Showing posts with label mmorpg. Show all posts

Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn



 A couple years ago I did a the free trail of this mmo game here. Now I've finally decided to pay for the full game. I think my old character got deleted, but I forgot which server I was on so I didn't fully check so I id start over with a new character. I've purchased Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn on sale during the holiday season, and it includes 30 days of play. You will have to pay a monthly to continue to play. You can also pay with 60 day time cards also. Steam also has this game available too but please be in mind that you can't apply expansions to your Steam version of the game if you bought it from other places. If you want the expansions you will have to finish the main quest in the main base game in order to access the expansion areas so you don't have to buy it right away. There's a lot of stuff in this game that you can do which can be a bit overwhelming if you are new. You don't have to do everything, and you can be like me and just focus on doing main story quests with some side quests stuff.

 The community in the mmo have been rather nice. There weren't any jerks harassing me or bothering me. And during story dungeons, people were either quiet or would give you helpful tips. Even though I am new and bad while doing dungeons, I haven't had anyone make me feel bad about that. Well there was one time I kept dying to a boss which had upset someone in the party. Can't be helped since I'm mostly the only new one in the party, and everyone else knows what to do. If you have friends you could play them and avoid having to deal with strangers. I will say that looking up and reading guides on how play your role is very helpful. You can't go into dungeons solo so you need a party. Luckily the game can form a party for you automatically. When you start off you may get a number of invites to people's guilds or free companies as this game calls them. Joining them is not necessary.

 The main story quests are pretty long. I think there are about 100 quests in it in the main game? They do have you go back and forth quite a bit, so I have been trying to get through them as fast as I can though I don't think I can finish within the 30 days that came with the game. I may have to purchase another month of play, and maybe afterwards the Heavensward expansion. Once you've hit level 30, you can unlock new jobs but you need to level another class to level 15. Don't be like me who try to finish low level quests on your higher level class set. Save or do them with another class so you can level them up so you can unlock new jobs. When you run out of quests, you're kind of left with doing repeatable quests and grinding which can get boring fast. Another reason to want to level other classes to unlocking skills that you can use on your main class. Certain skills can be shared and used on other classes which is quite useful.

 The graphics still looks good, and music is still great. I haven't experienced any issues with the game so far. So I would definitely recommend this game if you got the time for it. As for prices, there's an entry subscription that give you one character per server for $12.99 a month. Then there's the standard subscription that gives you 8 characters per server. The standard subscription price depends on the subscription length: 30 days for $14.99, 90 days for $41.97 ($13.99 a month), or 180 for $77.94 ($12.99 a month). If you use Steam, you can use fund in your steam wallet to do a one time payment instead of auto-renewal. The subscription payments are done through Mogstation.

UPDATE:  This is an update as its been two years and some things have changed. I've been playing this again and was able to finally finish the story to the main base game. One of the main changes I've noticed is that you no longer can share skills from other classes, but not you have a seperate set of skills that this replaces. To illustrate this, before I played a warrior and was able to get a healer type skill but now I can no longer use that skill. Instead They gave me a different type of heal skill. There's 10 of them in total and you unlock them by leveling up to level 50.

 There is now a number of new classes you can play as but since they're from the expansions you do need to buy them in order to have access. You can't get them until you've reached level 50 as well, and some you will need to finish the main story in order to access the new expansion area where some of the new classes are in. 

 If you don't have the expansions you can't level past 50 and all the experience points you earn will be lost. Luckily with each new expansion it will include the previous ones. With Stormbringers coming soon, I have bought it and it included Heavensward and Stormblood expansions. If you're playing on Steam be sure to to buy the expansions on Steam as other versions will not work. Steam will give you a code which you need to add through Mog Station in order for it to work.

