AstralEcho

Meh. I was really excited to see how this game would turn out when it was first announced, but over the years my hype has really died down. Between FC's cash shop models in AO and AoC, plus the fact that all of TSW's trailers have only shown the same few areas (something I noticed about AoC as well, and look how their world turned out), I think I'll pass. At least until I hear more about the game from testers.

FFXIV. The game has made massive strides forward, has an update frequency that surpasses Rift, and has a bright future ahead of it. Too many people seem to overlook that, plus the ways in which it proves itself different from the standard modern MMO, and yet continue to lament the lack of games breaking away from the mold.

Hopefully there will be some real willingness in the community to give the game a second chance with 2.0.

Bring back one shots, plxkthx.

As far as lore-based articles go, this one in particular feels a bit poorly researched.

For one, you're missing an entire city as far as those that exist in lore but can't be reached yet: Sharlayan. This one even ties a bit into the original main storyline, and the ongoing primal content.

Two, there's a good deal of information about Ala Mihgo and Ishgard between the grand company quests released in patch 1.20 and the job quests in patch 1.21 (Monk and Dragoon in particular). I think this one strikes me as particularly bothersome because the article spins the two cities as being a lot less fleshed out than they've become in recent months.

Overall this one does a poor job of representing the game and its world compared to the previous city features, and it isn't for lack of information.

I was debating resubbing last night in light of the changes to the market, as that was the one barrier preventing me from buying my own instanced city to farm AI raids...but every time I resub, it's out of hope for the future of the game moreso than any interest in the current state of it. With how long it has been taking them to get the engine out, plus now the added work on rebalancing and the new player experience (which themselves have been in development for at least a year or more), I feel like the best approach now is to just wait until it happens.

Still, I'm glad to see the game continues to see active development this far into its life. AO was easily my favorite MMO of all time for a multitude of reasons, and I'll be more than happy to return once there's a more solid release date for the new features.

I started MMOs with EverQuest shortly after Ruins of Kunark released, at the prodding of a friend of mine. He was the closest thing I really had to a mentor, providing me with some starting gear and getting me roughly associated with the game, but I still ended up having to discover most of the intricacies myself.

Five years later, not only was I mentoring my now-fiance, but also the very same friend who brought me into the genre. He's grown fairly complacent with features like super-detailed maps and quest trackers, and god forbid there's ever a game without either, he'd act like it's the end of the world. It actually reached a point where he was so far-gone that it was no longer fun to play with him. After all, I can only stomach being asked what continent Silithis is on so many times in a week.

I don't expect it (anymore), but that doesn't mean I don't want to see it. Unfortunately in the last half-decade I haven't seen companies willing to hand out punishments for severe harassment cases that are entirely unrelated to RP, and if they can't even do that then I don't see any enforcement heading towards RP servers any time soon.

I don't think there's anything archaic at all about the job quests. To start, obtaining a job in the first place isn't exactly difficult. I can't say how a level 30 character would fare doing their initial quest solo, but the initial quests are far from anything that require a complete team of competent players. In fact you can get by with a small party all the way up until your 4th piece of job-specific equipment. If you absolutely despise grouping (and I'd ask why you're playing an MMO, specifically the cousin of one of the most notoriously group-oriented MMOs in the first place if that were the case), you can do most of the quests solo if you have some levels behind you, and the jobs are hardly a prerequisite for leveling.

I'm personally fond of the idea that things should be gated behind relevant content. I liked that in order to unlock the last five levels to cap in FFXI, you had to complete a quest that would test your individual capability with your class. I like that in order to obtain the final abilities and equipment used in party-oriented play as a job, you're tasked with completing the last quests in a competent party. This isn't archaic, it's logical.

Even if you have no friends or a linkshell to get help from, there are plenty of people shouting in Ul'dah all day. The fights aren't nearly as difficult as they were a week ago when the patch hit, now that people know the strategies and have unlocked their own jobs to assist with. Personally I think the job quests were wonderfully implemented - it breathed a bit more life into the pick-up grouping game, and brought the game that much closer to the social experience I've come to expect from the Final Fantasy family of MMOs.

@Jef Reahard

Thanks =) I'll keep my eye on it, as the setting really grabs my attention like none other, just need to get my hands on it so I know whether or not the meat of the game does too >.<

Something inside me hopes that they took some inspiration from the Anarchy Online book of world-building moreso than the Age of Conan one.

Hrm. So I'm getting a bit of a mixed signal from you here Jef, as you first criticize the game's linearity (at least in it's opening sequence), but then praise its more MMO-esque elements such as crafting. While the system sounds interesting enough and I've always been a fan of Ragnar Tornquist's style of storytelling, I'm also really tired of...well, you said it best: "combat lobbies".

TSW to me looks intriguing but nothing has really convinced me that it'll be a full fledged persistent MMO world so much as a bunch of disjointed mission areas, open world and instanced both. Do you think this game changes it up enough for someone like me to treat it as more than just a quest/dungeon grinder?