Thank you so much!

I got 2800/4500, and from the score sheet it seems like anything above 2500 will have no problem.

I like the old school Final Fantasy "graduation" music that they used.

Wow, I would never have noticed that.

If this is true, I wonder what the purpose is to keep the new race a secret.

Oh no, I was really excited when I saw the designs on the Roegadyn, but the designs on the female Hyur looked better.

I look forward to seeing a "Sephiroth Sephiroth".

Originally posted by doragon86

Yea there will be a auto-translator in place and it will be much improved from the one in FFXI. I forget where I read it. I believe it was a translated article on ffxivcore

I remember reading something like that, too.

To me, cross platform, region, and language servers are a given.

There seems to be that "if you can't prove that it doesn't exist, it exists" logic around those beta threads, which makes little sense to me.

It's FFXIV for me.

Unless there's a beta spot for me, I plan on taking a break from MMORPGs to play some more console titles until the game launches.

From my speculation on the disciplines that would be available, my guess would be that FFXIV will stick with 6-player parties. Although there are disciplines still missing on FINALFANTASYXIV.com, I'm assuming the following:

(1) The five Disciples of War currently shown are all the ones that will be available at launch.

(2) This seems to also be the case for Disciples of the Hand with five available.

(3) I'll assume that Disciples of Magic will also have five choices.

(4) An even number party size allows the option to split the party between War and Magic members.

(5) Knowing the tendency of MMORPG players to follow generic party formats, I think going with 6 players balances desirability for disciplines that aren't the best tanks or healers more than going with 4 players.

I think the first bit of information on the beta being live would come from FFXI/FFXIV communities like Blue Gartr, Allakhazam, or FFXIVcore which hunts down information pretty quickly.

Unless SE takes the initiative to announce their beta stages, I'm not counting on all testers keeping their mouths shut. Things should show up on Youtube pretty early, both from individual posters and the SE channel.

I definitely don't think that the "first" bit of information will not come from MMORPG.com forums. There are a couple of threads talking about individuals who have already received beta access, I don't think those cases are true.

Originally posted by Hyanmen

Originally posted by Ariler

It was never at the top of my list >.> 

Top 4, before PvE, Combat, Crafting... all the things the gameplay consists of. If you put PvP before all these, what are you expecting, really? This game won't have PvP except as a "fun to do" activity maybe few years down the road.

-Storyline
-Lore/World
-Graphics
-Music
-Combat
-Large-scale PvE battles
-Quests
-Large-scale events
-Synthesis/Crafting
-Item gathering
-PvP
-Character development
-Player interaction
-Other

I actually took the approach to leave out choices that I'm more confident that FFXIV will do well in. In FFXI and previous FF titles, I've consistently enjoyed the storyline, lore/world, graphics, music, and quest/missions. Previous combat systems haven't always been to my liking, but they were acceptable, and I trust the trend that every FF brings something different on that subject.

My fourth choice would be "player interaction". Although this did not hinder social players, FFXI's player search/message tools weren't too good. Nowadays, not a lot of MMORPGs have the problem of missing out on tells/invites for five or more seconds when you change zones.

Originally posted by Krn_Assassin

Originally posted by Cik_Asalin

Originally posted by Elirion

Other:  FFXIV

 

No kidding.  How that can be overlooked is beyond me.

Add Tera Online and Blade&Soul.

As much as I consider TERA and B&S to be promising future MMORPGs, I don't think they belong to the 2010 category.

If I remember correctly, TERA is still looking for a list of key staff positions, like Producer.

The two lengthy teasers were entertaining, but I remember B&S mentioning that they're only halfway into development. Was NCsoft planning to launch B&S as their first MMORPG to support PS3?

I see nothing wrong with MMORPG.com awards going out according to the editors' votes.

I don't mind reading what MMORPG.com staff thinks once a year. For "majority voted" awards, I prefer checking the winners of websites that generate a lot more traffic.

EVE might win even often if these awards are voted.

As much as I say that FFXIV is my biggest MMORPG wish for 2010, I'll most likely try out all the other games like with every other year.

There are a lot of promising titles coming out for consoles this year, which can make good back-up plans.

For me:

The best community is one where you consistently find players that are willing to work together regardless of which part of the game you're at: FFXI. I found similar communities in other games: LotRO, DDO, and RO.

