Playing a little WoW and a lot of Final Fantasy XIV, the main scenario quests (MSQ) is the only way to unlock the game and its many features, any new player will do all these quests , the MSQ does not allow you to skip parts of the story, you can’t go to the next expansion zones if you didn’t finish the MSQ for the previous expansion.
ARR take the player from level 1 to 50 but in my case i reached level 53 by the end of it, the story arc is intriguing, it introduce the main antagonist faction which the player will face over and over and in every expansion, in ARR they are behind most major events.
The game showed many NPCs and many of them are interesting, it even managed to make me care about them too much, i followed their own stories and i try to talk with them every time the story progress, they change what they say as the story unfold, they are not static NPCs who stay in one place for 10 years and never change!
FFXIV story is the strongest aspect of the game, you have to be interested in the story to play this game, if you don’t care about the story much then you may find it difficult to keep playing it, because ARR quests have so many fetch quests, go there quests (Sometimes just 10 steps away!), kill mobs quests and so on, the story itself takes a long time to move on to the next chapter.
Add to that the group content, to finish the ARR MSQ you need to do:
- 12 Dungeons
- 10 Trials (one raid boss)
At first i was ok with doing dungeons, then it became too much for me, add to that the waiting time for each dungeon or trial, it felt tedious, from what i read in different websites, the next expansion fix some of these issues or at least things get better, i’ll see.
The group content made me sure how i feel about them, i think SWTOR did it right, the story line in SWTOR (another story driven MMO) requires dungeons but it offer a story-mode dungeons where you can do them solo.
I like soloing dungeons at my pace, which is slow and cautious, filled with many screenshots, which is something i can’t do in a group, in FFXIV i have to skip cinematic so i don’t keep other players waiting for me, no time for screenshots.
FFXIV offer a new system in the latest expansion where you go to dungeons with a group of NPCs, i wish this feature is available for the whole game not just one expansion.
Socializing in MMOs could be done in many ways, it does not have to be only group content.
I love it! this is an achievement i noticed.