WoW/FFXI: Day three
Sep. 29th, 2005 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserIf nothing else, I'm enjoying playing WoW because people leave interesting and thoughtful comments on my FFXI/WoW posts. Purchasing it was worth it just so I can see so many different POVs on games! And a note: I really, really hope I'm not offending any WoW players. I understand that different people want different things from games, and I'm not attempting to say that one set of goals is more valid than another. This is just my experience with WoW, how I'm feeling about it, what I'm getting out of it, etc.
My opinion on WoW hasn't changed much, other than slipping more towards bored and unsatisfied.
Those who know me on FFXI (or read the LJ posts) know how much hard work and time I put into leveling leathercrafting: Months and months of work (I was low level so I couldn't farm and be faster about it), and millions and millions of gil. I leveled it up to 86 before stopping. I spent months turning in enough guildpoints to earn my apron and gloves. It was hard (so very very hard), but I accomplished it! I did it! Tonght on WoW, I leveled skinning to 60+. I did it in about two hours. I did it while XPing. I could hardly decide between laughing and crying over that. (FFXI players: You skill up in whole numbers, not tenths like we do it. Everything is like that, weapon skill level, everything.)
I experienced another new thing tonight: Death on WoW. It was another one of those "don't know if I should laugh or cry over this" moments. On FFXI, you lose XP when you die. It's pretty painful, especially at higher levels. You really, really want to avoid death if possible. (Which is reasonable in a game (or RL!), no?) In WoW, if you die you turn into a ghost (the whole ghost world thing looks pretty cool) and have to run back to your body (which is on your map, see the little tombstone in the upper right hand corner?). Once you get in a few feet of it, you come back to life. The only thing that you lose is that your armor gets a tiny bit (10% I think?) worn out. When your armor wears out, you have to pay a little money to get it fixed (you can never lose it). That's it.
With death being so ... so meaningless, I took a lot of chances I would not usually take. Aggro? Who cares! Tackling a much higher mob? Go for it! I died three times tonight, which would make me kill myself RL if ever happened on FFXI. (Okay, not really. But you get the idea!)
There were some things I liked. I hate to say it (really, really, really, really hate to say it), but the bright colors are growing on me. FFXI is starting to look a little "washed out" when I switch back to it. Gah, that's just horrible.
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peppygrowlithe's server suggestion was a good one, and for some reason I have not run into one idiot yet (and a number of helpful people casting good stuff on me!). I mostly ignore all the channels, so that could be part of it, but in general it seems okay thus far.
Surprisingly, WoW is more realistic than FFXI in a couple of ways:
1) Swimming! I've said since day one that FFXI needs to let you swim! That's so cool!
2) Mobs running away when they're nearly dead. At first that tickled the heck out of me, but it quickly got annoying. "Hey, you! Come back! I'm not finished killing you yet!" (Luckily I have a range weapon, so they don't get far.) But annoying or not, I love it because it's real. I run when I'm losing, so why wouldn't a mob?
3) Damage when falling/falling in general. I seem to fall in WoW. A lot. In FFXI you can't fall off a lot of things, which saves me. I nearly died tonight because I fell off a high thing!
4) The sounds are nicely realistic. When you fight a wolf, it sounds like a dog is fighting. Kill a pig and it makes a noise like a RL dying pig would. Lions sound all lion-y. It's cool.
Some of the bad things:
1) Quests are still nothing but carbon copies of each other: You need to collect X items! Go kill Y mob to get the drops! Very, very, very boring and utterly uncreative.
2) I really, really dislike how WoW handles aggro. Things give up chasing you way too quickly! I would have had probably four more deaths tonight if the mobs hadn't lost interest in me after a few feet.
3) That whole "paths not only take you useful places, but you basically don't get aggro on them!" thing bugs me a lot. I can cope with the first half of that, but I really, really hate how being on one makes you safe from aggro.
Oh heck, there was lots more I wanted to mention, but now I'm forgetting. Maybe I should keep notes while playing. :P
Here's the other screenshot I took: I take lots of pretty screenshots in FFXI, so I thought I'd try to take one in WoW. This was the prettiest I found. :/
I ended the night at level 9. I had wanted to get to level 10 so I can do the quests to learn to tame beasts, but man, I think XP grinding is even more boring in WoW than in FFXI. :p (FFXI people: While Hunters are like RNG/BST or BST/RNG, they can't charm/tame anything till level 10.)
Huh. I just realized something: Other than the "racial movie" you see when you first start out, I've not seen one single cutscene in WoW. I guess that shows you how little story there is in the game: The most plot you ever get is a couple of text sentences explaining why the NPC needs those X drops from Y mob.
Edit: Holy cow, this post got long. I only meant to note a few things before bed!
Edit: Oh, one more note! WoW is so very, very, very lonely. In three days, the most I've talked to anyone was to /tell a "Thanks!" when someone casts something good onto me. :/ That's so utterly different than the LS "family" I have on FFXI. I know I could probably join some guild or something, but strangers are scary and all that... :/
Oh, and one last note, then I'm going to bed for sure! I thought this would amuse folks: You get XP for everything in WoW, not just killing stuff and quests! I got XP for entering a zone for the first time! Heh heh. (I'm not sure if that happens for every zone or just cities. Of course I'm not expecting XP for that so never watched for it.)
