By the time I logged into the stress test today I think it was no longer stressful. The US realms were packed, but the sole AU realm was only at medium pop. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets full tonight when more people will be at home to give it a try.

I rolled a few Alliance and Horde characters to see how each zone was playing and what differences if any there were. The Alliance zones seemed a lot more popular - especially the Humans, but even the Dwarves were fairly busy. Chat was full of either people trolling each other, or full of wonder at the nostalgia hit. The Tauren zone on the other hand was relatively lowly populated, and chat was much more helpful and gentle, as befits the Tauren nature.

Not being overly familiar with the Alliance, it was entertaining to hear how their intros were far more heroic when compared to the Horde. The Dwarves were going to war with the ‘merciless Horde’, and the Humans were being told ‘now is the time for humans’ - racial supremacy seems to be their thing. I wonder if the current voiceover intro is the same… …nope. Updated for Cataclysm, and also doing away with the Horde bashing and Human trumpeting. I guess Cataclysm was good for something after all!

The experience is very familiar, yet also very different. A Paladin starts with precisely zero melee abilities, having only the Seal of Righteousness buff to apply before you auto-attack with a hammer. Everything feels slightly slower and slightly more challenging, though I think respawn rates have been upped - maybe just for the test?

Start zones have aggressive mobs again, and it feels like you have to put more thought into your play. Much of this is simply due to the overpowered nature of Live now we have heirlooms and streamlined levelling, but there’s also a sense of delight at a world which is a bit rough around the edges and a bit more dangerous.

I didn’t play long, partly because the characters will be wiped, but mainly because I started to get the thrill of the new, strange as that may sound. Despite incredibly familiarity with Mulgore and the Tauren starter areas, it felt like I was doing it for the first time. Things seem more like work, more like you have to earn your quests and loot and upgrades and skills. Looting a grey drop and equipping it because it’s better. Having to read the quests to find directions, and understand and learn the map as a result. Dealing with mobs dying slowly, and being cautious on pulls. Knowing that getting through a zone, or a dungeon, or even a quest, is going to take concentration and effort.

It felt like there was a real journey ahead, and one which would take time. It will be fascinating to see if the glow wears off once it launches, but for now I’m excited.

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I jumped onto Live shortly after, and attempted the Nazjatar dailies, and the comparison was stark. Even though they’ve made the zone hard - I died a few times - it doesn’t feel like it’s hard because you’re learning, it feels hard because that means it will take longer, and because the map is frustratingly difficult to navigate.

Earning flying almost seems not worth it, and disappointingly punitive with the two new factions you have to advance - as Grimmtooth says, it feels like a slog rather than fun gameplay. I was looking forward to working to the flight unlock, but I think I’m starting to agree with Kaylriene’s theory on the curse of the x.2 patch:

I’d like to talk about what I’ve taken to calling the “ChoreCraft” effect – the point where playing the game distils down to a set of chores you have to do in order to enjoy the game … Since Pathfinder was introduced, no matter how good the underlying content is – no matter how artful the zones, beautiful the music, fun the raid and/or dungeon – it always will have the stink of being the place you go to do the chores.

I think Pathfinder should probably just be a single part, followed by a token quest chain unlock when the patch that enables flying drops. That would be far more satisfying, and allow the design of the new zones to focus on flying and fun instead of repetition and delay.

Despite all this I still like the idea of being land-locked for the first period of an expansion, but delaying it now via rep grinds is just busy work. It’s a worry for Blizzard when the initial narrative for a point release is that it’s annoying. There is some hope I guess as people seem to enjoy Mechagon, but there’s no avoiding Nazjatar.

#Blaugust09

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A break from the regular FFXIV posts today to catch up with the goings on in Warcraft world. The big event tomorrow is the Global stress test, starting Friday 9 at 0400 Australian time. For a moment I was excited to read that it would be ‘tomorrow 4AM’ on the official announcement page, thinking that meant 4AM California time and a perfect 9PM here, but quickly realised Blizzard have developed some kind of clever tech that displays the time relative to your OS locale or something. Curses.

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Still it will be fun to hop in and see the chaos and excitement. Also in that post are ‘minimum’ specs, nothing to worry about there - you can even play with (relatively new) integrated laptop graphics. And for those wanting to try it for the first time, remember to download the client in advance - quoting from the post:

1. Open the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App and select World of Warcraft in the game selection menu on the left.
2. Under the Version dropdown menu, select World of Warcraft Classic. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second dropdown for Account. In that column, select the active account to associate with your WoW Classic install.
3. Click the Install button. You’ll see an installation progress bar that will show you when the installation is complete.

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There was some news released about the Classic realms, with the welcome announcement that RP-PVP worlds will be available. Slightly less welcome is it appears to be US and EU only for the moment, but we in AU live in hope.

