What's a good MMO?

I don’t think this would hold your attention full-time, but if you want to veg out on collecting things Rift is a decent option. They have a huge amount of collectible sets called artifacts, which show up as sparkly things you pick up in outdoor zones. And since every artifact’s location is hand-selected, you can kill lots of time listening to music and rambling around the weird corners every map inevitably has.

They also have pretty good housing. Wildstar’s controls for moving objects around struck me as a more polished version of Rift, specifically. (I hear there’s an addon to make fine-tuning easier.)

The game shows its age and it’s less a story than a moderately interesting world with a thin narrative, but I still end up back there at least a few weeks each year. It runs on a variant of WoW’s old talent trees, but if you’re not into that there are preset builds that’ll give you an intro feel of things.

Fortunately, I’m one of those people that can kind of… mindlessly grind until I’m where I want to be.

I did manage to get the game downloaded - got logged in, started playing. Made an Arcanist Miqo’te, which is fun. Arcanist feels more or less like mage so far, though I feel like I might regret this choice later on since I’m not very sociable and I heard the game gets hard.

Unless you’re doing Savages, I think FFXIV end-game is pretty easy compared to WoW Mythics.

If you ever decide to heal, just realize that only healing is a bad thing. Heals are tuned that they pack a punch, and dungeons will take forever if healers don’t damage along the way and just heal as needed, at least early on.

Yeah. Housing is such a huge thing and helps RP a ton. A lot of guilds run taverns every single week, and I’ve had more fun with them than WoW “tavern” RP. Guild houses are a major part of their personality, and running open nights is a big thing to bring people in their homes and showcase their work. Because of it, tavern owners tend to be super into it and helpful.

Half the time on Ghaoithe, I just walk into a tavern and say “I’m new here and would like to meet people,” and the bartenders take it from there. The other night, Balmung’s Epoch Tavern forced a bunch of people like me sitting by themselves to all sit at a table together and talk. I made friends. It was fun.

Arcanist is a good start for wanting to solo. You get the choice of two Jobs at level 30, Scholar (healer with a fairy pet), or Summoner (DPS caster with Egis, smaller versions of Elemental Primals). The Summoner gets a tank pet that will do wonders in helping you progress solo. Think of it like a Warlock with a Voidwalker pet, but even sturdier.

On the other hand, the Main Story Quests are all designed to be solo’d. The only time you have to group is when you’re required to run a dungeon or Trial (group instances vs one big boss). There’s plenty of video resources if you don’t want to go into the group content blind, though.

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That doesn’t sound half bad, really. Definitely going Summoner, since I’m a selfish turd and the thought of healing someone is antithetical to who I am as a person.

I’m glad stuff is designed to be solo’d. I know that’s strange when you play an MMO, but when I’m playing a game the -last- thing I want to do is to have to cooperate with other people to proceed xD I’m fine with avoiding doing certain aspects of the game, but the leveling itself is kind of… a big part to not be able to proceed with.

Dare I ask?

Edit --> I just summoned a carbuncle and my first instinct is to want to hug it. This game is too cute.

Savages are essentially the FF version of WoW Mythics. You have Hard, Extreme, and then Savage at high-end. The good part with a lot of them is that “Trials” that are usually Savage raids are just the boss. No or very little trash. Cool music. On the whole, FF fights are really well designed, partially because their engine can handle cooler physics things than WoW does, or at least the devs get creative with visuals in making them.

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I can believe that. This is the prettiest MMO I’ve played so far, so I’m quite happy with that. It’s nice to have a combat-style that’s familiar to me instead of completely abandoning the hotkey style and going full action like some I’ve played have tried.

Anyway here’s Brute Justice

Stormblood has the best boss battle theme of any MMO in recent memory.

Other fun facts, if you’re a music junkie, open-world zones (cities included) have multiple themes based on location and time of day.

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I haven’t done any SB content yet since I quit not long after it was announced last time, but that theme is dope. FF music is usually good, but I guess that’s not surprising when you have proteges of Nobuo Uematsu working for you.

Also, RDM is fun as hell

So, uh… question. Does the games skybox always flail between night and day? It was bright and sunny thirty minutes ago. Now it’s dark like it’s night again.

Yes. Above the minimap, you can see a little bronze moon/sun moving across the top to see where the day is at

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I should point out that the game does have its faults, of course.

