Final Fantasy XI
My lust for new adventures have led me to pick up the complete version of Final Fantasy XI, for only $15. What a scoop! So, 12 hours of installs and updates later, I get to log-in and be severely disappointed!
Now, before I start complaining, I want to be fair. I had forgotten a number of things about FFXI; mainly the fact that it is eight years old, probably the oldest MMO still actively updating besides Everquest (and who the hell is still playing original Everquest), and it was designed to be playable on the PS2. So of course the game looks awful by 2010 standards. It’s blocky and grainy and the starting city is an almost uniform brown. A bit disappointing, but considering its age, understandable.
Then I finished with the very Final Fantasy-like intro, and prepared to start adventuring, only to discover that I couldn’t goddamn move! I tried all the buttons I was used to, wasd, arrow keys, clicking on the ground where I want to go, nothing doing. So I decide, my bad, I should probably read the manual, better log out, only to find that all the obvious logout options don’t work either! I couldn’t do anything! I was trapped.
Turns out that the directional pad, which had gathered dust on my keyboard because it's never used, was how you move by default, and to log out you push pause/break. Naturally, I think this is dumb, so I try to go to the main menu to change it up…and I can’t find it. Ridiculous.
After finally getting the keyboard set-up how I want and figuring out how to move around and access all my menus (a bit of a chore process), I have completely forgotten what the initial quest giver told me to do. So I wander around talking to random dudes. One of them gave me a quest to get an egg, and I ignored him, while another asked me if I wanted to help my country. Of course! So I run outside and immediately get stung to death by a bee.
I didn’t even go where he asked me to, he wanted me to go to some mines and get a report. So I do, wandering for 10-15 minutes trying to find the guy who has the report, getting said report, leaving the mine, and being unable to find where I’m supposed to go next. Been playing for an hour…haven’t even gained a single experience point. Fantastic.
After more wandering around the city, I try to leave again to get killed by more bees, when some NPC flags me down. Holy crap, a newbie questman! Why didn’t you greet me and tell me how to WALK when I spawned in another damn area? I didn’t know I was supposed to come here! This was a coincidence at best. Why didn’t you save me from that bee?
So eventually this guy tells me what I’m supposed to do, and rewards me with various bonuses and foodstuffs and quests. I was on a roll, and finally able to kill a damn monster. Turns out I had a weapon, and neglected to equip it. I also had a spell, Dia, a name familiar to me. So I was off.
I killed some worms and some bees, and was feeling a bit limp, so I was going to cast Dia on myself to heal. Game wouldn’t let me. In fact, every time I tried to cast it, it cast it on an enemy! No, don’t do that! Don’t give them hit points! It was only then that I realized that this wasn't Megaten, and Dia was not a heal spell in the Final Fantasy universe. Cure is the heal spell, and here, Dia is a light damaging spell. I felt like an idiot.
I also tried to buy stuff, but I had no money, so couldn’t afford another spell or a better set of armor. I didn’t know how to get money, so I just logged out instead.
I have never been this confused playing an MMO. The only time I came close was Seed, a combat-less game that crashed and burned in 2005. Everything was just so unintuitive and unfriendly, and it seems to expect me to know a lot of things I don’t. I’ll be continue to try, but it’s got a long way to climb in quality before I ragequit.
My lust for new adventures have led me to pick up the complete version of Final Fantasy XI, for only $15. What a scoop! So, 12 hours of installs and updates later, I get to log-in and be severely disappointed!
Now, before I start complaining, I want to be fair. I had forgotten a number of things about FFXI; mainly the fact that it is eight years old, probably the oldest MMO still actively updating besides Everquest (and who the hell is still playing original Everquest), and it was designed to be playable on the PS2. So of course the game looks awful by 2010 standards. It’s blocky and grainy and the starting city is an almost uniform brown. A bit disappointing, but considering its age, understandable.
Then I finished with the very Final Fantasy-like intro, and prepared to start adventuring, only to discover that I couldn’t goddamn move! I tried all the buttons I was used to, wasd, arrow keys, clicking on the ground where I want to go, nothing doing. So I decide, my bad, I should probably read the manual, better log out, only to find that all the obvious logout options don’t work either! I couldn’t do anything! I was trapped.
Turns out that the directional pad, which had gathered dust on my keyboard because it's never used, was how you move by default, and to log out you push pause/break. Naturally, I think this is dumb, so I try to go to the main menu to change it up…and I can’t find it. Ridiculous.
After finally getting the keyboard set-up how I want and figuring out how to move around and access all my menus (a bit of a chore process), I have completely forgotten what the initial quest giver told me to do. So I wander around talking to random dudes. One of them gave me a quest to get an egg, and I ignored him, while another asked me if I wanted to help my country. Of course! So I run outside and immediately get stung to death by a bee.
I didn’t even go where he asked me to, he wanted me to go to some mines and get a report. So I do, wandering for 10-15 minutes trying to find the guy who has the report, getting said report, leaving the mine, and being unable to find where I’m supposed to go next. Been playing for an hour…haven’t even gained a single experience point. Fantastic.
After more wandering around the city, I try to leave again to get killed by more bees, when some NPC flags me down. Holy crap, a newbie questman! Why didn’t you greet me and tell me how to WALK when I spawned in another damn area? I didn’t know I was supposed to come here! This was a coincidence at best. Why didn’t you save me from that bee?
So eventually this guy tells me what I’m supposed to do, and rewards me with various bonuses and foodstuffs and quests. I was on a roll, and finally able to kill a damn monster. Turns out I had a weapon, and neglected to equip it. I also had a spell, Dia, a name familiar to me. So I was off.
I killed some worms and some bees, and was feeling a bit limp, so I was going to cast Dia on myself to heal. Game wouldn’t let me. In fact, every time I tried to cast it, it cast it on an enemy! No, don’t do that! Don’t give them hit points! It was only then that I realized that this wasn't Megaten, and Dia was not a heal spell in the Final Fantasy universe. Cure is the heal spell, and here, Dia is a light damaging spell. I felt like an idiot.
I also tried to buy stuff, but I had no money, so couldn’t afford another spell or a better set of armor. I didn’t know how to get money, so I just logged out instead.
I have never been this confused playing an MMO. The only time I came close was Seed, a combat-less game that crashed and burned in 2005. Everything was just so unintuitive and unfriendly, and it seems to expect me to know a lot of things I don’t. I’ll be continue to try, but it’s got a long way to climb in quality before I ragequit.
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