The graphics are not wonderful in Nier, but you can tell that it was made parallell to FFXIV – it even has the same shining gathering nodes! Except… it rocks.

NIER is, to me, the lost FF game. It’s like a single player cross between the good parts of XIII and XIV. IMHO, it’s way more worthy of the Final Fantasy heritage than XIII or XIV.

Wait … didn’t that just happen? Or has SE just managed to relocate their entire operations over to China?

You know what, fuck it, I can’t finish that. Square needs to end the Final Fantasy series with an ultimate bang: HD remake of FFVII, and some sort of monster crossover game that lets you have a party of all the best characters from the “standout” games (IV, VI, VII, IX, XII) and take on some ultra-mega-badass monster and close it with the cutscene to end all cutscenes, and just say, “OK, we’re closing up shop on this. Enjoy Kingdom Hearts and Parasite Eve, PEACE!”

For Yoichi Wada, the title of SE CEO is all about finding new ways to leverage the Final Fantasy brand-name for cheap products, he is completely indifferent to value adding to it, since this has little immediate monetary impact.

Square should have just upgraded the graphical assets of their existing MMO.

I think you owe everyone here an apology for misrepresenting your opinion! Now take a sip from your mouldy Chinese tumbler of shame, climb upon your horsebird and NEVER RETURN!!!

You don’t like WoW, where leveling means performing story oriented and varied tasks. Wondeful. But a grind is a repetitive task with no different outcome. Kill quests are a minority of WoW quests.

I have seen nothing in the release patches that gives me much hope for FFXIV, and I wanted to like the game. It’s a niche MMO for weeaboos that want to oooh and aaah over decent graphics and talk about how superior their game is to others. I like WoW, obvs, but I’m not enthralled. I’m beta testing 3-4 more games and still play AoC and WAR. WoW is still the best around because they make fun and engaging systems, let lots of people see the content, especially at endgame, and make game mechanics transparent enough that players can figure out how to play well. It is a smartly made game.

FFXIV is not. It is a boring, laggy excuse to create a social space.

I read this, and I laughed. For all the wrong reasons. I feel that the reviewer is totally biased, and bashes features he isn’t even interested in using.

Like the crafting system. You can level, without ever entering combat. This makes sense to me, since that leveling only applies to your crafting class. It does not apply to any other class. Although you can make use of abilities that you’ve unlocked. I honestly like combat sometimes. But most the time I don’t. I don’t feel good about grinding enemies and killing all the wildlife in an entire region. Sorry WoW players, killing shit shouldn’t be the only way to level.

Another reason for my belief on this issue, is because the “go kill shit” attitude pisses me off. Especially in WoW, (which I’ve played for 2 years now). I don’t like fighting. In WoW, I’m almost always a healer. I just don’t see the point in killing PvE monsters over and over for “quests” (quests=grinding in WoW) all by your lonesome. Which is how it usually is in WoW. I don’t want to fight. I think it would be great if I could level as a crafter. This game gives me exactly that opportunity.

Also, for the WoW people here who despise what this game stands for. Grind fest? Seriously? That’s exactly what WoW is, so why don’t you love Korean games? WoW is just a different type of grind fest. It’s grinding out quests (which are almsot all “Go kill shit and pick this item off their dead corpse”, OR “Go find this item, and kill tons of shit to find it, then bring it back. Then do the exact same thing two quests from now). That’s grinding. Just a different type.

Also, WoW is all about grinding at end-game. Think about WotlK, it took me 5 months to get from lvl 200 gear to lvl 264 gear. That’s roughly, 3800 gearscore to a 5700 gearscore rating. But it was all pure grinding. Killing raid bosses to get drops (which half the time I couldn’t even get a good roll on), or grinding emblems to get some other piece of gear. Grind-grind-grind-grind. That’s what WoW is all about. It’s just that hardcore WoW people seem to be fooled by the ole’ bait and switch. Suddenly they don’t think it’s grinding!

Then guess what? The next X-pack comes out and you have to grind back to max level, and then spend twice as long grinding gear constantly. Great idea reviewer guy! That’s obviously loads better than this game’s leveling and gearing system. NOT!

Seriously. Considering the reviewers biases…and lack of objectivity, I feel that this is a totally inaccurate review.

Stay away from FF14 at least for … 6 month maybe 12 months at least.

Quoted for sheer lunacy! What a delightful notion!

The UI has got to be fixed:
1. Mouse lag, WTH.
2. Why the hell do I have to hit home-enter to bring up a menu with everything on it. Where is the “go up to object and press X/click” tradition of every other FF console game. I only ever see one or two options in the menu that I want- Synth (crafting) or Use-the-darned-save-point. If it only has one option, why present the giant slow menu? Even character interaction… ugh.
3. It’s pretty, it’s currently the prettiest MMO that I’ve had the chance to play/willing-to-give-it-a-chance.
4. I have a rather overkill system, it only uses 2 cores at most, and about 700MB of RAM. For that, it uses MUCH less resources than equally pretty games (Vindictus) and is much more seamless. There’s more prettiness to turn on in the config program. You can make a top of the line machine CRAWL with some settings.

As you’ve stated before, the graphics themselves are equal to most modern MMORPGs. However, I think it’s how they’ve utilized the graphics with the developers art style. Although it’s obvious it is a JAPANESE game, with a JAPANESE art style, there is some hint of originality to it all. For whatever reason, I find myself drawn to the potato-limbed “Falafel” creatures.

I’ve been a slave to eastern MMOs for far too long. The stories aren’t immersive and the fetch quests make me want to scratch out my eyeballs. I can’t get myself to suit up in the toony Disney-esque creatures WoW has to offer either.

I was worried FF14 would essentially be playing with a “doll”. Pushing myself through a game because of the aesthetics of it all. But even the lack of customization options makes my stomach turn. Woe is me.

You’ve given me a lot to think about.

You might however find that it gets better over time.