Good Morning Friends! This is a rare Saturday post that I decided I am making today partially in honor of Blaugust and partially because I feel like sharing some information. If you follow me on Twitter you probably have noticed that I have been dropping a bunch of information threads about FFXIV, largely targetting brand new players or WoW transplants. One of the things that I keep mentioning is just how bad of an idea it is to roll new characters in order to play a new job. One of the great things that FFXIV has going for it is the ability to play a single character and have it be viable at every single job available in the game. Starting a brand new character effectively means that you are starting the game over from scratch and there is little to no carryover between these characters, meaning you lose all of your hard-earned mounts, titles, minions, and most importantly cosmetics.
This however is a bit of a double-edged sword, because the Main Story Quest of Final Fantasy XIV is designed to rapidly progress a single job in level ensuring that you are always caught up to be able to do the next quest in sequence. Unfortunately, you won’t have access to the MSQ on your alternate jobs and will quickly find that the ocean of side quests available in the game, just is not a great way to level because they reward a pittance of progression. There are of course a number of ways to grind up new jobs if you really want to “no-life” your way to the level cap. However, over the years I have realized that the game prefers a “variety is the spice of life” approach and rewards you for doing a little bit of a lot of different activities. Once I have adopted this methodology, I have found that leveling becomes pretty straightforward and just an application of days of repeated effort rather than a focused grinding session.
There are a number of activities that are rather rewarding, and I thought I would start by prefacing what I do on an alt that I am trying to level every day. Here is a quick bullet point list, and I will explain each of these further down in the post.
Main Story Roulette
Battlecraft Beast Tribe Dailies
Clan Hunt Logs
PVP Roulette
Alliance Raid Roulette (once it opens up)
Trials Roulette
Leveling/50+ Roulette
Generally speaking, I will hop in a queue for activity, and while in that queue I will be working on either Beast Tribe quests or Clan Hunt logs specifically, allowing that time spent in the queue, especially as a DPS to be productive. On another note, this is largely targetting folks who have leveled a single job all of the ways through the main story quest. If you don’t have a character to the level cap, you really should be focusing on that first. You get a bonus to experience for the alternate jobs if you have a single job to whatever the current level cap is.
Main Story Roulette
This friends is the single largest chunk of experience you are going to get from any activity. Main Story Roulette is a way of Square guaranteeing that every player can always get a group for Castrum Meridianum and The Praetorium. I’ve said before that Square is extremely adept at bribing players to do the right thing, and it starts right here. If you are on an alt, you are going to get roughly 75% of a level for a Praetorium run and 50% of a level for a Castrum run. I greatly prefer Praetorium even though it is significantly longer because you can semi-AFK during the cutscenes and be doing something else on the other monitor. Do not sleep on this XP boost. Sure it becomes boring and sure there is a specific pattern to the way that these mega-dungeons are run, but the single boost that you can get every day is well worth your time investment.
PVP Roulette
This is another big chunk of experience and I think the secret to why I don’t mind doing PVP in this form is that the player is rewarded effectively the same win or lose. You are going to see somewhere in the vicinity of half of the levels worth of experience from running the PVP roulette every single day. This is something that I would suggest queueing for during prime time however as during off-hours the queues might be a little longer and your time could be served better elsewhere. A side benefit is you gain wolf marks which you can then turn in for pets, cool exclusive weapon and armor appearances, and even a magitek mount.
Battlecraft Beast Tribe Dailies
To be completely honest, I ignored these for the longest time to my own detriment. In “A Realm Reborn” the Beast Tribe quests were not worth that much experience. They were something that I did to earn a reputation and eventually unlock unique dyes and the mounts but not really a net positive on the experience gain. However starting with Heavensward, the quests began scaling with your level and this has increased significantly with Stormblood and no Shadowbringers. For example, doing the three Pixie Beast Tribe dailies can be upwards of half of the level of experience for level 70+ characters.
Each expansion seems to reward more experience than the previous expansion. If you are below level 50, it is still worth doing the A Realm Reborn quests largely because the later quests in the series reward better experience gain than the early ones.
