A peek at Gridania and Ul'dah in Final Fantasy XIV

I'm so tired of LL* I could scream. I really hope they unlock the other areas soon so I can have a change of scenery.

*Does not refer to Leaping Lizzy

Been in the beta for about a week, had high hopes, but the combat is just soooo bad. The main storyline really is good but that combat is wonky....don't think I can get past that.

"although perhaps a bitter pill for the testers not yet able to play these cities."

Heck no. I love having stuff I haven't seen waiting for me on release. If they put the cities in the beta I'll feel guilty for not rushing to test them like a good little beta monkey. ;-) As it is now I can just pick a different starting city when the game comes out and poof, stuff I haven't done before!

Anyone who complains about slow combat has only watched alpha or early beta videos and judged it on that. It's so much better now it's not even funny. TP moves really mean something in beta 3 and I'm finding that I'm actually using all of my abilities regularily (except haymaker because Jarring strike is the same thing but with a stun) and I never run out of stamina and spend time waiting for it to regenerate. They also spruced up the battle animations and stamina gauge and made weapon skills a lot more flashy.

IMO this game has a ton of potential and I can see myself playing it for years. I just hope they fix the server stability issues and input lag which I have no doubt they'll do considering how massive of a leap it's taken in performance in those areas throughout the beta. If people think SE's handling of this beta is "bad" I'd recommend you check out how they handled FFXI

http://zeusls.llima.net/download/ffxiupdatehistory.html

Here's hoping for another experience like FFXI.

@Joker

What are you talking about man? I never said I was in alpha lol. Seriously just simmer down there little fanboy. I'm just describing my feelings of the combat atm. Destructoid & 1Up have published reviews of the beta saying similar things about the combat AND they add in how bad the UI is. Are they trolls to? For some reason you think I want this game to fail but I don't, however, lying to people about the UI and the combat is something I just want do.

@Russ
The combat is not what I would call clunky at the moment. I would say it is not as polished as the combat in a game like WoW. Honestly, without an autoattack system and the current interface lag issues its hard to compare with other games. The interface lag that is there in just about every aspect of the beta just serves to make combat not always flow very well. Right now XI's combat beats out XIVs.

The UI is clunky, and some of the issues it has are not effected by the interface lag. That being said, the game has come a LONG way since Alpha. Heck, there were significant improvements between Beta1 and Beta 2 and 3. Its unfair to really give a review of any system or even the game world when we are in an extremely confined test bed situation. There is an internal build where everything is where it should be, and the beta build where mobs are mostly just there for us to kill and the area is extremely narrowed.

For this reason getting out of LL and into another area will be a godsend. We need an announcement of when and how long Open Beta will start and last. With the game being released in 4 weeks, we need some movement.