My opinion on WoW hasn't changed much, other than slipping more towards bored and unsatisfied.
Those who know me on FFXI (or read the LJ posts) know how much hard work and time I put into leveling leathercrafting: Months and months of work (I was low level so I couldn't farm and be faster about it), and millions and millions of gil. I leveled it up to 86 before stopping. I spent months turning in enough guildpoints to earn my apron and gloves. It was hard (so very very hard), but I accomplished it! I did it! Tonght on WoW, I leveled skinning to 60+. I did it in about two hours. I did it while XPing. I could hardly decide between laughing and crying over that. (FFXI players: You skill up in whole numbers, not tenths like we do it. Everything is like that, weapon skill level, everything.)
I experienced another new thing tonight: Death on WoW. It was another one of those "don't know if I should laugh or cry over this" moments. On FFXI, you lose XP when you die. It's pretty painful, especially at higher levels. You really, really want to avoid death if possible. (Which is reasonable in a game (or RL!), no?) In WoW, if you die you turn into a ghost (the whole ghost world thing looks pretty cool) and have to run back to your body (which is on your map, see the little tombstone in the upper right hand corner?). Once you get in a few feet of it, you come back to life. The only thing that you lose is that your armor gets a tiny bit (10% I think?) worn out. When your armor wears out, you have to pay a little money to get it fixed (you can never lose it). That's it.
With death being so ... so meaningless, I took a lot of chances I would not usually take. Aggro? Who cares! Tackling a much higher mob? Go for it! I died three times tonight, which would make me kill myself RL if ever happened on FFXI. (Okay, not really. But you get the idea!)
There were some things I liked. I hate to say it (really, really, really, really hate to say it), but the bright colors are growing on me. FFXI is starting to look a little "washed out" when I switch back to it. Gah, that's just horrible.
peppygrowlithe's server suggestion was a good one, and for some reason I have not run into one idiot yet (and a number of helpful people casting good stuff on me!). I mostly ignore all the channels, so that could be part of it, but in general it seems okay thus far.Surprisingly, WoW is more realistic than FFXI in a couple of ways:
1) Swimming! I've said since day one that FFXI needs to let you swim! That's so cool!
2) Mobs running away when they're nearly dead. At first that tickled the heck out of me, but it quickly got annoying. "Hey, you! Come back! I'm not finished killing you yet!" (Luckily I have a range weapon, so they don't get far.) But annoying or not, I love it because it's real. I run when I'm losing, so why wouldn't a mob?
3) Damage when falling/falling in general. I seem to fall in WoW. A lot. In FFXI you can't fall off a lot of things, which saves me. I nearly died tonight because I fell off a high thing!
4) The sounds are nicely realistic. When you fight a wolf, it sounds like a dog is fighting. Kill a pig and it makes a noise like a RL dying pig would. Lions sound all lion-y. It's cool.
Some of the bad things:
1) Quests are still nothing but carbon copies of each other: You need to collect X items! Go kill Y mob to get the drops! Very, very, very boring and utterly uncreative.
2) I really, really dislike how WoW handles aggro. Things give up chasing you way too quickly! I would have had probably four more deaths tonight if the mobs hadn't lost interest in me after a few feet.
3) That whole "paths not only take you useful places, but you basically don't get aggro on them!" thing bugs me a lot. I can cope with the first half of that, but I really, really hate how being on one makes you safe from aggro.
Oh heck, there was lots more I wanted to mention, but now I'm forgetting. Maybe I should keep notes while playing. :P
Here's the other screenshot I took: I take lots of pretty screenshots in FFXI, so I thought I'd try to take one in WoW. This was the prettiest I found. :/
I ended the night at level 9. I had wanted to get to level 10 so I can do the quests to learn to tame beasts, but man, I think XP grinding is even more boring in WoW than in FFXI. :p (FFXI people: While Hunters are like RNG/BST or BST/RNG, they can't charm/tame anything till level 10.)
Huh. I just realized something: Other than the "racial movie" you see when you first start out, I've not seen one single cutscene in WoW. I guess that shows you how little story there is in the game: The most plot you ever get is a couple of text sentences explaining why the NPC needs those X drops from Y mob.
Edit: Holy cow, this post got long. I only meant to note a few things before bed!
Edit: Oh, one more note! WoW is so very, very, very lonely. In three days, the most I've talked to anyone was to /tell a "Thanks!" when someone casts something good onto me. :/ That's so utterly different than the LS "family" I have on FFXI. I know I could probably join some guild or something, but strangers are scary and all that... :/
Oh, and one last note, then I'm going to bed for sure! I thought this would amuse folks: You get XP for everything in WoW, not just killing stuff and quests! I got XP for entering a zone for the first time! Heh heh. (I'm not sure if that happens for every zone or just cities. Of course I'm not expecting XP for that so never watched for it.)
