Life in Eorzea

It's been a bit over two weeks since the launch of the Collector's Edition of Final Fantasy XIV.  It's been quite the ride.

I've decided on making my main character a Seeker of the Sun Miqo'te Conjurer on the Figaro server:

She's probably the most decent looking female character I've designed in an MMO to date (which probably isn't that hard, laughably).

The pace isn't much different than in open beta, and now that I've reached the upper teens, I'm definitely feeling the grind.  Being Asian, I usually like the grind -- but only when it's efficient grinding.  Grinding in gear over 10 levels behind is not my idea of fun, however, so I've had to invest quite a bit of time into crafting, which also is just as slow.

My list of complaints are probably the same that many have already thoroughly expressed elsewhere.  For example, crafting requiring components from multiple professions, which by itself (in a normal MMO) is fine.  In an MMO without an official trade channel or an auction house, it is not.  Hopefully, dividing market wards into categories will help somewhat, but I'm still fairly unhappy with the 4 total clicks + loading time required to browse through and close each individual retainer/character's bazaar.

I also agree with someone who said that the game feels like a massive online single player game.  In a nice active linkshell?  Great, but be prepared to walk for ages (since there's no alternate transportation yet) after you rapidly deplete your anima, unless you have a very tight-knit, static party.  Lack of level-sync is a bit of a turn-off after FFXI, but it's not a game-breaker.

All that said, I'm still fairly satisfied overall with FFXIV, and hope that they make it better over time, to patch up the big gaping holes of bugs and unsatisfactory implementations and mechanics.

End of FFXIV Open Beta

Open Beta came to a close today.  Near the end, we had a small Taru Line in Ul'dah:

About 5 minutes before the server shutdown, GM "Rep Eulatot" made a brief appearance to say goodbye:

 

I didn't realize that GM's could be female - I've only seen male ones in FFXI.

New Taru?

This is my male Taru (or Lalafell) candidate for my main.  Maybe.

I tried to make it as close as I could to my original Taru (picture, little guy in the middle), but I can't seem to do a very good job of it.  That and the Dune Lalas don't seem to have very brown hair color choices.  I'd have made the skin color darker, but they seemed a bit too unnatural when I actually tried them out.

 

Excited for FF14

Final Fantasy XIV is going to be out in 6 more days! I wonder how it's going to be, and if the bugs that are all over in beta will be fixed in the short time between now and release.  I really dread the game crashes, especially while doing levequests -- especially considering the 48 hour (hopefully lessened by release?) cooldowns on those. Being locked out for the entire duration just for crashing during the course of one isn't my idea of fun.

I still can't decide between a Lala and a Mi'qote as my main...  Having played a Taru in FFXI, it's grown on me quite a bit, but for the life of me, I can't stand the way they run in 14.  I think they run too fast in proportion to their body size.  Like a Noggenfogger Elixir (small effect) + mount + run around kind of an effect.  And when you put them into walk mode, they walk even goofier than the Taru toddler "walk" mode.  Hard to push myself to the suspension of disbelief when there's this big uncanny valley to cross, especially when my Lala looks just like my daughter:

I know SHE would be tired (in real life) after 30 seconds of running like my character.  Who knows, it might be something I'd simply adjust to after a while.  That or I could play a catgirl...

I'd simply play a male, but the Hyur I designed after myself just ended up looking like Harry Potter or Shinpachi:

 At least the males in FFXIV are indeed less offensive than in WoW to me, but I still can't seem to feel right about it, like I could in Aion:

We'll see I guess.