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:

End of 2010 pics!

Wow, has it been a month already since my last post? Lots happening in FFXI, most of it fun. I figure this update would mainly be for those who stopped playing so that they can get an idea of how things have changed.

The main changes would be... the level cap is now 90 and that the Abyssea content is now finished. The level 90 cap pretty much makes any old-world content a joke and everything significant/fun is in Abyssea now, including almost all the gear. About the only thing that isn't purely Abyssea that is 80+ are the magian weapons, and a good number of their trials do require items from Abyssea.

So... anyway, I've been working on my magian dagger, the "occasionally attacks twice" high damage version. The good news is that since finishing the initial VNM step, and the two "get drops from NMs" piece, the dagger has become fairly easy to maintain, just using points from various new battle systems that popped up (bastion & Dominion)

The armor everyone is after now is what people have been calling "AF3", the job-specific armor. The base pieces are fairly easy to get, with some work needed to get the +1 pieces which is where they start to become useful. The +2 pieces are where the job specific armor really shines, and we've just barely started to work on getting those pieces for everyone. Here's a pic of my DNC +1 set

New armor & weapons mean newer mobs to fight, right? Exactly! Bigger, meaner battles including this one!

Raja is one of the more fun tanking fights I've done on DNC. Lots of large AoEs, gives silence, amnesia and more. Basically I'm the only one engaging it/tanking it with the rest of the alliance spread out to support me and come in to do damage when possible. Abyssea NM fighting also requires more attention compared to fights in the past. Now we have to perform specific weaponskills at specific times, cast certain BweaponsLM/BRD/BLU spells or even turn away from the mob when it does certain moves. Many NMs now absorb physical or magical damage depending on the situation or move that they make. A single person not paying attention could end up healing the NM for thousands of HP.

One new game mechanic that was added with Abyssea was the concept of "atmas", buffs that you can get inside of Abyssea. These include things like more HP, regain, additions to attributes and more. There are some funny ones like Auto-Reraise III, and significantly increase the damage of everyone, especially 1-handed jobs like THF, NIN and DNC, which leads to funny weaponskill damage like this:

All three Abyssea expansions have been released now. These mini-expansions have a plot of sorts, though the story itself is much shorter and more straightforward compared to even the previous mini-expansions like the moogle and Shantotto ones. At the end of it, you get to fight this:

and meet some old friends:

After everything is done, one of the things you get is the ability to buy the Primevel Brew, an item that gives you +999 stats, +9999 HP/MP, crazy amounts of regain, regen, refresh, etc. for 3 minutes for 200k cruor. It's basically the cheat code for FFXI and lets you solo anything inside Abyssea. You can WS constantly, and with Chainspell, RDMs can nuke down anything in the time.

I'm still figuring out the optimum way to use the brew myself... my weak DRG managed to do this:

but this is really weak compared to what other people have done, or what my DNC can do xD I still have to figure out how to best use the brew.

Finally, some more random pics! Seems like this is the new DNC uniform as I'm seeing tons of us running around like this!

Kelhor(Rooks) & I went to do more WotG quests... Interest for WoTG is at an all-time low even though they.. i think they actually finished releasing it all? Anyway, it's been so long since the last time anyone did anything in WotG that I've forgotten most of the details of the storyline. There isn't any significant rewards at the end, and the way they split the questlines up makes it nearly impossible for people to cooperate in WotG. I consider this expansion to be the most well done story & cutscene wise, and the biggest failure of FFXI simply due to the game mechanics and how long they took to release it.

Anyway, here is a pic that I'm calling "attack of the clones"

That's it for now! Happy New Year!

Long time no post

Been a while since my last post... mainly because of RL stuff. I've taken a new job with more responsibility and better opportunity. It also takes up more of my time so I don't have time to put together blog posts at work. FFXI itself hasn't really been that exciting either, just the usual gear acquisition with minimal challenge except for the randomness of drops or claim competition. Abyssea is the only "real" thing going on now, with the magian trials for those who have multi-hours during the day to spend their time.

At this point, I'm not quite sure how much longer I'll keep playing myself. It seems that there are people who want to step up FFXI activities to the point where events are held for multi-hours for most days of the week... Kinda weird for nearly 9 year old MMO game, and... well, I'm not sure if I want to commit that kind of time. I don't mind spending a few hours every other night playing, but nearly every night, and during the day on weekends? A certain South Park episode comes to mind...

Anyway, for those who don't play anymore, here's a little pic of my latest WS gear for DNC!

The new FFXI

I figure that since there are a quite a few people actually reading this who are no longer playing FFXI that I should put up a post summarizing the changes to the game. If you left or cut down on playing FFXI before the latest series of "Abyssea" expansions, I think you'd be in for a huge culture shock if you ever started playing the game again.