Clan Hunt Logs
Scattered throughout Eorzea are Clan Hunt boards. From them, you can gain hunt bills that can be completed each day and reward a decent chunk of experience, Gil, as well as a specific clan hunt currency for each expansion that can be spent on gear. You can also join in “hunt trains” where groups of players go around the world taking out high-rank hunt targets, but I am not going to get into that today. I am largely focusing on the hunt bills that you can work on at your own pace, and between this and the beast tribe dailies, these serve as a thing you can do while waiting in roulette queues. Each bill will ask you to find a specific target mob in a specific zone and kill a specific number of them. Each time you complete a step on the bill you are rewarded experience, Gil, and the hunt currency. You can find the hunt boards for each expansion in the following locations.
A Realm Reborn
Your Grand Company Headquarters – Limsa Lominsa / Gridania / Ul’dah
Heavensward
Ishgard – just outside the Forgotten Knight Tavern
Stormblood
Rhalgr’s Reach – inside the tunnel by the tomestone vendors
Shadowbringers
The Crystarium – just outside the main Aetheryte on the same level
Alliance Roulette
I had been avoiding this one like the plague, but no that I have started to get my feet about me I gave it a spin. I was shocked by just how much experience these are worth. You can’t start running this until you reach level 50 on the character, but in my experience, it is worth roughly 50% of a level each day. The best time to run these is during the 50-60 grind because it means you will get either Labyrinth of the Ancients, Syrcus Tower, or World of Darkness… all of which are extremely safe these days and tend to go fast and by the numbers. Once you cross that 60 threshold, you start being eligible for monsters like Dun Scaithe that can turn into a horrific wipe fest. I still throw myself against this wall but your mileage may vary.
Trials/Leveling/50+ Roulettes
I am lumping the dungeon and trial roulettes in the same bucket because they are reasonably rewarding, but how rewarding varies wildly based on which activity you end up getting. The roulette itself is worth 15-20% of a level and this can scale upwards greatly if the activity you end up getting randomed into is near your level range so that you are getting decent experience off individual monster kills. They are most definitely worth doing, but not at the detriment of any of the other options you have available to you.
The No-Lifer Grind Methods
Are you the kind of player that prefers to find the most efficient method of doing something and then repeat that same process over and over until achieving the desired result? There are absolutely methods for leveling that follow this thought process. Truth is that I do some of each of these along with the above methods in order to keep things flowing smoothly and keep me from bogging down anywhere along the way. While I ascribe to the “variety is the spice of life” method of leveling, there are absolutely points at which I will grind my way over specific humps.
FATE Grinding
This is pretty straightforward… essentially go camp a zone and take out FATEs for the experience. The best possible course of action is to look in the party finder and see if anyone has a FATE grinding group up. There are a number of steps in the artifact weapon quests that involve grinding fates for some sort of a resource. In many cases, you can ride along with one of these groups and they will benefit from a faster time to kill and you will benefit from reaping all of that experience. If you can’t find a party finder group then the best practice is to choose a zone in your level range and just start doing FATEs. It is very rare that you will be in a zone and not have a group already running around and doing them. Mouse over each of the FATEs and then head towards the one that seems to be gaining progress, chances are you will find a fledgling group ready to go doing them that you can follow around.
Max Level Dungeon Queues
This one is pretty straightforward as well and works best if you are leveling a Healer or a Tank for the shorter queue times. Essentially you go into the duty finder, tick the highest level dungeon that you are eligible to queue for, and then do it over and over until you unlock a new dungeon. Repeat until you have achieved the desired level and also gear yourself pretty well in the process. Doing this as a DPS can suck because you end up with a much longer queue time than the Healer/Tanks and their near-instant queues.
Hunt Trains
This is admittedly one of the methods that I know the least about. On every server, there is a sequence of high-level hunt targets that spawn, and there are groups that are dedicated to running through them in sequence for experience and hunt currency. Generally speaking, these groups are organized out of Discord communities now, so I would suggest you do some searching for your Data Center and see what hunt communities might be available for you. I know this is a thing, and it is a great way of gearing alts… but also I have not really had the time or the mental bandwidth to dive into this system. I am telling you that it exists if you want to go down that rabbit hole, but I don’t have the knowledge to pass it along to you directly, unfortunately.