Blizzard have also created something called Classic Connections which guides you through drilling down from faction to realm-type to your original server, and then posting your name and class in order to try and reunite with some of the people you played with. It’s a nice idea, though the pickings are fairly slim at the moment. Maybe as we get closer to launch it will perk up.

And finally, name reservations are opening August 12 at 3PM, translating to 8AM August 13 for Australia (and I think 11PM GMT on the 12th). Blizzard have done pretty well here choosing a time that means most people will be vaguely awake. An important job before leaving for work that morning - choosing which three names, and which servers, is going to be more stressful than the stress test I think!

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Meanwhile on Live, our Alliance dungeon questing is almost at the end of the Classic dungeon set - tonight we finished off Stratholme, so only Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire and to go. The latter is a real favourite, a classic long dungeon crawl with amazing design, so I’m looking forward to that. Stratholme too is a great instance, full of tricky pulls and deadly postmen.

And Baron Rivendale, who, typically, didn’t drop his mount. Though he did drop a very nice sword - 10% movement buff and constant self-heals? Now that’s a weapon for Classic.

#Blaugust08

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Ahh, freedom.

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As soon as I left Ul’dah the game started to come alive. There were fantastic beasts, far horizons, and plenty to explore. could not find image

Unfortunately the weather went downhill rapidly, and my screenshots suffered accordingly - please excuse the dim light. As posited yesterday, I think it would be better design to start players in one of the small settlements outside the city (there’s even a cute one called Stonesthrow which is within…well, you get it) and work your way to the more established locales.

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Naturally, we also get our first taste of combat: it seems pretty fun and looks nicer than your average MMO. There are great lighting animations to show sword sweeps and special moves, which I’m sure must be spectacular in mass group combat. The global cool down seems pretty mellow, so it’s a lazy style of attack. Having said that, I soon discovered that you can have weapon combos, which is a fun mechanic - time your second ability that has combo potential right and you deal more damage.

I wonder how complex that gets, it could be quite a dance. I’m not sure yet if there are telegraphs and dodging required from enemy attacks, so far it’s simple hotkey abilities and timing - my preferred style, I think, though I’ve not been exposed to much else. There also appears to be auto loot, I haven’t had to manually pick up anything from a defeated foe yet.

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The minimap and map are very informative, though I was led slightly astray by what looked like a path to another zone along a railroad. Turns out it was a no through tunnel - the real zone links come from the larger red arrows on the map. Again a little surprised at how small the zones are before you need to load the next set of assets.

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There are public quests or FATES in FFXIV terminology (the rather uncomfortable acronym Full Active Time Events), which appear as icons on the minimap. I was too low level to join any, but look forward to seeing how they work when compared to GW2. I was expecting to see people advertising for assistance in chat, but so far I haven’t seen a single chat message, whether in the city or the wilds of Thanalan where I’ve been exploring. I suspect that means I’m doing something wrong, though I haven’t changed any settings.

One final observation for the day is that the inventory system is very generous. I seem to have four storage bags with 140 slots total, plus a ‘Key Items’ bag for quest items, and an ‘Armoury Chest’ with 20ish spots for each gear slot. It even has a neat UI data visualisation of the spaces in your bags, and which slots are taken.

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Quite a change from the normal MMO experience of eeking out precious space - it’s certainly a boost for the ‘one character’ philosophy!

#Blaugust07

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After earning my freedom from the tutorial, I’ve been wandering around the city of Ul’dah and following the breadcrumb quests. Which do a good job of introducing you to the various facilities and zones of the city. So far I’ve seen the merchants, Class guilds, and many a well dressed resident. The quests lead you sequentially from one thing to the next, all with inconsequential results.

After a while I started to get an itch to get out of the city, but I have a bit of a completionist personality so continued picking up every quest I saw and dutifully fulfilling the requests tasks. During all the back and forthing I naturally started jumping about, but unfortunately the jump animation leaves a bit to be desired, you kind of hop straight up and down just like a GW2 character - none of the playful fun of a Blood Elf’s occasional spin for joy.

The city itself is quite unlike most fantasy worlds I’ve encountered. The people are preoccupied with fairly regular concerns - fashion being a large one. There is a lot of fashion on display, from NPCs to other players, and many of the quests were concerned with things like finding the ‘in’ colour for the season, or acquiring gems for a spectacular dress.

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Also unusual was being tasked with performing some unsavoury jobs. During the tutorial you witness some thugs beating up a gambling debtor, and one of the early quests has you heavy a citizen quivering with fear - who then hands over her mother’s wedding ring for you to hock to repay the debt. You don’t get any choices in this, so there’s no consequence (I don’t think?), and nor does the game judge you in any way. I think I prefer the SWtOR light/dark model, where you at least get ‘rewarded’ for being bad, or good.