The worst community is no community: SotNW. The games that I felt had more percentage of "asshats" than WoW all came after it: AoC, DF, and I wonder if I'm an outlier for mentioning Tabula Rasa.

I agree that item bonuses for bigger purchase packages should stay close to "fluff".

The main problem for me with the $239.99 lifetime subscription is that at the time STO announced it, I'm working with an impression of the beta that STO still has a good amount of things that should be fixed or improved by launch. Meanwhile, when I heard about LotRO's lifetime subscription, the impression I got during beta was that LotRO was in good shape to launch.

Discounts on a large subscription purchase loses its appeal if I feel the game still needs patchwork. There's probably bias here, because I was more interested with the IP with LotRO than STO. It's possible that more people enjoyed STO beta than LotRO.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

World of Warcraft .---->  Both in design as in support and follow up.

Just take your personal flying mount and fly over the seamless lands of Northrend ...

EVERY flag you see is animated in the wind, every bird, rabit, rat and living creature is animated and breathing life.

The world setting alone costed probably more than some full blown mmo's in its total development costs.

Full passable 3D background loading and design costs roughly 3 times more than the older traditionel settings of "zoning".

----

Follow up: 1 month (!) after the intro of the cross server dungeons, Blizzard already adapted mulitple dungeons in accordance with the analysis of their server data concerning player activity.

This game is the MOST analysed data mine ever for balance and gameplay issues.

I doubt we will ever see such an over-analysed game in the future.

 

Like OP and a few previous posters, it's pretty much WoW for me.

I want to mention that Blizzard made excellent use of test servers for players. I hope other MMORPGs look at WoW's methods of making sure updates are tailored to their players because it shouldn't be about "WoW has this, we don't, so let's add this".

LotRO has been brought up a couple of times. I thought LotRO was one of the most polished MMORPGs during its launch and first year, but does everyone think it's the same case with recent updates?

SotNW was my favorite MMORPG to release in 2007 for North America, and it was definitely a love-and-hate relationship.

The multi-character controls was really good in my opinion. At launch, players already had the option of 100+ stances (basically individual "sub-class" skill sets) available in 5 archtypes excluding unique playable character builds that you can obtain. The barrack idea lets you support a lot of characters and treat your party options in a way similar to how you consider which cards in a trading card game should go into your play deck.

It was unfortunate that the auto-defend feature was practically a built-in botting program. That was probably the worst thing to have happened to the community at launch, when you find 50+ guildmates logged in but all AFK-leveling. Even after that, SotNW was still one of the better games to dedicate to because of how good PvP can get at times. But the game kept adding elements to make its players even more lazy, like auto-loot pets.

The grind that so many players complained about was nowhere as bad as the lack of community interaction that resulted from the botting support in terms of sealing SotNW's fate. In fact, a focused player can burn through enemies so many times faster than a player in bot-mode that maximizing kill rate becomes an art.

SotNW should have been way more successful in its niche, and I hope SotNW2 does more to encourage an active community.

In the case of FFXIV, I have to agree with the statement that jumping is not necessary. Ignoring spin-offs, Final Fantasy emphasized menu-based gameplay over action combat, and it makes sense considering how players in these games engage in battles.

I can't think of good reasons for FFXIV to implement jumping. More action? Sometimes I get bored playing MMORPGs. When it happens, I switch to Street Fighter or Modern Warfare. Being able to jump in WoW and use Light Feathers won't prevent me from looking to a game that's more action-oriented. More realism? I also don't find players jumping over heads and getting past-Lebron-James hangtime to be realistic.

Yes, jumping is important for other genres like platformers, especially hop-and-bop games like Mario and Sonic. Jumping also adds movement and evasion elements to action games, shooters, cross-genre MMOs, etc. That's good to know, but jumping for MMORPGs is about as essential as jumping for RTS games to me.

I think Aion made an effort where jumping can affect the chance of enemies landing hits, but I don't think Aion players care about it as an evasion technique when they have flying and falling to work with. Kind of like Barbarians in Diablo, Dragoons in FFXI have a jump skill that temporarily prevents them from getting hit.

Really, do characters in every game need to be able to jump? I enjoyed Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and more without jumping. Being able to jump will not make or break Diablo 3, and the same goes for FFXIV.

In fact, I wonder if being able to jump in FFXIV does anything besides make the game play a bit more like WoW.