Guild Wars and FFXI

[thistlechaser]

When nothing is happening on FFXI, I spend my time reloading those random LJ image sites. Lately Guild War screenshots have been catching my eye, so I downloaded some videos and poked around on YouTube. Anyone on my flist play it? Based on what little I've seen (art style, mostly) if I had to leave FFXI and still wanted an MMO, it looks like a pretty cool place. What's gameplay like compared to FFXI?

Unrelated: This icon amuses me, but even if I saved it I'd never use it in fear of offending folks. :P

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Besieged is slowly building, so I might as well post! Yesterday I had nothing I needed to do, so went farming for bomb ash (goes into firesand, keeps my bullet cost down). While there I killed a couple of NMs~.

Juggler Hecatomb is my friend, even though he never drops anything for me. That's fine, as I don't want his drop! I just enjoy killing him. I've been thinking about him lately. I did some DRK-related quest (I think it might have been a WS quest?) in which we learned that the weapons floating over the dancing weapons' is actually the soul of blah blah blah, elves or army guys or something. Whatever. The point is, if the weapon is a soul, how do you explain the dancing weapons which have three weapons over their heads? Soul orgy time? I was thinking it could be something more IC: Some people have one job. "I'm a Dark Knight" said no matter what job you're currently on. But what if people have a connection to more than one job? Maybe they're the ones who end up as dancing weapons with more than one weapon over them!

Also got the uber HNM Crushed Kraus. His sole purpose in life (unlife?) was keeping me entertained for the rest of the night, thinking of cool ghost names.

Not a NM but amused me: Two different eles at once! Weather was coming hard and fast, one right after the other, so this kept happening.

Today while home for lunch (which just happened to be new moon/Darkday) that HNM LS guy caught me for his synths. Unfortunately (but totally unsurprisingly) both were NQs:

I hope that he'll bazaar them so there's a chance my name will stay on them (usually I don't like having my name on NQ synths, but this is an exception), but I'll understand if he AHs them.

Assault static was tonight, and it went well other than me being rushed and stressed and sick for most of it. :P Work kept me late so I got home just in time, but my stomach was upset the whole time so I kept thinking I'd have to run off in the middle of things. Blech.

Unfortunately we lost our new one: Extermination. We were really close to winning (one mob short), but the slimes slowed us down too much. Our only mage-like things were a WHM/BLM (we had a melee with no shadows, so her MP was muchly taken by curing though), a SMN, and DRK/NIN me. I tossed out what nukes I could, but my MP pool is too puddle-like for much. It was really close though. After that we won our usual three runs of Saving Private Ryaaf. Next week we should be halfway to our goal in that area, I think.

Comments

[aelice.livejournal.com]

GW is pretty good. Dramatically different gameplay, jobs are pretty interesting, and missions/storyline are really, really good. :) It's great for a break. Much more geared for casual play.

[deckardmagnus.livejournal.com]

Extermination is hard to win without a BLM or RDM to solo the slimes while the melees mop up the other mobs.

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I dabble in Guild Wars some. (Yeah, I'm cheating on FFXI with another MMO. Actually, I haven't logged into GW in a while, and right now I'm cheating on FFXI with FFXII. But that's a little bit different. ;p) It's pretty fun, although I solo 99% of the time, so it feels less like an MMO and more like an offline RPG with a bunch of really odd NPCs in the towns.

For starters, everything is instanced. You never see another player outside of a town unless they're in your party. So you don't have to compete with people for anything. You also don't really level grind. Most of the xp I've gained has come from quests (they usually give some xp as well as an item reward) and killing whatever I happen to run into.

...hm. Before I start babbling a lot, are there specific things you want to know? Like character types and customization or how the games connect or what enemies are like?

[southern-hell.livejournal.com]

The thing about GW is that you can complete a mission line very quickly. Once you finish the expansions there's nothing to do except either take another character through the exact same missions, or pvp. It is not a long term PvE game at all. The lastability drops to null if you aren't into the guild versus guild pvp system. It may have been improved in expansions as well as the random team pvp but when I played I quit after completing the missions and never cared to blow 40 bucks on the next line. The random team pvp didn't even matter how good your players were, if you got a 4 Me versus 4 Mo the Mo were going to blow through you; when I played it would just toss the first 4 people in onto a team onto a random map, and that was that. GvG is something I never participated in because the instances make it very hard to meet people who want to make friends and guildees, but the basis of it is protecting your teams hero, so there are very fixed requirements job and build wise for succeeding.
The elements of the PvE system are however very enjoyable, as are the graphics, and I very much look forward to Guild Wars II, which instead of continuing the expansions they realized the player base they were losing from lack of PvE content and so will rebuild the game with higher level cap and more continuous PvE content.
Personally I can't wait for Aion. I think it will be quitting FFXI worthy.

[southern-hell.livejournal.com]

If your SMN and WHM can't be another job the SMN should go get pulls early, otherwise one of them should be a DD and you on BRD should pull early. I have won it with a BLM soloing the slimes but I have also won it WHM BRD 4 DDs w/ BRD pulling moreso than worrying about songs.

