[Beta] Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Overview

   Over the years I have played several MMO's from Runescape to the recent Guild Wars 2, and while I have had fun in most very few have held my attention as of late. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn however had me hooked for the approximate 24 hours I had access to the beta. I tried to do as much as I could in what little time I had, went through a love-hate relationship with the combat, and probably most importantly had a lot of fun in the process.

   I think the thing I noticed first about the game was the beautiful environments, tied with a very minimalist UI to bring forth a very immersive experience. I spent hours playing that, for the most part felt like minutes. The flow of the game added so much to the experience, because I never felt like there was extensive downtime. I just kept playing, never getting lost, or not knowing what to do next, and because of that the experience was amplified much more for me.
   If you do not like the default UI set up you can move any UI piece to wherever you want on the screen. This allowed me to set up an already minimalist UI to be even more to my liking and added even more to my personal enjoyment of the game.

       
     



   The story was delivered very well, the only criticism I have is the lack of voice acting, but beta is beta, and who knows that might change before launch. Truth to be told, even if it doesn't it isn't game breaking to me.I can live without the voice acting, and in a way it adds to the experience not having it. The game feels like a throwback to old school RPG's in many ways, to me the lack of voice acting was no exception.
   The leveling experience has everything you would expect from a modern MMO, from a traditional quest method to FATE's that are very similar to Guild Wars 2's dynamic event system. Levequests are a nice addition of repeatable quests, and Guildhests are good if you just want to do some quick group content.

    I will touch on the combat though, because I did mention I had a bit of a love hate relationship with it. Lately I have been playing GW2, a game known for it's faster pace semi action based combat, so at first swapping to slower more Final Fantasy style combat system was weird to me and initially I did not think I would be able to play it for very long, however the more I played, the more used to it I got. I still don't think it has the best combat system, but it definitely feels like a Final Fantasy game.
   Overall I think the game is solid, and definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of MMO's. It is set to have an open beta sometime within the next month, and has a retail release date of August 27th, 2013.

[Update] Assassins Creed 3, Mists of Pandaria, Video Content, and more

So, I decided to make this just so that I didn't go all ranty in my Dishonored post about everything that's going on. My family emergency is still going on, life is a little hectic, and because of that I have decided to go on as much of a vacation that a broke college student can. I'm going to visit my father in California. I have no idea what my access to the internet will be like, but rest assured if I have access I will be posting like normal.

I am a massive Assassins Creed fan so I will be at least renting that no matter what when it comes out on the 30th. I will play through it, and will be posting about it at some point.

This blog has always been a test for me, to see if I can stick to a schedule, and even if I can't it was meant to work on that because I will need to learn at some point. I think I am getting better about it, so yay me. If only I havn't been spending so much time in Mists of Pandaria.

I realize these update posts may not be for everyone but I'm the type of person who likes being as open as I can about whats going on with my work, and if anyone at all is curious these are here for that purpose.

Let's Talk About: Dishonored

Well, Dishonored has been out for a while, and this blog has been eerily quiet about it, so I'll just come out and say this: I havn't made a Dishonored post yet because I have not played the game yet. My PC would probably not run it, and I'm scared to play it on my SDTV. Oh the joys of being a rather broke, in between semesters college kid. I will eventually play it, but by the time I do it will probably fall out of relevancy. Which is sad, because I have been looking forward to the game. I have however watched a friend of mine play it and it does look very, very good. So there's that. All the more depressed about this fall/winter line up because so many games that are coming out look great and I will not be able to play them all by any stretch of the imagination.

I guess the good news is that I do plan to at least rent Assassins Creed 3, and will probably get a look at Halo 4 and Black Ops 2 over at another friends house. Dishonored is just the game that will get very little attention from me, because aside from the fact that it looks great, I have no other knowledge of the game.

I suppose this is more of an update then a "let's talk about" so the rest of this I will just put in an update.

Let's Talk About: Internet Media

So after hearing an interesting theory on this weeks episode of Gamebreaker After Dark I got to thinking about the whole "internet media" sensation thats been popping up over the last few years and what this could mean for media in general. With things like Youtube, Twitch.tv, and Netflix, will there still be a place for companies like Directtv, Dish Network, and Time Warner in 5-10 years?

My answer to this is, "no, not really". I think that as more people start to watch stuff online, we will see a steady decline of regular television just because it's about 100x more convenient to watch things online. I think the biggest thing holding the internet media industry back is that there is no one platform for everything that's really gone "main stream" I think that Netflix is the one thing that's bridging the internet/ tv gap, but as crazy as this is, I think it needs to be something bigger. Something that encompasses literally everything. Something where you go to it and you can watch real world news, or a movie. Something that has a great user interface, that it really easy to navigate, that really just catches on, and people go "Hey, I like this, I'm going to use this for everything now." I also think that this currently unknown thing will happen eventually.

