More from FFXIV

A new game is always fun to explore, so here is more notes about FFXIV.

Hiring a retainer, there is no bank in the game, i thought i have to carry everything with me, which means i’ll have to deal with the inventory, but i found out that you can hire a retainer, someone works for you and have inventory space to save anything, also works as auction house manager, and i read that you can send the retainer into quests and they level up, that is a cool feature.

Quests for features, the game explain itself with blue quests, you can’t use any feature without doing the quest first, and these quests are simple and elegant, instead of telling you what the features are it asks you to do something,

Breaking the fourth wall, sometimes the game itself talks to you directly, in other games an NPC will tell you to press CTRL+O to open something, in FFXIV the NPCs don’t do that, instead the game show text in a dark grey area explaining to you a feature.

Helpful help system, the guides in the game are so helpful and short, they explain the game so well i rarely need to look for information in webites.

Chocobo! the mounts that every one have, a yellow brid which can later fight with you or tank for you, it even heals you if you want, you can customize the bird with items or change its color, a mount here is investment not an item to collect.

The game provide other mounts to collect if you want.

Dungeon training, i love this feature, before going into dungeons you can join solo training which teach you the basics, then you can join group training, both are designed to be simple so you learn by doing stuff instead of reading about them.

Goofy! while the story can be dark in this game (and it will get darker in later levels), that does not stop it from being so goofy, silly and funny, i like it when developers don’t take the game so seriously.

That’s it for now, more to come later.

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One brings shadow, one brings light

As usual, i’m too distracted to focus on one game, i bought Final Fantasy XIV, it’s an MMO i wanted to play for a long time, i tried it twice on free account before but i felt it’s too slow and i wasn’t happy about the character i made, but i know it’s a game worth playing.

This time i spent a lot of time making my character, in FFXIV you really don’t need alts because you can play all classes on one character, that include all crafting classes, or i should say Jobs, and there is 17 of them not counting crafting and gathering classes .. or jobs.

Sometimes i wish all MMOs use same terminology!

Anyway, the game is like many MMOs but it have it’s own … feeling? taste? style! yes, different style, there are zones, quests, mobs, gathering, crafting and story driven progress, if you follow the main scenario quests (MSQ) you’ll find the game linear but that does not mean you can’t go and make your own fun.

Here are some things i noticed so far:

No bags, the character start with full inventory space, i don’t know if you can add more but so far there are no bags, and there is a plenty of space, unlike other MMOs FFXIV does not make inventory management a struggle.

No looting, when you kill a mob it may drop things but you don’t loot them like in WoW, whatever it drops goes to your inventory space, no looting required, which means no need to go to each mob to do that.

Day and Night cycle, in WoW a day takes 24 hours, in FFXIV it takes way less than that, i don’t know how long but in one playing session i saw many days come and go, the night is dark and i don’t like it, but it does not take long for the day to come.

Change jobs by changing weapons, each job have it’s own set of gear, even crafting jobs have their own gear, first time i tried to change job my character dropped all gear and was almost naked! it was a nightmare! why i feel embraced by that? it’s a digital world.

Anyway, you have special inventory space for gear, and you can make gear sets, so you can equip whatever gear usable by your class with a click, that’s how you change jobs, you have to carry gear with you, but so far this is not a problem.

Crafting is a mini game, you level crafting and you get better gear and abilities, an item could go from normal quality to high quality, depend on your luck and skill, and i don’t know if i can mass craft anything.

That’s it for now.

All the coming void

At 12:40am i woke up from much needed sleep, it’s the curse of being light sleeper, any tiny noise wakes me up, and it’s hard to go back so i thought i’ll spend some times browsing the web, maybe i’ll feel the need to sleep later.

Nope! Blizzard decided to reveal the last patch of BFA, 8.3 named Visions of N’Zoth and it have all the deep purples and blues, or that is the theme colors anyway … so what do i do when i see something exciting? i make tea!

