Truely, I don't think they can really say "it wasn't considered" or "convieced of" to have power customizations during development. Perhaps during the initial developmental stages, but durring the early days of closed beta when they were asking for for feedback and suggestions, I recall that there were quite a number of testers that highly recommended them to take this route. Now that there are upcoming super hero MMOs that promise to offer such a feature, they are finally considering it worth their time. Not to discredit their efforts, I know it is appriciated by the fans, but I still wish they would have done so much sooner. Glad to see the change though

Please read this article:

Top Ten Most Misused Words/phrases...

Top Ten Most Misused Words

Epic Fail....

this is known as the landslide argument in philosophy.

Some people love to kill and cause chaos because it makes them feel big. Best thing to do is just be the person who lives by their morals. Every PvP game I've been in, I've always gotten ganked at some point, it's going to happen, part of a PvP server. You just learn to take it in turn and try to do your part to make your community better. Join a close nit guild to help you when you are getting greafed, and start grouping more so you're not out there on your own. In a way the PvP system has incuraged grouping in the game again for safety in numbers.
Remember, if you die in PvP, the only drawback is a respawn point, a rebuffing, and one more death on your record. You don't lose exp, you don't lose money, just a bit of time. Learn from each experience, keep an eye out and have fun.
Lastly, if you still don't like it, maybe you're not ready for the PvP servers. get some practice with your class on the PvE server and come back when you're good and ready.

While I agree many MMO's are unpolished products, the reality of our world is harsher than simply choosing to manufacture the "perfect" game. Developing teams have to worry constantly about keeping their investors happy, and usualy that means delivering a product on a certain date, regardless. The only thing most companies can do is at least get graphics down to a reasonable level. If you really want them to developed more polished games, people have to be willing to change themselves. Change their lust for money over their desire to see art come to life. People have to be willing to not complain when a game gets pushed back. Developers have to truely be passionate about their work without having to stress out about paying bills or meeting deadlines because of crazed fans, harsh critics, and investors that want their promised payback ASAP. The best thing one can do is get themselves in a position where they themselves are capable of investing in MMO's, so that they can be the one willing to take the risks of having a company design a functioning artpiece. Like it or not, this is the truth of the matter.

I'm still somewhat new to FFXI, but go down to the bottom of the web address I'm about to post and check out theBlack Mage Guides, they could help give you some ideas. Also do a /sea all blackmage or something of that sort to see what others like to take and ask the players what they think.

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Black_Mage

Hope this helps you some:-)

P.S. what server do you play on?

Rdm on Cerubos (or however it's spelled)

I would have liked to have heard something about Asheron's Call. Curious about it's future.

While people have complaints about the "end game" content, most of this is conjectural. LoTR aims more for the RPing group, the group that has been highly overlooked in modern MMO's in favor for Raiding and more and more equipment based grinding. If you take into consideration the goals of furnishing your new homes with the most interesting things you can find, along with becoming more of a community member, a sort of lore spinner and more of a character in the world and less of someone trying to grind, you've got great options for end game already. People forget that a great appeal to an MMO is the fact that it IS an MMO, and the last three letters often associated with it are RPG. Take a few breaths, if you're a minstrel play some music and get together with friends and design some sorts of community quests, like scavenger hunts, or duels, etc.
I'd love to see an MMO that would implement more tools for the higher end players to design live quests, allowing them to hunt down other players who want to play the "bad guy" and act as the sort of end boss of a quest. Or perhaps a lore quest where the players have to piece together evidence of an older culture or event. Players who are creative enough to think of ways of implementing it CAN do most of this already. However as the MMO populations have grown, so have the lack of creative players, and people willing to think beyond the grind and the everyday rat race. Let the game be more than just another rat race, let it take on a life and let yourself contribute to its life. This is about escaping reality, not causing more headaches and reminding everyone of the age of constant self-glorification at the expense of everyone and everything else. I’m not saying that this game has a perfect end-game design, by far, but the answers are not in constantly adding more levels and more repetitive quests, it’s in giving players more of a role in the world, more active competitions (like live events) and less numerically generated quests.

Well I'd have to say that I am actualy impressed, which seems to be hard to do these days MMO wise.
I don't care how "original" the ideas are, the goal which they are after, and are succeeding at, is improving this game. They're taking into count the roleplaying community (which IMO should always be a main focus point, perticularly if it's based on a book. This effects the immersion for everyone as players who choose to loose themselves in the world draw just as much if not more depth as any lore, quests, or creative NPC interactions ever do).
I'm glad for their community and wish them many good times ahead.