Deep Dungeon
One of my favorite methods for leveling alternate jobs, especially the 1-50 grind is the “Deep Dungeon” system. These are made up of the Palace of the Dead in the South Shroud and Heaven on High in The Ruby Sea. Essentially it is an alternate leveling scheme that allows you to walk in with no gear and be perfectly effective at playing your class, queueing with strangers, and completing a course of dungeon floors that take somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes to run. Palace of the Dead can be started by a character at level 1, slows down after 40, and then slows down again after level 50. Heaven on High picks up at level 61 and can take a character easily to level 70, but again slows down significantly in the 70-80 level grind. While doing the dungeons you have a chance of getting specific loot chests to drop that can be decoded into an assortment of minions and cosmetic armor pieces.
I have to be completely honest, that one of the best guides to understanding how this system works was produced by Square themselves. In order to gain access to each of these there is a short quest chain and below are links to the specific quest that starts each.
I am very new to this system, but essentially this is an alternate leveling system that involves doing battle against the forces of the Empire in an attempt to save the Bozjan people. It opens up for characters over level 71 and in my brief experience, the gain is comparable to that of a Deep Dungeon system. Unlocking the system requires you to have completed the level 80 Main Story Quest and have also completed the entire Ivalice Alliance Raid quest series. Since I am still learning the ropes I am going to refer you to another source for information about this system. All in all, I have found this enjoyable so far and I plan on pushing my Dancer into it some more once I hit level 71.
Summary
One of the other important things that you need to probably note is when the daily reset happens on your server. Each reset you get a fresh batch of all of the above bonuses available to you in order to keep working those levels up. Like I said before, I take an approach these days of doing a little bit of all of these things because it keeps things feeling fresh. However, at various other points in my FFXIV history, I was very much a FATE grinder or a Deep Dungeon grinder. The problem for me at least is that I got burned out on this method of play pretty quickly. I could keep my head down up until the point I achieved my first goal, but then found it extremely hard to start over again with the next class. I ground all of the Battlecraft jobs to 50 using a combination of FATEs and Deep Dungeon for example.
I think ultimately you need to find your own groove and what works for you the best. If I happen across a party doing a FATE I tend to pop in and join the fun, because it will ultimately provide a little chunk of experience along the way. If you employ multiple methods of leveling, I think you too will find that grinding up those Alternate Jobs doesn’t feel quite so grindy. As always if you have any questions or comments feel free to drop them below. I hope this guide is useful to someone out there because it certainly took a long time to write this morning.
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One of the things that I love about being a fairly prolific blogger, is that it also makes me a fairly prolific “screenshotter”. I like using images to break up blocks of text, so it means that I am always looking to capture moments in games. At last count, it also means that I have an archive of somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 GB worth of images recouting my time in various games. This means that with some measure of accuracy I can usually pinpoint exactly when I started playing a game. For example with my most recent return to Final Fantasy XIV, I know without a doubt that it happened on June 26th or 2021 and the above image is the first screenshot that I took. I started playing again on a Saturday which allowed me to get in, buy a jumbo cactpot ticket, and then cash that in after the podcast and I took a screenshot of it because I got a prize slightly greater than the default. It isn’t always a moment of huge significance that causes a screenshot to happen, but I do enjoy the fact that I do this regularly enough that I can use it as a visual journal.
This puts me slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to the recent wave of players trying out the game. It also has me still playing catch up for all of the content I missed since I last played around the release of the 5.3 patch. Something I had never participated in for example was the Bozjan Southern Front which is like this interesting halfway point between a Deep Dungeon and something like Eureka. To get it unlocked however I had to run through the entire Ivalice Alliance raid series that I never actually got around to doing in Stormblood. I’ve not spent a lot of time in there, but what limited time I have has been enjoyable. I mostly bounced from FATE to FATE and then signed up for all of the boss fights that happened while I was in the vicinity. I’ve unlocked the second area of the zone and I think at last count I was rank 6 of 15. Every time I can put on a new rank I pop back into the base and upgrade because I had been warned that often times this opens up new quests which unlock new things.
