My thoughts so farFollow

So my first MMO was XI back when I was a freshman in highschool in 03, then I went to WoW, and then on to various others throughout the years. I played WoW for the longest with XI as fairly close second. In recent years while trying out new games, I thought the sense of wonder and immersion I no longer experienced was just because I was a kid with no worries other than going to school and coming home to play games at that time I did. Aion, Guild Wars 2, Lotr, they all just felt like games, but nothing more.

Ive taken a different outook on starting XIV, instead of playing every minute of beta I could, reading up on everything etc, I decided to take things slow and go in with an open unbiased mind. I finally made it onto a server on sunday and have played only for 5-7 hours or so, but that feeling I got in XI and WoW is back. I want to explore every corner of the city, or go kill something even if its not part of a quest, just to see what it does, how hard it is, if I can indeed kill it. It seems like every game ive played in recent years ive spent running from quest to quest, making sure I have the best gear at my level, making sure crafting is keeping up as well. I havent felt the need to do any of that thus far. Im literally just having fun wandering around seeing what I can find. I am keeping up with the story, but not because I feel like I should, or have to, but because its legitimately entertaining and I want to find out where to go and do next.

I'm sure one day soon I will work my way back to wanting to max out my gear and complete everything I can, but ill surely look back to the first of my days in Eorzea as a nostalgic time of exploration and excitement, rather than just getting the low levels over with.

I completely agree with everything you have stated.

I had pretty much same gaming experience with Zidaga, about 2 years of FFXI before I jumped on the WoW band wagon, on and off for about 5 years and still have a subscription with them.
Now I am testing out FFXIV, although some disappointment with the login and everything, but I was so happy with the game, all the role playing and all. I felt a lot more alive here than in current WoW.

The FATE system reminds me of GW2 a lot, and I didn't really like GW2's end game, but i didn't have a lot of expectation from them since it's free to play.
I would expect a fair bit of end game content from FFXIV though, from both PvP and PvE perspective, and really looking forward to what they have to offer.
Hope the servers will become stable though, kinda losing patients with all the errors.

Edited, Sep 4th 2013 1:09am by Twinz