Let’s start with the MMO update, because I have something really exciting to share!

FFXI – On the “He Says, She Says” website, I made the announcement of the Square Enix Podcast Tour. And I get to give away prizes in my show! HS/SS has been going strong for 11 episodes now and slowly generating some buzz. I’m just really happy that it’s gotten to the point where it was included in SE’s community team. I’ve levelled Warrior up to 34, Paladin to 26, Thief to 27, Black Mage to 34, and the recent April update has been *amazing* for White Mage. I am very, very, VERY happy with this update. Hyozan has been bustling with activity as well. It makes me a very proud linkshell leader~

More on Pangya, Gunbound and World of Warcraft after the jump.

Gunbound & Pangya – By starting a thread about other MMOs on the Hyozan forums, I started to feel nostalgic. Especially since Nikki had mentioned she’d been playing both with people in Iparty recently. Now, the problem I have with these two now, is that I can’t play with her for stupid reasons. You see, while Pangya moved to a different company and has some Account Recovery thing going on, I can’t play with my old account until the next maintenance. I refuse to play with a low-level Scout with default gear. As for Gunbound, Nikki says she’s able to use her old account on Gunbound Revolution (since apparently, Gunbound World Champion is no longer updated or something). Ijji.com took over Gunbound or something? Regardless, I have to start over since I can’t access my space-marine-helmet, chinese-lantern-carrying guy.

Enter World of Warcraft. I’m trying this from a reviewer point of view, and all my bitching about what I’ve seen what it does to people AND prejudices towards its commercialism, I think it’s only fair to tackle it properly. I’m an open-minded person. And I enjoyed the Warcraft lore a lot from the preceding three titles. I’ve given it a shot last year, with a Human Paladin, but got tired of it really fast because I didn’t bother with quests; just grinding. Which was mistake #1. Since XP is gained through quests, it would’ve gone faster that way! Not to mention, I had to deal with a huge download AND a patch afterwards. Nowadays, Blizzard offers the trial via stream. Which means that you only need to download a 6mb client and play it via their servers. I’m down with that. No prob.

I was joking on Ventrilo about how I was going to create a female Human Warrior named Sooraya, just to tease Nikki. But I went for the non-couch-resulting option of doing what I do when trying out MMO(RPG’s): Create a character that uses ranged attacks and call her Najelith.

….Which actually sends me to the couch too. Damnit.

Anyway, 11 levels on Najelith the human Rogue, I think I can give somewhat of an impression.

• Challenge – Compared to FFXI, this game is easy. I can see that it’s more accessible for casual players (like your mom). I joined an RP server, where to my surprise, only 50% of the people I’ve encountered were actually roleplaying. I suppose joining an RP guild is the thing to do for more intense roleplaying, but I don’t think you can do that on a trial account. I’ve not done raids or tackled the higher levelled quests (which is really more of the same. Fetching stuff.), so I can’t really judge that.
• Levelling up – At some point, grinding gets tedious (especially since I’m playing this solo). But at least I’m busy the whole time, since as a Rogue, you’re more dependant on your additional skills to pack extra damage with your daggers (much like Thief, in FFXI). I think once I get another talent point, I’ll put it in Dual Wield.
• Enemies – Aggro does not work the same way as in FFXI. It’s stupid. How am I going to Backstab monsters if they aggro by *range*?
• Graphics – WoW is a different kind of pretty. The zones are very intricate and the effects are high-end. The characters themselves, not so much. While the selection of armor is very varied, they look more like cheap painted low-res textures on the bodies. Unless it’s spiky, they armor pieces don’t really seem to have any body to them. I like the visible capes, though. Entering Stormwind for the first time really felt like entering a big stronghold/castle/city. The soundtrack that played as you entered was really effective. Kind of like those well-placed movie soundtracks.
• Battle - The (battle) animations are really stiff. But it’s the same as it was in the RTS variant of Warcraft. When I logged into FFXI after a WoW session, it felt that Tamtu was really executing the actions with effort, compared to Najelith’s *stab.stab.stab.stab.stab.*
• Death – I’m still unsure on how I feel about dying in WoW. In FFXI, you incur a EXP penalty that covers 10% of your required total experience points to the next level. Here, you don’t lose EXP, but your armor incurs a 25% durability penalty. An additional 10% penalty happens when you choose to resurrect via the spirit right away. Chances are, you’ve died in a group of mobs, making it pretty useless to run to your corpse as a spirit and resurrect yourself. I mean…You don’t lose XP. But I’ve found myself having to run to my corpse 5 times in a row because of stupid aggro. Again, not really sure how I feel about dying in this game.
• Likes? – Something I did enjoy in WoW are the smaller areas to do things on the way from one big stronghold area to the next. It makes questing more fun, since you can do little quests for rewards and exp from and to another village/farm. Granted, it also means a lot of footwork to be done, but it also makes questing more elaborate. FFXI quests are really pretty limited to the few cities/villages available, making travelling for these quests in comparison more tedious than WoW.

Overall, the game reminded me of Fable (one I need to play again and finish!). The gameplay, the quests, the vibrant colors of the world, the overall feel to it, that’s what brought me to that reference. World of Warcraft was entertaining, but not worth it for me to pay a monthly fee. After I’ve milked out this trial for what it’s worth, I think I’ll go and pick up Fable again for my PC questing needs.

Also. I like my battles to have music. Battle themes for the win~

Final conclusion to follow when the trial ends!

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