(Author's Note: I am a level 18 Conjurer at the time of this article so I am reviewing the early part of the game.)
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a new MMORPG produced by Square Enix that has been highly anticipated by the general community despite the failed attempt of FFXIV the original. I personally have never played any of the Final Fantasy series before FFXIV and had no personal interest in the game but got swept up by the hype train of everyone elses excitement. I was selected to play in the Beta around Phase 4 but since they had an odd Beta schedule I was never actually able to play the Beta.
Launch
To say that Final Fantasy XIV had a bad launch would be an incredibly large understatement. FFXIV has had the worst launch for a AAA MMO we have seen for a very long time. I'm usually a pretty understanding person when it comes to downtime for patches and launches since it is a giant undertaking but for me this was pretty inexcusable because this could have easily been prevented with a little bit more testing. FFXIV had only one stress test that I remember right before it's launch and it was a two day event that ended early because one of the servers literally had a melt down. FFXIV also had no open beta except for the Open Beta they had for a few days shortly before their Early Access period. I was unable to participate in the Open Beta event because I couldn't find where to re-download the game after I uninstalled during the Closed Beta because it was giving me errors that I wasn't in the Beta but when I tried to sign up it said I was already in the Beta. Even after all of this, the hype was enough to make me pre-order the game.
Square Enix had their pre-order numbers (which I believe was probably around 1 million or so) and they only had about 8-10 US Servers open at launch. At least 5 different errors occurred during their Early Access Period, there were no Server queues, no AFK kick mechanics and once the servers were filled you couldn't even make characters on the servers. This made it so you had to make and log-in to your character at about 5am if you wanted to play at all during Prime Time. I wasn't able to actually play the game until the 26th which was only one day before the actual launch of the game.
Needless to say, myself (and many others) were not at all happy with the game's launch and I saw some people even just quit over the debacle. There are a lot of different things that could have prevented this from happening. Having more than one open beta or stress test would have helped out a great deal as well as having more servers open at the time of launch for NA/EU players or a login queue for servers would have made it so more people could play.
Early Leveling
Once I was able to finally get access to the game I was extremely disappointed with my experience personally. Personally, it's my opinion that even though SWTOR wasn't seen as an overall success among the general MMO community, I think it definitely raised the bar on what a questing experience should be. Final Fantasy had a large story element to it with both the class specific story lines and the Main Arching story line but a lot of it was lost on me due to not having hardly any Voice Over. It wasn't necessary for SE to do VO for each individual player character but the Main Story line NPC's having voice over work would have made the Main Story line much more unique and enjoyable. Instead, they sprinkled random VO here and there and left the rest for quest text to be skipped. Another thing that really annoyed me is that if you and another person you plan on playing with pick different classes you won't be able to quest with each other until around level 15 where you're able to go to the other starting areas.
The questing by itself is extremely tedious and boring. It takes two steps back towards the World of Warcraft model of questing with kill X and gather Y, two quests at a time and run back to the original quest giver to run back out to the same spot you were at to do it again. They did however, make it so that quest objectives are open to everyone so they do not despawn and respawn in a given time so it doesn't take as long to get through gathering quests if lots of people are in one area.
As with most MMOs now a days, the early levels are to be quested through until you hit 10 or 15 where you can then do PvP or PvE dungeons. However, there is currently no PvP in FFXIV which I feel really is a determinate, not only to the community but also to break up the monotony of leveling which can be boring at the early levels and doing anything except questing can help people push through the game. I actually had to stop playing the game for several days and nearly just cancelled everything the questing was so dull I wanted to go play anything else. However, people on Twitter urged me to at least get to level 15 in my first job and do the first few dungeons before I make a final decision. This review would have been MUCH different if I had written it at level 10 like I originally planned last week.
Alternatives To Questing
There are a few things that you can do outside of just questing. Fates are open world bosses that can be found throughout the world, similar to Rifts in the liked name MMO, and you gain experience and Gil based on how much you participate so leeching exp is pretty impossible. You have to be exactly in the level range of the Fate however, even a level or two under can significantly dwarf your exp. I wasn't able to find a lot of unique same level Fates while I was questing but a lot of people say that farming Fates is very good exp if you can find them. There are also small Duty's that you unlock as you level which are almost like WoW Scenarios that can be done with 2-4 people and can be queued for. They take between 3-10 minutes to complete and give great exp the first time through but the exp decreases heavily thereafter.
Dungeons
This is where the game truly begins to shine except there is one large annoyance. You HAVE to complete the main story line to unlock your dungeons. Most MMOs you simply have to get to level 15 and you can simply just queue up for them. I hit level 15 and was unable to queue until someone in my stream chat told me I had to do the main story line to get them unlocked, I was level 17 by the time I caught up in quests since I picked up all side quests as well while I was leveling. This is annoying to me because this makes it so players HAVE to quest to do other content and forcing players to do content they may not necessarily wish to do just to do other content is never a good thing to me. However, once I was able to actually get into the dungeons I was pleasantly surprised. The dungeons are extremely linear so it is very difficult to get lost and the trash has a high amount of health and each individual trash pack takes about 45 seconds to 1 minute to be cleared. Even early dungeons are not flattering for new tanks, if you don't have decent/up to date gear before you go in you will be hit incredibly hard and the healer will have to pump out constant heals. Aggro also appeared to be pretty difficult to hold for some tanks in some of the runs that I did if I had to AoE heal the group it was very easy for to get and hold threat.
You get the first three dungeons between 15-17 and each dungeon is radically different in scenery. The boss mechanics grow increasingly difficult with the final boss in Copperbell Mines wiping my pug group at least 3 or 4 times before we were able to complete it. The dungeons are honestly the saving grace of the game for me as I like multiplayer content and the dungeons have a lot of neat mechanics and are said to only get more difficult as you get higher in levels. The dungeons are the first thing that have made me want to continue playing the game to see more of as so far nothing in the low levels are exactly exciting or innovating.
All in all, with so many MMOs on the market to me, it is very important for games to captivate you within the first 10 or so levels as statistics show that a majority of people who try MMOs unsub or stop playing at around level 10. SWTOR is the first game in recent memory that has made the questing experience enjoyable and captivating and made you want to keep playing as you got invested more and more into your character. With SWTOR doing such an amazing job with questing/story content I feel as though all games should step up their leveling content to keep players interested. But the dungeon content is definitely what makes this game shine. If you're wondering whether or not you want to play the game or not, I would say at least pick it up. Digital standard edition is only $32 after taxes and you get 30 days free which is more than enough time for you to determine if the game is worth playing after that. And the subscription fee is only $12 for 1 character (which is all someone like me will need) with a Free to Play model on the way (from what the rumor mill is saying anyway).
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