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FF14 – Aspects of WoW I Hope They Implement

Kirei — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:16:50 +0000

Having played FF11 for 2 years (2004-2006) I’d like to offer Square Enix some advice about their upcoming FF14. Most of this is from WoW because let’s be honest. They did something right.

Linked Auction Houses

While there were a few AHs linked in FFXI (Sand’Oria and Rabao come to mind) I would hope that they link all AHs together between the main cities. It would keep you from having to have alts in all the cities, keep you from having to ride the airship back and forth, and help lower level players find items they need to survive. I can’t tell you how many times my ditsy self has forgotten an ingredient for cooking and had to travel all the way back to Sand’Oria just to get the item. Very time consuming.

Have More Solo Content

Some of us have jobs, lives, families, friends, etc outside of gaming. Sometimes we only have an hour.. or maybe two to log onto a game and do something. FFXI did not allow that. There was nothing you could do in game for an hour or two. You couldn’t level; you couldn’t continue on with the story. You had to dedicate at least 3 hours in order to do anything important when logging in.

Crafting and Synthesis Changes

I can’t tell you… how horrible it was to finally get a big drop from a god or dragon, w/e.. to only lose the drop in a failed synthesis because SE decided to spit in your direction, or because the moon wasn’t in the 3rd quarter of Ares, or because a bird tooted in the ballpark of your general area. It sucked. Change the synthesis (WoW term: Crafting) to not lose items based on LUCK. Fail them all you want, but don’t make us lose the items!!

Larger Drop Percentages

This, I must say was the biggest reason I left. Hours.. and I do mean HOURS of your time on fighting Nidhogg to end up with a.. Fire Crystal. A god damn crystal. (WoW term: ..like Linen Cloth) The amount of time you put into FFXI you never got back an equal reward. Never. I played for two years.. and never got back an equal rewards for my time playing. Yes I was in an HNMLS. (WoW term: ..erm Top Raiding Guild)

Make Farming Easier

I’m not saying everyone should have millions and millions of gil (gold), but make it so we can at least survive on our own. Back in my day the best way to make money was to camp Notorious Monsters, NMs, (Rares and Elites) hope they drop the big money prize and sell it off. Then there were the BCNMs (..small instances) again.. hope they drop the big money prize and not just a crystal and sell it off. None of this could be done by yourself unless you were camping a lower level NM so you had to get a group of people and split the profits. It was.. annoying.

Make Side Quests Fun.. Not Just a Rep Grind

Quests! Side Quests! I don’t want to give this Elvaan 200 bat wings I bought off the AH for a quest just because I need the rep! More side quests please

You may look at this list and think.. “Wow that game sucked why did you play it so long?” Because there were some things that FFXI did right. Things that WoW doesn’t have.

The Story

When I logged onto WoW I had no idea what the story was. Never played any of the previous Warcrafts. I just knew there was a war going on and we all wanted to kill each other. I didn’t know what started the war, who the leaders were, why we were still fighting, nothing. I knew nothing. I honestly still didn’t know anything until TBC hit and I actually went and looked it up on the Internet. I wanted to know more about Slyvanas and from there I learned about Thrall and more about the races. Point is, I had to go out of my way to find the story.

The story is right there in front of you in FFXI. Why you’re fighting, who the big bad is. You’re literally moving the story a long as you go through missions. You’re getting cut scenes left and right. You feel involved.

The Connections

Being forced to make friends to even level caused you to have connections. I still have friends I talk to from FFXI. I love them to death.

Many factors forced you to stay on your main character. To be known by your main. The ability to change classes was amazing. No need to log onto an alt. Speaking of alts in order to have another character you had to pay an extra $1 a month per alt. This really helped my altaholic attitude. (25+ characters on WoW <.<) This forced you to gain a good reputation. You couldn’t just switch to a different character with your ninja loot and start fresh. At least not as easily as you can in WoW.

This is not to say people don’t make connections in WoW. Some do. Some find very deep connections. However I think that FFXI has a greater success rate. lol

If Square Enix learns from their mistakes I think FF14 will be a great MMO.

The Game That Started It All

Kirei — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:42:02 +0000

This is a shared topic from Blog Azeroth about RPG Nostalgia. The forum topic can be found here along with other bloggers posts.

