Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Good EXP Areas

Just wanted to share with everyone some of the good exp spots to help out if you are having trouble leveling up.

Rank 7-14ish NW of Gridinia in the Black Shroud
  • Fight squirrels, and then when you get too high fight Young Garalago.
Rank 5-10 Directly north-west of Camp Bearded Rock is a small downward slope. In there there's a cave
  • Fight Moles and Aurelia
Rank 10 (2 people) NW of Camp Drybone is a little mountain that the path goes through
  • Fight dodos, thistletail marmots and coblyns
Rank 11-14 Way south of dry bones past the node, there is a spot against the rock wall
  • Fight dodos
Rank 6-9 Uldah Cave
  • Fight chigoes, wandering souls, snapping shrews, etc.
Rank 12-16 The Black Shroud, just north of Camp Tranquility is a river area 
  • Fight Canopy Galagos and Faerie Funguars.
 These are just some of them, but it should be enough to get you started. Let me know if this is helpful and you would like to hear about more.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

So, what's your favorite MMORPG?

As an aside before I ask, I got my computer put together and got FFXIV installed. Unfortunately the server that all my friends went to closed because it filled up. I'll be making a character on a different server until it opens up again, but that kinda blows.

Here's a list of most of the MMORPGs that have come out.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/gameId/0

So, which is your favorite? If you think MMOs are a massive waste of time and suck balls, then you can post that too.

To list the ones that I have heard of:
  • Aion
  • Asheron's Call
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • City of Heroes
  • Eve Online
  • Everquest 1/2
  • Final Fantasy XI
  • Guild Wars 1/2
  • Lineage 1/2
  • Lord of the Rings Online
  • Ragnarok Online
  • Runsescape
  • Warhammer
  • World of Warcraft
I didn't list FFXIV obviously because it's too new. These are really just the major mainstream ones that I've heard of, I haven't played nearly all of them. All I've really played is FFXI, WoW, Aion and a little bit of Lineage. FFXI would have to be the one that I liked the most, though a lot of people didn't like it. It just kept me interested for longer. I got bored pretty fast in Aion and WoW, felt like they were too easy. 

Anyway, I don't want to get into a deep explanation of my favorite MMO, I'd like to hear other people's opinions. Feel free to tell me that FFXI is a horrible game. In some ways I'd agree, but it was still my favorite.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Computer Build

So since a few people asked about the specs on the computer I ordered, I'll go ahead and post them up here since I'm still waiting on everything to come in the mail. This is only my 2nd build but hopefully I did alright picking stuff out.

Total with shipping came out to $805.66

Case: Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100283-3L Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor HDZ955FBGMBOX
PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 ...
DVD/CD Drive: SAMSUNG DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223L LightScribe Support - OEM
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL7D-4GBRM
Heatsink/Fan: ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 64 Pro 92mm Ceramic CPU Cooler
Motherboard: ASUS M4A77TD AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
Hard Drive: SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Also includes Windows 7, I could have saved $90 by torrenting that but didn't feel like dealing with it. So, how'd I do? Is this an ok build for the price?

Thursday, September 23, 2010

The Release

So, the game's been released, or at least the collector's edition has for people who wanted to pay the extra $30. I'm still waiting on my computer to come, supposed to be here Friday. I was planning on waiting for the standard edition, but I got offered a buddy pass and now I pretty much get the game free, saving me $50 and I just have to torrent the game. I'll be heading over to Figaro server when I get my new pc together and setup and everything. Anyone else playing right now or going to pick up the game soon?

Saturday, September 18, 2010

New computer!

So I'm about to order my new computer build so that I can actually play the damn game when it comes out. Total comes out to $826.66 with shipping. Not too bad, lol. I was actually expecting to pay more than that to get something decent enough to run it. Hopefully this one will be able to run it on more than minimum settings. Playing FFXI on this shitty computer always sucked.

I'm not even sure what server I'm going to play on. It seems like all of my friends are spreading out amongst different servers, and I don't know where to go. I don't even know what servers anyone is playing on. I guess I'll figure that out when I need to. I'm thinking about just waiting an extra week and getting the standard edition instead of the collector's edition to save some money. I'm not that desperate to play. I can't wait until my computer comes though, only going to be my second time building a computer so it'll be fun. It's easy but it's nice to get used to doing things like that.

I leave you with this.

http://ffxiv.xion2u.net/

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Only a week until release.

Who's as excited as I am for the release? We only have a week to go for the collector's edition and then another week for the standard edition. We're not far off. I am not even sure what server I am going to play on. A lot of my old friends from FFXI are spread out amongst different servers. I'm anxious to play with some new people though.

As I'm not playing the beta right now, I don't have a whole lot to discuss. I feel like I'm behind quite a bit though in comparison to all the people that have been playing the beta this whole time. Well, as far as knowledge of the game goes. Everything gets reset when the game is released. I guess it couldn't be too hard to learn though, especially since I play FFXI.

I did want to talk a little about the fatigue system that I linked in my last post. I like this idea as I'm not going to have a ton of time to play and it'll keep me from falling too far behind. Apparently this threshold is specific to each class, so if you switch to a different class your fatigue will be gone and you can level up that job. I think the hardcore players are probably going to end up leveling a ton of classes at once. According to the video, a person who plays 1 hour a day can level at the same pace as someone who plays 15 hours a day. That's crazy. A lot of people aren't going to like that, but it works in my favor.

Monday, September 13, 2010

FFXIV: The next game to ruin my life and yours.

Hey everyone. This blog is going to be focused on the analysis and discussion of the new MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. I'm going to assume that readers and followers know the basics of an MMORPG and, to an extent, FFXIV. I'm not going to explain every minor thing as if I'm giving a guide to the game; I'm just doing an analysis and writing about how I feel about the game. To tell you a little about myself, I played Final Fantasy XI, the other Final Fantasy MMO, for about 6 years. This game had a lot of potential to be great, and it was great in some aspects, but there were a lot of things that Square Enix could have done better. I don't want to delve too deep into FFXI as this blog is going to be about FFXIV, but there are some things that SE could improve on with the release of FFXIV.

The biggest concern that I had with FFXI was the customer service (or lack thereof) that SE provided. Getting any support from the staff was like pulling teeth, except it was a lot harder.You would call a GM about a problem in the game and not only would it take an hour or more for a response, you probably wouldn't get any help when you did eventually hear from someone. Another thing that sort of ties in with this is the fact that SE has always been persistent in making their games seem "mysterious," and not explaining anything. There are things that should most definitely be explained to the players, as opposed to leaving them in the dark. I'm not saying that it's not good for the community to get together and collaborate about strategy and damage formulas, but there's certain things that are just stupid to be secretive about.

I was always a hardcore player when I played FFXI, playing about 16 hours a day when I didn't have anything to do (which was often). I was addicted. I'm busy now though, so I'm going to be playing FFXIV a little (a lot) more casual. I feel like this game is going to be more directed at the casual player than FFXIV was. I think SE realized that in FFXI a lot of things were just too time-consuming. It's a lot better to be able to just jump on for an hour or two and actually feel like you accomplished something.

There's a lot of things that I'm looking forward to in FFXIV. I'm not going to talk about anything specific in this introductory post though, I'll get started on that in my next post. The open beta has started already, but I haven't played yet because I need to get a new computer still to run it. I'm not sure if I'll get in before the beta ends; if not, I'll just start when it's actually released, which isn't too far away. I've heard mixed opinions on how the beta is going, but a lot of what I've heard has been good. So we're not too far away from release, and I hope everyone else is as pumped as I am to play it.

I'm going to leave you with this video that I'll probably talk about in my next post.