22 Jun A Realm Reborn
I’m finally allowed to talk about Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and can show you some of the first screenshots from Beta Phase 3 ^,^!
First of all: A Realm Reborn is a lot better than Version 1! Well it would be pretty bad if not, but now you can finally enjoy the game, how it should have been from the start. As you might know I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XI for over 8 years now. We started playing in April 2004 and I love this MMORPG more than any other MMO. It just has everything: A perfectly big and cruel world, a lot of difficult fights (it has gotten a lot easier over the years though), cross-platform gaming, cross-continent gaming, millions of items and monsters, and a very cool job system.
So I’ve been pretty down, when I could finally play FFXIV 1.0. I was also a beta tester back then and hoped those where just beta problems, on the other side I was also pretty hyped because of the beautiful graphics and the new world Eorzea. But when the game finally came out (Tom and me got the retail Collectors Edition) we just played one month and then skipped to something else (was it Aion?). It was just near to unplayable and no fun at all. The whole interface was slow as hell, all Disciple of War classes felt more or less the same, and the maps with no mobs at all were a joke.
Later, after a few changes were made to the game, to make it more like FFXI (that’s what it felt like for me), it definitely got better. I played my pugilist to around 30, when it got pretty boring with no one playing and I finally decided to play FFXI again *lol*. Well at least I defeated Maat and brought my WHM to lvl 75…
Okay, back to FFXIV again:
I was invited to the beta test since beta phase 1, but because the information was confidential, I couldn’t tell you yet, how much the game has improved:
You can really feel how much they got inspired from other current MMORPGS like Guild Wars 2 or Rift, but without losing too much of their own style. They just took a little bit out of every game, but kept the world, the characters and the possibility to change your classes or jobs whenever you want to. I really like how they implemented more quests, the raid dungeons (only played one so far), the FATEs, where everyone comes together to do a kind of quest within a certain time. There are even male Miqo’te and female Roegadyn now! And everything just got easier to access and to understand.
The re-designed maps are so much better than the old ones, everything feels so lively and fresh! I also like how they changed the skills, even if you get so little skills for just one class you can also use some of the skills of other classes without making just one class useless. Also the crafting was improved a lot! It’s so much easier and better now!
So I don’t want to talk to much about the game. I can just advise you to try out the game for yourself. You can still get beta keys for the PC or PS3 Version on their Square Enix’s website.
Now to the screenshots. They are not so many, but I’ll hope you’ll like them and enjoy the game as much as I do.
I think about playing Hyur, when it’s finally out again and will start with the Arcanist or whichever of the new mage jobs will start in Limsa Lominsa. I’ll later switch over to Conjurer, because I’m going for White Mage again. Tom wants to start with marauder as a tank. Well, there>’s still some time until then. Final Fantasy XIV will be on sale in late August.
Did you ever play FFXI or FFXIV? What do you think about A Realm Reborn?