Fate Fantasy XIV: An Anti-Social MMO

I finished PLD50 on Sunday and finished the main story, watched the credits, etc. Sooo... chances are that this post will have some spoilers, read on at your own risk! Side note: There are much too many people who worked on this game. Pretty sure that most are contractors or temps as I can't imagine a product that pulls at most $140-200M/year could employ that many people long-term.

Anyway, having "beaten" the game, I can't help but draw direct comparisons between FFXIV and Star Wars: The Old Republic. It feels like a shorter, less social version of SWTOR. This especially rings true for the state of endgame. Let's pull some direct comparisons:

* Standard quest + hub system -- This is identical to any other MMO out there, SWTOR, WoW, Tera, etc. all follow the "main story brings you to a new town where there are sidequests". The sidequests are identical too, the usual kill X mobs, fetch Y items, do /dance to NPCs, go to THIS side of the map to fight a NM, then go to THAT side to talk to a NPC. I'm highly amused that late in the game, they get blatant about it too, not only telling you to your face that they are just giving you busy work, but literally asking you to go to a different town and repeat exactly what you just did.

* Individual "main stories" and content -- The class/job quests, hunt logs, etc. are all meant to be tackled for you alone. You *could* bring a friend along for some of it, but generally it's single player content. Oh, one funny thing is that I think the AF reward was adjusted down to level 45 at some point just before launch. After getting 4/5 AF pieces with the level 45 job quest, I still ran into side quests in the 47-49 range which had gear rewards that were clearly outclassed by your AF gear. The level 44 dungeon gear becomes obsoletely nearly immediately and is probably just for looks now.

Yes. Yes I am.

* Instanced dungeons -- Flashpoints in SWTOR, dungeons in FFXIV. The nice thing is that they got matchmaking working from the start (Duty Finder) instead of having it be something introduced later. Good for optional gear along the way, and you don't have to do it more than once.

* Endgame consisting of "hard mode" encounters -- All done with the game? Alright, here's Ifrit, Garuda and Titan v2 for you to fight... oh, done with those too? Well, don't worry, Yoshi-P has said outright that in version 2.2, there will be a new level of Titan, Garuda and Ifrit for you to fight. He just hasn't decided whether to call it "super", "hyper", or "ultra" yet. I'm going to suggest Super Hyper Fighting Turbo edition! SWTOR called these "hard" and "nightmare" modes.

* Progression-type gating -- In order to do content from dungeon B, you have to grind content from dungeon A before you can proceed. If you try to look at the content from B before you finish grinding, you can't do it at all. This comes with hidden gear checks in the boss mechanics so you have to either read about it, or figure it out yourself. At least in SWTOR it actually rates your gear and tells you outright that you can't even attempt certain content until you finish grinding instead of making you waste your time and gil.

The whole thing really felt like a rehash of SWTOR at some points, even down to the voiced cutscenes. FFXIV however, has a lot less content as well. Voiced cutscenes are limited (and seem to be badly added to the music -- all the voice simply came from my center speaker and sounded exactly like someone speaking into a microphone). The storyline is slightly better compared to most SWTOR stories, though it really is classic Final Fantasy and pretty predictable. Ironically, the *main* difference is that there is significantly less content in FFXIV compared to SWTOR and it goes by much faster. I think it took 1 1/2 months of fairly intense playing to go from 1-50 in SWTOR. In FFXIV, it took less than 10 days.

The Anti-Social MMO
Unlike SWTOR, FFXIV seem to actively discourage any sort of social interaction as well. In SWTOR, I had a bonus for doing things in a party with someone else. Not only were there quests which required 2, sometimes 4 people to complete, but there was also a bonus for just partnering with a friend and going through the quests. You can even do your class quests with the help of a friend for fun, and they get to see some of your story.

FFXIV actively forces you to play alone for not only class quests and job quests, but your Grand Company leves. You can't even play with a friend for leveling content if you want to. About the only thing you can do with friends is repeating dungeons and FATEs.

Now FATEs are an interesting concept. Initially I compared them directly to the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2, or rifts in Rift, but the frequency and rewards of FATEs have lead people to select this as the new "exp party grind" for FFXIV. The fact that dungeons don't give as much exp (but are good for gear) and that levequests give a pretty crappy time/reward ratio(and are more useful for crafting/gathering) mean that in certain zones, you have massive mobs of people roaming around simply doing FATEs.

