MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER
(Posted 2004-01-12 18:53:06 by basscomm)

I hadn't really gotten back into the whole 'pay to play a game with other
people on the network for a monthly fee' frame of mind since the XBand
folded, and I was torn between Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft. Both of
them promised that they would keep me occupied for very nearly forever, and
since Blizzard has this habit of taking 30 or 40 years to get a game ready,
I decided to see what Final Fantasy had to offer. 

Now I've never actually played a online role playing game, much less one
that promised to be both massive _and_ multiplayer. My experience with
online gaming has mostly been in the form of playing Unreal Tournament 2003
against people who are much better than me, so I was intrigued by the
premise of not actually having anything really defined to do. Just sort of
existing. That sounded right up my alley, I exist multiple times a day!

To be quite honest, Final Fantasy XI isn't really a whole lot different
from this free online game [ http://www.progressquest.com ] in a couple of
respects: nearly all of the quests that I have done are 'go here, fetch/do
that' quests, and you gain levels.

That's pretty much the gist of the game. There's a lot of minutae that I
could go into, but I don't really need to. 

There are only two real problems that I see with this game:

1. Playing with friends. I know why Square-Enix did what they did. I know
that if you let everyone just pick what server they wanted to be in, there
would be servers full of people and servers devoid of people. So things are
balanced out. Great! But, if I buy the game and my friend does the same,
there's only about a 1/28 chance that we will end up in the same server.
Now, of course, I have somewhat of an interest in playing an online game
with someone that I know from Real Life. Square-Enix recognized this and
let people buy World Passes that allow a player to be created in whatever
server they choose. But that's the thing. You can't move your character,
you have to create a new one (which costs an extra dollar a month). So one
of you ends up playing a new character while the other one is cruising
along with whatever one he was originally playing with. Not a real big
deal, but if the level difference is too big between the players, then
neither one of them will get a decent amount of experience, effectiely
penalizing you for buying that world pass so you and your friend can play
together.

2. Fees. There is a fee with everything about this game. Want more than one
character? There's a fee. Want to play a card game? There's a fee. Want
your significant other to play the game too? You have to buy two copies of
the game and two accounts. Bleh. Well, at least I have the option of not
paying for the card game. That saves me $0.25 a week!

One of the more interesting things is the auto-translate feature, letting
North American and Japanese people play in the same server and, to some
degree, communicate with each other. It's kind of a pain to use, but it
gets the job done, especially in a non battle situation. I wouldn't expect
to be able to carry on a conversation with someone like that, but certainly
saying, "Thanks," or, "Watch out!" is doable.

Now, admittedly, I've only been able to sink about a week into this game,
so my opinion may change slightly as I invest more time into it. If it
turns out that this game isn't as fun as advertised, it'll probably happen
during my 30 day free trial, and then I can give World of Warcraft a try,
assuming Blizzard releases it before the Sun goes nova, that is.


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There are 4 comments on this post:

Comment #1 by  [EvL]Dakota (  joshuacasey@hotmail.com ) on 2004-01-14
17:39:27
The only other complaint I have with the game is the controls. It seems
like the game was designed to be used with a conroller instead of mouse and
keyboard. Your also limited on what you can can change keyboard controls
to. Almost every hot key has to be used by pressing ctrl or alt. (Example
ctrl+e opens your equipment menu) I would guess that using a contoller
would be more comfortable when your playing a game that never ends but I
feel like my reaction time is better with a keyboard and mouse. 

Other than these complaints (this one and previous ones mentioned) I think
the game is awesome.


Comment #2 by  Ray (  ) on 2004-01-19 02:19:25
I didn't realize this was already out for the PC until I saw it at EA Games
this weekend.  


Comment #3 by  basscomm (  ) on 2004-01-19 05:34:13
I had forgotten all about it also until a few weeks ago. Apparently they
managed to release it this past October without me knowing it.


Comment #4 by Lil' ol' me ( kailelle@hotmail.com ) on 2004-02-03 03:18:00
I know what you mean...  my boyfriend and I have to go out and buy yet
another copy of the friggin' game this weekend just so we can play at the
same time - from the same apartment.  Does't make sense to me.  I guess
they end up getting their money in the end, as I'm sure was what they
intended. :


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