My only problem with this review is the "Vile and Evil" comment about the Sarnak, this shows a lack of lore. The Developers themselves have previously stated, in an interview on this website in fact, that the sarnak are not in nature truely "Evil," they do not have any agendas beyond their own races survival according to the developers, unlike dark elves which seek power to rule. They are precieved as being evil due to their creation stories and their misunderstood survival techniques. I bring this up because for me lore can make or brake a game and I don't want others reading this to be misslead and start seeing them as something they were not ment to be seen as, again according to the developers.

The Big issue I have with the game's quests is the way that they lead the player through almost all the major ones, that before you only did if that was something you wanted to do with that character. It looses imersion if I have to follow a long drown linear quest line since everyone has to pretty much follow that path. Though even in a free for all quest system, I do realise most people still did the themeparks, however it was nice knowing that some people chose not to do one or two of them for whatever reasons, and I respect their choice.

On the other hand though, I have to admit they have done some decent work with their quests, though they still have a long way to go , and they need to find a way to keep placing more diversity back into the game.

I remember reading sometime back (think it was about two months ago, maybe three) that the game was having crashing issues with Vista users, but the game still has some stability problems so it may not be anything super unique to Vista. Worth checking into, however.

I havn't played this game for a few months, but I used to be a very avid player. I'd have to agree that these new time caps are a bad idea. An example of something that might sound good on paper, but not in reality due to the actual nature of how the  game ends up being played.

Thanks for the great overview Stradden. Optamistical approach (which is very good to have for early games) with a decent fact to opinion ratio. I look forward to reading your review

Thanks Grunty:-)

Yeah, you CAN do that all in RL, but there are things your ego wants to do that you would never make the decition to do or have the motivation to do. You wouldn't decide to race 120 miles an hour through a red light, because you know if you die, that's it. But in a game, you can choose to make that choise, however like in RL, your choise has real consiquinces. However instead of getting along with the realism the bitter taiste of loosing invested time and effort, your effort and time will translate from one 'life' as a character over to someother hidden skills (perhaps in someway related to your previous skills and choices)  in your next character's life. A constant chanse at self discovery. The joy of facing your inner ego's fears and desires, along with the mortal feeling of being able to "lose it all" that makes the poison taste soo sweet.

Well, besides the death idea, a good game that you could potentialy find what you are looking for in s second life. It's like living in a wikipedia, sometimes some really great stuff is added and people create these bueatiful fantacy lives, other times real crap is entered and a little part of you dies:-P

The MMO would need some "within games" that you could play like in RL, but you also have to offer the chanse for people who wish to play their luck at gambling, etc, but you'd have to create a real economy system (controled fluctuation of money) to keep the money flowing so that people who find ways to "farm" gold can't just hord it and sell it for RL money so easly. Perhaps after a certain time period, money is "given back" or some things have to be given up in order to reduce the will to buy in game things with RL money.

Hmm, that be interesting, but it would have to be hyper realistic in order for it to succeed. Because we know our own time so well (for it is where we exist) and have access to it at all times, we would be able to brake free from the game's illusion too easily.

The game would probably sell best to the people approaching it from the mind setting of it being their chance to live another life with consequences, but not ones of complete progress reversing permanence. Therefore it would probably be wisest to incorporate as many real life choices as possible into the game without  getting too detailed in the small  things (like not having to make choices of exactly which bill to pay, but choices as in if you would rather spend your money on this instead of that, etc.). For instance, the ability to question and defy the law would need to come into play. And lastly, you'd have to also offer the freedom to commit acts that our own culture would consider taboo... however you also have to be careful not to go into a few areas that the masses would completely reject (being able to kill someone is one thing, but rape, etc. would be pushing the envelope).

There would be no 'levels' but skills that go up as you use them, with some natural barriers to prevent the too unnatural (logic in our reality: someone who can walk must surely be able to crawl, therefore they must have had obtained some skill at crawling to become better at walking).

You might want to also approach the game from a bit of a different angle on what exactly a character is. Perhaps in order to give the thrill of choice in the game, the punishment of death could be... fatal. Your character dies, it dies and stays dead. However, you can create a new character that has a natural tendency at things that may either be related to things your old character did, or other skills of equal worth in some other area for you to discover with your new character (what better way to have a "new" character and create the illusion of a real death and a new life by not making the player feel like their new character is just a direct reincarnation of their old one) .

So what do you think?

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