Typical FATE view. Get used to seeing this if you intend on leveling more than one job.

The funny part is that unlike FFXI, everyone is welcome to a FATE party. It doesn't matter who you are, what job you are on, just that you're in the party and hence, whatever you do increases the experience of everyone in the party. Joining a party is as simple as shouting in the appropriate zone "LFG FATE" and you'll automatically get an invite at this time. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the one-time quests, and that there is only one set of quests from level 20-50, if you want to play more than one job, you will spend most of your gametime simply roaming around in quiet, wordless FATE parties. Even if you are only leveling one job, a certain amount of grinding is necessary to make up for the lack of exp from quests.

A not-so-typical FATE view. Can you tell the difference? The main one is that in this case, the mob you're attacking rarely pops up so you probably can't target it!

The toxic community
My experience in going through the content from 1-49 was generally very pleasant. In dungeons, we talked at first, admitted to being new to a dungeon and experimented to see what new dungeons had to offer. Sometimes we learnt things and failed, only to retry and come to a win. My Garuda fight was a full team which had never done it before, but we went from having no clue to figuring the fight mechanics out and pulling off a win. During one of my high level quests (around level 47 or so), I had to kill some mobs for a quest, but there was a level 50 PLD there clearly farming them for crafting items. When I showed up, he would claim a mob, then turn and not attack so I could do enough damage for credit for the quest. He got his drops, I got my credit and moved on.

That all changed at level 50 with an incredibly toxic community. To finish up the storyline, you have to reach level 50 and do a few 8-person dungeons. Unfortunately, these dungeons are also the exact same ones that you need to farm for "tombstones" (one of the currencies for endgame gear, including AF+1 and darklight gear)  so what you end up with is a group of impatient douchebags screaming at people to skip through cutscenes, running ahead of everyone, triggering mobs, not explaining fights and making the experience generally miserable for everyone. In some cases, SE actually put cutscenes right in the middle of fighting masses of mobs, so you'd be fighting and engaging mobs and suddenly the cutscene would start without warning. Highly annoying, and supposedly people have died to this. As tank, I skipped these cutscenes to make sure that nobody died, but the entire experience is very jarring.

The fights for the final dungeons are pretty easy too so people would go ahead and start fighting while others are in the middle of cutscenes. It's VERY noticeable as even during the cutscene, you can hear the sounds of the boss that is being fought trash talking. It's very silly that the final boss of a Final Fantasy game is already dead by the time you come out of a CS because some assholes decide to go ahead and start fighting with half the team.

This sort of toxic behavior also carries over to the post-story content. In a few instances in duty finder, I've seen people drop out without another word when one person admits that they've never tried the content before. I've also seen cases of people berating others for having a low DPS from running FFXIV-APP and immediately quitting. In all cases, I've reported them to the support desk for harassment, but I'm pretty sure that the GMs in this game are as useless as other games.

This general feeling from the FFXIV community has lead me to ignore endgame activities until more friends catch up. I'm not too surprised, just disappointed that a community that was so friendly could turn so toxic so quickly.

Will FFXIV be successful?
I've stated often in previous posts that the long-term success of FFXIV really depends on their endgame content. Having experienced it briefly, and investigated what needed to be done, I think my answer to this is that it will not be as successful as people think it will be. It shares most of the characteristics as SWTOR, is incomplete in some ways (no PvP, making promises of player/guild housing, like SWTOR promised guild ships) and has vague promises of future content ("Good King Moogle Mog", harder mode of primal battles and other primals). The tiered progression system also discourages casual play at endgame, given that to get from the first tier to the next, you basically have to repeat the same 60-90 minute dungeons a good 30-40 times. Just like SWTOR, you are essentially locked out of some content until you farm the initial content, making it frustrating for casual players.

Unlike SWTOR, the content for FFXIV moves along a lot faster. Not only is the leveling process really fast in comparison (basically FFXIV has maybe 1/3 of the total quest/story content compared to SWTOR), but the farming process has no barriers. In SWTOR, you were limited to 2 operations per week due to lockouts. FFXIV has no lockouts so people can (and have been) farm the dungeons constantly. I expect that people should have full AF+1 and relics before even the basic trial periods are complete.