[reynardstruan.livejournal.com]

Quote

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Juggler Hetacomb is my friend. I like killing him

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Even I can see how that's just not right, and I'm guilty of saying "I'm sure I could have posted a picture of Mikhail Gorbachev doing the Texas Line Dance and it would have worked, but unfortunately, that has very little to do with shaving badgers."

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

I played guildwars- was in the Beta and bought when it was released. I haven't touched the expansions. The only way I enjoyed it was when I recruited friends to play. Even then...its really more of an actionRPG. Hack&Slash. The plot is 'meh.' Some of the quests are like: Run out into this battlefield, rescue commander from the advancing horde. Very scenic, fireballs falling from the sky, demons racing over the hills, eventually everyone's fighting things while one person races for the gates...Was fun, but not in an engaging, lasting way.

As someone said above, most of the leveling curve is based on quests...It reminded me a lot of Diablo2. As your character progresses, you progress through new towns, doing new quests...Sadly, it feels about as linear as Diablo2 (which isn't a wholly bad thing. if you have a group of friends to play with, running around smearing&searing the local fauna can make for a very enjoyable evening of gaming). The crafting was...well...could barely be called crafting. Seemed like pretty much anyone can make pretty much anything if you get the drops.

Eventually it all went to PvP, and the PvP system just wasn't engaging enough for me (don't think I've ever found one that didn't bore me after a short while, except Planetside, but that hardly counts).

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

I suppose a caveat to this comment, based on other comments, is that I'm really not that far in. I haven't done most of the missions. I've spent most of my time exploring and doing quests. I haven't touched anything PvP-ish, nor do I have any plans for it. So I can't really say much about the long-term aspects of the game.

[veri-of-remora.livejournal.com]

^ he pretty much sum'd up what I was going to say.

[daltontrix.livejournal.com]

Yarr, come play Puzzle Pirates with me, lass! Where PVP is strategic sea battles and Tetris or Puzzle Bobble dependin' on yer weaponry.

Okay, I'm going to stop talking like a creepy pirate. But hey, it's simple, pretty fun I find, and a year subscription is only 75 dollars, so it's a bit cheaper than most MMOs I think. And you can play for free as long as you want too, with certain restrictions (limited access to certain puzzles and can only advance so far up in rank and such).

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hm, maybe I'll check out the free version! Thanks for the info. :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not really big on PvP. Hm. Well, if I ever need a break from FFXI maybe I'll try GW instead of poking my head back into WoW.

Thanks for the info!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

:D But see, a friendship with a NM is a special thing! You try to kill it, it tries to kill you, it all works out! :P

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hm, thanks for the info!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Huh, GW II with more staying power sounds good! I'm not so big on PvP but we'll see if I need a new game soon. (Hopefully not, but you never know.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ability to solo is great and "For starters, everything is instanced. You never see another player outside of a town unless they're in your party." sounds amazingly good!

...hm. Before I start babbling a lot, are there specific things you want to know? Like character types and customization or how the games connect or what enemies are like?

Is it fun? How do the graphics compare to FFXI? I saw some cat-men-things, are those characters or beastmen? (I like playing animal-people things!)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah. We're going to give it another try next week and see how it goes. *crosses fingers*

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Casual play/break is hopefully how I'd use it. Though, if I burnt out on FFXI then I'd probably have to look for something more intense. :/

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

It is pretty fun. I find it's easier to play for short periods of time. I can usually log in for an hour and get a few quests done, for starters.

I prefer the larger character models of FFXI, but the graphics are fairly nice. Things are well-animated. If you've seen screen shots, then you've probably got a pretty good idea of the size of various things.

Right now, you can only play as a human. In GWII, you'll be able to play as some of the other races. (They're introducing most of them in Eye of the North.) I think that in the third campaign (Nightfall) there are some non-human NPCs you can get in your party.

If you aren't familiar with how the game is structured, there are three campaigns out right now: the original Guild Wars (aka Prophecies), Factions, and Nightfall. Each is standalone and covers a different region of the world. You don't need Prophecies to play Factions, etc. At the end of August, they're releasing Eye of the North, which is an actual expansion and requires at least one of the others. It sets up a lot of things for GWII (but won't be required for it).

If you have more than one campaign, you can take the same character all over the world and do all the missions (and most of the quests). Certain jobs are only creatable in certain campaigns. For example, you can only start an Assassin in Factions, but you can take them to the Prophecies and Nightfall areas if you have all three games. (For the record, I only have Prophecies, but if the other two drop to $30 or less, I might consider picking them up.)

By the way, you can always pick up NPCs in towns to fill out your party. There's a standard set of 4 or 5 that are available in each town. They don't gain levels while they're with you, but as you progress in the game, they come with higher levels. Nightfall apparently has more customizeable ones called Heroes, but I don't know much about them.