Shiku

So recently I've been swamped with assignments and haven't had much time to spend several hours looking for a party followed by several hours of having to put up with gimps, getting gimp exp/hr and possibly dying several times.  We all need a break from work every now and then so I downloaded the World of Warcraft trial and played that during my breaks (and sometimes whilst I was supposed to be working ).   In this blog entry I'm gonna document my experience in WoW and also compare it to FFXI.  Even my blog entry is starting to sound like an essay !

Firstly, lets introduce my character.  The loveable gnome warlock, Tinpo!  Virtually nobody in WoW speaks Japanese so I can get away it

(I thought I had a picture of her but apparently I was lying to myself.  I'll take one tomorrow and post it.)

One of the things I didn't particularly like about WoW is the fact that each race can only pick from a handful of classes, with certain classes being limited to only 2 or 3 of the races.  In FFXI you can be any race, pick any job and level all your jobs on one character.  In WoW each character can only be one class and this can't be changed, on the other hand you do get space for 50 characters on one account without having to pay extra for the other characters. 

When I entered WoW I had this vision of being completely stranded; not knowing how to attack, where to go, etc.  However I found that the control are extremely easy to use, npcs will tell you where everything is and best of all... YOU CAN JUMP!  After years of playing FFXI the ability to jump is a big deal.  On a similar note you can also swim!!!  Swimming underwater is pretty cool because you get monsters that live in the water, like crabs and fishmen.  And it's not just limited to lakes, you can also swim and dive deep into the oceans.  Not sure how far you can get but with my warlocks Unending Breath spell I got pretty far down and found some sharks, then I started to fatigue (probably from water pressure?) and decided to go back to the surface.

Now onto some quests, luckily the first quest npc is right next to where you spawn when you create a new character.  Ok, great so I gotta go kill a certain number of these animals, I hope I don't lose count... but wait, it tells me on-screen how many I've killed as I kill them. Not like the stupid dark knight quest in FFXI where you gotta kill 100 monsters and keep track of how many you've killed yourself.

Unlike FFXI quests actually earn you experience points as well as some money and items.  The quest log also shows the exact npc text unlike FFXI's short quest descriptions.  Another great feature is the colour-coding system in the quest log.  Green quests are easy to complete for your level with yellow being of average difficulty and orange/red quests are recommended for higher levels.

So far so good, now this quest I've got is showing orange to me so I'd better exp a little.  Levels in WoW go somuch faster than in FFXI and there's no waiting for a party so you can just log in whenever and get down to business.  And the handy exp bar at the bottom of the screen is always there so you can see how far you have til your next level.

In FFXI jobs abilities and traits are learned automatically upon leveling, spells however need to be bought from an NPC, quested or dropped from a monster.  In WoW all job abilties, traits and spells have to be taught by an npc in exchange for a small amount of money.  With FFXI spells you can carry the scrolls around while leveling so when you get a new level you can learn the spell instantly.  With WoW you gotta run back to the npc every 2 levels to learn them since you can't buy them in advance... annoying. 

Upon reaching level 10 I noticed a new button in my toolbar, the talent button.  Every level from levels 10 to 70 you get a talent point, which can be used to specialize your class.  Each class has three talent trees with only a few talents in each tree being available to you at the start.  After spending so many points in one tree you can progress further down that tree, acquiring new skills and improving old ones.  However, since you gain only 61 talent points you can never learn every talent.  Being able to specialize your class from such an early level provides a much broader range of play styles than you see in FFXI where most people pretty much use the same 'cookie-cutter' equip and play style.  Not to mention that the amount of specialization that FFXI allows is pretty minimal and if you ever wanted to change your merits you gotta exp to earn them back.  With WoW all it takes is a little gold to reset your talent points.

Wow, level 10 already, better upgrade my equip.  So it's off to the auction house in Stormwind.  The auction house in WoW is much, much different to the one in FFXI.  It allows you set a starting price so people can bid on the item and the highest bidder will recieve the item when it's duration expires.  Next you can set a buyout price so people can buy the item instantly and also a duration of 12, 24 or 48 hours.  Not only that, but it only lists equipment that is in stock and shows the starting price and buyout price for each item.  Well, I'll buyout that lovely robe and wand and just equip them... hmm... but they're not in my inventory .  After buying anything on AH or cancelling an auction you gotta run to a mailbox to pick up your items.  It's not a huge distance between the AH's and mailboxes but even so, it's gonna add up.

Ok, so I'm geared up, I've set my talent point and it's back off to leveling.  Now with FFXI the only way to level is by doing ENMs, partying or by doing beseiged/campaign.  In WoW you can get a quest that involves killing certain monsters, either with the purpose of simply killing them or to obtain certain quest items.  After meeting your quota you can return to the npc and gain some additional exp, great, especially when the quest monsters are of a similar level to your own.