The tiered progression system is one I am not a fan of and was afraid would actually come to FFXIV. Unfortunately, my fears did come true and in order to see content, you have to go through the grind. Compare this to FFXI where you could select from the different endgame activities to do and do any, or all that you wanted to with the gear that you had when you reached level cap. You could do Dynamis without having to camp the kings, or do Sky without having to touch Dynamis. Or do all at the same time. New events that were later added -- Limbus, ZNMs, Nyzul, Campaign, etc. could all be done with basic gear, without having to do one or the other. Of course, having better gear made things easier and faster, but you could experience all the content and decide which ones you wanted to pursue. Amusingly, about a year after the SWTOR release, they started giving away the first tier of endgame gear to anyone who reached level 50 so that people could jump ahead of outdated content. Will FFXIV do the same?

The tiered progression system also punishes people who want to be helpful and flexible. If you want to be prepared for various roles, after grinding your 2nd or 3rd job up to 50 through FATEs, you have to do double or triple the amount of grinding at the various tiers to gear up your various jobs. It would be simpler to just stick with one role.

I think the player base will split into 3 parts:
1) The hardcore which will be done with content before even the first month is up (possibly being able to actually return the game without entering a code if they pre-ordered and use the early access & new trial +7 days? or maybe they still need to enter a code to get the +7 days to the trial), complain that there is no content and leave.
2) The casual which will finish the story and quickly realize that they don't want to grind through the same thing over and over again.
3) The fans that will actually stick to the game even on the downhill. There are people like this on SWTOR that still raid and do operations. I expect that a large number of similar fans will stay around for FFXIV. Ironically, I think this will end up putting the final nail in the coffin for FFXI as most of the fans are probably current players for FFXI.

My guess is that FFXIV: ARR will peak very quickly in the first 3-4 months, after which it will lose players rapidly, settling down in the 500-700k range of steady subscribers. This is exactly what happened to SWTOR, except it happened over about 6-8 months. Unlike SWTOR, there is less content in FFXIV, and no artificial tethers to slow people down. I actually think that this is also what SE expects given their initial launch of 50 total servers. As I recall, each server can handle a max of 4,000 concurrent connections, but is expected to host about 12,000 players, making for an estimated max of 600,000 subs. I do hope that SE isn't overbuying servers with tonight's maintenance. If they open up too many new worlds, that would just end up with server merges in a few months (which is what happened to SWTOR, which also signaled the failure of a MMO to the public). 600k subscribers is still a decent number, and I believe is about what FFXI had for a good portion of its lifetime.

How about AlphaPrime/Impact/CTR?
Now this is where it gets interesting... This is the first time we've had the whole group from FFXI back together since... well, I think people started dropping off at around 2010-2011? It's really nice to see everyone back together again, though truthfully, we haven't really played together much at all. We've done a few dungeons together, but very little outside of that. FFXIV just isn't a social game in the leveling process. There was even one time when I got into a random FATE party with one other (brand new) CTR member but he didn't even notice me saying hi to him on linkshell chat -.-

I'd like to think that we might end up playing together for a while, but I'm not optimistic as to how long it will last. I'm fully expecting some people to get bored and leave fairly quickly (myself possibly among them), while other people will feel that we're moving too slow and join a "real" FC to progress faster (which has already happened). Personally, I've switched to playing on ARC so that I can join in with some friends as they go through the various dungeons, though it's quite boring on the 2nd job due to FATEs being the only real way to exp.

As for the future of CTR, well, we have a stupid number of PLDs right now. Last I counted, there were between 8-10 of us. That's too many tanks for 30 people, and I'm not even counting the WARs yet! It's mildly ironic that we have very few DDs. Every time someone asks for help in a dungeon, I can't offer it because they're also leveling PLD. For events, I'm not entirely sure what we can do... perhaps some farming runs for currency? 8 people at a time? While it might be fun to do this as a group, it would be almost as easy to just use Duty Finder for it. The same for the hard mode primal fights for a chance at the weapons. We'll have to see what happens as more people get to 50.

What do you think? Leave comments below.

