Wish you were here!

[Freya]

I am a WoWer. I played XI but wasn't too fond of it.

What are some things you hope XIV takes from these other popular MMO's?

I'm really hoping for less grindage, that always bores me. I loved Aion's customization so I hope they have a lot of that too. I'm sure there are may other things but my mind is drawing a blank now.

[Ouch!]

I hope SE learns something about customer support.

[Loony BoB]

What are your bad experiences with customer support, out of curiosity, Ouch!? I never really dealt with them.

I haven't played many other MMORPG's so I'm not sure I can really say what I'd like to be brought over. Maybe faster healing when you're not fighting.

[Ouch!]

What are your bad experiences with customer support, out of curiosity, Ouch!? I never really dealt with them.
Square Enix is notorious for having awful customer support in regards to issues in Final Fantasy XI. Most of these lately have to do with billing and their sluggishness or outright inability to rectify problems.

A common problem which has been occurring since its introduction involves their 3-d secure verification for credit cards for PC users. They implemented this long after the initial introduction of the game and will randomly throw in a check for it during a billing period. If your card (which has worked up until that point) fails this check, you are suspended from the game indefinitely. You have to call into customer support where none of the agents will be able to help you. If you're lucky, the agent will escalate the issue to a manager. If you're aware of the ability to escalate an issue (most agents will not willingly offer the service), you can request it yourself.

Not that it matters, because it will take them at least a month to rectify the situation, and that's if you're calling, emailing, or using their chat support multiple times until you become enough of an annoyance to motivate them to do something about the issue. Most people are forced to get up and use a different card.

Other than that, they're also notorious for being unable to give out information. They literally cannot tell you anything. More often than not, people who have been banned are unable to determine the cause of their ban. I have a friend who was banned for "hacking movement speed" within the game who has never even used a windower program which would unable him to hack the game in this manner. When he requested information regarding the specific event that caused his ban, they were unable to release it to him.

[Freya]

So it seems like they just don't care about it so much :/ Hopefully XIV DOES have a better customer support.

I want to jump. I hated XI cause I couldn't Jump. I like to just hop around when i'm idle cause.. well I just do! I'll be sad if they don't let me do that :(

[Ultimage]

I've always had good experiences with them when it comes to customer support (it seems I'm one of the lucky few). When my account got hacked, I got it back rather easily and the GMs that helped me with my account restore afterwards were just as helpful. Even at FanFest back in '07 when I did the Tarutaru run and nobody was sure of where to line up, a GM spent a good 10-15 minutes trying to find out and just hanging out helping to pass the time.

[Ouch!]

I hear a couple stories like that every so often, but, like you said, it's one of those issues of being a lucky few. When my girlfriend had her 3-d secure thing fucked up, the agent escalated the issue after trying to manually override it with three different cards (the original, her debit, and my credit card). Cases like that seem few and far between though.

Don't quote me for certain, but I believe they've said that jumping will not be included as an active command, but you will have more interaction with the environment in other manners (perhaps being able to jump over certain objects?). Like I said, don't quote me. I vaguely remember that being said but can't source it.

[Shlup]

I would love to see another MMO someday where you can set up a home. What was the last game to have that? To have a character that just runs around the world without a home is sad. In Ultima Online my dad and I had four houses and I loved it!

[Miriel]

I would love to see another MMO someday where you can set up a home. What was the last game to have that? To have a character that just runs around the world without a home is sad. In Ultima Online my dad and I had four houses and I loved it!

FFXI has mog houses! Decorating the inside with all my pretty treasures was like one of my favorite things to do. :p

[Freya]

Everquest 2 has houses and guild houses so then your guild can make a awesome one.

I think that's always cool. They also have a way where you can makea guild shop so other players can buy from you guys. I'd like to see that implemented more.

[Mirage]

I just hope it's gonna let me jump in and get things done more easily. The worst part of FF11 is having to wait so god damned much. I also hope, and i feel pretty sure that they'll get at least this right, they'll get instancing nailed down in a better way than the pseudo-instancing they have "some places" in FFXI. Waiting for one group to get done with an area before you can enter is just sooo last decade.

[Yeargdribble]

I would love to see another MMO someday where you can set up a home. What was the last game to have that? To have a character that just runs around the world without a home is sad. In Ultima Online my dad and I had four houses and I loved it!