Until then we need pioneers that take the media format seriously, and really step and prove that this is a valid format that should be taken seriously. I showed a friend gamebreaker.tv like a week ago and he was blown away by the quality of it all. He could never really get into the whole "Internet media" thing because he figured that it was a bunch of people sitting around in their bedrooms playing video games. He had no idea that people are actually taking it seriously, at least in the video game community.

Anyway, yes to wrap it up, I think it's only a matter of time before internet media surpasses regualar television, I know that I for one already prefer it. All it's going to take it a shove in the right direction, and I think that that shove is in the process of happening right now.

[Update] Family Issues, stress, and Time Management

So, after experiencing a family emergency, going through a lot of stress, and having just poor time management skills in general I'm back.  I should be okay for a while, I'm going to try queing most of my posts so that theres regular new content flowing onto the blog, and only twitter/facebook start to lag. The family emergency is far from over though, and probably won't be for a good while.

So yes, let's hope that I can actually keep my stuff toughener this time around.

[WoW] Mists of Pandaria

So, I caved in and got Mists of Pandaria, if only for the nostalgia it's sure to bring, and so far I'm having a lot of fun with the questing. I said this back in beta, and I'll say it again: Mists of Pandaria has all of the potential to be the best expansion WoW has ever had. It's added a mini game, an 18 boss raid tier, a ton of daily quests, 5 new levels, a new race, a new class and lots of new lore. As Blizzard has said, this is the most they have ever added in a single expansion launch.

Obviously I have to say that it has the potential to be the best because you never know, the raids could completely suck, or something else could randomly be wrong. Also, as we should all know, launch content doesn't determine how the entire expansion will be viewed.. but it's a good indication of Blizzards plans going forward.

Things that I am looking forward to at the moment include: Challenge modes, the raids, and just generally playing the game with some old friends.

What this means for this blog? Well, I'll probably write a bit more about Mists now that it's out, but I make no promises.

[MMO] Is "the Trinity" really such a bad thing?

Alright, so bear with me a moment, because I want to discuss something controversial in the MMO space. I would also love to hear everyone's opinion on the matter, but only in such a way where the entire issue is explained logically.


Now, one of the major selling points of Guild Wars 2 was the removal of the Trinity. For those that arn't in the know the Trinity is the standard "Tank, Healer, DPS" model found in World of Warcraft, and many MMO's like it. Now, I want to start out by saying that I am in no means implying that Arena.net should have kept the Trinity model. Innovation in the industry is a great thing, and something that can only be accomplished by trial and error. It was only a matter of time before someone made an MMO that tried to do away with the trinity, and I'm glad it was Arena.net.


All of that said, I want to talk about why the Trinity is such a horrible concept to people. Especially people around the GW2 community. It seems like people think that nothing good can come from a game that features the trinity ever again, and the entire system is outdated and trash. I'm not joking either, sadly. I've read some pretty horrible (and seemingly bias) criticisms of the trinity. "Why would you want to wait 30+ minutes to find a dungeon group! That's all the trinity does, down with it I say!" Seems to make up the bulk of the arguments against the trinity. To that particular claim, I offer this, should more people learn how to tank or heal? It would shorten the time it takes for a DPS to find a group, and it would certainly shorten your own time to find a group. If you hate waiting that long learn another role. Most people who seem to have a huge issue with the trinity hate it because they come from a game with a dungeon finder and they find it "unfair" that Tanks, and Healers (to an extent) get groups almost instantly, while they have to wait, because they are unwilling to try and Tank/Heal. I mained a Healer for years in WoW, and I almost never have to wait over 5 minutes when I wanted to run a dungeon. Now in Mists I'm maining a Tank. I personally prefer the Tank and Healer roles because I don't have to wait as long, and because generally speaking? There easy. I would almost say that DPS is hardest role to be good at. Healing would probably be the second hardest role, and the easiest? Probably Tank. Yet everyone likes DPS because while it's the hardest role to be good at, it's the role with the least impact on the group, and therefore the easiest to be bad at and still make it through the dungeon. Mind you, these are my opinions, I'm not saying that they are facts.


With that, I my main argument for the Trinity is this: should we be trying to abolish it, or should we be trying to improve upon it? Some people like the idea of "I play this role, because I like this role, and I feel good at it." In a game like GW2 you can't really have that feeling.


I almost feel like a better way to improve upon the Trinity would be to try and add in more roles to it. I know that 5 Man design is pretty crowded as is, but I think you could (and for the most part people already do some of this) split ranged dps and melee dps apart, and even add in a 5th support type role. That is a role that's dedicated to making sure things get cc'ed , to be able to dps when needed, or heal if needed, and generally just be flexible to whatever the group needs. "Oh a bunch of adds spawned, but the tanks are dealing with the boss, I can pick those up"


Another way that the trinity could be dealt with is to just make the dps role carry more responsibility in general. Make it so that all of the DPS need to be good in order to make it through the dungeon.


Just some suggestions, as I mentioned above I would love to see what everyone else thinks.