I played a couple of weeks of Final Fantasy and disliked it. I honestly don’t care how many players it has or what lies ahead, nothing about it appealed to me.
And seeing all theses posts on GD I have to wonder - did nobody try Elder Scrolls Online?
Take a look at some of the positives and negatives of both.
Story: according to many people, the overarching story of FF is better than WoW and better than ESO. I can’t speak personally to that, since I didn’t play FF enough to figure out the lore. ESO was based around the Elder Scrolls single player games (including Skyrim) but the lore is a bit hit-and-miss. This didn’t really bother me all that much, I like the localised story without feeling I was missing anything.
General game: ESO has a higher game rating so it tends to include more adult content (FF is Teen). It doesn’t have cute Japanese-style graphics, no people with rabbit ears in school uniforms, its more earthy and mature, which I prefer personally. And I like the look of the game, its architecture, geography and world design. FF has flight, ESO does not but it does have a very extensive travel system.
How you pay to play: FF is, like WoW, a subscription based game where you pay for the initial game and a subscription and expansions. ESO can be played for free once you buy the game. Paying a sub gives benefits (to attract people to pay it) but it is neither mandatory nor absolutely essential.
Professions: IMO ESO’s crafting is better than FF; the gear you can make can be excellent, it has a superb dye system and its a lot of fun. Even fishing can be fun (and profitable). And its easy to learn and use. Although gathering doesn’t have the shared nodes of WoW and FF, the world is absolutely littered with herb and ore nodes and I never found a moment’s difficulty in gathering anything I needed.
I’ll try keeping this a bit short - I much preferred the combat system in ESO, the UI is clean and uncluttered, movement is fairly smooth. However, I dislike there being no central AH (ESO is a mercantile guild gaming system), it has megaservers which make gaming a little slower for anyone outside the US. I love the ability to attack civilians or try to pick their pockets, of being able to fence loot you steal, they have an enormous PvP zone (Cyrodiil) and other PvP options, ESO releases content very regularly, possibly faster than any other MMO at the moment. ESO’s mail system is a pest and you don’t have a bank for each character but an account bank for all your characters. However, if you have a sub your characters each have an endless back for your materials.
Oh and PS: Player housing. Yes, you have to pay for the houses but the game gives you free Crowns if you are a subscriber and you can use those to buy a house. And they are instanced, unlike FF’s which are these weird huge neighbourhoods that apparently its really hard to get a house in.
So, on the whole I prefer ESO to Final Fantasy. I’m just surprised more people don’t choose to play it as an alternative to WoW.
