is basically doing either Abyssea as described above, or magian trials which I've described in previous posts. Both of which are highly repetitive and do get boring fairly quickly. There isn't really any challenge left in FFXI. The only fighting you're doing is against probability with drop rates, and latency with the JP button. If you can pop a mob, you can definitely kill it. There is virtually no challenge left in the game.

Personal response
On a personal basis, I'd actually like to complete the WotG missions to get some closure. I know this is nearly impossible to organize, but if I can get 4-5 like-minded people together...

Basically, the challenge is this: If you're interested in finishing WotG, focus on the Sandy quests and we'll work on them together. Kelhor, Vanh and myself are currently at the Blood of Heroes Sandy quest, which according to the wiki, is between WoTG missions 26 & 27. If we can get another 1-2 people to meet us at this quest, then set up a regular time to meet up, we can plow through the rest of these missions and complete WoTG. The reason why I've chosen Sandy is... well, that's the only questline I've found that actually has people relatively far along! If you are up for it, leave a comment or send me a /tell. Vanh is currently on break, so if you see this Vanh, think about coming back in March... send me an IM though to make sure we can set this up. I'm considering using Sunday afternoons/evenings to finish up WotG.

"Getting stuff" wise, I'm down to 5 items that I'd actually like to have, but truthfully, even those 5 items would be such a minor incremental increase in performance that... well... if I finish WotG and there aren't any more content announcements for FFXI, I might just skip over them and consider FFXI "completed". Soooo... this may be one of the last blog posts I make!

Meanwhile, here are a few pics to entertain you.

First, this is how stupidly crazy DNC has become in terms of attacks/round. This is solo, no additional buffs beyond what DNC normally has. I'm also in evasion gear instead of haste gear:

Low-manning what used to be a tough mob:

New variety of taru! Or is it rarab? Or some form of cheerleader?

Schoolgirl look has been replaced by a professor look for SCH:

For Talint: This is what male Dancers look like now:

For everyone else: This is what male elvaan look like now: