GUYS CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? That last news update had some way crazy updates on how XIV is going to work, namely the whole no experience or leveling. That's what MMO's are 9/10 based upon, so this is exciting.

I'm getting pumped. I just couldn't play XI. I tried several times but I just couldn't continue playing. I've seen all of the cutscenes for the Sandoria and Windhurst missions. As well as the main story of Rise of the Zilart, Chains of Promathia (and Apocalypse Nigh), and Treasures of Aht Urhgan. The story is simply amazing and I wish someone would upload the Bastok missions and the rest of the Wings of the Goddess story.
The gameplay was alright but altogether, nothing was accessible to a new player, and someone new to mmos (me) is left dumbfounded on what the hell to do. Compile this on the unacceptable tedium, and the difficulty of finding a useful party, the game really is pretty bad. It is the only FF game that I couldn't get into (this includes all spinoffs).

If FFIV is going to be newbie friendly and more casual like it sounds, I think I'll really get into it if the story is even half as good as XI's. The system seems very interesting.

Yeah, it took me absolutely forever to work out what to do. People weren't too helpful when I started, and just kept saying "you've got a lot to learn, LOL you don't do Black mage and Summoner". There was so much to know and to do, but you had to know it existed first. I mean, I was sitting in San'Doria for at least 3 days, not even knowing I could get out of the place haha. It took me even longer to find out that the "Stone" in my inventory was a spell I had to use, and not just a rock.

It really does sound more approachable. Not more casual in terms of "we dumbed everything down", but more casual in terms of play. Like, they've been saying you can play for 40 minutes, a few hours or all day. You couldn't really play XI for less than 6 hours or something, and even then you probably wouldn't get far.

Plus, the masses of new features this game has is almost unthinkable. No leveling? No experience even?? How they're going to pull this off in an MMORPG, I have no idea. It sounds really great though.

This sound... different.

O.o

Now I'm really curious. Are you sure that you can play in groups?

Oh yeah, of course you can. It's just that the main problem with XI was that you could really only play in groups. You'd be waiting for 5 hours to get a team with the right people because you couldn't just go out and level yourself.

Now, you can do group work, but if you only want to play for an hour or three, you can just go and play by yourself for that time. No more tedious waiting :>

If you're talking about if there'll be a Linkshell system, that's like, 100%. They might change the name, but there's going to be a system for 'guilds'.

When I think of "guild," I think of a group that has the same job (like, I think stonemason). Is a guild just a group when it comes to MMOs?

Yeah. Think of it as a group of people who can all talk in the same chat channel, then you can join up in 'person' into parties/teams which would usually be 6-8 people.

Dang it GEEKANG! I read your little bullet posts about the game... and it sounds like they really are improving a lot. As much as I'm hesitant to play another MMO, if this turns out the way I think it will, I just may end up playing it.

Haha, yeah. It looks like they're doing a lot of good with it, and it's why I'm so excited. Plus, you can't go wrong with the god Uematsu composing the whole thing.

Exactly, I was suddenly very interested in the game when I read that...ha ha.