 I started this game as a tank classes which I learned from doing the dungeons as too much responsibility for me to handle especially in the base game dungeons where almost everybody you're with have run through numerous times. I advise starting out as a DPS class. The base game dungeons your party will mostly like breeze through them. But I will advise to still look up guides so that you can at least be able to follow along. Since the dungeons are required for the story it can be a cause for anxiety as I had experienced. But you gotta press that join button and so far as a DPS I've had zero bad experiences. Did I die sometimes? Yes, but I haven't been called names or made fun for it. I do my best to avoid enemy attacks and stay alive. Dungeons do get more complex and difficult as you progress through the story. There are a few story heavy dungeons that haev a lot of cutscenes. I've heard before you could skip them but that causes problems as those who didn't skip would get left behind. But now you can't skip them at all so no one gets left behind now. Party members will get bonuses if there's a party member who hasn't done the dungeon before.

 Since I finished the ARR story, I learned there's two parts: the story, and the epilogue. So I saw two sets of credits through the ARR story. This story is long and things actually does get interesting and spicy towards the end. In the Mogstation, you can purchase to skip the Realm Reborn and Heavensward story as well as purchase to get a character to level 60. If you're like me who want to go through the game the long way, there is a unique dungeon called Palace of the Dead that is the best and fastest way to level up. You will need to finish the level in order to get the experience. If your party fails you get no experience!

Overall if you're getting into this MMO game for the story please play through the base game. Of course if you don't have the time there are "movie" versions on youtube that you can watch if you plan on buying the story skip.
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Final Fantasy XIV


I have learned not too long ago that Final Fantasy XIV (14) the mmo, has a free trial! I signed up through Steam and have played a few days so far. I have to say that its true when people say that this is good. The design is good, the story is quite interesting and engaging, and gameplay isn't too bad. That's saying a lot for a mmo in my opinion. The game is about $50  and is available on PC ($25 for digital download!), PS3, and PS4. You have to buy it and then pay a monthly fee of $15. I would probably buy it only to finish the story since I don't have the time nor want to pay a monthly fee. I hardly play mmo games so paying a $15 monthly fee feels like a waste. But I really do want to keep playing this so its quite conflicting for me.

This game is like other mmo games with all the quests, races, classes, and so on. Its just in a Final Fantasy setting. The trial is bit limiting so you can't do everything. You only have 14 days and can only level up to level 20. You can make one character per server, and think they will be deleted if you don't purchase the game after 90 days. If you purchase the game you get 30 days of gameplay with it which is good. The character creation is not bad either. You have a lot of traits you can customize, but not a lot of options. Funny enough some of the NPCs have the same hair styles so its kind of weird if your character has the same hair cut.


So depending on what class you start off with with determine what city you start in. I chose Gladiator and the Gladiator guild is in Ul'dah, the desert area. There's Gridania, the forresty place, for dps classes like archers. And Limsa Lominsa, the seaside area, for the magic classes. Quests level 1-15 will differ depending on where you start, but after that you have access to the other cities and the main story will be linear. Each city has their own story so I think its worth experiencing all three. I have to say having started in the desert area was good since I got quite interested in one of the main NPC characters. Each city you meet a NPC a number of times during the main quests and each are different in each city. The one in the desert area is named Thancred. These characters are part of an organization which you will eventually learn about in the game.



If you are a fan of Final Fantasy games then this is great for you. There's chocobos, moogles, airships, materia, magiteck, etc. Its like all the games in one kind of! The neat thing is that you can actually change your class easily with your character so there's no real need for alts. To change you just switch your main weapon to that of the class associated with it. Class also includes the typical crafting jobs in mmos like cooks, and blacksmiths. You can unlock them all and have your character do everything. Downside is that you have to level each individually so that can be time consuming. Speaking of levels, the cap level is 50.

The game seem to be ever expanding since there have been some big patches that adds more dungeons, and main quests. Though I think they're are just extras or "epilogues" kind of material since the last quest in the main quest line summaries a final mission/battle. Obviously there's a kind of "its not over yet" kind of ending to keep having new material.

Overall, I am quite impressed with this mmo. I don't think I've ever been this impressed with an mmo. I just hope it will keep being good if I eventually do buy it.The game runs well and I haven't had any issues or bugs. Graphics are great too. The game does feel like the typical jrpg game rather than a mmo because of the story, but that's a good thing in my book. Would highly recommend giving the trial a try!
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Aion

This is a online roleplaying multiplayer game (MMORPG) made by a korean game company, and it recently became free to play. So I'll do a review of the game as I played the beta versions of it a long time ago. The game has a Final Fantasy esque art style and story. Through the game you will learn about the world of Aion and its history. The story can drag out a bit, but its not too hard to understand. Also, its not an easy game to play solo. Important quests tend to require groups since there are elite monsters that are not easy to defeat by yourself. Although playing a mmo game solo kind of defeats the real reason why its a mmo game. You can ignore the group quests since there's plenty of solo quests to do.