Best I've played with this is LOTRO. My wife and I could even share a house. It's not some random place. It's in an actual neighborhood with other houses. Sometimes it's interesting to see what your neighbor next door is doing with their yard. Hell... some people even leave their houses and guild halls open to the public so you can go check out their houses for decorating ideas or just marvel a the trophies they've accumulated from fighting big things. The methods of decorating your house are the most robust I've seen in an MMO.

[bipper]

LOTRO is the best true MMO.
WOW is more of an after school club in comparison. The serious nature of things in LOTRO is it's only drawback here. That and wanting to make it to level 20 with out dying. :mad2:

It is a nerdish mmo, but most un-nerds would love its features elsewhere. So if FFXI is like Lotro - count me in. (count me in either way, really)

[Freya]

I dunno if I like the full voice acting though. :/ I mean I'm half on the fence about it. While FF's have been showing some good points with voice acting I dunno if I want every NPC to talk :/ Maybe just important ones.

[nirojan]

^ Well star wars the old republic will have all characters, playable and NPCs, completely voiced. The first MMO to ever do this....but I doubt that's its selling point. The success behind mmos like WOW and LOTRO are the fans they had from the series point before launch. The warcraft series was extremely successful and Warcraft 3 is one of the best selling RTS games of all time. LOTR has an even bigger fan pool to draw from.
The fate of FFXIV is down to the question if the casual FF fan will play this online, subscription-pay game.

[Freya]

Doesn't the Everquest 2 have every quest giver talk? I dunno My older brother plays it and sometimes I hear them giving strange quests form time to time.

[bipper]

Doesn't the Everquest 2 have every quest giver talk? I dunno My older brother plays it and sometimes I hear them giving strange quests form time to time.

Only certain ones, at certain times. It is kind of annoying.

I think the environment interaction between character (fluid) model and the environment model is key. One place square has showed little regard to. The simple intuitive bliss I get from running around and jumping on WoW actually affords it a lot of comfortably points in my mind.

[Loony BoB]

Speaking of voice acting, I would love for it to contain a voicechat system for various channels - eg. clans, party chats and private chats.

Optional, of course. I would personally only use it for friends.

[Ouch!]

Speaking of voice acting, I would love for it to contain a voicechat system for various channels - eg. clans, party chats and private chats.

Optional, of course. I would personally only use it for friends.
Ventrillllllllllllooooooooo!

[Loony BoB]

Yeah, but integrated would be better if it were possible. At least with clan-type stuff.

[qwertysaur]

I hope this can catch my attention. I dont expect much though, MMO's in general all bore me really quickly :/

[No.78]

I hope it takes nothing from other MMOs and tries to become popular off it's own merits.

If it was like WoW, i wouldn't even buy it.

[Rostum]

All I can say is that from reading the alpha client manual that the battle system seems very unique to MMO's. I guess we'll find out soon enough though.

*cough* The manual was leaked, btw. >.>;

[KentaRawr!]

I hope that its beginning is similar to FFXI's. Out of all the MMOs I've played, FFXI had the best beginning. Or at least FFXI's beginning if you chose Windurst. I don't know about all those other lame places.

[No.78]

Integrated voice chat would be fabulocious, also.

[Mezlabor]

I didnt have any problem with the 3-d secure thing. When i signed up I had to call them but they were able to very easily verify ome information for me and add my cc manually. the whole process took about 10 minutes.

[Madame Adequate]

Steal WoW's UI and controls. Though not too much else - trying to be a successful MMO by copying WoW is pretty stupid, because WoW already exists and you're just not going to top it, and even if you do you're not going to get the publicity for that to matter.

Character customization on the order of City of Heroes.

Ability to solo. And relatedly, ability to play for 45 minutes and feel like you've made progress.

[Del Murder]

What are the main differences between WoW's controls and FFXI's?

[Madame Adequate]

WoW has a number of action bars where you can stick your various moves and use them with the press of a single button. FFXI has a series of menus to navigate, awakwardly, to achieve the same. For long-time players there might not seem to be any problems but even as someone playing games for a very long time FFXI has a very unintuitive interface and on the three occasions I've played the game, I've had to spend far too long getting used to the controls.

Basically the controls need to be simpler, easier to customize, and have a rapid and direct impact and what you're doing. FFXI's characters handle like tanks and it feels laggy even when you've got great ping.