But all we are is dust in the wind.

Newbie Experience

This game is beautiful, especially if you crank up all the options to the max.  The character models are highly detailed and offer a fair amount of customization compared to Final Fantasy XI, which is definitely an improvement.  I created a lalafell, the short people, and a miqo’te, a cat girl; as my two characters.  Final Fantasy is kind of this way, players spend 10 dollars for the service and then spend money for each individual character slot the first month is still free but it’s an interesting payment strategy.  I am not sure if I actually like it all that much, but given the way the job system works in this game it’s not overly limiting on options class wise, but it does limit the servers you can actually play on.  Odd decision but I will go with it for now.

Anyway once the game starts I chose my city-state the game begins with a nice cut scene that is fully voiced and well animated and overall just sets a nice tone for an introduction to the game.  There is a brief combat and some story and then player is brought to their first real area, or starting zone.  There is an NPC nearby that directs you to the Adventurer’s Guild which is the hub of the player experience, this is where the guildleves come from and where the first main quest begins.  Overall it’s well done as far as style and flavor are concerned.

My issue with the new player experience is that there I very little guidance of what you should be doing.  There is no in-game effort to tell you that you can only do 8 regional guildleves every day and a half, there are no recipe book in-game for crafters, and I still have no idea what the battle regimen system is.  Overall it gives the new player experience a certain lack of polish and tends to give the impression of a hands off experience.  There are very little handrails to guide the new player and much of the knowledge is gained from outside the game from websites, wikis, or other community resources.  I admire the sentiment but it seems an undue hurdle to new players to actually understand the game.  Overall I consider the newbie experience somewhat lackluster, it is pretty and packed with content but very little guidance and fails to educate the new player on the basic content of the game.

Crafting

Crafting is something that I enjoy in MMO games, though most games don’t have very deep crafting systems.  They tend to be fairly simplistic in most games; this is one area where Final Fantasy XIV really shines.  The crafting and gathering mini-games are interesting and require more than just point and clicking.  I enjoy it but I could see where some may see it as tedious.  I find the most tedious part is picking recipes and then dealing with the interface lag which turns a chore that should take a few seconds into a half minute or more endeavor waiting for the interface to update.  This would not be so bad but when you do regional guildleves it becomes a little tedious going through the menus over and over, the crafting UI really needs an overhaul.

Speaking of the Crafting UI, the lack of a recipe book is a questionable omission.  I really do not like this aspect of crafting because once again it leaves the new player without any basic tools to engage in crafting without consulting resources that exist outside the game.  Not every player engages in the community and I don’t think it’s fair to require them to do so when including a recipe book only serves to improve the player experience.  This idea of the community fixing the gaps in Final Fantasy XIV is repeated a few times in other areas of the game.  Specifically when changing jobs there is no system that saves your action bar, so players have to rely on macros.  Again I am not sure what the reasoning is behind this but it mars what is admittedly a very deep and interactive system.  My other main concern is that the crafting professions may be too intertwined, with many low level recipes requiring materials created from three different professions in some cases such as the Bronze Dagger for instance.

The Bronze Dagger requires Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Alchemy, and Goldsmithing to create all the mats for this level 9 weapon.  Not overly terrible but with no Auction House or any usable system to sell materials besides going to individual players it, the task of crafting gear can be daunting for new players.  Again I don’t understand why an auction house was omitted from the game, but it makes the life of the casual crafter that much harder.  Now the task is not insurmountable but it does provide another unneeded barrier to the new player.  These are all barriers that can easily be overcome but I have to wonder why these were not just taken care of before the game went live.

Combat

Combat is fun if a little slow, there is no auto-attack system so all actions are initiated by the player.  It keeps it interactive if a little slow.  I will admit I don’t understand the battle regimen, even after reading about it so I can’t comment on that.  Overall it’s interesting the main problem is that I feel it is a little archaic and could have used an overhaul, especially when it comes to targeting and engaging enemies.  I have never been a fan of target based combat systems where the player is focused on a single enemy and has to use commands to disengage.  Just seems clumsy to me and overly clunky.

Another problem with targeting is that the system makes retargeting enemies a chore, I use a macro but it still feels like a band aid to a clunky system, but other then that the combat system is fairly straight forward and is enjoyable if as mentioned earlier a little slow.  I don’t have many complaints here so I won’t cover this much further.

Overall

Despite some of these issues the game is pretty fun and oozes atmosphere and is quite beautiful.  The animations are very smooth and the character models are very detailed with intricate armor and weapon models.  The game plays well even with the clunky interface, and it seems overall a solid effort but compared to what is already available still seems to fall short in my initial assessment.  I still have a month to go though so maybe it will get better.  Thu far it’s enjoyable but I am not sure I want to renew just quite yet.

I don’t have too many inferences yet on where they will take us but there is some writing on the wall:

- I expect them to make changes to Hammer of the Righteous or Seal of Command and even possibly both.  I think the fact that our threat rotation is exactly the same in single target and AoE is just boring.  I look forward to this.

- The Dispel mechanics will definitely change some of how I play at least when it comes to dispelling my own magic effects like on Steelbreaker.

- I think paladins in general will get a low level instant attack ability to add to the low level experience and make it more interactive.  At least more interactive than auto-attack and judgement.

- More of a wish and inferred guess based on similar vanity shaman changes; but I suspect that the varying paladin races may get race specific mounts in Cataclysm.

The 16th will be a good day, I look forward to the new class changes being posted today!  And now some Thom Yorke to soothe your weary soul.