In last two weeks i didn’t play much WoW, i played some Maplestory, i’m starting to understand the game and that means i enjoy it even more, it’s a beautiful game and one of few that makes grinding fun, killing monsters is a valid way to level, even the game encourage that, so quests are often ignored.

Spoiler Alert I’m going to talk about some WoW 8.3 stuff, no story details but some new things, so maybe you don’t want to see that.

First, new allied races, Alliance gets Mechgnomes and Horde gets Vulpera, this alone makes me so happy, even if that means leveling another alt to 120, i know i’ll complain about leveling alts … but still, happy for the new races.

New hair style, cyborg parts, crazy looking mount and beautiful armor, what’s there not to love? some commenters are complaining about how the Horde getting the “easy” allied race … come on guys, look at this! for me i think the Alliance gets the better race.

Then there is Heritage armor for both goblins and worgens, i like them both but i wish the worgen one have less gold, the shoulders need some improvement, but i guess you can hide them.

Then there is the N’zoth visions, solo scenario like we’ve seen in Legion’s Mage Tower, but this time it scales for 1 to 5 players, and it have it’s own progress, you need a legendary cloak from Wrathion (yes … again!), i like this idea.

Anyway, will i play WoW again? no, Classic is enough, but there is a chance for me to upgrade my computer with better parts, more ram and some SSD, new CPU and graphic card, if i did that then yes .. i’ll go back to WoW.

Going to retail WoW with my current PC is going to be frustrating.

No Brewfest in Classic

As Wowpedia says; Brewfest was added in Burning Crusade, so in Classic there is no festival, no dark iron attacking from the ground, they removed that in 2019 as WoWhead reported, no ram riding between the festival and Kharanos.

Honestly i miss the festival, and i’m thinking about installing retail WoW just for it and for the Halloween event too, the end of the year events are my favorite, also Darkmoon Faire.

Where i live there are no food festivals, and as i grow up i find myself long for things i can’t find in real life, so games provide some of what i want, sometimes i think i should travel to places where people have food festivals, it’s not the food what i’m looking for, it’s watching people have fun.

Anyway … WoW is a game, it’s there to have fun in it .. so have fun 🙂

Walking for adventures

Waiting for the group members in front of SFK .. and dancing!

At level 20 the paladin went back to Stormwind and into Cathedral of Light, there he spoke with Duthroian Rall who sent him to Ironforge to talk with Jordan Stilwell, mr.Stilwell asked for four items to craft a weapon:

• A hammer he left in what’s now called Shadowfang Keep, he left it in the stables.
• Ore shipment from a Dwarf in Loch Modan.
• Oak wood from Deadmines.
• A gem from a night elf in Darkshore.

I started with the easier one, the ore in Loch Modan, i did a quest for a dwarf to collect the ore from a place filled with ogres, then i went to Westfall to try find a group to Deadmines.

It took me two days to find a group, i whispered people who are looking for DPS players and they ignored me, some one told me that they already have a paladin, later i found a group.

It wasn’t a good group, the healer didn’t want to help with a quest in the mines before the dungeon so he left, we got lost many times and some of us died, then another player joined us but he was a warrior not a healer.

So now i have to heal! ok, i told them i’m not a healer but i’ll try, first boss was easy, by the second boss room the tank decided that it’s no use, he have to quit and left.

But not before killing some goblins which drop the oak wood i needed for the quest, next day i went back to Westfall and found a good group, i have 4 dungeon quests here so it was a quick clear for the whole dungeon, i finished my quests and it was nice to see the old dungeon.

For the gem i read in WoWhead that you can loot it from elite mobs before Blackfathom Deeps, so i went there and the second elite mob dropped the gem, went back to Darkshore to purify the gem, these quests are never easy .. no one says: “here take this”, no! they have to send you some where.

Shadowfang Keep is a Horde dungeon, for the alliance there are no quests for the dungeon except the paladin quest, i went from Stormwind to Silverpine Forest, it was a long walk but i liked that.

After few hours and logging off and coming back i found a group, it was a great group too, we cleared the place, every one found new gear except me (which is fine) and i found the hammer i need.

