Final Fantasy XI

[isiolia]

I haven't played since Promathia. A patch came in so that Beastmasters couldn't juggle pets properly anymore, so I just unsubbed. I still have a lot of happy memories of the game, though. It's been tempting to go back, but I'm not keen on the third party payment options they have in place.

As annoying as the change was for BSTs at the time, it did fix a lot of other issues. Fairly irrelevant now anyway, as while BST is probably more popular than ever, actually charming pets as opposed to using jugs is quite rare. The post-75 jugs are substantially stronger than the early ones.

They did put back some of the other payment options too. You don't need to buy Crysta anymore, there's a basic recurring charge to do too.

[Zing]

World of Warcraft was too easy. My friend and I duo'd it to level 60 and were able to easily do everything in the game alone except dungeons.

The challenge in wow isnt in leveling up nor in 5 man dungeons, it's in doing PvE and PvP. It used to be a lot more grindy than its nowadays.

I played it from launch until burning crusade. We never did any grinding. We only killed mobs related to quests. We actually avoided fighting sometimes since we felt we were over leveled.

[Zing]

The PC one is supposedly better, but I play on 360. the controls on PC take some SERIOUS getting used to. I guess you can configure it to play with a controller, but it's a pain.

I played with a Saitek P800, which was as close as you could get to a PS2 controller at the time. The controls are literally ported from the PS2 version, so PC gamers using a keyboard were screwed.

[isiolia]

I played with a Saitek P800, which was as close as you could get to a PS2 controller at the time. The controls are literally ported from the PS2 version, so PC gamers using a keyboard were screwed.

Only thing you really lack with keyboard control is variable movement speed, but that's par for the course for most PC games. Used to be the macro bar was delayed in actually appearing for keyboards since just hitting Ctrl or Alt + number was all that was needed anyway. They changed it so it now pops up fast, but you actually need to wait for it to appear
People also used to like the party targeting on the controller, but now we have <stpt> and <stal> that make it meh.

Game is currently adjusting things for PC users only, though most aren't in yet. There is a newer WSAD + mouse oriented control scheme.

Personally, I wouldn't say keyboard users were screwed. Like I mentioned, I think it's better. Gamepad control feels very limited. That's not even counting that, thanks to playing on PC, I can script gear with XML instead of the limited line macros they've got

[Menegrothx]

I played it from launch until burning crusade. We never did any grinding.

Doesn't sound like it, or you played very casually. Sure vanilla wow didnt have as much grinding as korean games you play with bot that farms the game for you, but it did have very time consuming reputation and material grinds

[Zing]

My level 60 Mage was in the first two months after launch. I also had a character of every race and class, almost all over level 30. I wouldn't call that casual. I went on one raid and it bored me to death, and that was the end of that. I did use the burning crusade trial to get a blood elf to level 12, but the low level areas were dead by then, so it was lonely and boring.

I really missed the forced parties of Everquest and FFXI.

[Menegrothx]

My level 60 Mage was in the first two months after launch. I also had a character of every race and class, almost all over level 30. I wouldn't call that casual. I went on one raid and it bored me to death, and that was the end of that. I did use the burning crusade trial to get a blood elf to level 12, but the low level areas were dead by then, so it was lonely and boring.

I really missed the forced parties of Everquest and FFXI.

Leveling doesnt require any grinding in WoW really. All the challenge is in PvE and PvP. And the grinding starts when you hit 60. Getting PvP rank 14 took months of farming, 6-8 hours a day atleast. And the last push between rank 13 and rank 14 required usually about 12-16 hours of PvPing 7 days a week for 3 consecutive weeks. There weren't really any (meaningful) reputation factions or anything you could grind between level 1-59. The whole game is designed around end game. Leveling is fairly meaningless, it's something you have to get done with so you can really start playing and enjoying the game.

I dont see what's so great about being forced to play in a party, that means you cant effectively play if you dont have any friends who play the game or if you want to solo. Warhammer Online did have a great system though, there were alot of regional party based quests and it was easy to join and drop out. Too bad most of the servers were dead so you had to solo/2 man content that was meant to be done with a bigger party.

[KoLAddict]

I agree about not liking forced partying. I understand completely with an MMO having areas/stuff you can't do without groups, but you should be able to at the least get to max level solo. Rift currently has my favorite system for leveling, although I don't play the MMO itself anymore. Being able to pop in/out of public groups via a pop up when near other people is awesome, and the world events/attacks are as well.

[Solus_Emsu]

I picked this game back up near the beginning of this year after having not played since launch. I got burned out pretty quick though as I got to lvl 90 in a matter of a month or two, when previously it took me nearly a year to get to ~65-70. The changes are nice since you can solo with Fields of Valor and in general things are easier but without the required community support the game just kind of loses its luster.

[rlrunyon]

Haven't played FF11 since Kingdom Hearts 2 came out for PS2. And I played FF11 on my PS2. I had the nice HDD and everything. I generally played EverQuest and World of Warcraft. I played a little Guild Wars and Phantasy Star Online. (PSO mainly offline.) I'm real interested in Phantasy Star Online 2, which releases the beginning of next year in America and Europe. Can't play MMORPGs right now due to lack of good enough internet to enjoy it. =(