My final fantasy addiction somewhat rivals my lungs addiction to breathing. It's the kind of addiction that can see you develop scoliosis of the spine because sitting on a bean bag for 10 consecutive days isn't good for you. I'm the kind of person who has all her avatars named after characters in the games. So yes, the Final Fantasy 14 Beta was released last week. I very nearly wet myself with excitement (read: did) when I sent my little application to Square Enix. My enthusiasm was slightly deadened by the immense difficulty I had downloading the client and then accessing the server. It took 4 days to download. I gave the first two days up as a concession because I realise the entirety of Europe was also probably trying to DL it too. But there seems to be some kind of retard programming the DLer because if there is an error in the process it has to download the whole thing again. It's like an OCD child counting smarties, if you miss one you start again from the beginning. There's no reference point for how much has already been downloaded and stored on your computer. How retarded.
Anyway I finally logged on and created my stock standard(a Mage of course) called Kriji Wolf, which is a sort of, cute, cat-anime hybrid class called a Miq'ote.
You can play as
- Miq'ote (Kitty hybrid)
- Elezen (Elf.)
- Lalafell (Mooglesque dwarf)
- Hyur (Hume pretty much)
- Roegadyn (Tauren... kidding, Giant.)
I'm pretty disappointed that I couldn't have been a Viera. That would have been an awesome class, but maybe they are waiting for the final version for that.
The beginning starts with a confusing cut scene of my avatar walking through a beautiful scenic forest where I encounter some people who, to be honest, I ended up wanting to be more than the character I had created. Not a very good start.
I was hoping that FF14 would stand up by resolving the issues that were had in FF11. But the tutorial is just lacking. There is no voice acting and no explanation of how to talk to people or do anything. This resulted in a rather angry assault of clicking on everyone in sight before finally working out that you have to click each character to read the next paragraph of their speech. I really think it could benefit from a pop up box. Just for user friendliness. The other main problem I had was that it seems to presuppose knowledge of how MMO's work, which i guess is fair for the beta testers, because who else would be playing it. But, It's really not a good place for new users to be initiated into the JRPG, MMO scene.
The menu is awkward at best you have to click X on everything, theres no hot keys as of yet. I can't even run the game on full screen because there is NO full screen option, I have to play it windowed, which quite frankly takes away from the immersion that is supposed to be a key feature of MMOS.
I do have to say the Graphics are pretty well done. There is lots of amazing scenery and original art work and no it doesn't play anything like WOW. I'm going to deviate a little bit here to talk about this.
I was going to try and avoid comparisons too WOW, but I think it's going to be impossible because the reason WOW is so successful as an MMO is because it does some things so well. If you see a mountain in the distance in WOW, you can go there. I once swam around Kalimdor, it took me an hour and a half and it was boring as shit, but I could do it. In FF14 you see a pretty tree, you want to go to pretty tree, but the invisible barrier stops you. Boundaries are something that I strongly feel need to be omitted in MMOS. Every time you walk into an invisible border, barring you from your compulsion to explore you are reminded that you are playing a game, and you can't do what you want. If Square Enix are going to create a game that will grip people they need to give consumers the freedom to explore, but at this point I think theres a little too much linearity to make for immersive game-play, and this, if anywhere will be somewhere that they will fall down.
Now I must address the combat system. HOW DOES IT WORK? It's so awkward. When you click on an enemy the combat bar pops up in the middle of the screen. The cast bar isn't really obvious enough to tell you how long your cast is taking, and all the spells pretty much look the same. Although to be fair I haven't got that many yet, and I'm only speaking for mage since I haven't played any of the other classes yet. Also HOW CAN A BUNNY HURT ME? It fails to tell me how much damage is being done to me and doesn't tell you how to regen or anything. Where is the tutorial information on healing??
So in conclusion, the Beta is incredibly buggy, they have got a really long way to go if they want to have any kind of share in the MMO market place. I relaly don't want to say that this will fail because an FF MMO that was actually good would be amazing, but they don't seem to be able to quite grasp it. This confuses me alot because something like FF12 would have been an amazing online game yet they seem unable to make a good introductory MMO for Rabanastre. Lets hope this is only in infancy.
I might finish with a question from a Q&A with the producer of F14,
"In the alpha I wasn't able to jump, will there be jumping in FFXIV? And swimming? Maybe even climbing?
Its going to be the same as in FFXI. So currently there will be no jumping. If its necessary we might add swimming and climbing in the future."
.... NO JUMPING.
KAtie ^___^
