FFXI and WoW

[thistlechaser]

FFXI: I'm just sorry someone beat me to this idea! Heeheehee.

Because I'm a really, really, really slow learner, I went chocobo digging last night and this morning. See, my plan was to take advantage of this downtime and hop on a bird and dig the moment the servers come back up. This required me to be at the location and have my bag full of greens before the servers went down. So last night I flew out to the Jungles, bought some greens, and went 'hey, I have an hour before I need to log off, perhaps I should dig!'.

So I did, and I actually made profit (Shock! Amazement!). This morning I was up before the servers went down at 8, so I figured 'hey, why not?'. I made less profit than last night, but still some. (More shock and amazement!) I have no confidence in my digging-ASAP-once-servers-up plan (it failed badly once before, every other digger seems to try this, too), but hey.

WoW: Ha ha ha, I'm stupid. I knew I'd be playing today (because FFXI was down, if for no other reason), and peppygrowlithe mentioned a patch needing to be downloaded, and I said 'Oh my! I suppose I should do that today so I can play tomorrow!'... then promptly forgot about it. :P But luckily WoW updates are tons tons tons better than even the best FFXI update, so I started it, wandered off, and when I got back in 15 minutes the entire thing was done.

Thanks to juicy "rested XP", I hit 19 this morning (and my XP bar is still blue)! I still don't understand this whole rested XP system (why reward people for staying away? Why not reward them for playing a long time?) but whatever! 200% of normal XP? {Yes, please!}

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

The idea behind 'rested XP' is to make the game nicer to the casual gamer. It takes a lot of grinding in any of these games to level up. That's not a big deal for the hardcore, 30+ hours a week type (well, not such a big deal), but for adults with an active social life, that spend 8 hours a week playing, mostly on weekends, the math becomes overwhelmingly bad. When you start levelling up once a calendar month, for most people, that's time to quit.

And from Blizzard's perspective, these guys are solid gold. They pay their monthly fee, and usually aren't online using server resources. If they can keep the casual crowd having fun, great!

It also is nice for people who like to play a lot of different alts (job variety)! I've never been good at sticking to a single character, and so I rarely see the higher level content in these games, even though if you added up all my levels, I'd be right up there!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

They pay their monthly fee, and usually aren't online using server resources. If they can keep the casual crowd having fun, great!

Yeah, I did think about the "saved server resources" angle, but... I guess it just doesn't synch up with my personal experience. (To me, "casual gamer" is one step from just outright quitting. I do something with every free moment of my time or I don't do it at all. "Casual playing" would be a term I used because I wasn't yet ready to say I had quit.)

It also is nice for people who like to play a lot of different alts (job variety)! I've never been good at sticking to a single character,

That's another part where I'm just totally out of synch with both Blizzard and (I suspect) the majority of gamers: I can't imagine playing more than one character (which is why I love FFXI's ability to play multiple jobs on one character, but really hate WoW's one-job-per-character).

It's odd (and nice) that between WoW and FFXI almost anyone interested in a MMORPG should be able to find somewhere that suits them.

[phoenix-leandra.livejournal.com]

Yup! For people like me who are silly and work too many hours and have too many credits at the same time. I like playing games, I just have no flipping time! (other than my nice little 30min chunks) You've already heard me moan and sob about it in your other replies about this killing me in FFXI. In WoW rested exp actually lets me almost catch up to my friends who have more time. Ultimately they DO get more experience for playing more, but it gives me a good head-start in trying to keep up.

Hee hee. I'm having fun playing Devil's (read: WoW) advocate after having used to think it was so terrible. I want to like FFXI more, but it just doesn't suit my lifestyle this semester.

[loneguardian.livejournal.com]

*falls over* 19? Hell, how'm I supposed to catch up to you? ;3 Meanie~

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, sorry! I did wonder why you commented yesterday that you hit 12. I was 18 then. :P I figured maybe you meant that you were now big enough to come find me wherever I happen to be.