The bulk of my week was spent working on my machinist job, and I have to say right now at this very moment it is probably my favorite DPS class in the game. This is weird given how much I did not like Machinist when it was originally released in Heavensward. We’ve lost track of how many revisions to the class this has been, but right now they have a really enjoyable mix of a gunner class and Edgard from Final Fantasy VI. One of my friends Erry mentioned that she was not digging the class at all… and then she got Drill and that changed everything. I have to agree with this sentiment, it is really when you get the gadgets and the upgraded “heated” versions of your base attacks that it really starts to come alive. I hit level 80 with the class a few days ago and as is usually my pattern, once I got some basic gear I flipped out and started leveling something new.
There was one job that was completely greyed out for me, and I decided to remedy this. Otherwise, all of my battlecraft jobs are at least level 50 or higher. Dancer was introduced with Shadowbringers and I have to admit it is not traditionally what I would consider my jam. The first thing we had to remedy was getting rid of the default appearance which looked a bit goofy on a Lala. Instead, I went with this whole pirate lord sort of theme and I think it works nicely. Shocking to me is how much I am enjoying the class because it feels like playing a melee… but all of your attacks work at range. This means that like Bard and Machinist it is a class with a high degree of mobility since I don’t have to wait on any abilities to cast. What really pushes it up there though is the group support it provides with a bunch of interesting AOE minor heal abilities. I am learning the ropes but definitely a job that I dig. I think ultimately I am on the path to level everything to 80, but I sincerely doubt that happens before Endwalker.
Grace and I were joking that somehow I was replaced by the version of the player that they were in 2017. I have been throwing myself at all sorts of random group content and am even doing the daily Alliance Roulette for fun and experience. Sometimes it works great and we get a nice easy Syrcus run, and other times it does not… and you get Dun Scaithe that has so many wipes that I eventually had to bail out and go to bed. All the time however I find myself enjoying doing content with random players and how generally awesome everyone has been. Even in the cavalcade of wipes that was that Dun Scaithe run, no one was really hostile at least not the levels of hostility that I would have seen in other games. Like I can take passive aggressiveness because I grew up with plenty of that, it is the downright hostility towards other players that I think has driven me away from random group encounters in other games.
I had built this mental block up against doing things with strangers, and it makes me wonder how many opportunities I had missed out on. For example, I happened to be doing clan hunt logs in the Lochs when I noticed the Ixion this big mega FATE was up. Shortly thereafter folks started flocking to the zone and grouping up to prepare to kill it. They sat there and waited a good solid 10 minutes for folks to filter in from other zones and when there were 20 minutes left on the FATe they pulled. You can see the grouping of players that already had their mount, but were super happy to help out and do the FATE just because it was fun. I was in that camp as well, because I got the mount through another source and was just there to experience the event. It wasn’t particularly difficult but also wasn’t a trivial face stomp either. I walked away with enough Ixion horns to be able to pop over to Rhalgar’s Reach and get the minion version of Ixion to show for my effort.
Thing is… there is a version of me from not too long ago that would never have signed up for an event with a bunch of strangers. I know this is corny, but it feels like this game and its community have summoned forth a version of me that I thought was long dead. I used to be a group organizer and constantly slamming my face against impossible obstacles with strangers. That is more or less how I survived all of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and because of it I had long lists of friends and was in my maximum number of social channels that I used as a reservoir of people to do things with. Then the community changed, or at least I became fearful of it and I stopped grouping with anyone that I did not know personally… or at least were not vetted through one of my friends. Coming back into this atmosphere it has revitalized that part of me that is willing to talk to strangers and even lend a helping hand again. I’ve missed this version of me.
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Good morning friends. I sorta did everything in the wrong order this morning and as a result, I have been struggling to get started on this blog post. I thought for a while about trying to do a Favorite Fridays post, but really if I did one it would have been for the server that I play on in FFXIV. Right now I am clinging super hard to FFXIV because it has been a glimmer of joy in an otherwise lightless void of a week. We have a weekend starting however so that is at least a really good thing. I still find myself glued to the continued trickle of news about Blizzard’s wrongdoing even though I know I should probably stop watching it for my own mental health. I do want to reiterate that yesterday’s post was not a call to get people to leave World of Warcraft, but instead to provide some options for folks who have never played another MMORPG.
I really do love Cactuar the server I have played on since the release of the game. More recently the server has become widely known for the place where he-who-must-not-be-named plays, but really Cactuar has been amazing since day one and has largely been unaffected by e-celeb’s presence. During Stormblood, there was a random day when someone was shouting to the entire zone in the Loch’s talking about the Dodo Appreciation Society and giving everyone a Dodo minion that would come up and open a trade window. Similarly we have a player who has been travelling around the zones offering everyone a pet rat. I had to bring my own rat out just to make sure he knew I was already indoctrinated. Thing is… this is by no means a strange occurrence because people are constantly doing interesting and weird things on the server and I love it greatly.
In other news my friend Lonen reached the point in the main story quest where she needed to do the sequence of three dungeons in a row. We pulled together a Free Company group last night so she could have her first public tanking experience be a pretty chill one. The shocking portion of this is that I brought along my Scholar and healed. Well in truth Eos healed and I mostly just casted dots and nukes while we burned through the packs of mobs. I don’t really heal at all but I have White Mage and Scholar both sitting at 50. Astralogian is boosted to 60, largely because I did not want to level it and I wanted to get rid of all of the low level healer gear I had clogging my vaults. I am not a terribly good healer, nor am I really attentive to hotbars.
I spent the first years of my MMO gaming life as a healer. I played a Cleric in Everquest and the Complete Heal rotation was about the least engaging way to play a game. That was not however what killed healing for me. I could handle the slow pace of Root and Nuke gameplay and I could even handle spending most of my time sitting on the ground to regenerate mana. What I could not handle however was the constant calls at all hours of the night to log in and come resurrect someone because they took a bad death and were about to lose a level. This distaste for healers has carried over into modern life and other than a brief stint going to raids as a Holy Paladin, I have never really spent any significant amount of time as a healer. Thing is though, for the most part a lot of the healing classes in FFXIV are actually enjoyable. While leveling White Mage and Scholar and I actually spent a fair amount of time queueing for random dungeons.
Well friends, I think that is all I have in me this morning. I hope you all have a very good weekend and can get some much needed rest. I am probably going to pour myself further into Final Fantasy XIV and keep working on the Machinist and Dragoon. I might even try my hand at healing some more because last night was fairly enjoyable. If you are looking for a server, I highly recommend Cactuar. It can be a pain in the butt to get onto, but generally speaking if you roll a character first thing in the morning you can get in. Make sure you check the official server status page to see if you can create a character or not.
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Good morning friends. We find ourselves in really difficult times, more specifically for those players who had a deep connection to World of Warcraft. One of the most interesting aspects surrounding the Warcraft universe is that there are so many players that were happily plugged into Azeroth without knowing much about the larger MMORPG scene. The game had a unique way of spreading from spouse to partner or to family members or maybe even to coworkers. The end result is that it created a large number of “Blizzard Gamers” that had never really played much prior to the game nor played much in addition to it. This morning’s post is specifically for the members of the Warcraft community that now find themselves in a troubling situation. For many playing Warcraft right now feels tainted, but at the same time the game became part of their self-care routine as a way to alleviate the stresses of the world.
Please note this is not a post telling people to abandon World of Warcraft. That isn’t something that I can tell anyone to do. Personally, I just can’t touch Blizzard products right now. Maybe if the systemic change goes into place and it seems like the company is on the right track again I can return, but for now, I am distancing myself. If you are feeling the same way, but also struggling to know what to do with your gaming time… this morning’s post is specifically targeted at you. As a long-time “WoW Tourist” I have played almost all of the MMORPGs that have come out throughout the years and I have great news for you. While Warcraft was consuming all of the discourse, there were a wide number of games that have quietly been gaining steam in the background. This morning I am going to talk about the games that I think specifically would be easy to move over to after coming from a World of Warcraft background.
The Lord of the Rings Online
This is one of the older games on this list and it is impossible to talk about without also talking about Lord of the Rings as a whole. This game was released on the heels of the extremely popular series of movies and had the challenge of creating a world that felt like said movies, but also had none of the licensing rights to the movie imagery. It is also very much a game of its era and if you were a huge fan of the way that Vanilla Warcraft and Burning Crusade felt, then you might possibly feel at home roaming this vast world. Enjoyment of the game however is greatly enhanced if you have a love of Tolkien because so many little details of the books are lovingly placed or recreated in this setting.
The story of Lord of the Rings Online is set as you being a contemporary of the Fellowship. This means throughout the course of its long tale you will be crossing paths with various members of the larger story. This gives the game leverage to let your character stray from the text, but still has a larger context of the events of the story we know so well. There are a number of extremely interesting character classes and rich crafting system and a functional but not phenomenal housing system. I think more than anything I fell in love with the world itself because it makes for an extremely interesting backdrop to your own character story. The game is showing its age, but especially if you were a classic player it might feel like home.
There is of course a free trial that lets you get in and start playing the game with an albeit limited set of character options and only the base content available. It has one of the more complicated pricing models in that each expansion is purchased separately, but there is a version of the game that includes the first six expansions for $59.99. If you choose to subscribe to unlock additional features it comes in at the standard $15 a month.
Did you ever want to play World of Warcraft circa Wrath of the Lich King but in a Science Fiction setting? Gratz then Star Wars the Old Republic is probably just the game for you. If you ever played through the much acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic RPG by Bioware, this game is set further down in that same timeline and as a result, references a lot of events from that KOTOR 1/2 setting. The only negative about Star Wars the Old Republic is that at this point in its lifespan it is largely a single-player MMORPG and has been retooled to support that playstyle. It features some of the deepest and most engaging storylines I have experienced in an MMO with each of the eight classes having its own completely unique character arcs that play out over the course of the base game.
It adds a lot of interesting things to the genre, like a Starfox-style arcade space combat mode and a deep companion system allowing you to customize them and augment your play. For example, if you are a squishy DPS and struggle while questing, then bring a healing companion or a tank companion to come to make that questing go a little bit more smoothly. There is a fairly rich crafting system, but it feels like it was largely abandoned once you left the base game. The game veers sharply into a completely single-player narrative once you reach the expansion content, but is still very much worth experiencing for yourself. It featured some really interesting group content at release but has been tuned in a way that most people just solo it these days.
There is a free trial that unlocks a limited subset of content and character options. One of the interesting things about Star Wars the Old Republic is that if you pay for a single month at $15, it permanently unlocks all of the expansion content and a number of the missing character options. Even more interesting about this game is it supports a $60 two-month subscription that does not renew, which tells me that Bioware fully understands that this is the type of game that folks dip their toes back into every now and then for a month or two at a time. There are ways to buy the game outright for $30 featuring all of the expansions, but really the better option is to simply pay for a single month of subscription time.
Neverwinter is a bit of a mixed bag, but I feel like it is worth talking about nonetheless. The first two games in this sequence started their lives as a subscription model game and then were later converted over to free to play when the market proved that there could only be one “WoW”. Neverwinter on the other hand released as a purely free-to-play vehicle… and as a result, I would classify it as very “freemium”. You are going to be deluged with a bunch of nonsense that is associated with paid unlocks and priced-to-own features… including so many varied currencies that it is difficult to keep track of. if you can ignore all of this, the core gameplay loop is extremely enjoyable and it offers a more action roleplaying game take on what is the tried and true World of Warcraft formula.
The game releases content at pretty regular intervals and the moment-to-moment gameplay is enjoyable. Trying to sort out what it actually costs for anything from the store is completely incomprehensible. If you are looking for a fun game to get in and play for a while but don’t plan on it turning into anything more serious then Neverwinter might just be the ideal fit for you. It requires setting up an ArcGames account, which means that you are going to have to deal with Perfect World nonsense, but pending again that you can overlook that I’ve personally had a lot of fun with it. This is a game that I don’t see recommended as very awesome because you need to be willing to overlook a lot of those free-to-play flaws to find the diamond among the trash heap.
Guild Wars 2 is without a doubt the best deal in MMORPGs. I can say that statement without irony or subterfuge because the game legitimately is a “buy the box” and play the game type experience. The only caveats that I need to include with it, is that the game itself is vastly different from any other MMORPG on the market in the way it feels and the types of content that is available to the player. If you were a loremaster in World of Warcraft and got joy in ticking things off a list, then this might be the perfect game for you. If you loved World Quest content, then again this might be the ideal experience because pretty much the entire game is the equivalent of a World Quest. Guild Wars 2 presents you huge maps with lots of activities on them and reoccurring group events that you get credit for as you move your way towards “map completion”.