Whilst WoW is mainly solo play there are also quests that pretty much require you to team up with other players, unless you're a much higher level than the quest.  Generally these type of quests involve going into an instanced dungeon, killing some hard monster and a couple of bosses.  In addition to the nice exp from killing the monsters and turning in the quest items, each of these 'elite' monsters has a good chance of dropping rare equipment.

Since I'd been solo until now I was craving some kind of social interaction beyond the spam found in the major cities.  So I click a few buttons and set myself to 'Looking for Group' for the dungeon I needed.  A few minutes later I get an invite, a blind invite...  I accept anyway.  After about 15 minutes the leader is unable to find a healer so he passes lead to another member and disbands from the party.  This is promptly followed by another person leaving, then another.  So it's back to looking for group.

Some time passes and I'm greeted by yet another blind invite.  Again I accept and find myself in a now full party with all the required classes.  After a quick trek to the dungeon entrance we begin killing the monsters.  Much better than my first party experience until the tank takes a small amount of damage... "HEAL ME" "HEAL ME".  So glad I wasn't the healer...

About five minutes later and we reach the first boss who goes down with ease and a fair amount of CAPS SPAM FOR HEALS!  A lovely hammer drops with blue text.  Colour-coded item text, amazing.  Grey and white for common items, green for uncommons, blue for rares, purple for epics and orange for legendarys.  A simple colour-coding and you can tell the relative rareness of an item.  WoW also has several different loot systems for partys, the most common being 'Need before Greed'.  When an item drops a small window appears on each members screen with the item icon and name (stats available on mouse-over) and 3 options: greed, need and pass.  Each member can specify whether they need the item (Need), don't particularly need it or only want it to sell (Greed) or they want to pass it to other members (Pass).  The game then /randoms for each person who picked Need with the item being given to the person who rolls highest.  If no-one picks need then the people who picked greed get a chance for the item.  Nice little system, however, it leaves a lot of room for people to try and take valuable items that they may never use or will just sell over someone who geniunely needs it.  However the game does also offer alternative distribution systems whereby the leader may distribute treasure accordingly to the party members.

With the loot being handled professionally by each of the party members it's on to the next part of the dungeon.   Unfortunately, the tank now has to go.  No previous warnings, just a quick "I gotta go, bye" followed by a disband.  Next thing I know I have been promoted to leader and the former leader disbands also, followed by the last 2 members.

So at this point I'm thinking, is all of WoW this rude?!  Well... pretty much.  The same sequence of blind invites and aburpt disbands with no warning happened probably 9 times out of 10.  Then of course you get the druids who wont heal because they wanna damage deal, despite there been no healers available and the warriors who wont tank because they wanna do more damage.  On top of that the majority of low level WoW'ers appear to be completely fucking brainless.  One example of this is a warrior I recently partied with.  (S)He would run into large groups of enemies, aggroing the entire lot rather than letting a hunter or rogue pull with a ranged weapon and then moan when (s)he died.

Whilst I'm talking about the black hole that is the space between 99% of WoW'ers ears, lets talk about town spam.  Now I'm all for a nice bit of informal banter but I like to be able to actually understand it and proper English goes a long way to achieving that.  A lot of the players may not speak English as their first language but I'm pretty sure their schools didn't teach them "PLX GIEF".  Not only that but RMT actually spam advertisements in say, shout and in the looking for group channel...   As far as RMT goes that's my only experience of them, never actually ran into anyone and been able to say "omg RMT farming xxx!"

In comparison to WoW, FFXI actually forces you to interact with people just to level efficiently.  Granted it's a pain in the ass having to seek for a party just so you can level, but maybe this is the reason FFXI'ers can at least interact like decent human beings, unlike the WoW'ers who act more like emotionless baffoons.  And it's not just the manners of WoW'ers that suffers, when it comes to working as a group people in WoW do not have a fucking clue.  Meleeing healers, people running off every which way to pull, attacking multiple monsters, etc.  Of course this is just based on my low level experiences and probably becomes less true as you reach higher levels.  I have actually met several people in my WoW time who tried to organise the party and showed something resembling logic and intelligence when it came to devising strategies, however these people were few and far between...

Well, there's my essay on my experiences in WoW.  One final thing to add is a screenshot I took the other day.  In this picture I'm actually trying out the druid class on a night elf called Altanas.  Look closely at the guild name that the other character in the picture is in.  Oh and I promise when I find more pictures I will add them to break up this massive Wall O' Text!