Anyway, here are some pics! Quite limited due to me not wanting to spoil things too much for people, but there *ARE* spoilers...

Despite my complaints, it's still a really pretty game. Wonder how DX11 will make things look

And there's some surprisingly skimpy clothing too, like any MMO I guess

I'm a ghost!

Please make sure your Lalafell is wearing goggles before you practice tossing them!

Generic FF battle scene!

It's a bird! It's a plane! (Yda really has short shorts :o)

Whee, the whole group of Scions

And Ascy on ARC. That bow is as tall as I am o.o

Other MMOs and their issues

(Lots of posts recently! If you haven't checked in a while, go back and read the recent guest posts by Ark & Caoimhe! They're quite informative!)

I've bounced around a few MMOs over the last two years. As you can see, none of them have really managed to hold my interest. Hopefully FFXIV can do so, but we'll have to see. Here are some of the MMOs I've tried out, what I liked about them, and why I eventually quit.

Star Wars: The Old Republic
This was the first MMO after FFXI that actually looked like fun. Quite a lot of people from FFXI played SWTOR, including Fuji, Val, Ark, Ghiren and Rooks.  Done by BioWare (famous for the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series), it had a large amount of voice acting, decision wheels, and of course, a long extended storyline. Actually, 8 long extended storylines covering the 8 different main character types.

The Bounty Hunter with her companions at the end of the story. (Last time I posted I only had a trooper character. I created and finished a Bounty Hunter with Ghiren earlier this year)

Gameplay wise, this is a classic MMO with the trinity (tank, healer, DPS) with hotkeys and a global cooldown, similar to FFXIV. There is also a companion system which lets you have a NPC come help you fight, or heal you, similar to the chocobo companion of FFXIV, but a little more detailed in the equipment and orders you can give to them. There's also a relationship storyline with the various companions and you can marry one of them. Gay and lesbian marriage was added in a later patch, though I haven't checked that out yet!

Whee, romance!

Content wise, there was quite a bit. Space battles, the classic questing system, dungeons (called flashpoints), and finally, endgame operations. The last is considered the endgame activity with 8 or 16 people needing to go through a number of fights and boss fights.

Star Wars! See? Stars? And they're fighting!

Some things that stood out about SWTOR:

• The storylines were generally pretty good and interconnected. They basically created a ton of content for you to go experience. To get the full SWTOR experience, you'd have to finish 8 different alts. Each character takes between 1-2 months of casual gameplay to finish the story.
• Unfortunately, the filler quest content is the same for each character to create, so while you might create a Smuggler and a Jedi Knight, other than the individual class quests, all the rest of the quest experience is the same. 
• Crafting was very easy. All you had to do is select what you wanted to craft, then your companions would go craft it for you. You can even set them to go gather materials for you if you have the credits for it. The only thing is that as you go up in levels, it will take a longer time to complete. Some of the crafting missions took ~2 hours to finish.
• PvP was generally fun. There are 8v8 arenas with different objectives, like "Huttball", a football-like game where you can shoot up other players, or a capture 3 flags type game. The PvP and PvE gear are clearly separated so you'd have to earn your way through either one.

Fooling around and dancing before starting an operation. Are those lightsabers safe to be waving around like that?

The biggest problem with SWTOR is the lack of endgame content. The existing endgame content is very solidly tiered. As in, you start off doing the most basic operation, and only after you farm enough gear from that operation will you be able to do the next operation, and the next after that. If you don't have gear from the lower tier, you have no chance of completing the next tier. In theory, once you get through the first few rounds of the endgame content, you can turn on a "nightmare" mode to get the *next* tier of gear. Even though the operations themselves are initially interesting as you learn the different tricks that they throw at you, it quickly becomes tedious as you're literally doing the same thing every time your group gets together for weeks at a time. You're also locked out of doing operations for 3 days after you complete one, meaning you can only do an operation at most twice a week. Once you hit level cap, there is very little to do in terms of variety. A friend of mine still playing told me that after they raised the level cap to level 55, they went back and simply slapped new labels on the old operations, raising the level for those to level 55 and making you redo everything all over again.