The game also does an excellent job of making sure there is always some objective that you could be working towards, presenting you with a menu of different achievements and collections to go out into the world and complete. It has an extremely rich crafting system and instanced nodes so you are never actually competing with players for resources. The gameplay itself however is a bit of an acquired taste with a character being made up of not only the class you choose but also the specific weapon combination you choose to go with it. I have to admit I have played a lot of Guild Wars 2 in spite of the fact that I still don’t really get the core draw of the experience. It has rich and acclaimed story content, that I have largely bounced off of, but those who love this game they are extremely devoted to it.
If you were a big PVP player in World of Warcraft this game is known for its rich Realm vs Realm vs Realm gameplay. Essentially think Alterac Valley, but something that people actually queue for and participate in as you have a big epic battle with other players over resources. Never really been my cup of tea but I know there are a good number of players that play Guild Wars 2 almost exclusively for this content.
Essentially as it stands right now there are two ways to buy into the experience. The first is an edition that includes the base game and the first two expansions for $29.99. If you are willing to spend a bit more you can buy a new multi-pack that includes the upcoming End of Dragons expansion releasing in February for $49.99. In addition to this, there is of course a cash shop with a large amount of account unlocks and cosmetics, that are in truth purely optional content. Some of the things like unbreakable harvesting tools are the awesome quality of life improvements but provide no real benefit over the base breakable tools in the game. Well worth giving a shot if you have never played before because it might just be the game you have been looking for.
Now we are getting into the games that I assume anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows I will be recommending. Something you need to understand about this game is that I love Elder Scrolls Online. I was a friend and family alpha tester, have two characters named after me, and have played it off and on since it was released. I am more than a little biased about this game, so you need to understand that going into this discussion. ESO was a critically panned game that managed to gain traction and absolutely mail a regular cadence of content releases. Essentially each year there is one large expansion and three smaller content drops, essentially meaning that every 3 months or so there is something new and exciting to engage within the game.
Classes in Elder Scrolls Online are more suggestions than actually locking you down to playing a specific role and if enough time is spent in the game you can earn more than enough points to buy your way into multiple functional specs. I personally main a Dragon Knight, and I can play that as DPS, Healer, or my role of choice Tank. The crafting system is probably my favorite from any MMORPG and the content is laid out in such a way that effectively all of it remains evergreen. Each zone drops specific gear sets and you can take a blue item and upgrade it all the way to the highest tier. This means players are always out in the world participating in content regardless of the zone, making the entire world feel vibrant and alive.
If you were a PVPer in World of Warcraft, this also might be a landing place for you given that it has an entire game mode centering around huge battles to seize control of Cyrodil. Three factions vie for control over Forts and Keeps, all while trying to earn the right to conquer the Imperial City in the center of the map. These campaigns come in seven days and thirty-day flavors and involve players needing to not only take territory but organize the holding of territory during off-hours. For those who are not into the big campaign, Cyrodil still serves as an interesting but dangerous land to explore and well worth doing so for all of the sky shards and little mini-dungeons found there.
Pricing for Elder Scrolls Online gets a little bit contorted. Essentially things are divided into two categories, Expansions which add large new areas to the world along with a new starter experience, and DLC which adds dungeons, raids, and smaller areas. There is an expansion every year and it comes with a standard new game price tag associated with it. DLC is purchased through the crown shop and is somewhere in the $15-$20 price tag depending on how elaborate it is. Alternately you can pay a $15 a month price tag which unlocks all DLC for the game along with your “ESO Plus” subscription. I keep this active if I am playing because it also gives you an unlimited crafting inventory allowing you to harvest until your heart is content without ever worrying about bag space. There is a multi-pack that includes Morrowind, Summerset, Elseweyr, Greymoor, and Blackwood for $59.99 which is the ideal way to buy-in.
