Coming back from the World of Warcraft.

[guz_rdm]

Hello again to all the community, a word that doesn't exist within wow unfortunately. Within in the next couple days I'll be coming back to FFXI looking for the challenge, community and generally well put together game I remember.

Unfortunately wow was a bit on the easy side and while I loved the graphics at first, they haven't made for any photorealistic moments such as Xaracabard (sp) etc. I've also found the end game quite lacking and plagued with bugs and unoriginal design (have a 60 rogue in Ragnaros/BWL capable guild).

I was just curious what I've missed since I quit the game. I believe I left in July of 04, maybe sooner to play COH while awaiting wow which I was pumped about after playing Everquest for 5 years, unfortunately so far I've been let down by WOW. I know the game has undergone quite a few changes. While I've read the page a bit and I'm still catching up, I'm sure the player base is always the best place to go for the most interesting additions to the game.

Any new information would be greatly appreciated look forward to seeing some of you in my return to Vana'diel.

[grunion]

that game is about 2x as complicated, i think. but in a good way. not a lot has changed for the negative except the proliferation of gil sellers, inflation (which can be good or bad), and the concentration of players in the upper levels.

[DakAttack]

They handed it to Rangers, and now they're spending the next week or two flapping their wings and creating as much drama as possible.

[Balfree]

another one bites the dust

wow > nothing

[guz_rdm]

Yeah as much as I was looking forward to it I'm pretty disappointed. I don't like having everything handed to me on a silver platter. Instagibbing every single mob you fight in a group isn't enjoyable either and the fact that you can reach max level within a month or 2 without grouping at all makes the few groups that do exist up to 60 (cap) very very painful, pickup group takes on a whole new meaning of terror. Granted pickup groups could be pretty bad in FFXI at times such as people not understanding or knowing what a renkei is at level 50+ the groups in wow are just amazingly stupid at times. Grouping in general trivializes everything in World of Warcraft short of the raid instances which require 40 people. I miss the smaller groups that had to work together or get stomped.

Which servers have the highest NA population? I know many JP players would not group with NA players, while I loved grouping with them standing around at random playtimes and being discriminated against for being NA did take away from my experience at times. So i'd love to play on a majority NA server.

Also what have they dont to remedy the furious botting that went on in terms of fishing and has the economy balanced out any from the damage that 75 afk bots in Rabao can do?

Last but not least for now anyway, I heard they changed experience acquisition around a bit how does that work and what the hell are henchmen?! :)

Thanks again for all your replies.

[meeyutu]

I'll be coming back in a month or so.. I was on Midgard, but I'm not sure if I'll settle back there. Can anyone recommend a good server?

[Jei]

i got back from WoW a couple months ago too. The game itself doesn't change much but there are a lot new additions to zone/items. You might find yourself confusing watching ppl shouts in jeuno, weird terms all over.

[l33t_c0w]

they did a lot of stuff... I'm not good with dates. usually am lucky if I can get events down to the right year... Foods are different now. more of them doing different things, and you'll run into foods that're better at different level ranges too. Also ninjas got a small nerf where they lose hate when a shadow is taken, and rangers got a small(?) nerf to their damage. (a lot of rangers complain loudly, but I wonder if they've parsed things and if they were standing at optimal range). geez... Was the new fishing system even around in July 04? (now a faster-moving mini-game) or where they cut sell-to-npc prices of high level fish in half?

[Blood Red Poet]

A lot of NMs, new NPC(that you pretty much raise), big nerf on RNGs(isnt too bad, but horrible with kiting), and a few new things came out this month a lone.... a lot of stuff has changed... a lot. Probably more content than all of WoW ;p.

[Tyrien]

well square made summoners barely ptable

[guz_rdm]

Uh oh what did they do to summoners? The ranger nerf was similar to the deadzone in wow right? In wow hunters (the rangers with pets) can only shoot with ranged weapons between 8-42 yards.

[Tyrien]

Uh oh what did they do to summoners? The ranger nerf was similar to the deadzone in wow right? In wow hunters (the rangers with pets) can only shoot with ranged weapons between 8-42 yards.
<That was a good thing>
they made us able to MB/SC and raised the dmg
they also introduced austere armor

then they lower are damage signifigantly in another update

[tazirai]

well square made summoners barely ptable

excuse me? You mean Playable? How so? I resemble a summoner...
explain?

Double Post Edited:
Oh you mean PT'able? I still need to understand where you're coming from with this.

[Tyrien]

excuse me? You mean Playable? How so? I resemble a summoner...
explain?