Phantasy Star Online 2

This was an unusual MMO to try out. For starters, it's only released in Japan at this time, though a US release is supposed to becoming out in 2013. There is also a PSP Vita client which lets you play on the goal. Whether SEGA will actually release it in the US or not is still up for debate as they have delayed it many times. Still, since it's a free-to-play MMO there was no harm in trying it out. Ark & I created accounts on the JP server and toyed with it for a few hours! 

Fan-created patches also make the game playable

PSO2 is a lobby/instance type of MMO, where you can interact with people in the central hub, create a party, then select an instanced mission to go do. There are cutscenes and dialog of course, but I have no idea what they were saying!

Yay squigglies!

Gameplay was highly simplified, a few buttons to press and relatively simple classes (Long range gun shooter, short range close combat, and spellcaster). I'm guessing this was to handle the PSP Vita players as well, though I remember Phantasy Star Universe as being relatively simple too.

Combat consists of lots of dust!

The "pay" store seemed to be focused on cosmetic items, event items and stuff. The whole thing definitely felt like a Phantasy Star type game and story, though the gameplay and graphics are quite dated by today's standards. The character expressions are very robotic (I mean, even the non-CAST characters looked robotic!) 

The game as a whole definitely didn't feel very big, though it might have been fun to play around with once in a while. If they ever come out with a US release, I'll probably play around with it! 

Big gun, big sword or big staff?

One interesting thing about PSO2 is that they have a benchmark program where you can design your character and then use the designed characters in the benchmark cutscene sequence that they run. The designed character can then be saved and the profile information loaded into the actual PSO2 game to use as your character. The FFXIV team has announced the same feature for a FFXIV 2.0 benchmark, with this character designer scheduled to be released between beta phase 3 & 4.

Tera Online

Tera was the next MMO that a bunch of us played after SWTOR. Many of the same suspects.. Fuji, Ark, Val... I guess it was really lolipedo and skimpy outfits online!

Bunnies! Just one of many races such as kitties, squirrels and other cute sexy animals!

Graphically, the game is quite impressive, very pretty areas, great graphics that probably rival FFXIV in terms of quality and in-game cutscenes. The leveling process is very WoW-like... run to new area, pick up quests, kill X mobs, collect Y items, turn in quests, move to next area and repeat.

Cutscene with in-game model. Also, fantasy low-level warrior-type armor that only exposes the belly

Gameplay wise, Tera was a nice refreshing change compared to the standard tab-targeting type MMOs like FFXIV and SWTOR. The actions you did were in the world and whether you hit the enemy or not was almost entirely due to your own skill. Dodging and avoiding big enemy moves is a big part of gameplay, and if you want a challenge, there are open world "big-ass monsters" (yes, that's what they are officially called) where you can go up against for a challenge. Easy to fight against when you're in a party, but they can be taken down solo by a skilled player.

Highly configurable UI. You can do *some* of this in FFXIV as well with the chat boxes that can be broken out into different places

The control scheme is also quite interesting and in many ways, similar to FFXIV. You have the standard keyboard 1-= hotkeys that you can use, but if you use a controller, you can also simply use the four face buttons on your controller to trigger actions. You can also use the triggers to access even more buttons, making it very much like FFXIV. The action-oriented gameplay made this controller-type play very fun, like playing an action game on a console. One thing I really liked in Tera was that combos can always be done by pressing the same key (spacebar, or X on a controller). Unlike on FFXIV where you have to press different buttons to pull off combos.

Did I mention the skimpy outfits?

When it came to endgame, this is where Tera showed its Korean roots. The basic endgame sequence was to just go grind... grind grind grind... repeat the dungeon multiple times to get weapons, use the same weapon to upgrade your weapon. You can upgrade the weapon by sacrificing weapons and expensive catalysts for a probability of increasing the quality. Try to upgrade the weapon to a +9 by farming weapons and money, or repeating daily events... erm... daily to get points to get more gear. There is a "Nexus" event for people at level cap that happen at specific times of the day. Virtually everyone at endgame level would go to these places and fight enemies to get points to get gear. Of course, this lead to huge amounts of lag and graphical glitches. For a game that ran smoothly in all other places, you'd drop down to around 5 frames per second.

Whee... people as far as the eye can see.

The dungeons are a decent amount of fun the first couple of times through, and many have interesting mechanics. For example, in the screenshot below, at some point during a boss fight you have to assign one person to go to a cannon and shoot the boss to prevent it from launching a special move. 

