My Weekend in Eorzea

First of all I had this entire weekend of so I splurged a bit ... I was absolutely amazed by the atmosphere in this game. At one point in Girdania (Sp?) It was raining so hard that it appeared to be raining sideways, the wind was whipping my robe and hair all around as lightning flashed and illuminated the woods sending light through the leaves and casting appropriate shadows everywhere...... just damn. 

I felt like the game didn't actually start until I hit level 15 on Gld but once I did man did the game open up. Access to the airship changes the entire game..... The first thing I did was get access to every class and profession so there was a lot of double confirmation. I took Cnj to 15 before continuing the main story seeing as I wanted cure and protect on Gld before doing any dungeons. What I noticed is how deceptive this game is, it may seem like your standard fare but there is a lot of customization and preparation that goes into setting up your character.  Having Cnj leveled made my first dungeon experience go very smoothly.

I also love how everything gets more difficult as you level after taking two jobs up past 15 to level more I was forced to do leves and fates as exp quests are non repeatable. This is a good thing as it makes leveling more than one job a grind......... weather its a fate grind , a leve grind or an old school FFXI styled exp party (They work exceptionally well) its a grind. In other words you will not take all classes/jobs to cap over the weekend which is currently pretty easy to do in most mmos. 

The Music............ OH MY GOD THE MUSIC......... atmospheric,epic,grandiose,powerful,dynamic and ever changing. 

The Graphics ......... OH MY GOD THE GRAPHICS ........ Playing on PC on Max Settings at a constant 60 fps ........ no other current mmo even comes close. The attention to detail is staggering.

The Combat, this one requires a bit more insight but in my opinion the combat is absolutely amazing and will lead to some pretty epic PvP once it is implemented. Until level 15 on all Classes so far it was very tedious and slow once I hit  level 18 on a few classes you start to see the possibilities for some very complex combat. Example doing dungeons on my Gld/Cnj for the boss fight I would run and flash all mobs ....pop rampart + combo 1 for enmity then cure myself as needed go flash adds change target letting the other mobs hit my back as I grabbed hate by using combo 1 on mobs for enmity then combo 2 to restore my mp. Shield bashing anything that looks like it could cause me serious harm as that stuns them and prevents the move....... tossing up conval to enhance my cures when needed. Someone said Gld had a simple rotation and this is only partly correct seeing as there is a difference in playing and playing well...... if you are playing the class correctly you should not be mindlessly spamming a rotation. Shield lob is also an excellent tool for grabbing hate on adds that have just appeared.

Thurm is pretty simple as you level its basically a lesson in resource management..... blizzard a few times swap umbral ice to umbral fire toss lightning dot and whatever other dot you have use fire a few times swap back to umbral ice when mp is low and repeat. then you get Sleep and blizzard II which casts bind on enemies...... Bind is a bit different in this final fantasy as bound mobs cannot turn to face you. This can lead to some interesting Thm/Blm soloing strategies ........ Blizzard 1 for heavy .......swap to fire nuke when they get close sleep .... swap back to ice Thunder for Dot...... take a few hits wait on them to do a tp move. Get out of the way ..... blizzard II to apply Bind then circle around behind them using blizzard 2 to bind them as they face away from you unable to damage you. ...... this is just low level crap but I can see the possibilities.

So my overall opinion on the combat is that it is very deliberately paced and requires a lot more thinking than most other tab target spam rotation mmos but I love it. 

The classes I leveled up this weekend were Gld 20/Thm 18/Cnj 18/Acn 18/Mrd 10/Lnc 10/Pug 10/ Gsm 12/ Min 10

Speaking of Goldsmith  ...... The crafting in this game is by far my favorite way to craft ever. You don't just select your materials and pray for a success you actually have abilities that can raise the chances for success or even raise the rate of getting a high quality item..... very well thought out crafting system indeed.  Crafted things on the AH are reasonably priced at the moment but once someone who looks a lot like me caps all crafts expect this to change.

Also do not let the number of classes I leveled over the weekend make it appear that leveling is easy. After leveling the first job to 20 the rest were pretty much done with Leves and Fate Farming....... I also had the chance to do old school parties with a few friends of mine that came over from FFXI..... if anyone else wants to try the "Old School" party I will warn you the experience is very good but try to avoid monsters that are more than 6 levels higher than you. The only reason I say this is because monsters are scaled with the size of your party if you pull one in a full part you had better believe 3 more are on the way. You cannot just gang up on a monster and beat him down he will call his buddies.  Also the Exp per hour in an old school party is very nice if you have a good group you get very high chain bonuses which go up by % and can really speed things up. 

The story so far is very good and pulls you in if you actually spend the time to read it all . ..... Also there seems to be more Japanese voice acting than English right now and the JP voice acting is a lot less corny.  For anyone who cannot speak Japanese you can turn the voice acting to JP and use Eng subs.

So far the in game community on Midgardsormr is absolutely amazing...... I did not cut on my /Sh or /S filters just to see what was going on and I must say for an open beta almost everyone was helpful and there were generally very few trolls....I hate to say this but the worst people I encountered were a group of Legacy players who had a very smug disposition towards a few people who had obviously not played FFXI or the failed FFXIV.  Not everyone knows this game or this Franchises lore everyone starts off somewhere lets all be a bit more inviting and a lot less douche bag ish no one likes an elitist.

A few Tips

1. Level Crafts with Leves as they give you the materials so you can sell what you make and turn a (small) profit.

2. When Fate Farming find a mage (Any Mage) that is doing the same and ask him if he would like to /party . This makes getting healed a lot easier as targeting party members is much easier than tab targeting through hordes of monsters. It also raises your chances of success should you run into a higher level fate with no one participating .....

3. Level other classes to gain access to their abilities,  This will greatly improve your characters utility.

4. As you get higher level Gil starts becoming more rare do not power through your Gil on weapons and what not from vendors. Just about all low level gear can be gotten through quests. Save your gear and use it on all of your jobs.

In conclusion if I had to rate this game I would give it a 9/10 so far so good.