Last week i was a MMORPG player without a game. That’s not a new state for me, i’m in that waiting phase for almost 3 years now. Of course i’ve played MMORPGs, but without much dedication. Then, incidentally, a friend of mine started playing Firefall and decided to inject some life into the game and a longstanding, but gamewise inactive guild on friday. And there’s also the early access to Final Fantasy XIV.
Firefall
We created an Army for us and frankly, i didn’t expect others to join us. Part of that has to do with our more recent history of going into and out of games in quite a rapid succession, so many members lost faith in the community being able to form an active guild. While some of the members are close, they started viewing the community as forum-only. Not surprisingly, forum activity is quite low nowadays. Surprisingly, for now we seem to have grown to 5 members, if i counted correctly, with two invites pending. I guess we’ll see a first result in about two weeks- if we are still playing the game, and do so together, we have achieved something.
Firefall is not very beginner friendly, besides there being a tutorial and beginner missions. Once you are in the world, you’ll begin wandering around freely and some things are not self-explanatory. For instance, there’s this type of ARES mission where you have to bring some coloured items with you and it seems to me that the mission fails when you don’t have those items. But i wouldn’t know where to get them. Some other members tried starting a race and had to realize they don’t know how to summon a vehicle yet.
Mind you, finding out stuff is part of the fun to be had in this game. I’m looking forward to more of this game. What i like here, is:
- while it’s not easy to understand the game mechanics, it is an easy game to pick up and have some fun with others. Without level- and gear restrictions, you can play together as you want
- it seems there is content for almost any group size- even with ARES missions or other singleplayer content, there’s nothing wrong with some other people being around
- getting to know the mechanics is fun
Final Fantasy XIV
On the other hand, there’s Final Fantasy XIV ARR. With the early access beginning on saturday, i clocked about 6 hours this weekend and my good feelings about this MMORPG are getting deeper. My newest discovery are story missions that take place in an instanced battle area. For now, i’ve met about three of these, and i guess the first one’s just an introduction to the feature while it gets more difficult afterwards. These quests actually consist of more or less just one fight- but i met a group of bandits, had the mission fail on me because i didn’t realize one of the enemies is a healer (the mob’s tag had been the same as the other mobs’ tags- you had to look at the enemy to find out he’s a healer).
After continuing this quest chain you come to a fight with “bird-men” – my first try failed here, as well. You go into this fight with a group of rangers and there are many enemies around- i have no idea how to succeed here- i guess there would be two options to try out next: bring the main guy down and hope that the mission will succeed or concentrate on healing the rangers. I’m not very confident one of these approaches will do the trick, though, so i’ll be looking forward to figure out what to do.
And this is great- first, the mission feels epic in scope- i don’t know why that is, but i guess it comes down to the fact that you’re not supposed to be the “chosen” to free the land from all evil, but just an adventurer lending a hand. The mission and quest texts, not only in this one, support that- there are also NPCs that are annoyed by all those adventurers around. The whole game supports you in immersing yourself in the experience.
I’ll have to change my goals, though, mainly because i learned that you’ll get retainer access only with level 20 (don’t know whether this means doing the Level 20 story mission or getting to the level), so i’ll do as follows:
- Bring the Conjurer to Level 20 to get retainer access
- Go to Limsa Lominsa and enter the Arcanist guild
- Go to Ul’dah and enter the Weaver guild
- Level Arcanist, Botanic and Weaver to 20
So yes, there’s much to do and it will take some time to reach these goals.
Party Business 
Oh! You got into Firefall! How is it? Do you think it’s worth the subs? Firefall or FF14 if you forced to choose between 1? =P
Firefall is free-to-play. Just go over to their homepage (https://www.firefallthegame.com/ ), register and download the game. It’s not only f2p, but also quite…well, cheap to play 😀 The Cash shop has virtually nothing you must buy.
If i had to choose, i’d choose FF14, but fortunately i don’t have to 😉 Firefall is…well, not easy to get into, but definitely a very fun, somewhat deep and very promising game. You should try it 🙂
Oh crap sorry, that is Wild Star. Was thinking of another game. *bangs head*. Will give it a try though seems interesting.
No worries, it can happen 😉 Firefall is an interesting game, though. It’s some kind of hybrid between Borderlands, Tabula Rasa…although, that doesn’t sound right. But at times it actually reminds me of Tabula Rasa.
Now, if i was in Wildstar, i wouldn’t blog about it, since i guess there’s still a NDA active.