My Quick Review

BelegStrongbow

So I am a semi-casual/Semi-hardcore Darkfall player.   

I played every mmo from DAoC, WoW, FFXI, Trasa, AoC, blah blah

Darkfalls expansion is taking years to release so I had to give ffXIV a shot since I loved FFXI

 

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THE BAD

I feel everyones Bad comments are relatively true.  

The UI is poor, it lags, is very hard to learn and at the end of the day is just cumbersome.  

The lack of Content for Hardcore players is there,  But for me I am only logging in for like 4 hours a day and I am not having any issues running out of Leve's with friends around.  My clan is getting different Leves so we reep rewards from them.  

Biggest Problem right now-------  The BAZAAR!    The market wards are probably the biggest Epic Fail system I have ever seen.  Please NOTE that the majority of this issue is coming from the cumbersome UI.  But entering a market ward with 100 NPC vendors all mixed together, unorganized, mostly JUNK on these vendors is horrific to say the least.  Then I have to use the Cumbersome UI to access EVERY vendor just to see if he has that single armor peice or Weapon I need.  Then I find it and realize it is over priced and Have to search through 50 more crammed vendors.  

Basically a trip to the market ward takes a tedious 2 hours of my 4 hour playtime.  

If they dont fix this soon I will not be purchasing a subscription october 23.  

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THE GOOD

The reason I purchased this game to me far outweighs all of the BAD that everyone is crying about. I knew all these bad points while I was in Open beta

 

The Combat  -- While everyone is crying Lag.  I get no lag,  If I do it is very seldom.  I love the combat, its not turn based but is dependant on Stamina which makes it kinda hybrid.  I love that I can combine a Maurader skill with my Pugilist and combine class skills to supplement my Pugilist.  Sorta like a hybrid Sandbox

The Armory System -  Armor looks great,  The Character Models are best I have seen.  The Weapons are great, I love how everything is player made.

The Crafting -  Best crafting System In any game hands down,  The harvesting is amazing fun minigames.  I love mining and fishing.  I can really spend my whole day crafting If I get burnt out from battle leves.  The UI makes the actualy crafting a bit anoying.  Hopefully this will get optimized which I am certain it will.

The Story -  SE makes the best story games hands down.  The first 2 quests in Uldah I have done are very engaging.  A lot of twists and turns keeping me reading.  I wish they would flesh out the voice acting but maybe another time when everything else gets fixed.

 

These are all pretty primary aspects of MMOS that I feel Square Enix met Next Generation standards.  Since the game just launched it is safe to say all of these systems are in there infant stage.  In a year from now I imagine all of these systems to be perfect and truly revolutionary.  P.S.  if you are a primary crafter in MMO's   This is your heaven.

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Conclusion

If they dont fix the Bazaar system  I wont resub untill they do.  I believe the current system is just set for CE release.  I feel like they didnt want to do regional AH in CE release so we could manipulate the market prices and burden the release players.  I could be wrong.  But This system is and remains to be the biggest EPIC FAIL of any MMO until it is fixed.