FFXI vs WoW

[invaderrizz]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: invaderrizz
My personal MMOcrack of choice is City of Villains. I <3 the character creator. Leveling can be slow, but when you get in on an 8 person team, it goes by in a breeze.

Do they ever have free trials for that game? I was bored last weekend and wanted to try it out but they required a purchase. I am done buy games I havent tried out before hand.

don't bother. its garbage. its complete grinding. no story at all, all the quests and mobs are literally the same.

I've been playing the "Good Vs. Evil" (CoH+CoV) trial for a week now, and I ordered the real thing on Saturday and am anxiously awaiting its delivery tomorrow. My experience so far has been nothing like you described, of course I've only reached level eight as I've been testing different types of characters to see what I liked.

Claws/regeneration stalker FTW.

It can start to feel like grinding after a while. For me, it was at about level 15, except for my two Masterminds. Pets set on autokill FTW. But when you get in a party, it all changes. A healthy guild system with PVP built right into it. Big 8 person raids that got me nearly an entire level of xp at level 30 (it only goes up to 50, but you can keep getting missions). Lots of PVP. Giant monsters. Free updates. An awesome character creator. And they never really tell you the deeper parts of the story. I had a headscratching moment when I realized one of the enemy groups were there for the sole purpose of being turned into aliens.

And I wuvses my energy/kinetics corruptor. Liberty server also FTW.

 

[Zbox]

I like how people buy in to the thought/saying that WoW is casual friendly, MMO light, etc...

After having experienced all end-game content as of now, four lvl 60s, one of which hit rank 14, all I have to say is _bullcrap_. End-game WoW is nothing but a job. Rep grinds, timesinks, and moneysinks. You really got to love the fact that they limit the clearing of high end instances to once a week so that it takes 3 months to half a year to completely gear up a character. It's freaking ridiculous. Also, the honor system was probably THE worst system ever introduced in an MMO to date. Another sour note in WoW is the fact that you'd expect a company with so much income to be able to keep servers and playing conditions optimal - something Blizzard continues to fail miserably at.

I like a lot of things about WoW, but unfortunately I dislike even more things about it. If they would remove the BS I'd be more than happy to return as a player. The first step in a right direction would be kicking Jeff Kaplan in the junk because he deserves it. He's become everything that he spoke out against in EQ.

 

[Aftermath]

Zbox: It IS a "lite" MMORPG because most of your casual players don't go in for grinding and timesinks at all. If it takes you until level 60 to start getting to the real grinds and boring parts, that's a pretty casual MMORPG.

You'll start much, much worse in something like FFXI. Try standing around town for 5+ hours because you're a Dark Knight at level 32, and it's literally impossible to level up alone. You need a party. Oh, but you wont get any invites unless you have all of the best possible armor and your subjob is leveled up properly, so get cracking on that Warrior job before you start considering leveling up your Dark Knight job.

Pontiflex: Ignorant statement. You're one of the ones who hardly got to know the game before you started spewing off about it. Complaints about the game are expected, but that's just lame.

 

[Zbox]

That just highlights failed game mechanics (grouping issues) in FFXI and doesn't make it any more hardcore than WoW by any means. If anything that just places FFXI years behind in the MMO market-- it actually sounds very much like everquest 6-7 years ago. Have fun trying to get a group back then if you played a class like a warrior. People would spend hours in town trying to find a group, many times logging hours later having accomplished nothing. SOE (verant at the time) recognized the system for what it was (crap) and made improvements.

Still, I will never say WoW is casual friendly. And most people do ride some form of a grind whether it is rinse and repeat instances at the low level to instances like strath/scholo/brs (which is not anywhere near the current end-game). Have fun running those 50+ times each if you want a junk tier 0 set, then get ready to spend far too much in gold and time on a tier 0.5 set which was described by blizzard as an upgraded "casual" set. Shenanigans. Call WoW the greatest MMORPG of all time for all I care, but don't call it casual friendly or MMO "lite."

WoW is more like a progressive MMO with plenty of retarded timesinks from beginning to high-end. (adios rested xp post 60 anyone?)

 

[Aftermath]

Well, I respectfully disagree. I look at it from the perspective of the casual gamer going into the MMORPG landscape in the first place. WoW is generally "easy." The quest givers are easy to find. The levels come easy (comparitively.) You don't need to have the best equipment, or to rely on parties. I single handedly soloed a Dwarf Paladin to level 32, only joining a few groups to complete quests that would've taken far longer for me to do alone. (That is to say, I would've had to wait until a much higher level to do it.) I can stop and start World of Warcraft at any time of the day or night, only play for a few hours at a time (if that), and still make relative progress.