Finding groups or players to party with you always, at least for me, takes some effort. In the chat there's a channel for those looking for groups but its not by the region you are in so you will get many messages from most of the aion of people looking for groups for a certain quest. Also people like to chat in that channel and messages of joined a legion (guilds) so it can also be annoying and spam like. There is a separate window to list yourself or find others who are looking to group that is by the region your are in. However barely anyone uses it so you are better off finding people running around in the game. There are instances in each area which are either solo only or group only. These are great places of loot but they can take awhile to complete. There are in it owns little world within area its in so its not entirely important and you can ignore them.

There are only 4 servers you can choose to play. With so littler servers some will have alot of people in it than others. You can check online status of your friends and servers status and info on the aion website without having to open the game itself. When you choose a server you have to chose a race. There are two races: Elysian and Asmodian. You can read about both in the game. Once you chose one you are stuck with that race in that server. You will have to choose another server if you want to play as a different race or delete all your characters and then you should be able to chose the other race when you make a new character. The 2 different races are important because it is the core of the player-vs-player or pvp of the game.

The game has plenty of quests to do and the beginning area isn't too difficult to finish within a day or so. You will start off as a regular human, and you will learn about your past and eventually become as Daeva which are higher beings than humans and they have wings. Afterwards the beginning area will take you about a few hours to finish in your alt characters or "toons." There's lots of quests to do and you have a 40 quest limit. When you get to a higher level like around 30 you will see yourself reaching your quest limit often. Many quests are mostly killing certain monsters and collecting certain quest loot from monsters. Like many mmos games, quests are what gives you the most experience points. Your inventory is called a Cube which you will have to pa to expand as you level. Money isn't too hard to obtain but some extras would cost millions of money so you will have to do a bit of business. One you can set up a personal shop or sell your stuff at auctions. The auction or broker house is very important as this is where you can get the best equipment. The weapon and armor are from monster drops or coin/token rewards. The coin and tokens are different then the common gold currency in the game. You earn tokens and coins through certain quests or achievements. The aion website will also give out special items if you do certain achievements which you can learn about on the site.

PvP is very important in this game. After you've finished the beginning area and next low level area, the next area is open for the opposite race to come through a rift portal and they can attack you no matter what you're doing. Ever area has a main city that is safe but most of the area are not as safe. On the maps rifts will be indicated that it is open and they change once the limit number of uses have surpassed. Every rift has a level limit depending on what part of the area its in to discourage level gaps. The maps will not show the enemies' rifts so do look for a map online to help you out what areas to look out for. With the addition of the Fast Track server you can level faster and be in pvp free area which is great cause it can get really annoying to do quests when you are constantly being attacked or looking out for other pvp players. There are quests where you have to go to the other race's world but these are able to skip them if you are not up for it. There is a separate world called the Abyss that is just for pvp and guild battling. You will get quests about it when you reach lvl 25. The Abyss has three levels and each level has a number of fortresses that are controlled by whatever race or monster that has conquered it. Even though you can enter the area at lvl 25 you can't really fight in these fortresses since the enemies are at level 40. You will come across players with huge level gaps here too. There are no clear indicators at what lvl these players are in either. Try not to get killed too much as it will lose you experience points and can even go down levels. The Abyss is great for guilds to show how powerful they are because they can attack a fortress and their guild name will be there. The game also allows guild alliances and kisks that you can place and serves as a temporary respawn point.

Aion also has housing and you can get a studio for free at level 20. You can buy houses only at the house auctions but they are really pricey. The housing area also has its own set of quests that you can do. What I don't like about this area is that you need a special item to gather plants, fish, and mine ore. These are kinda useless too since there are unique from the rest of the Aion world so its a waste of money to spend but its for quests. The houses are really nice and they have varies sizes and locations you can choose. Lots of choices and freedom to customize your home. Some offer items and you can have npcs that are like stores in your home too.

