An interesting read.

[Draylo]

2007? Didn't level sync come out like 1 year ago, maybe year and a half lol.

[Andradi]

September 2008.

Levelling subs is bullshit, but whatever.

[rog]

I could swear i remember reading that at least 3-5 years ago.

[AidenCarby]

Lol'd hard at "dia and bio, in that order"/

[Plow]

It's from around 2005 or 2006 i think.

What's interesting about this review is this:

You'd think exactly that.

Then you notice he talks about SCH and DNC, FoV, level sync, etc., which puts it in the last couple years.

Like... it's an understandable review... if you're as bad as a lot of us were in 2003. With the game at the point it is where he's talking about... yeah, dude's terrible at the tactical, strategic, and social aspects of the game all.

[Jex]

Yes.

lol'd hard irl @ that lol

[Francisco]

In the review he mentions that FFXI is eight years old... so it must be recent.

[Apelila]

What is this, a review by a 15 year old? He said he was playing RDM/WAR. That + him going on at length about the lack of social interaction tell me all I need to know. It comes across like he didn't have anyone to play with, and didn't read up on the game. Or worse, used the brady guide 8 years after launch.

[evilpaul]

It's from on or around Sun Mar 01, 2009 10:10 pm.

Fields of Valor was from the Dec 2008 version update.

Google's hard stuff.

I'm not about to reread the entire article to pull forth the relevant details, but he had a trial account and had some SMPS forum regulars join him briefly to give FFXI a try for the review. I don't know how long he was playing after FoV was out or whatever, but most of what he had to say was pretty spot on for FFXI up until around then when Square-Enix made some actual effort to make FFXI approachable to more casual players.

People scoffed at not knowing about Bio and Dia overwriting each other, but it's...not mentioned anywhere in the game. There's a pretty overwhelming absence of any in-game explanation of pretty basic game mechanics.

"Go check the Wiki!!111"

Well, Square-Enix doesn't provide a Start Menu shortcut to the half dozen or more FFXI websites you need to know about to not suck at the game.

SE doesn't seem to have learned anything about that in FFXIV either, sadly. Aside from the FFIX "Strategy Guide", I'm not aware of any other FF stuff that required the Internet to make some progress in.

Final playtime: 75 hours. Over three days of my life -- of my fleeting, irrecoverable life, and of my waning youth -- spent on this game, and I barely put a dent in it. Many Final Fantasy XI regulars would snort and call me impatient.

Love FFXI as many of us may, it's extremely grindy, not user (or newbie) friendly, and I think (from memory) that the review was pretty spot on.

I'm skipping FFXIV as I'd rather spend a little more time finishing a few things in FFXI and then play many other games (backlog, etc) that I wouldn't/won't have time to play if I started FFXIV. And I'm not hearing anything about FFXIV to make me regret that decision.

[Snick]

Who cares.

[evilpaul]

My penis.

Or the 1,900 people who viewed it?

[Spira]

we knew the bio dia shit way before 2009 tho. if he wanted to find out about it, i guess he easily could have. the point isnt that the game is vague about gameplay mechanics - that much depends on the level of openness the game devs want in the game - somehow I'm happier with them giving some vague description than dia saying something like "does x light damage every tic, where x dmg depends on how much divine skill + how much MND you have".. its one way of doing it, but it kinda takes the mystery out of it.. OR makes it unnecessarily technical for some people who dont care...

I have to agree on the XIV comment tho.. they must have learnt some things from XI in making XIV, but clearly they forgot everything they might have remotely gotten right in XI. AH, (surprisingly) simpler menus, sort/auto-sort, say/shout/party/ls chat filters, mob progression and zone mob distribution (arguable but vanilla ffxi zones had pretty logical mob placement)

[rog]

"Go check the Wiki!!111"

Well, Square-Enix doesn't provide a Start Menu shortcut to the half dozen or more FFXI websites you need to know about to not suck at the game.

http://www.playonline.com/polapps/s/...op?polg_loc=en

[shepardG]

He should have bought a fucking account, duh.

[Cymmina]

the point isnt that the game is vague about gameplay mechanics - that much depends on the level of openness the game devs want in the game - somehow I'm happier with them giving some vague description than dia saying something like "does x light damage every tic, where x dmg depends on how much divine skill + how much MND you have".. its one way of doing it, but it kinda takes the mystery out of it.. OR makes it unnecessarily technical for some people who dont care...

Why is that a good thing? Having clear skill descriptions certainly hasn't hurt games like Guild Wars or Diablo II. There's still plenty of things to test/discuss (buff precedence, finding new ways to pair up skills, etc.).

Having all this mystery makes it a lot more involved to figure out "what's best", especially when "what's best" isn't always logical (attack vs str, int vs mab) or there's latent/hidden effects involved. Ultima Online didn't spell very much out either, but the answer was almost always simple: raise skill = do more damage/be more accurate.