Double Post Edited:
Oh you mean PT'able? I still need to understand where you're coming from with this.

meant that like they didnt offer too much to pts. sure the blink and stoneskin are very helpful, but people would always choose something else.

[tazirai]

meant that like they didnt offer too much to pts. sure the blink and stoneskin are very helpful, but people would always choose something else.

Totally disagree ^^
If a Summoner just stoneskins and Blinks they really shouldnt leave their moghouse's.

Theres more to Summoner than just Stoneskin/Blinkage, Theres also a lot we can do to offer the PT more flexiblity in Chains and MB and Support that has nothing to do with our 1min( if you have no BP reduction Items).
Seriously. To quote mysefl from another thread....
Heyyy!! :)
Maybe Summoners were worthless in regards to most NA players. But I never had trouble and I sure wasnt just a cure tank.

I do think Advanced/Extra jobs are a good way to carry over from previous FF games. But let it be known That Square calls them Extra Jobs as far as the Japanese version is concerned.
I tend to favor advanced job myself. Since the majority of Summoners suck pretty badly.
Most Summoners no matter what tend to still just cure tank, it makes the job easier for them and they can gain exp at a good rate by doing. Blink,Stoneskin,Accuracy/Evasion up.

Summoner actually does take a god amount of skill to play effectively. A sad fact I see lacking among alot of my peers. You dont need a Phd to be a Summoner. But its a lot more than just summon pet sic on foe and pull off a BP now and then.
Just like How most Redmages dont enfeeble much. Gravity,Dia,Refresh and MB everynow and then is not a red mage.

Summoners should know a few things , some of which they gain thru basic jobs.
A) Conserving MP :knowing when to heal, to enfeeble, to nuke.
B) Elemental variables : Know whats strong or weak to what.
C) Supporting the team: Even with out a refresher know when to give the juice to another player who may need it more than you. When to stack heals. How to divy the duties, etc. 2 Rdm should alternate enfeebles and refreshes and magical support.
D) MB timing: should be a well known thing but its not.

you learn things like in the trainer/support jobs as you level.
Then you move onto Summoner(I love Summoners ^^ biased al lthe way)

Summoners take a whole new thing to learn.
A) ALL of the above skills
B) Avatar powers and abilities and the correct uses and application.
C) A whole new batch of MP conserving since a Summoner is essentially two mages using MP at once.
D) How to pull and observe whats taking place in your area.
E) How to help with Adds and distracting the Enemy when your PT is in trouble.
F) How to safely juggle support job abilities along with Primary job ones.
G) When not to use Support abilities and save them for Summoning abilities.
H) Pulling to help Maintain Chains.

Theres a slew of things I see summoners not doing that cause them to hate being one after the "prettiness"wears off.
All Summoner PTs are great I love the fellowship but I hate the fact that you use only one power to level and do nothing else but rest.

I have a great love for summoners and hate to see how people treat the job.
Its like how you have SOme Ninjas that use all a Ninjas powers, then you have those that only use Utsusemi.

[Blood Red Poet]

taz, you are such a show off ;p

[tazirai]

taz, you are such a show off ;p

Just to let you know your sig is my new Wall paper haha!!

That thing seriously rocks...

As far as Summoner is concernd I hate it when People Downplay what we can do , into a 1 min BP, like thats all we are hehe. (Not specifically to you Tyrien, but folks in general).

We are so much more, but Even "experienced" Summoners, I use that loosely fall into .. Heal, Heal, Heal, BP(WOOT teh WIN). No we can do more.


And your sig still rocks heh^^

[guz_rdm]

Appreciate all the useful information and learned a bit about summoners in the process! ^^ On a side note my friend who is also returning and myself decided we'd like to make characters on Fairy, so if anyone could spot us 2 world passes it would be greatly appreciated and we would pay you back ASAP once we got some gil. I'd be willing to help someone do the buddy system? That they put in if thats what it takes to get a couple of world passes.

Email: narzul@gmail.com
AIM: notmisfit

[Tyrien]

Totally disagree ^^
If a Summoner just stoneskins and Blinks they really shouldnt leave their moghouse's.

Theres more to Summoner than just Stoneskin/Blinkage, Theres also a lot we can do to offer the PT more flexiblity in Chains and MB and Support that has nothing to do with our 1min( if you have no BP reduction Items).
Seriously. To quote mysefl from another thread....

i know that summoner has loads of potential, and that the job is very great, which is why I play it. In fact, if summoner was not in the game, I doubt that I would be playing. I know the potential the summoner has, but I was discounting our bp and sc abilities in that post, because I was refering to us before that patch.

