Originally Posted by gobsied

No but really, Your wrong...
-There are couple non party jobs which are MADE for solo, Beastmaster and PuP were made for solo players and if u know what ur doing you level pretty damn fast. Drg can also solo. Other combinations can duo.

-Race matters, but doesn't stop you: I was a Taru Paladin as my first class, Then a Taru Dark then WAR. Taru which is stereotypically the mage onri race.

-There is NO down time between kills if you know what your doing. If your just starting out you will have alot of downtime as u figure out which classes are good for what, what equipment are necessary, which weapon u love the most. How long u should sit when u heal. Which class makes the best tank, Which idiot is leeching you.

- There is ALOT more depth in gameplay 1-75 isnt about jumping from one campsite to the next. There are quests to get into areas, cutscenes, storylines. Bosses, rare mobs.

- The Community is NOT dead, it's actually pretty active, I see newbies coming in every day, and Pros help them out frequently.

- You don't die alot if u have party that has even HALF a clue.

- FFXI is not grindy. The parties are hugely dynamic, the way you have to adjust to each new members fighting style race, class, pulling style to get the absolutely perfect synergy.

You see from what u just said. It's apparent that you were a newb who played with newbs and because the game isn't just rush and mash buttons, it takes some basic level of strategy you failed miserably.

You can't gain basic proficiency in this game in a week. You can't play absent mindly, Your party will fail.


WoW completely aside, FFXI takes skill, practice and active sensibility. Once you have the hang of it the game moves very quickly and the game gets so easy.

To me WoW is exceptionally fun because endgame plays like a LAN party. But the feeling u get when u rushing KRT with a monk party raking up chain 80s. Kiting Vrtra, straight up tanking Everything in sky as a Taru paladin. 12 blm mana burning. Spending 4 hours trying to take down Jourmy. Getting all your summons. Rushing out with the perfect party mixed with japanese players foddling through. Claiming your first King. Raising your first Chocobo their is really no end to the list.

FFXI is an epic Masterpiece and corasked, your just a noob who didn't get anywhere.
Dont be a Noob.

Originally Posted by corasked

Lol,arent you the dude who always posts like he has a dick in his ***?

My post was a opinion,get it right. Your "master piece" is a opinion a matter of fact,and if you cant deal with it gtfo.

Originally Posted by beshino

I play anything from blizzard they rock!! <3
Go with WoW or Hellgate london since it's REALLY good...
WoW is just full package since it has so much stuff you can do it blows your mind :o!
Hellgate london is just the better version of doom and diablo II and... Yeah it's unique but it has the same item system from diablo and I'm REALLY happy about that...

Originally Posted by Shiftfallout

It's not utter bull that FFXI also failed in concepts.

sigh... I part of my degree covers game design. Since graduating I have been active in both game design and film. Thats my passion as well as in a sense, profession. That said, I cant expect you to see things from a "professional" or even design "educated" point of view. Over the internet there are circles of game designers and developers who dicuss such things, where bias takes a back seat and actual game design, like science, is neutrally and matter of factually, discussed.

Here is one article's explanation, something I couldn't have said better.
******************

"Steve Danuser has an excellent post, discussing why Blizzard succeeded with WoW. His conclusion, that it all comes down to Blizzard’s ability to execute, is in my opinion dead on. Ask any venture capitalist: ideas are cheap. Success comes down to the ability to actually put those ideas into action. Surprisingly, few game companies have that. Most end up attempting to do to much, and execute too little of it well.

Brian has taken umbrage at this statement, bizarrely (and in my opinion, very mistakenly). His pathway to Blizzard’s success is simple. Spend a shitload of money. Have a huge name. Have a huge fanbase. Ship when ‘it’s done’. Easy as pie. And all a factor in their success.

The problem, of course, is that it’s only part of the story, and in my opinion, it’s a small part. Consider the Sims Online, SWG, FFXI, and even to a lesser extent EQ2. All of them spent a shitload of money. All of them had huge names. All of them had huge fanbases. None of them reached WoW’s level of success (although depending on whose numbers you believe, FFXI may have gotten into the same league). Despite what Brian later says here, WoW’s circumstances aren’t particularly unique. Blizzard just took advantage of them better.

The one thing that WoW did that the others didn’t do, according to Brian’s list, is to ship when its done. And while shipping a well-polished, bug-free product is something I will always evangelize, it’s certainly not the only answer here. Even if the four products I had listed had shipped completely bug-free and stable, their growth would have been capped by some very fundamental game design decisions which limited their success. Are you trying to tell me that TSO just needed a bit more time to turn their pizza-making core gameplay into a 10M subscriber game? Don’t be silly.

The problem I have with this line of reasoning in general is that it seems to fundamentally disregard the importance of good design decisions. I’m always surprised when people are unwilling to acknowledge that World of Warcraft is fundamentally an extremely good and exceptionally well-designed game. If you disregard this, you are not only disregarding business reality which favors and mandates good design, you are also showing a severe disconnect with the core market. And the worst thing that a designer can do is to accumulate disdain for the player, and what the player values and finds fun.

If you disregard this, you’re just making excuses. “We can’t compete because we’re not Blizzard!” is nothing more than a cry for the whambulance. Take a look at the next big things: Kart Rider. Habbo Hotel. Club Penguin. Maple Story. All were made for peanuts. All had no name recognition. All had no existing fanbase. Most were shipped with a very limited amount of content. All of them enjoyed very strong success anyway - some claim that their numbers kick the shit out of WoW, and while that conclusion can be debated, they are definitely matching (and usually obliterating) the other four games I named.

And none of those four games are EQ/WoW clones.

To me, the answer is simple: vision, design, and execution. Figure out what your game is really about, focus on a thoughtful, well-rounded design supporting that vision, prune out features that don’t do so, and be sure that, no matter what, your execution ensures that you deliver on that vision better than your competitors.

Does money help? Do Blizzard, EA and Microsoft all have an advantage? Sure. But in terms of spending massive wads of cash and trading on name recognition for blockbuster success - WoW is the anomaly, not the norm"

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Nuff said.

Originally Posted by Shiftfallout

WoW's one shortcoming is that players found a lack of things to do end game. Getting to end game is 1000% more fun than staying there.

Originally Posted by gobsied

Ironically NONE of this has ANYTHING to do with what we were talking about.

Your position which have yet to see any sensibility with and which has nothing to do with your qoute :
-Grind in FFXI is never hard
-Final Fantasy tried and failed on a few concepts
-Hardly as solid in design as WoW.
-FF seemed confused at what it wanted to be at times
-the japanese are not quite yet accustomed to the MMORPG genre which is why FFXI is such a weird product.

Please stop throwing in random bs quotes w/o citation that has nothing to do with your position.

Ive played out both games, and I continue to play both games and I love both games. But your just F'n wrong.

WoW is bigger because its so friggin easy, because it spawned at the perfect time and because it has massive publicity. And that's OKAY!(and because it does have great content)

I love both games, but what your saying about ffxi is garbage. It's a solid game with a solid interface, it's definately NOT generic. and its not just about trumping people with levels, it takes timing skill and synergy. Square Enix is doing exceptionally well with the game and I would say that as a product FFXI has more to offer.

I'll close with this


Edit: Response to Corasked removed because Marchie did a much better job