The new level cap
The highest you can go now is level 85. Now remember that most of the original hard mobs were around level 85 or so back when the level cap was 75 and you'll see the problem. Basically, all the old content has become easy. Just about anyone can low-man or solo older stuff, anything released pre-abyssea. Missions of all sorts, including the previous 3 expansions (Shantotto, Moogle, etc.) are now a joke instead of being a challenge. As long as there is no level cap on the fight, you almost always duo or solo it do it.

Exp
There is no more exp outside of Abyssea. You may see a few people out doing some FoV, or some random sub-30 parties around, but basically, Abyssea has taken over everything, and with good reason. Since you can easily get around 50-80k, maybe 100k+/hour with the proper setup, exping outside of Abyssea is just plain inefficient. You can enter Abyssea starting at level 30, so once you hit 30, you can start going in to "leech" exp. However, even leechers have a purpose, that is, to open chests that the people doing the real work of killing mobs can't do. For an exp alliance of 13-18 people, you might have 1-2 leechers just along for the ride.

Exp has also changed from a "get together a party and go at it" for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, to a "the longer you're at it, the better the reward" endurance session of at least 3-4+ hours. Our typical exp session on Sunday mornings (yes, mornings... people are setting alarm clocks JUST for exp) runs from around 9am - 3pm at the very least, 6 hours of exp, and that is followed by a couple of hours of NM hunting. Near the end of the session, the exp rate does easily hit 100k/hour, but that is also around the time that people are hitting both level cap, and merit cap

Soooooooo... for people entering Abyssea at level 80, they can expect to leave at 85 plus capped merits after a full session. Many people have leeched jobs from sub-60 easily to 85 in a couple of sessions. And yes, exping that quickly means that you leave a session with horribly underleveled skills no matter how much you put in it.

Colibri camps have never been more open for skillups.

Older content
Old content is obsolete. There is no real reason to go do anything that isn't Abyssea anymore. Dynamis, Limbus, Sea, Sky, Einherjar, all the old content is neither a challenge, nor is it rewarding. We took a group in to Dynamis last Thursday, barely 14 people and completely wiped the zone... twice. Relic armor is a joke and basically everything went freelot. I guess there are some people still working on relic weapons since the coins still sell, which is kinda amusing since the relic weapon trials to upgrade those relics is something only an insane person would do.

About the only thing that SE added to make old content somewhat relevant was that they reward people who completed the mission stories, that is, the expansion stories, the original 3 nation quests, and the various expansions like CoP, Zilart and Aht Urghan, with "atmas" which can be used in Abyssea

Abyssea & Atmas
Atmas are "power ups" that you can earn inside Abyssea. You can get them through quests, killing certain NMs, finishing mission lines, etc. They can give you power-ups like extra strength (+50), extra HP & MP(my PLD has over 3000 HP), or gives you certain things like Refresh(+10/tick), Regain and others.

And the way you get Atmas are from doing certain things to NMs in a certain way. For instance, using specific elemental weaponskills on NMs depending on the day, under very specific conditions (mob must not be casting or doing TP skills). You can also increase the drop rate by casting specific elemental magics on the mob as well. (rendering TH obsolete to an extent?)

Now we have a random assortment of jobs being brought into Abyssea simply for the reason of using their elemental weaponskills, or casting elemental magics of various kinds. I'm not just talking about BLMs here to nuke, but we also need to bring BLUs for their (lol)magical spells, SCHs for their Helixes, etc. I'm amused that they haven't found a way to work PUP into things, and I'm wondering if the COR Quick Draw cards might come into play here.

Soooo... Abyssea has broken the crown of the usual SAM+BRD combination and people are essentially free to bring whatever they please if they aren't part of the core group of WHMs, RDMs and to an extent, PLDs.

Abyssea NM fights
With all the atma buffs, as well as exp being a joke to get these days (you actually GET exp from killing NMs, anywhere from 500-5000 per kill), most NM fights become a free-for-all where everyone just goes all out. If a DD gets killed, it's no big deal, throw a Raise out there and put him on the bench for 5 minutes. All the buffs out there makes it pretty hard for a PLD to keep hate unless the DDs hold back. There aren't many fights that actually require PLDs now, only the zone bosses and a few tough NMs. I'm sure by the time we're level 90(or higher since SE said that 99 would be the final cap), these would be easily low-manned by a group of DDs.

Essentially, everything now is either a simple free-for-all that is done in less than 5 minutes (with a few random people dying along the way) or a kite fight where it's mainly on the nukers (BLM, SCH, and even RDM). Rarely do we actually need to bring out real tanks. People not paying attention is the norm, judging on how many times we have to shout on linkshell for people to actually do thing properly. (You'd think that they would pay attention since the objective IS to get things for them... at least bidding has people's attention after a few people lost out on things that they wanted because they didn't bid properly in the 20 seconds and hopefully taken more seriously after Mday lost 2000 points bidding on a random item that nobody wanted)

Current Content
With all old content essentially obsolete, the new content is mainly focused inside of Abyssea itself. The only things I've seen people do in the old zones is either Magian Trials (the kill 2000-10,000 of various mob families under specific days/weather conditions/killshots/proccing of addititional effects stuff that takes months to do), or people doing missions specifically for atmas (Crystal prices are going for anywhere from 1500-3000/stack since nobody exps anymore -- there is a huge shortage of crystals since people are using them for rank points)

In Abyssea, the content is essentially quests, NMs, and popped NMs.

