Yo,

just wanted to talk a bit 'bout MMOs ~

So yeah, i just ordered FFXIV for 10 Bucks. I wanted to take a look at this piece of Software myself, after the crittics.. gave their scores for good.  And yeah, i think i can drop that ammount of money to look into it (and maybe even have fun!..?) with it.

but the reason i did order it wasnt the price alone, but the fact that WoW isnt much fun to me right now.  I mean.. Raids are great.. Heroic instances WOULD be too, if i had a group to do 1-2 a day. and mostly, i havent. (most of my guildmates are twinking or pvping. ;<) and yeah, random ppl are.. dumb. like hell. at least, many of them.

And yeah, pvp isnt any better. its just a big unbalanced mess. >:O! .. i mean come on, Frostmages are masters of CC; Warriors can burst almost 100k in 6 seconds, Rogue's Smokebomb breaks the line of sight completely (which can be - well used - be something that could be declared as OP) and so on., While Hunters and Priests (and Subletly Rogue's aswell as maybe Retribution pallys PvP DPS) - are a laugh.

So yeah, tell me your opinion about FFXIV (<- and if possible, give me some information about classes here.. i simply dont get how it works .. and if i'd know when i receive it by mail, it'd me amazing, sinze ive heard there arent any tutorials in XIV 0o?)) and the State of Cataclysm. :>

I will advise you to download this software first when you are playing an online game. After many people complain about the lag in FFXIV, I was trying to find something online to correct it (it only lags on my laptop, but not my desktop except in certain areas) and I found this:

http://www.gzero.com/gboost/home.html

It disables all background processes running on your computer (disables Windows Aero, which is good since your graphics card uses that but you graphics card is also needed to render FFXIV or any other games) with one click, and the same click will enable all of your programs once again.

I thoroughly enjoy FFXIV despite all of the negative feedback some of the other users on the forums give it. I have found which area is actually easier to start out in, and that's Limsa Lominsa (I noticed this while doing battle levequests). Second difficulty is Ul'Dah, and higher difficulty is Gridania (my character is from Gridania).

Your character race has no impact on stats, HP, or MP now; it's just for personal tastes. I'm an Elezen (elf, or Elvaan from FFXI) and I transferred my character's name and server name from FFXI to use in this game, hence my username on here is Naraku_Diabolos, as that is what it is on FFXIV.

A good class to start out as is Pugilist (hand to hand combat). All of my classes are going towards Rank 15 now, so once they are even I will raise them some more. However, your character also has a physical level and mine is 27 (I forget lol). Changing between classes is easy; just switch your main held item to become something else; plus each class can use the same armor, but some classes will get more benefits from different equipment. Crafting is also easier, and is manditory as well. There are crafting classes and you need the synthesizing 'item/weapon' to become that class. However, to easily level the crafting is a much easier process than it was in FFXI. You can do crafting quests, and these quests give you the materials to make into an item (you don't get the finish item to keep, but you get skill points and exp for completing a synthesis). The crafting, as I mention is manditory, is needed to also repair weapons and armor (which just require you to have one material in order to repair it, plus you will skill up, too).

There is a thread on FFXIV on the Gaming Discussion part of the forum, but I am the one who has mainly decided to keep it alive with updates.

It's decent but it has many upon many problems right now. They are in the process of a team restructure and also a game restructure. Fans and critics alike do not like this WoWinized FF game. We want FF, not that.

They have 4 keywords they are using atm: Fun, Live, Rebuild, and Reboot for the future of the game. The new director has a sense of humor too so that gives me hope.

Personally, I think FFXIV is a sinking ship and you wasted $5 on that game.

I'm not saying it can't be fixed, I'm saying it doesn't matter.  A new team will only help so much and the damage has already been done.  The game has been (rightly) destroyed by critics and is skating on incredibly thin ice.  They basically have until March and if the game is still in shambles by the time it releases on PS3, the servers will be closed by the end of the year. 

If they do manage to turn the game around by the time the PS3 version releases, then it could be a fun game but, like I said, the damage has been done.  The game already has a pretty negative following from everyone except only the most die hard fans and even those are quitting. 

The new director can throw out buzz words all he likes but we'll see how well they're implemented come March.  FFXIV was easily the worst game of 2010 but, hey, at least you don't have to pay a subscription fee.  There's at one positive.