After all of that i went back to Jordan Stilwell and he made a mace and named it Verigan’s Fist after his dwarf friend.

Making groups in Classic is hard, from my experience with 2 groups i think it’s worth it, when a group works and clear the dungeon quickly it feels good to be part of that group, also the quest lines in Classic require a lot of running around, i find this both tedious and fun … i can’t explain it!

12 levels of Classic hunter

Durrzam and his friend

Months before Classic WoW i decided that i will play a human paladin or an orc hunter, and i did both, because why not? it’s like i’m in hurry to reach level 60.

Playing a hunter is different than paladin in many ways, so i’ll try to make it short:

• hitting things from far is much easier than melee classes.
• Hunter struggles for first 9 levels because they have no pet, but still better than melee classes.
• At level 10 a hunter can tame a pet after a quest, and this makes hunter way more powerful, or at least faster at leveling than other classes.
• Inventory management is harder with hunters, because they have one less bag and they need ammo/arrow bag.
• With engineering they need to carry more stuff which leave less bag space.
• Their pets need food to keep them happy so cooking is important or they should have stack of foods from mobs or buy them (depend on the pet family).
• With pets there is less need to stop for health or mana, means more doing quests stuff.
• Pets need training, and they have their own levels, and they have loyalty level too.

I love the RPG elements of hunter as a class, needing a pet, training the pet, gaining loyalty from the pet, i don’t like the lack of bag space and the lack of money, i have to spend money early on to buy abilities and train myself and the pet, i have to buy bags from AH, buy profession training.

The paladin needed many of these things but he didn’t need to spend so much of the money, he was lucky with bag drops and someone offering making a bag for free, he only needed abilities for himself (no pet!) and no need to buy many abilities early.

Anyway, i think the hunter will start having more money soon, this early investment was necessary, i need to do quests, grind some mobs, try to sell few things in AH and i’ll gain back what i spent.

I tamed a raptor because everyone else is taming either a boar (eats everything) or a scorpion which looks cool i guess? it have poison ability which stack 5 times which i think is powerful ability.

So in conclusion: i’m enjoying playing a hunter way more than the paladin to be honest!

Random thoughts on Classic

I wanted to write a small guide for bags from quests rewards in Classic, but found that Blizzard Watch wrote full guide for all bags: All the different bags and where to get them in WoW classic.

Bag space saves you time, less going back to vendor stuff, if you’re main character is a tailor then you’ll have all the bags you need, if not then make a tailor alt, send any unneeded cloth to that alt.

Check the Auction House for bags, because many people selling them the prices are cheap, and never ever buy a bag from bag vendors, unless you are desperate.

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Classic WoW have a lot of travel time, you can put your character on auto walk and it’ll take them some time to reach places, meanwhile you are free to do other stuff:

• Drink water, no really .. drink water!
• if you are in a group: chat with them
• Read Ikea catalog
• Stand up, do some stretching
• Jump and run around the room
• Clean the kitchen
• Paint the ceiling
• Read a book
• check on your character and make sure you are not running into a tree for 3 hours.

Running in WoW gives me time to come up with many silly ideas!

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Playing Classic makes me think about retail WoW and how it changed, sometimes i think there is a good reason for this change, sometimes i wish that retail WoW use this idea or this system from Classic.

With every design, with every system there is an upside and a downside, it’s not easy to say that Classic (or retail) is better in every way, i have more sympathy for the Blizzard game designers, they have to take hard decisions, some of them work and some fail, that’s the nature of their job, not to mention they have to maintain a 15 years old game.

When the game add expansions and more content and most of the players move into the newest content, the old zones will face a problem, it will be harder to make groups for elite quests or dungeons, so no wonder Blizzard added LFG in Wrath.

Right now i’m facing a problem with groups, i can’t get into a dungeon group, my paladin at level 21 and i refuse to level him up until i finish a paladin quest line to get a paladin mace.

But maybe i’ll move on because waiting around for hours is not productive.

P.S: i’m not saying LFG is a good or bad idea, i say there is a reason for it, but this deserve another post.