Quests
There are around 8-9 quests per Abyssea zone, some of which are repeatable for seals. This is the super-low seal drop rate method of getting seals required to upgrade the "AF3" armor to be useful. I estimate around a 5% drop rate, and you need 8 seals to do a single upgrade of a single piece. I spent 4 hours on Friday night to try to get just the final 2 seals I need for my DNC feet and the only thing I had to show for it was a loss of 4k exp.

This is the "solo" content that SE promised us. Yes, it's possible to solo. It's mind-numbingly boring. With a 5% drop rate, on average you'd have to do 20 repeats, or 160 repeats of the SAME quest in order to complete one of your AF3 pieces. If you're lucky like me and can actually repeat the quest in a reasonable time of around 5 minutes, that's only 13 hours of grinding a quest and on average, you'd be able to finish a piece. Of course, that only the average... I'm already waaaaay past the average for this quest.

And if you're not lucky and have a quest that requires items from IT mobs... well, I'll be surprised if you actually succeed with this method.

NMs
Around all the zones there are various NMs that drop some good items. Some drop seals for AF3, giving another method of obtaining them that doesn't involve mind-numbing grinding, while most drop some sort of gear that is useful, including various job-specific accessories, some crazy pieces like the mage piece that has +100 HP & MP, and gives Refresh & Regen. Most NMs also have Atma.

The respawn time of these NMs is actually fairly decent, around 30 minutes after they are last killed. The bad news is that with the drops being so desirable, people are low-manning them and taking forever to kill. Since dying isn't a big deal anymore, reraise, doing some damage, and getting killed isn't a big deal anymore so people are low-manning them and taking forever to do so... Glitching of the mob's paths is unfortunately common and requires a GM call every time.

Popped NMs
Most of the exp mobs drop pop items to pop various NMs that also drop seals and various items. The pop items themselves are pretty common, and can be sold on the AH. The good news is that the ??? that pops the NMs has a short, 3 minute repop. The bad news is that there are also tons of competition for these since, well, they are just about the only thing to do. It's fairly typical to walk up to a ??? area and find another group already doing it, or have another group barge in on you as you're working through pops. Most people are generally polite and either move on when they see another group there, or work in an alternating schedule so that people take turns to pop. However, there are lots of jackasses out there too who won't communicate or cooperate.

My blacklist is unfortunately full :( I need to talk to a GM about increasing it!

Oh, and the Abyssea "storyline" consists of... building to and fighting a high level NM(about the only time a serious alliance with a tank party is needed) and a bunch of crappy cutscenes.

Sooooooooo... that's FFXI right now. Quests, NMs, and occasional exp. Oh, one more thing. While a typical "old school" event like Dynamis would end up with people losing exp, the Abyssea mobs all have exp and give them out generously. 500 exp tends to be on the low side per kill, with 5000 exp being easily possible. Typically you'd leave an Abyssea NM hunting session with 4-6 merits, with the highest I've ever done was going in with absolutely 0 merits or limits and coming out fully capped.

With only 300 merits left to cap all my jobs, even the ones I never use... well, DO said it best that exp is no longer relevant.

Long time no post

Hmm... does anyone still read this? Hello? Hello?

Well, just for those of you who still do read this... I figure I owe an explanation of what is going on.

No, I haven't been been caught up playing FFXIV... in fact, if I were playing that more, I would probably have more posts showing off the world (it's very pretty!) FFXIV is as bad as the reviews out there say it is. I haven't played it in over two weeks at this point. I think I have until the end of November before the initial "free trial" ends, at which time I'll most likely shut off my account.

Instead, I've been playing more FFXI, ironically... The Abyssea atmas have finally got me started on doing the nation quests, getting rank 10 Bastok, working on Windy right now and I hope to finish Sandy by the end of the month. I've also been doing a LOT more in FFXI then I had planned, partly because of the way Abyssea is structured where the longer you stay in, the higher the rewards and... well, wanting to beat the silly time stones things.

I've gotten a lot of good gear from Abyssea and stuff so far... including the Pluviale, lots of seals for DNC, SCH, and even completing my DNC "AF3" set (though I still need two more feet seals). Big thanks to DO and everyone else who stayed after exp last Sunday to farm these. I know that DO was capped merits like me and was just there to try to get drops.

So... now for the good... or bad news, depending on how you look at it. I just accepted a new job at a very fast-paced company, so... it'll take me a few months to build things up to the point where I can automate my job. Which means... no more weekday events before 7:30pm for the most part. Or just assume I'll be late. This is pretty much the same schedule as when I was in grad school!

Which should be fine since FFXI is dying, right? ;)