I was fortunate enough to be part of the beta test group for this next generation of Final Fantasy games (although it continues in the numbering progression, so now it goes to eleven). To be honest when I first heard about the newest Final Fantasy being an online MMORPG, I was kind of disappointed, since at the time I really didn’t get into MMORPGs. Now six EverQuest months later I am thinking that hey, it could be pretty cool to see how they implement a lot of the Final Fantasy gameplay and themes into an MMORPG, so the appeal grew for me.
Of course, we got the beta a little later than most; it was maybe a couple of months before the release of the game. Nevertheless when the box appeared at my doorstep I was so excited I proceeded to install the game immediately. Little did I know that the game takes up 7 GIGS of space on the hard drive!
Another major issue is this game has been out for a while in Asia, and it seems that they didn’t include all the patches and updates… so even though I was running the beta version it took HOURS to install everything! Yikes! So make sure you are not revved up to play right away since it will be a painfully long wait. (Editors Note: in the release version it took nearly three hours to get started.)
But then there was the account creation and logging in process. I had some beta test code in my little packet, and I really didn’t know what to enter where. First you are to register with PlayOnline. Basically you are signing on the PlayOnline server first, with the notion that PlayOnline will eventually have more games than FFXI. Oh actually, there is another game – Tetra Master, which is the trading card game from FFIX. Why they picked this one I’m not sure, since it was really a game that I mostly ignored from FFIX since it was pretty non-essential (and kind of confusing). The OTHER thing you NEED to know is that while you can install FFXI and Tetra Master, that they are SEPARATE games in terms of subscription costs (separate Content IDs, that is), which makes the game even more non-essential for FFXI. (Editors Note: In the final release it is the same – way you’ve got more codes than you know what to do with and no directions on where the hell to put them!)
After you create your registration with PlayOnline, you can login to the PlayOnline server, where you can check your PlayOnline mail (non-essential) friends list (might be useful), messaging (non-essential), chat (non-essential). Seriously, I have enough email addresses and messaging software that I really don’t need another one, especially not for a GAME where you can talk to people in the game.
Now you need to make your Content IDs for FFXI. This is where things cost money. Unlike EverQuest though, while you get to make additional characters per Content ID, you have to buy them and it’s an extra $1 per character per month. I guess it’s not that unreasonable but it’s a reason not to play multiple characters (maybe they are doing this to discourage that). (Editors Note: This process is so convoluted it’s a wonder anyone actually gets into the game!)
I have written quite a bit on this game and have yet to actually talk about the game itself. Well finally, now that you have your Content ID you can create your character! FFXI has a neat interface for creating characters, and many different iterations of hair, face, even height. You have five races to choose from: Hume, Elvaan, Tarutaru, Mithra, and Galka. Each race has different starting stats, giving pretty obvious bonuses based on race. The only issue I have with this is that you are pretty much pigeon-holed into playing particular races for particular classes. For example, you probably won’t see too many Tarutaru warriors running around. The character preview animations are neat too, though the Mithra animation is a bit… er… risque for my tastes (though I’m sure teenage boys love it).
Once you create your character, you choose your home city. The world is called Vana’diel, and the home cities to choose from are Bastok, Sand’oria, and Windhurst. If you want to roleplay, you can choose the home city that best suits your race (it will be fairly obvious). Otherwise it really doesn’t matter that much. You can get a preview of character creation, along with a lot of other overview info on the FFXI site – http://www.playonline.com/ff11us.
Starting out your character is not too easy, considering everything seems to cost a lot of gil (gil being the money unit, in case you aren’t familiar). When I was playing as a Hume in Bastok, the shops were selling potions for over 900 gil EACH. Seeing as the newbie mobs drop mostly stuff you can sell for about 4-5 gil apiece, buying potions in the beginning is pretty much out of the question.
The real beauty of this game is in the graphics. The world is extremely pleasing to look at, even if a bit drab in color (though it lends to a bit more realism in my opinion). Moving into different zones has a nice “fade-out, fade-in” touch to it, and facial expressions and lip movements when NPCs are speaking to you are prevalent. The music is also quite pleasant as is typical for FF games. Of course, if your computer only has the minimum requirements for the game, you may not really be able to experience this at all. Square-Enix has made a benchmark program that you can download here that will test your computer’s performance under its detailed graphics engine, plus it’s kind of fun to look at the little preview of the world of Vana’diel. If you want to do any kind of configuring of graphics, this is OUTSIDE of the game, so make sure you find that Config program and customize it before you run the PlayOnline Viewer.
I found the interface to be a little clunky, too. The main problem is that you really only have two choices of keyboard “layouts,” rather than allowing you to completely customize your key commands. Why they force you into one or the other is not clear to me. Also I found that I have to use the mouse for a lot of things, mostly because the keyboard shortcuts aren’t efficient for my tastes, which doesn’t help in gameplay. The text is rather large on screen, which I like but then again, things scroll very fast and it’s easy to miss something. I do like the way the chat window disappears line by line if nothing is happening (though I think this is customizable). It took me a long time however to figure out where to get the main menu, and especially how to log out (before I realized that you can just type “/logout”).
As your character starts out in its hometown, you can explore your town which is nice and safe and has many interesting things at the vendors that you can’t afford yet, but what you will also find is that a lot of NPCs have interesting things to say, and you will find a new quest in your quest list. The nice thing is that you can take as long as you want for quests, and you can probably have as many as you want at once (though I haven’t tried to max out the list quite yet). Quests are generally very simple in the beginning and you can get better equipment or even some valuable gil for your efforts.
There are some “bigger picture” themes in the game, such as the idea of conquest. There are 3 starting cities, and thus there are 3 “tribes” fighting for domination of the land. One good reason to worry about this is because you will find many of the vendors in your town require that your tribe has conquest of a particular region. To gain points, you find at one of the gates to the outside world you may find someone who will cast a spell called “Signet” on you, which means that as you kill mobs outside, your kill totals will add to the conquest points for your tribe. A slightly unique concept – which will become more interesting as time goes on and more people start to play the game.
There is no corpse retrieval if you die – instead you are set to a “home point” which is where you appear after you die (and lose a little XP). You have to set your home point manually if you want to change it from the current home point. Usually these home points are in towns but there may be others around the world.
A huge downfall to this game so far is the concept of the World Pass. When you start the game, the server that your character is on is randomly selected. So, if you want your friends to play, you either have to be really lucky, or you need the World Pass, which allows your characters to switch servers. I personally feel like this is a potential detriment to the game, especially if you do have friends who want to play with you. Apparently the World Pass costs a lot of gil, and increases depending on the amount of people on the server. Perhaps it is discouraging one server from becoming overloaded or lopsided somehow – but again I think it was not necessary.
I have not played the live version yet so I will withhold more comments about the game play. They may have improved on it since I was on the beta test. It is a gorgeous game though, and the music and realistic graphics make it enjoyable enough to give it a shot.