Densha82

Some things that I consider "innovative" and/or "unique" about FFXIV:

1) Armory system. This is the class system, whereby changing your weapon or tool you become, instantly, a different class. All spells/abilities you earn are set into an overall pool and from that pool you can pick and choose what abilities to set for yourself, regardless of class. There are few restrictions, with the major one being that if you set a weapon skill, say for spears but you're using hand-to-hand weapons to level Pugilist, you can't use the spear skill.

2) Crafting. I can't be specific because there is little publicly released info on FFXIV crafting.

3) Combat. There are official videos of the combat and from that you can tell it's a bit different than your average WoW style game. There's a stamina bar that constantly fills and basically determines the rate at which you can attack, depending on what skill you're using (weaker skills use less stamina, for example). Also, it's evident that auto-attack is completely gone, which in itself is sort of a revolutionary thing!

There are a few other things I'd like to say, but can't. I'd just say that if you're less and less interesting in WoW formula games, even good ones, then keep an eye on FFXIV.

I think we know enough here to know whether this game is going to meet our expectations or not. For example, at first I thought TOR was going to be a completely different beast than anything else on the market. As the press releases and interviews only focused on the story, though, I got nervous. As an MMO player that usually doesn't care *at all* about story, I wanted to know the mechanics.

Well, we know the mechanics now thanks to that battle video - it's tank/heal/dps, it's "1 2 3 4" hot keys, it's casting bars, basically it's everything that we already have except it'll be wrapped up in a shiny voice-over'd package.

North American developers are in a rut, plain and simple, and TOR belongs in that category too. If "it's like every other MMO but WITH STORY" is how this can be summed up then count me out.

The Old Republic has been a lot of hype up until now. It's Bioware's job to get everyone excited of course, but when all of that anticipation is followed up with a video that looks like it could be from any number of MMOs out today I think people have the right to sort of rebel against it.

Up until now, I think many of us were wondering how the big, epic stories would fit into an MMO type world, and perhaps thought of the possibility of a revolution of what an MMO could be. Now that's basically shattered - it's tank and spank like we've been doing for years.

I'm sure it will be a good game, but I'm also sure that a game like Final Fantasy XIV will be far more innovative. It's just a sad realization that no, ToR will not be heralding in the next generation of MMOs.

Looks like the biggest innovation is the minimap not being in the upper right corner. I'm not really looking forward to this game since I had a feeling this is how it was gonna be (I've already got FFXIV preordered) but I'm still a bit surprised about how blandly it plays out.

If only the PvMP were as fun as it was back in book 14 (vol 1) I'd still be playing. The PvE "freep" side is just so shallow and boring after a while.

Wow, Massively can't help but approve an oppressive, truth-burying government's black-out of all entertainment venues for a day of forced mourning. I just hope this article was written by some 13-year-old who just doesn't understand how the world works.

I can't wait *not* to buy STO.

Hopefully they pull it off better than LOTRO's monster play.

As someone who doesn't play Second Life and never signed up for or downloaded the "game", my perception of it is that it's not really a "game" but just a place for people who admit they are losers/lonely to try and interact with others in a "second life" online. Why "play" this game as a glorified Facebook when there's World of Warcraft where you actually get to do something interesting? Also, SL seems to really bring to life the worst fetish groups the internet has to offer... who wants to play in a game like that (aside from the aforementioned fetishists)?

I played LOTRO for two years. That's two level 60 freeps and four rank 6 through 9 creeps worth of play time. What LOTRO lacks right now is not a vision or goal, but the team to accomplish it with. They really need to double the size of their dev team to really accomplish anything more than what we've seen over the last year. I'd love to see large, free range lands but I don't think that will ever happen - they seem intent on condensing their content, having friendly camps every 100 feet, and really leading the characters down a defined leveling path.

I'll probably never go back to LOTRO, but if they ever do revamp the game somehow to be more epic, more open, and with more PvP I'd most certainly have to reconsider that position.