We all started somewhere. For me, there was Duck Hunt. I had the big orange gun that I couldn’t hit anything with until my older brother pulled me closer to the TV and said, “Put the gun on the TV and shoot.” Ah, the first instance of cheating at a game. Thanks bro! Then there was Mario. Getting Yoshi for the first time, discovering secret areas, and of course beating a game and feeling complete and proud of myself.

Those games didn’t give me the love I have for gaming though. Those games didn’t give me the addiction to RPGs. One game did that. This game I consider to be the best game of it’s time. Best game ever really. I would still play it again. Over and over again. It’s that good. Of course, I’m talking about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The story, the world, the freedom! I wasn’t limited to a line on a map of where I had to go. Oh no, there was this open space that gave me choice! Granted I did have to follow the story line and I couldn’t skip ahead or anything, but the game tricked me into thinking that I chose to see the Gorons or the Zoras. I never had that freedom before.

I still know the songs by heart and recognize the music. I remember all the secret areas and how to kill every boss. I remember more from this game than an MMO (FFXI) I played for 2 years. Sheik, Saria, and even the mention of Princess Ruto still bring smiles to my face. Epona! I squeal like a little girl every time I see her. The damn owl with the weird head. The punk Kokiri that refused to let Link see the Big Deku Tree. “You don’t even have a swoooord.” Whiny brat. All of these were memorable characters.

This game. This game brought the RPG addict out of me. This game is the reason I still play RPGs and other games. If I could have a Link shrine with a complimentary ocarina I would.

Mac vs PC WoW Style

Kirei — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:43:00 +0000

I love the Mac vs PC commercials. My favorite so far is when Mac calls out PC on all the funding they did for advertisements instead of fixing Vista. XD Good times. While checking out WoW.com I saw this as their Moviewatch: Alliance vs. Horde. Linky here. Anyway I thought about the other parodies I’ve seen of the commercials.

First the Alliance vs. Horde:

Be sure to check out Episode 2!

Second, South Park characters Mac vs. PC:

And an odd Halo Style one:

Off Topic: Loss of Identity

Kirei — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:35:00 +0000

This is more of a rant I suppose. I thought about adding links to psychological studies and whatever but really.. who cares.

Today I wondered to myself: When did I lose my identity?! You see I play Gears of War with my clan. I also play it a lot more with my BF than anyone else. Typically, if I’m on then we are playing together. However for the last week or so we haven’t been playing together. The game stopped being fun to him so I continued on my solo way. I began getting invites from his friends in the clan and I really enjoyed playing with them. That is.. until I was constantly asked where Fox was. (BF’s gamer tag is Gray Fox) What’s Fox doing? Is Fox going to hop on? Ask Fox when he’s going to play?

Forgive me, but I assumed that when you were inviting MY gamer tag to play you actually wanted to play with ME. Weird assumption eh? I soon realized I was only being invited to either get Fox on or to find out when he was going to be on. To make it worse my spot next in line to play was taken by other players that logged on after myself. I’ve gotten so fed up I don’t believe I will play with them anymore.

I feel as though I lost my identity. I no longer was Kirei Fu. I was Fox’s GF. I was Fox’s secretary. They didn’t want to play with me, they wanted to get to Fox. Not only does that honestly hurt my feelings, but I began to wonder just when did I lose my name? Was it my own doing?

Yes, yes I believe it was. I allowed it to happen. Every time I went to fetch Fox for them. Every time I handed over the mic so Fox could talk to them for a minute. Every time I relayed something back and forth. I set up the pattern. It was my own fault.

Fox plays WoW as well. I mention him often as Kosycus my partner in crime. His brother used to “borrow” his character to help level up his own. He used it so much that when Fox would actually log on he was greeted as his brother. Nothing frustrated him so much as that. He lost his character identity. He wasn’t his own person. Finally after quite a few weeks of being greeted as his brother he snapped and made the announcement in guild and on vent I believe, “Kosycus is MY character, NOT my brothers. I let him borrow my account, but Kos has and always will be MINE.” No one called him his brother again.

It may seem silly when reading, but I truly believe that everyone that plays an online game can relate. What if all the people began looking at you as a different person than you are?