hurstshifter wrote:I have about 3-4 friends that play so partying won't be a problem.
Not necessarily. If you don't have 6 people at all times, you're pretty much boned at level 25+.
I played this game for about... 5 years. As in I literally just canceled my account about a month ago. And finally bothered uninstalling it last week. The reason for this is that I just couldn't play enough to make it worthwhile. And considering the fact that it's pay to play, that kills it. I'm thankful for that extra $13 a month on pure principal. And it is a shame, because I've yet to play an MMO that's as in-depth and immersive, but recently I've realized how much it's designed to stifle you. For example:
You need to party a lot. And I do mean a lot. You will kill hundreds of the same monster over and over, in the exact same way. And if you die, there's no exp debt - you lose experience. You can delevel, removing any equipment you have at the previous level and rendering it useless until you get that exp back.
Get real friendly with Allakhazam, somepage, etc - the quests you get in game don't tell you what to do, they drop vague hints that would take you hours to run around and figure out on your own. The same goes for crafting, you'll just need a strategy guide for everything.
Get Windower (
www.windower.net) because the official one is terrible.
Getting around is a nightmare and will take forever in most cases. You can rent a chocobo, but it doesn't last all that long, and won't go into half the areas. And you can only do this once you get to level 18 for the quest, and even then you won't be able to rent them at lower levels. The places you're able to rent them are limited, and can take a while to get to. The solution for this was owning a chocobo. But this A) still doesn't last all that long, and B) requires you to go to your house every day and take care of it. This is again a huge time commitment, and a pain in the ass. Oh, and the chocobo still won't go into half the areas. You can also pay people to teleport you (or do it yourself if you get to level 60ish white mage), but even this is to limited locations, and you'll still probably have to rent a chocobo afterward, and probably have to run on foot after that because of how many areas don't allow chocobos. You can ride airships once you get to rank 5, but they all go in and out from one location. So if you're going from Sandoria to Bastok, you have to take the airship (which show up about every 15 minutes, so you could be in for a wait), to Jeuno, and then run to the other airship port to take the next ship to Bastok. This is incredibly tedious. It's worth noting that no teleports go into towns.
The traveling problem is exacerbated by two things:
1) The world is huge. Now, that's not a bad thing in and of itself; it's great. But only if you can see it all. After all my years of playing (albeit off and on), I'd say I've seen about half the content in the game, with all the expansions. Probably a bit less. The reasons for this are the absurd amount of time it takes to level, the pain of getting around, and the necessity of groups.
2) Quests make you run around a lot. It's taken me hours to do a single quest because I had to go to so many places that were so far apart.
hurstshifter wrote:But, they did inform me that recent updates have made it much easier to solo most of the game (until the higher levels of course)
This is either a lie or a gross stretching of the word "most". The only way you can "solo" throughout any reasonable part of the game is by having someone powerlevel (tank) you. Which is not really soloing in a true sense. There are little quests and such, and exp bonus rings, but they don't make up for one simple fact: at level 15-20+, you can't kill something of your level solo. I think that's completely stupid. At higher levels, you can't solo something 5-10 levels below you. Unless these updates have been made
really recently, I don't think this is accurate.
I'll stop right here because it sounds like I hate this game, and I don't. I resent the amount of time one must play it to get anywhere. The content in the game, I absolutely love. The bullshit you have to put up with to get to it... not so much. It all boils down to this last quote:
hurstshifter wrote:Final Fantasy is much more appealing to me.
And I agree completely. I'll play every MMO out there, and none will be quite as interesting. It's just personally not worth the frustration. I switched over to Runes of Magic, and it solves all of these problems above. But it's still not Final Fantasy.
Personally, I'm waiting for FFXIV. They supposedly learned a lot of lessons, and used their MMO experience to improve the next one. I'm a bit skeptical, but I'll still be picking it up right when it comes out in hopes of being proven wrong.
So in summary, if you can forgive annoyances, and can deal with slow progression - go for it, it's awesome. If you'd rather have the freedom of soloing most things, and getting somewhere reasonably fast - stay away.