I think that's fair to call it casual, since your true "casual" gamer is highly unlikely to reach the high levels in any of these MMORPGs. An MMORPG is, by function, a huge waste of time and money (to be honest.) They're not really for people with lives in the first place. (And I confess here again on these forums to having 100+ days of time logged in to Final Fantasy XI, so don't think I'm calling anybody out about it.) Just because the high level stuff gets really difficult and time consuming (which gives the people with lots of free time some extra stuff to do), doesn't make the entire game generally "hardcore."

 

[sonoma1993]

You'll start much, much worse in something like FFXI. Try standing around town for 5+ hours because you're a Dark Knight at level 32, and it's literally impossible to level up alone. You need a party. Oh, but you wont get any invites unless you have all of the best possible armor and your subjob is leveled up properly, so get cracking on that Warrior job before you start considering leveling up your Dark Knight job.

Pontiflex: Ignorant statement. You're one of the ones who hardly got to know the game before you started spewing off about it. Complaints about the game are expected, but that's just lame.[/quote]

standing around in town in ffxi is very boring. I was just standing around for the past 2hrs in jeuno shouting for help to try to get a coffer key from castle zavhal bailey but no one offer to help. It hard nowadays to find people that will help you out in this game.

 

[Imaginer]

If you were to start playing FFXI, be sure you have some friends go in with you or otherwise its like other posters said before me. It sucks going in standalone and trying to play the game by yourself. In this essemce if you have a solid group of friends, its not bad at all.

The autotranslate is just a bunch of preprogrammed phrases to ease communication amongst those japanese players but i find that some phrases are lacking. SE needs to continually add more phrases or have some way of submitting suggestion phrases to add to the translator.

And speaking of which, the menus to access them is a bit cumbersome. In fact, most of the menus are just that. It feels more like a console game rather than a PC game but then again, this game was designed for use with just a controller (using the keyboard to type). I can play the game well with just my USB Saitek PC controller and it felt very natural.

But yeah, if one wants to start FFXI, bring a friend or some with you or have established friends.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: BlancoNino

Well when you hit lvl 60 with WoW it feels like a full-time job too.

If any game you play feels like a "full-time job," I suggest you immediate quit and go study up on how to actually play a "game."

 

[Aikouka]

I used to play FFXI a bit, but the game just felt so awkward. Also, Square's policies regarding characters and accounts are horridly unfair to people who decide to stop and then start again. I decided to try it out once more, but I had stopped playing for more than a year. I entered the information to get my account back (because Square permanently disables your account) and they said it never existed. What a bummer eh, now if I want to play FFXI again, I gotta buy another copy of the game.

I still play World of Warcraft and I have since the game came out. I've done end-game PVE, PVP up to R10 and now I just level alts all day long. End-game PVE is repetative and boring. Once you've killed a boss, it's all for loot no matter what anyone says. Most people don't even actually think about boss kills, it's all about reading strategies and getting everyone into the "dance."

PVP is god awful. I spent up to 12 hours a day "pugging" honor and getting about 350,000 honor a week (very high for my server if you're not on a team) and I actually displaced some of the members of the PVP team. Man, they weren't happy that a rank 3 outranked them .

I actually find more solace in leveling now. Except that I play on a PVP sever and damn, people are mean sometimes . I get to learn everything about a class, which really helps when it comes to understanding proper roles in PVE and how to combat a class or work with a class in PVP. You'll find that some of the most aggravating things in games like World of Warcraft are the people that don't know what they're talking about. For example, I was on my 60 Dwarf Priest doing some PUG (Pick-Up Group) Onyxia. I kept having people sending me tells yelling at me to put Fear Ward on the tank... not realizing that I already did it and that Fear Ward has a 30 second cooldown! God, if I could only slap people across TCP-IP.

Really, the only community issues in WoW are the idiots that plague servers. There's a lot of high-quality players around and a lot of nice people to meet. I know I was thinking about switching to a PVE server to avoid the annoyances of my now constant leveling, but I don't think I can leave my friends or I'll have nothing but my leveling.

I gotta say, I'm leveling a mage right now (42 at the moment), and my god is he "hax." I solo elites like they're candy!

So umm, in short... I'd say try finding a new venue in WoW to entertain yourself with. The game really does have a lot of aspects that make it easier than other games, but in turn, those aspects make it more enjoyable.

EDIT: Worst part about FFXI ... trying to get on the same server as your friends when starting out...

"Hey, you on Bahamut!?"
"No, the game put me on Odin!"
"Okay, stay there, I'll reroll!"