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During all this running about the UI and how it works started to be exposed. I was very surprised to find loading screens happening within the city. It’s big, but it’s not that big - reminding me most of Ironforge with avenues and streets running off semi-circular hubs. Some of the UI is obviously carried over from the single player games, from massive QUEST ACCEPTED overlays to the old fashioned need to drag (or right click and select from a menu) an item from your bag to the quest window in order to hand it in.

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I’m intrigued by the depth of some of information panels - there are a lot of stats and things to learn about and min-max, if that’s your cup of tea. Hotbars and controls are intuitive and seem to be very customisable, with good mouse and movement controls. And there are many nice conveniences like clicking on subquests and having the map open to where you need to go. The UI also confirmed and tempted the magic possibility of one character who can do anything.

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A nice discovery is the ability to teleport to other Worlds (aka Servers) in order to be able to join up with friends. That makes the World choice less crucial, though there did appear to be some limits on what you could do when teleported.

One offputting thing is that the quest text is heavily heavily male skewed. Everything refers to men/man/he/him, no matter that I’m standing there as a woman wanting to learn how to Gladiator. I’m getting the feeling there will be a fair amount of sexism on display. As with any videogame, it’s a real shame when you encounter tired stereotypes such as the nagging wife and disobedient husband, given the scope for unlimited social creativity.

Maybe it’s because these zones are old, and things improve once you start getting to expansion material, but I don’t recall experiencing the same blatantly one-sided dialogue in Warcraft, SWtOR, or GW2. Having said that many of leading NPCs I’ve encountered are women, including the leader of my Gladiator’s Guild (though she was wearing a chainmail skirt - maybe it’s a nod to the Roman Gladiator’s armor skirt). Like the Viera, benefit of the doubt for now.

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I think perhaps starting in a city is a bad idea. While it allows FFXIV to do a good job establishing the mechanics of trading, crafting, fast travel, etc, it also limits the actual fantasy a fair amount. I felt like I was basically a courier travelling in a largish city, not too removed from real life. There’s also no sense of beginning a heroic story, or not yet. The concept of the big-bang (or even small-bang) start is not on show here.

Starting a Tauren in Warcraft has you defending the village from attack. In SWtOR you’re thrown into some local conflict or another almost immediately. In FFXIV I had to sign a charter to become an adventurer, then deliver some envelopes to stern looking administrative types. It’s quite amusing if not exactly compelling.

Apologies if this all seems fairly critical - I’m still very interested in finding out what makes this game tick. What I really want to experience is the wide open lands and strange wondrous creatures FFXIV is famous for. And the epic storylines. Fancily dressed citybound humans of various heights are still just humans. Thankfully I eventually started collecting the requisite ‘kill 10 rats’ missions, which will take me outside the city gates - into the real world.

#Blaugust06

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After days of planning and character tuning, I finally logged into FFXIV today. Well, after waiting for the 13 player queue to clear I did. That was a novelty - a logon queue! Haven’t seen one of them in a long time - even Warcraft expansion launches don’t have queues these days. A healthy sign for popularity.

My immediate thought was that the engine looks very much like that of GW2 - very high fidelity graphics, with beautiful colours and landscapes. Very different to Warcraft and SWtOR with their cartoony style and simpler palettes, both of which I enjoy despite the detractors.

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Interestingly it starts like more of an RPG, like the Witcher or Skyrim, setting the tone via cut scenes and slow story telling. We start in a wagon, moving across a desert landscape, being given gentle world cues by an elderly trader. The journey is interrupted by some brutish border guards, who in turn are attacked by our first sight of world mobs, before eventually we arrive in the starting city of Ul’dah.

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Again reminiscent of GW2 in scale and grandeur, though the city itself is rather empty when I arrive - even the NPCs seem scarce. I wonder if the intro is phased? I was quickly beckoned by my first true NPC, someone decidedly different to your regular fantasy stereotype.

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I decided I’d ignore him for the moment and go exploring, but the game refused to allow me to do that - I hit some kind of invisible wall within a few metres and was forced to turn back to my sunglassed friend. That was unexpected. My new friend advised that I needed to be registered with the Adventurer’s Guild in order to… adventure. Makes a kind of sense.

My freedom of movement grew slightly larger, but I still couldn’t wander to my heart’s content, so I went with the flow - I guess it’s a tutorial of sorts, which seems sensible. More cut scenes followed, complete with facial talking animations but no actual voices. It is kind of jolting not hearing what is being said while being forced to watch (SWtOR spoils us there), but it also allows quicker progress through the conversations.

I was witness to a gambler being beaten by local heavies, and strangely wasn’t called upon to do anything about it. Welcome to Ul’dah indeed. And with that I was free! Suddenly other players appeared, and quests, and the world was waiting. Time to explore.

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#Blaugust05

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