If I miss, you all die!

Overall, the game was a decent amount of fun. If not for the randomness of the endgame upgrades, it might have made it for a long-term game. The problem was that there was only a limited amount of endgame activities to do, and they were extremely repetitive with very little advancement. The Korean grind was too much for me.

Still... Tera did have a lot of vanity items too, and fanservice!

Glowy high level weapons, plus a halo, bikini and glasses!

Guild Wars 2

GW2 made for an interesting change of pace. Unlike most other MMOs, the concept of the tank-healer-DPS "holy trinity" was not used in GW2, but instead every job was a hybrid job, capable of doing a variety of roles. This also created lots of different types of gameplay. I played a Mesmer, basically an illusionist that can multiply her damage with extra clones, or fool enemies (and players) with illusions. 

Three Ascys attacking one mob!

You could also change what attacks and abilities you had available by switching the active weapon you were using. You could do this in the middle of battle too, giving quite a few different options for poking things. For the basic leveling, they did a modified version of the WoW-questing model. Instead of having to pick up quests, whenever you entered a new area, you would get the quests automatically with the objectives popping up for you. There were also dynamic events that occur either on timers, or can be activated when someone talks to a NPC, almost exactly like the FATE events of FFXIV. There are also instanced dungeons for group play, or for advancing the storyline, just like FFXIV.

Yay, I'm like... 4 people!

One fun aspect of gameplay was the "realm vs. realm" where different servers would fight against each other in a grand battle royale across a huge map. This included siege weapons, defending and taking castles, and coordinating a ton of people. Unlike Tera, there was little-to-no lag or performance problems during these big events.

To mix up gameplay, there were also various environmental weapons you could use... siege weapons, battle armor, random weapons lying around, so if you wanted to do something different instead of your usual class, you could.

What's a gun doing in a fantasy world... oh well, pew pew!

Graphically, the game isn't as good as Tera, at least in my opinion. The engine seemed simpler and the character models are less detailed, but it does allow for a variety of environments and armors. Much of the story is told through these cutscenes which have a NPC across from your character, like an old-style RPG...

Yes, I'm having trouble breathing in this outfit! Thanks for asking!

Like Tera, there is a fair amount of fan service in this game... Lots of revealing outfits, and even the beginning outfits show a lot of skin. I guess that's the trend for many of these MMOs. At least FFXIV isn't like that!

As a Mesmer, I'm supposed to... mesmerize people?

One thing that stood out for GW2 was the equipment dyeing system. Unlike other MMOs, you could change the color of your gear in different places. Up to three different choices of color could be made in your gear, changing things like the trim or colors of the design. It made it so that everyone in the world had a different look.

Whee... I'm a magical girl!

Overall, the game was a lot of fun to go from level 1-80. The real problem came at the end. Well, there were two main problems. The first was that the final, FINAL dungeon was bugged. As in... you could not access it... At all... due to bugged quest chains leading to it. As you can imagine, not being able to finish the final dungeon in the game due to bugs is very annoying, especially after spending time to set up a group and fighting our way to the entrance.

The other is the highly annoying jump quests which require you to jump around like Mario would to reach certain areas to complete quests. These are present not only as one-shot things, but daily quests, and special events. I don't like this sort of game to begin with, and having to do it online is... well... it frustrated me.

Big event mob. I'd rather fight than jump all over them :(

Neverwinter

Neverwinter has the distinction of being the first (and hopefully only) MMO I've played where I felt like I've finished all the content the game has to offer before it was officially released. As a free-to-play MMO, Neverwinter had nearly two full months of open beta where you could play all content, from level 1 to level cap. Ark & I finished everything in... maybe 3 weeks of casual play.

I'm a generic looking rogue that shows off my belly... hmm... another MMO outfit standard

Gameplay is nothing special, standard holy trinity, quest hubs where you click through, pick up quests, run around, turn them in and move on. You can only set a small number of abilities to use in combat (I think 6?) so you have to pick & choose what you want to do. Sadly, for my class, at around level 8 I found a combination that worked really well and used it all the way to level cap.

Fighting a generic dragon...