Each race has a main city that sits as its own area in the Aion world where you access crafting headquarters, skill teachers, pets, and other character customizations. There's lot of quests to do there too.

Overall this game is fun and beautiful too. I would highly recommend trying it out. Its not too limiting like Lord of the Rings Online where you can only play certain areas for free. Aion you can play it totally free with no worries on limited access to transportation or limited inventory space.
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Turbine's The Lord of the Rings Online

This is a review of the massive multiplayer online game. I was excited to hear about this game years ago, but never got a chance to play it until now. Its is free to play, but with all free-to-play games it also means you have to pay to win. Luckily you can actually be able to play the game without paying a cent, but it is very time consuming.

The game takes up about 9-10GB of space, it loads up pretty fast and has many servers to choose from. It doesn't tell you which servers are most popular or the most active. This could make playing the game a bit lonely, and difficult to find people to play with. The story of the game is basically you helping to fight evil to help the main characters. You do meet characters from the books/movies and sometimes fight alongside with them. This game is mostly a solo game, but there are instances which you have to be in a group. However you can skip/ignore them if you do not want to go through the trouble of finding people.

Available races to create characters from are Human, Elf, Hobbit, and Dwarf. Each race has its own different beginning but the human and hobbit has a shared starting area while the dwarves and elves have their own starting area. After reaching about level 6 you should be done with the main story then you are transported to your respected race home area. The dwarves and elves start in Ered Luin, the hobbits start in the Shire, and humans start in Archet which is near Bree. All these areas are next to each other and you can do the quests in all three of these areas. You also have the typical classes of any mmorpg games. There are seven to choose from. There is also the option of playing as a monster for Sauron too, but I haven’t tried so I can’t say anything about it.

The free account allows you to play area levels 1-30 of Ered Luin, Shire, Bree, and Lone Lands. You can wonder and kills monsters is other areas, but you can't do the quests there. You will have to buy or earn enough Turbine points to buy quests of these other areas. The only quest you can do are ones related to the Epic story quests which have big level gaps so you will need to somehow level up. Quests give you the most experience points so you can level up faster. Throughout the game you can trigger Deeds, which asks you to complete a certain number of kills or skill usage to gain a trait, title, and/or Turbine points. The points are what you should be after. There are also exploration Deeds which you just go find certain landmarks which is easy, but sometimes these areas have alot of monsters so you may struggle with that. The beginning ones are easy, but as you get higher in the levels these Deeds become harder in just the numbers. For example, in The Shire you can get 5 Turbine points for killing 30 monsters, but when you hit in level 30s you have to kill 120 monsters to get 5 points. So its much better to just do Deeds in the beginning areas over and over with new characters than to keep a couple characters and do deeds as you levels.

There are 3 types of accounts which you can learn on their website. For Free accounts you will eventually have to use you hard earned points for things like getting rid of the Gold cap so you have hold more than 3 Gold, and a Horse skill so you can ride a horse which is the main use of transportation. There's automatically traveling horses you can buy in many towns, and there's horses you can call for to ride around anywhere. You can only have 2 characters in one server but you can fill those up in the many servers they have. There is also guilds which they call Kinship and groups are called Fellowships. You can also equip certain traits to you character through a Bard to help boost stats, but you have to purchase slots with points if you want to have more than 2. The game also have areas for housing which you will learn about in the game. You buy a house and decorate it inside and on the lawn. They give you certain slots to put in stuff so you can’t freely put things anywhere you want. You will have to pay a small amount for maintenance too which you can pay ahead of time. You can have a profession and learn crafting which is not necessarily important. You can simply buy stuff people made through the Auction which is what I do. The game also has a Notary, and Barter system. And the ability to build reputation for your character. Having a high reputation gives you access to certain buildings that have npcs that sell items.

Overall, I’ve been playing this game for a few months and have fairly enjoyed it. Its fun, not overly difficult and can play fine alone. I think its worth trying if you’re a fan of LOTR. Sure it may not look exactly like the movie but it doesn’t stray far from it.
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