Amarok said:
Heh, well each to their own (WoW fan?). FFXI has kept my wife and I busy for about 3 years now, and we've met many good friends around the world (usually around the same age as us, ie, over 35s). I don't know if you've ever played it, if you have you'll recognise the time we've put into it just from our progress - 3 jobs at lvl 75 (RNG, MNK and COR), PLD at 70, NIN at 66, WAR at 41 etc, and thats just me, my wife does all the mage jobs (WHM, RDM at 75, BLM at 58). I prefer putting alot of time into fewer games (although our time in FFXI is massively excessive, I'd be the first to admit). I did manage to complete RE4 on the GC and Wii, and Zelda on the Wii, although god knows where I found the time. One day I'll get round to playing Metroid and Galaxy which have been sitting idle ever since I bought them (no thanks to FFXI) |
I'm not an MMO fan at all but last month a couple friends got me to try FFXI so I got a free trial and played it for a bit. I noticed several things:
1) The community is about as lively as a dead hamster (Titan). For an MMO, it sure didn't feel like any part of it. I realize it is an aging PC game with a dying community so I didn't have high hopes anyway.
2) The combat is tedious and uninspired. Out of the many RPGs I've played, FFXI's class system is among the worst I've played with. Absolutely nothing felt rewarding for the effort required to get it. For the amount of time required to get anywhere I could be making more progress and having more fun in tons of different games.
3) FFXI has the absolute worst controls of any PC game I've ever played. I've never seen a control scheme so bulky, so unintuitive, and simply so awful on any PC game ever. This is coming from someone who has been an avid PC gamer since the days of eTangle/vTangle, vgaTrek, and Commander Keen. FFXI made it quite clear to me that Square Enix had no freaking idea how to make a PC game. From the very first moment I pushed the Escape key and nothing happened, I knew it would be downhill from there. It was appalling.
If it's what you and your wife enjoy, more power to you. I know I couldn't stomach playing a game like that for any length of time. ^_^