We have reached the point in this post where we finally get to the game that you all expected me to talk about before you clicked on the link. Final Fantasy XIV is one of the best games on the market and also one of the most endearing comeback stories the games industry has ever had. I say this with no hyperbole intended, this is probably the best MMORPG on the market and it is for a lot of reasons. This game is still a passion project of the team responsible for turning this game around from abject failure to overwhelming success, and for the most part, all of the key players are still actively engaged in creating new content. This team also sets the bar for transparency in information and honesty with its player base about what is going to work and what is not going to work. Players don’t always get what they want, but we often get a better understanding of why exactly we are not getting it.
The challenge with Final Fantasy XIV however is that it feels very much like playing an alternate universe version of World of Warcraft. There is no denying the influence that Warcraft had on Yoshi P while working on this game, but also at the same time there are just a lot of things that work completely differently coming from the Everquest derived lineage of Final Fantasy XI. Additionally, this is a game that was designed with the limitations of the PlayStation 3 in mind, so a number of the systems just don’t work quite in the same ways that a PC-focused MMORPG gamer would expect them to. Then there is the story gating of content that I talked about yesterday, and even though the said story is phenomenal… you cannot progress through good chunks of the game without making your way up to a specific point in the Main Story Quest or MSQ.
The reason why I love this game and keep coming back to it though is the community. There has been a careful focus by the team working on the game to lay the groundwork of shared struggle and kindness throughout the game. There is subtle social pressure to do good and be friendly, in the hopes that maybe just maybe at the end of a group activity you get a commendation from your players. Like it sounds silly, but in practice ends up curbing a lot of the animosity and toxicity that I have seen in other games. The content is also structured in a way so that doing older content is both enjoyable and rewarding and when you have a brand new player those rewards are increased. This has created an effect where running with a brand new player is actually sought after, rather than something you fear. Sure you need to spend a bit more time explaining mechanics, but you are going to get more of the end game currency you are chasing as a result to make it worth your while.
That is not to say that the game does not have its low points as well. Casual PVP is great and I find it very enjoyable, but I am not the traditional PVP player. From what I understand it is nowhere near as highly tuned as other games and as a result those who are more focused on that gameplay get frustrated by it. Housing in the game is one of the coolest systems, but because of the way that it is structure it is prohibitively expensive and just plain unavailable due to demand for most players. Apartments and Free Company rooms exist, but they feature a limited subset of the options that a traditional house would include. One of the huge benefits of the game is the ability to play every single job on a single character, but this is also somewhat of a double edged sword. Leveling your first job comes extremely quickly as you follow the MSQ, but alternative jobs are left hanging forcing players to significantly slower ways of leveling them.
All of that is pretty manageable, but without a doubt the most frustrating part about the game is the account system. Square created a system that would have felt needlessly arcane during the Web 1.0 days and now feels just painful to interact with. Those of us who have been around awhile understand the ins and outs of it… but account creation is the first real hurdle any new player might encounter. It also has a weird pricing model with subscriptions having a good number of asterisks out beside it. The game is $13 a month if you only one one character per server with a maximum of 8 characters in total. $15 a month gets you up to 8 characters per server (which honestly alting is a trap) and a maximum of 40 in total. Then you can pay an additional $2 per month to gain additional retainers or an addition fee to gain use of the mobile app that lets you play the market boards aka auction house remotely.
Right now the game is being deeply discounted due to a sale that is taking place. You can pick up the Complete edition that includes the base game, Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions for $23.99 or the non-sale price of $59.99. Then come November if you are at that point in the game you will need to purchase the Endwalker expansion for $39.99. The Free Trial gives players access to the base game and the Heavensward expansion or the first 60 levels of the game, but comes with a bunch of restrictions limiting the player to 300,000 gil and cannot join Free Companies or send public messages like Shout, Yell or Tell. They are also now restricted with a longer queue time than paying customers. That said it is well worth trying the game for free in order to determine if it really is for you.
One of the things I realize upon making this post, is that I am going to have folks asking “What about X game”. The truth is there are literal hundreds of MMORPGs currently available, each with their positives and negatives. This is my personal take on the games that I think a World of Warcraft exclusive player would fit into most easily. If you have your own opinions for what you feel like are a better fit, as always feel free to leave a comment below. Once again this is not me trying to tell players that they need to leave World of Warcraft, but if you too are struggling with engaging with Blizzard right now… here are some alternative places you could find shelter in for the time being.
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