The grind for your Job’s Relic weapon is absolutely awful, and has been pretty consistently since their inception. The current line for them is especially mind-numbing.

PvP is very hit-or-miss. Your Job skills change to simpler versions while in a battleground, and most of the battlegrounds aren’t especially fun as there is a large priority on the objective over kills. Imagine every battleground being Warsong Gulch and 90% of your team fighting in mid while ignoring flags. The Arena-like system, The Feast, is team battles, but I don’t have much experience with those so I couldn’t tell you if they’re any fun or not (the handful I’ve done were okay).

Job balancing is a very slow work in progress. Some are very simple to pick up and play, others have incredibly precise rotations that result in a huge DPS loss until you get a chance to start over. Some Jobs are basically unplayable without very good internet. The new expansion promises sweeping combat changes, but we don’t know much about it yet (and probably won’t until the next convention in February).

Lastly, addons are non-existant, save for DPS meters. Technically no addons are allowed at all, but DPS meters work as long as you don’t shout about using one where a GM could see.

Good to know. I figured the game would run on a real-world time, so this is interesting.

What’s the deal with that MMO Amazon is working on? You would think a game developed by the wealthiest company in the world would have to be amazing. :roll_eyes:

But I don’t know, it looks a little weird. And the whole concept of a completely player-driven economy has been beaten to death.

Yeah. It’s not perfect, by any means. I like it because it’s probably the only MMO I would put as comparable to WoW. That said, they are very different in a lot of ways, and each does some things better than the other.

Just like WoW was hampered by Blizz not knowing what it was doing for an MMO early on, FF was hampered by being co-developed for consoles. I can’t bind my scroll wheel as a result, which is a really weird complaint but a big one for some rotations.

WoW also had a lot of weird development hiccups and Cata so there’s some cool itemization mythology. FF doesn’t have that. There are no “unobtainables” or Time-Lost Proto Drakes. Playing another MMO really puts into perspective just how many items WoW has put in over the years, and FF isn’t going to compete. That said, the designs and ability to color them in FF go a long way for mogs. Still, if you like collecting odd things, FF has a lot less to play with.

The playstyle is also slower, though the gap has been bridged. It’s not a bad or good thing, but some people might not like it. To make up for it, though, FF was made with that in mind, so the animations and flow tend to fit really well. WoW did not seem to take that note when it made the GCD changes, which is one reason BFA has been so janky.

If you play FF, I highly recommend an RP server. WoW has a lot to do and collect at end-game. FF has relics and raiding and that’s about it. I ran out of stuff to do a lot faster at end-game than I did with WoW on non-RP servers. But, RP servers have a great community that basically negates that. Balmung seems to shut down early, but I’ve never had issues with events in the evenings at all to kill time.

Also, leveling alt classes can be a pain. Doing the story the first time is awesome, but the end-of-ARR level 50 grind to get to Heavensward is much less fun on repeated go-arounds.

Probably the biggest positive difference between WoW and FFXIV is crafting and gathering. They are each their own separate class, and each has their own questline as you level (each Job and crafter/gatherer has a storyline focused on them, generally awarding gear and new skills as you level up and complete them).

Crafting and gathering have multiple skills and rotations, just like a PvE class would (you’d probably want to take a PvE Job to level 60 in order to open avenues to all expansion content), and you can make millions upon millions of gil just by crafting/gathering and using the Market Board (Auction House) to sell your wares.

Miqo’te has wares if you have the coin.

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FF PROS

  • Catgirls, lizard girls, confirmed bunny girls soon
  • Battle Wizards
  • Gentlemen Detectivery
  • Color your own clothes
  • Endless dungeon to sell common unique mogs to idiots
  • A strange and eclectic mix of smooth jazz, j-rock, and rap
  • Bards can play actual danger b0ngos (sorry, forums censored hardworking musicians)

FF CONS

  • Fighting other players to build your own erp-based onsen
  • Scrollwheels?!
  • Lalafel
  • House guilds are given actual story and justification for their actions
  • They change Merlwyb’s voice in Heavensward and I’m still very upset about it
  • Honest Healers

That race made me incredibly uncomfortable and I was not enthused about character creation until…

I’d like at least a little bit of variety between human, long-eared human and tall hitty human, please! Apparently tailed-human-with-cat-ears hit the niche for me.