I had a discussion with a friend today about the newest entry in the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy 14. Unlike 12 of the previous titles before it, though, FF14 is different--it's a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.
I don't have extensive experience in the MMORPG field outside of World of Warcraft. I've largely played WoW on-and-off over the years with my last foray into Azeroth being their most recent expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Plenty of MMOs have come out to try and dethrone the king, but so many of the so-called "WoW-killers" have fallen by the wayside. A few I can recall right now being Guild Wars 2 and RIFT.
That's not to say that no one plays those games, just that they're not competing with WoW really. Star Wars: The Old Republic was another MMORPG predicted to give WoW a run for its money. I actually gave that game a shot myself and, from my experience with it, it felt like WoW but with the classic BioWare touch; branching dialogue trees, companions and all that. That's not bad, I still thought it was fun... but definitely not worth the subscription price the game was asking for. Apparently a lot of folks thought that way, too, because the game ended up going free-to-play in less than a year and a few BioWare folks resigned. Ouch.
So enter Final Fantasy 14. The game's $30 on PC with the first month free, then the monthly sub fee is $13. Those are pretty friendly prices for any MMO I think, but comparing it to WoW isn't exactly fair; the core game plus all four expansions would run you a pretty penny just to have to pay more to play. My friend told me about characters leveling classes as opposed to characters, meaning you can make one character and be able to play all the classes well if you invest enough time. I've heard that it's also WoW-y, but that doesn't concern me too much because I enjoyed WoW.
I think I'll give it a shot in the upcoming weeks to see what it's like, but if it's feels just like WoW, why not play WoW instead?
I don't have extensive experience in the MMORPG field outside of World of Warcraft. I've largely played WoW on-and-off over the years with my last foray into Azeroth being their most recent expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Plenty of MMOs have come out to try and dethrone the king, but so many of the so-called "WoW-killers" have fallen by the wayside. A few I can recall right now being Guild Wars 2 and RIFT.
That's not to say that no one plays those games, just that they're not competing with WoW really. Star Wars: The Old Republic was another MMORPG predicted to give WoW a run for its money. I actually gave that game a shot myself and, from my experience with it, it felt like WoW but with the classic BioWare touch; branching dialogue trees, companions and all that. That's not bad, I still thought it was fun... but definitely not worth the subscription price the game was asking for. Apparently a lot of folks thought that way, too, because the game ended up going free-to-play in less than a year and a few BioWare folks resigned. Ouch.
So enter Final Fantasy 14. The game's $30 on PC with the first month free, then the monthly sub fee is $13. Those are pretty friendly prices for any MMO I think, but comparing it to WoW isn't exactly fair; the core game plus all four expansions would run you a pretty penny just to have to pay more to play. My friend told me about characters leveling classes as opposed to characters, meaning you can make one character and be able to play all the classes well if you invest enough time. I've heard that it's also WoW-y, but that doesn't concern me too much because I enjoyed WoW.
I think I'll give it a shot in the upcoming weeks to see what it's like, but if it's feels just like WoW, why not play WoW instead?
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