Neverwinter had a unique capability of having player created dungeons that you could play. While some people put together somewhat interesting storylines, you were still limited by what the engine could do, limiting most of the stories to blobs and blobs of text. Of course, when you let players have access to tools, people quickly figured out that they could simply make exp dungeons where you can attack or instantly kill tons of mobs without a way for them to fight back. Many many wizards went from level 1 to cap in a couple of hours from this system. There were also many other bugs in the game, allowing for exploits which eventually lead to a server rollback. Definitely a game to avoid!

Conclusion

That's a tour of most of the MMOs I've been through since stopping FFXI about 2 years ago! None of them held my interest for very long for various reasons. I think the longest was SWTOR for 4 months before losing interest there. Hopefully FFXIV will break this pattern! I'm hoping that the good system of having a single character to do everything instead of needing to create alts will be as addictive as it was in FFXI! 

To close, here's a pic of Limsa Lominsa from the FFXIV 1.0 Alpha!

(P.S.: For FFXIV beta phase 4 and release, we will be on the Hyperion legacy server. If you have a 1.0 character you'd like to play with us, please remember the deadline to apply for world transfers is July 15! New players should be able to create characters straight on Hyperion. It's currently a medium population server)

Ascy the Commando

It's been about 1 1/2 months since I started on TOR early access. Ascy the Commando has come a long way. I'm level 50 now, and still in the middle of act 3 in the Trooper storyline. Trooping along, taking some side trips to do some flashpoints with Fuji, Gibson and Ghir

We nearly have enough people hitting level 50 at this point that we can start thinking about setting up some operations. These are 8/16/32 people adventures which take up one part of the level 50 "endgame"

Some interesting things about TOR:

• Crafting and crew skills is crazy simple. I'm already at max skill for Armstech, Cybertech, Slicing, Scavenging, Investigation, Underworld Metals and Armormech. I'm starting to work on Synthweaving and associated skills as well on various alts
• Exping, or simply going through the plot is pretty easy too. There are more than enough quests on each planet to level up through content appropriately. I've actually started to skip various portions of boring planets to move on to the next major plot area. Space battles and PvP are optional, but are alternate ways to get exp quickly.
• Grouping up, while not mandatory like FFXI used to be, still has some advantages. You'll be able to blow through content a lot quicker, have less downtime, and the way the game is set up, you'll end up with more exp (which is one of the big reasons why I'm overleveled). The down side is that you'll get less credits since that is split up among people. 

In my opinion, the most fun way to play TOR is to do so with a partner. That way, you'll get social points for doing things in a group, and still have companion points since you'll have your companion around. Social points is important as there are various tiers of a "Social" attribute that can only be earned by playing in a group.

Some tricks for playing TOR:

• Use gifts to raise your companion's affection as soon as you get them. You can spam rank 1 gifts to get their affection up to 4,000/10,000 easily, after which you can use conversation options to increase their affection further. Raising affection not only makes them do crew skills faster, but also opens up a ton of extra dialog, quests, exp and credits from just talking to them
• At this time, most of the crafting skills are fairly pointless due to the "Commendation" system. You can get level appropriate gear from just trading in rewards you get from doing quests. If you do want to craft, the skill "Biochem" appears to be the current defacto "broken" craft due to the reusable consumable items that you can craft.
• Choosing "slicing" as one of your crew skills is highly recommended. There are tons of credit boxes just lying around the world which you can pick up for extra money. Furthermore, you can send your companions out on constant slicing missions for extra money while you are out questing, supplementing your income.
• Space missions have secret hidden bonus objectives which give a significant exp & credit reward, over 2k each. Use those missiles on big capital ship bridges!
• Spend some time in playing in the warzones, even if you're lower leveled. You can start at level 10, and the warzones boost your stats so that you can take on higher level players, though you won't have all the skills that they do. Warzones and pvp give you commendations that can be traded in for decent gear sets at level 20, 40 and are used to get pvp gear at 50.

Ok! Random photo time!

Full Commando level 40 PvP gear (helmet off). Also: See big gun

Havoc squad mission briefing

Funny warzone. I'm capturing the center turret with a stealth operative looking the wrong way

Havoc squad reporting in! All members accounted for!

View from the emperor's throne room

Troopers are aggressive!

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?