I would also like to refer you to a post i made today on the Summoner section, bashing the SMN 1 Minute timer(the bane of every smn). I cannot stress enough what a set back this is. I see the Summoner class (w/ Fenrir) as a Buffing and Debuffing class, though we are much more of jacks of all trades class than rdm.

I just do not understand why we have this stupid 1 minute timer. its like making white mages only be able to cure every 1 minute, or blm can only nuke every 1 minute. (and my bp timer is in the low 50s, cant quite recall right now. i just say 1 minute because thats the base setting.)

well about that post taz, before you get mad at me about all the smn bashing, it was just that i felt sooooo useless in that pt because of that dumb timer and the limitations i had on me. that pt was chaining for higher exp before i got there, and basicly all i could do was dish 500 dmg and throw an ecliptic grow (moon was 5% and i couldnt land a lunar cry for my life, along with a bunch of other downers specified in that thread). I really think that Fenrir is a great addition to any smn, but having the moon that low he wasnt good for his debuff which i feel is his best bp until the party eva+/acc+. read the thread and tell me what youd think or what you would have done in that situation (not being sarcastic btw:P)

[Blood Red Poet]

ty ;3

[Madison]

In tearms of game managment wow <3 ffxi ive just come back from wow and the way square handled this patch puts them to shame....

[Tyrien]

In tearms of game managment wow <3 ffxi ive just come back from wow and the way square handled this patch puts them to shame....
would be cool if square could get bitorrent for their updater. i remember having the japanese version and if i had to reinstall it, id have to wait on an 5-8 hour patch on DSL.

[guz_rdm]

You should try the new raid dungeon in WOW, Blackwing Lair if you would like to see poor management. Its the 2nd raid instance ever to be introduced to the game and it took them 7 months to put it out. First few days the door 50ft in would not open for people. Also due to a bug you are only able to attempt the 2nd encounter within the zone 1 hour per week. If you don't succeed in that hour, come back a week later!

On a side note still looking for 2 Fairy world passes if anyone can help me.

[kuu]

July 04 eh.... that's about 4-5 big updates...

Let's see.. I believe Assasin trait for thieves... very useful when one takes advantage of it...not to mention less stressful in general.

Fishing system, food system, ballista, xp ballista (for your PvP fanatics)....XP change post 50(lol that's a big one..can't believe people forgot that).

ENM was in feb.. so ENM! The hotest new thing in ffxi, xp and treasure.

That's all I can remember but you can sea playonline for the big updates.

Don't forget the update 2 days ago... Raise that pokemon!

[Madison]

Blizzard have a few bugs but atleast thery were fixed and in some cases when its their bad they made up for it with free days and full rested exp pretty good imo and their only new to this where ffxi has been out for 3-4 years??

[DakAttack]

A few bugs? Shall I list as many as I can off the top of my head? It's rather pathetic that they don't see a need to fix them.

[vadrek]

Played Daoc, FFXI and Wow, and left daoc for FFXI
Taked a break in FFXI to play WoW
Left WoW to come back FFXI :)

RL > FFXI > ALL

[kuu]

Blizzard seems to like money...well more then normal...is that an oxymoron?

They're busy expanding...

Not even 5 months and already, EU, korea then china localization, and moving onto taiwan and japan singapore(did I miss any localization?). At least with taiwan, it's only about 160 character or so difference from Chinese...

But blizzards seems to like to spend effort localizing more then anything.

While teams are split and doesn't necessarily need one to do the other, all these localizations doesn't help...not to mention piorities.

And yea their servers and update decisions kinda reflect cutting corners as well...

On their updates... how many have they had? I think it was 9 and if you're a realy number follower it would be 1.6 now? so 6 major changes?

If they're still stopper related bugs around, then they have to think on their priorities.

[DakAttack]

Their priorities have been centered around the new rather than old. They've been ignoring bugs that make playing the game terrible, while adding in new content with new bugs and releaseing it all into new countries. Why do people enjoy mucking through bugs to complete a mindless task? Beats me.

Besides, their gauge of success is placed on their "unique user" count, which means zilch. The unique visitor count of a strip bar in Vegas may be high, but how many of the visitors return on a continuous basis? How many visitors attend on a consistent basis? What's the average amount of time visitors have been attending the strip bar? What's the average amount of time visitors spend in the strip bar? See where I'm going with this? The average WoW player wouldn't even know what I'm talking about, so it works for them.

[Blood Red Poet]

FFXI only downfall is its update system... outside that, blows WoW away when it comes to game management.