-edit-

Forgot to add that the game also has the very high danger of being lost among all the other huge PS3 exclusives coming out this year.  It may have the Final Fantasy name but if there are other large exclusives coming out around the same time (I don't know the release schedule) then that's yet another problem the game will have to face.

You mean you didn't turn all that stuff off anyways? You don't need a program to do it for you. Unless of course, you don't have the time/knowhow to do so. In which case, I can see it being useful.

Oh, and as for opinions, here's a small rant from this thread that only touches on some of problems:

I'm positive he was.  Judging purely by the state of FFXIV, I'm sure almost every one of those people were the type of people that head their heads in the sand, fingers in their ears, and believed they really had a good product and it would do well up until release. 

The fact that they had the audacity to release FFXIV in the state they did shows that they didn't care about the community in any way shape or form and just assumed people would eat it up because it's Final Fantasy.  I don't know if you played XIV but it really was just all around awful in almost every way imaginable. The fact that they released it completely unfinished was just icing on the shit-cake.

That isn't to say the game had some good ideas, but it's beyond obvious they didn't take into account what any other MMO did right and wrong.  They didn't even use FFXI as a base, they completely started from scratch and FFXIV is what happens when you do that.

I know I'm ranting here now, but FFXIV just does that to me.

Just thinking of something as simple as the UI and how utterly full of fail that was.  It's like someone on the team played a game in the late 90's and thought they should do something like that. 

Their first problem was that they released the PC version 6 months before they planned to release the PS3 version.  If you do that, you should probably assume people are going to want to use the mouse and keyboard.  Instead, they make the UI nearly unusable with the mouse and keyboard. 

Next, there was the input lag.  Everything you did had insane amount of lag which made the shitty menus nearly unusable.  Add onto that the menus were a confusing mess of near endless unorganized sub menus and you all of a sudden have a shitty UI that confuses everybody.

Luckily the game did have an action bar and a macro system but those are probably two of the bigger failures!  The action bar was a confusing mess that most people just thought it didn't work because it was one of the most unintuitive things ever created.  When paired with the input lag, it's no surprise people thought it didn't work.

And then the macro.  Fuck the macro system.  It worked in FFXI because it was still, what, 2003-2004?  Actually, the real sad thing is it was actually better in FFXI.  In FFXIV you have case sensitive text commends.  Jesus, it's 2010, we can do better than case sensitive.  These are already hard enough to enter but making it case sensitive is just a massive douche-bag move and a giant slap in the face.

And it doesn't stop there with the macros!  Next, you have confusing text commands that are explained nowhere, you have to go to external sources to learn them.  After learning the text commands you then have to type spell and item names, but you better know the syntax and names perfectly!  Sometimes things have quotes, sometimes they do not.  Sometimes things are abbreviated, some times they are not.  Sometimes extra parts (like plus 1) don't work, sometimes they do.

To still add to the fail, they give you infinite lines to type your macros but they only read the first 10 lines.  It doesn't tell you that everywhere.  So you can spend an hour writing a 30 line macro but it's going to process the first 10 lines.  That means I need to spread macros out which wouldn't be a big deal except a macro can't call a macro.

So now lets assume I want to change my class, that means I need to change my equipment and action bar.  Instead of just needing a single macro press, I have to have at least 4.  I need one macro to unequip all my actions (because you have to do that manually in macros), I need another macro to set my new actions, I need a macro to unequip my current equipment, and then I need another macro to equip my new quipment.  Furthermore, it's normal to have a good 15-20 pieces of gear and several action bars which means even more macros.

Ontop of all that, the macros are buggy as all Hell.  You'd think if I had to press four macro's in succession I could press them quickly.  No, that would be too easy.  I have to press a macro, wait about 5 seconds to wait for it to finish processing, and then move onto the next macro.  If I press the next macro too quickly, it will cause problems with that macro and the previous one or just not know I pressed that macro.

The sad thing is after all that above ranting, that is merely scratching the tip of only the UI problems alone.  I could go on for pages about the problems in the game.

It disables the Aero and makes your PC look like Windows 95/98, and I forget how to manually do that by myself. That is one of the good things about the program.