Endgame Viable

I never got a chance to write my impressions of Final Fantasy XIV’s 2.2 patch, so I will do so now. I only had about one day to look at it before ESO came out, so there are some gaps in my knowledge. Like, for example, how I didn’t look at any of the new dungeons or trials. I did get a chance to sort-of look into Glamours, but it appears that you need Tailor, Leatherworker, and/or Armorer classes to create those glamour crystals, and of course I do not have those beyond level 15. (213 words.)

The technical difficulties seem to have fixed themselves. Shrug. I have one more criticism about ESO, although it’s not exactly a “criticism” so much as it is merely an “observation of the way ESO does things.” Most of the zones look the same. Stonefalls, near the beginning of the Ebonheart Pact starting point. Not exactly the same. Some of them have jungle trees and some of them have deciduous trees. Some of them are more rocky and some of them are more grassy. Some of them have oceans and some of them have swamps. (534 words.)

Lucky you. Because I can’t seem to post by email during the week any more, you get to read an epic novel of a post put together over the weekend. Falls-on-Steps. Yeah, I made an Argonian even though I played one in beta. It’s actually been kind of nice that I haven’t been able to post. I’m having so much fun playing ESO that I don’t want to analyze the game very much, because then I might start to wonder if I’m really supposed to be having this much fun or not. Perhaps I’ve somehow been “tricked” into thinking the game is fun when it’s really not. (2012 words.)

Having post-by-email technical difficulties, but I’m playing ESO instead of trying to fix it. Please stand by… (17 words.)

A quick followup to the Cobalt Pick debacle: The last Landmark patch fixed the invisible Ancient Rootstock trees. They are still rare, but now it’s more like 1 in 50 trees instead of 1 in 50,000,000 trees. That’s an acceptable level of rare-ness for me. It’s rare enough that you feel a small thrill of victory when you find one, but not so rare that you want to quit playing. (70 words.)

When the ESO servers came back up after the inexplicable pre-launch downtime, I threw caution to the wind and jumped into the Fungal Grotto dungeon to see what it was like. I was level 14 and would soon out-level it, so I figured I probably wouldn’t have another chance. I picked the DPS role because that’s always the least stressful way to explore how dungeons work in a new game. Also, I didn’t have much in the way of tanking or healing skills. (Although as it turned out, I had to do both healing and tanking in the dungeon.) (813 words.)

Still enjoying ESO. I was pleased with the first patch yesterday. It addressed almost every problem I had encountered. Finally I could capture Balreth’s soul and continue the main storyline, which, as I expected, unlocked a whole string of other quests in the zone. Based on just this one patch, I feel like Zenimax is going to release larger patches farther apart, rather than push out small patches frequently. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Their patch notes were not terrible, but I feel like they weren’t 100% complete either. (I am completely spoiled by Square Enix patch notes, though.) (655 words.)

Last week I had some generally negative things to say about Landmark, so I thought I would balance it out with some positive things this week. And then follow it with something negative again. I spent a big chunk of time on Saturday playing Landmark the first significant time I’ve spent in the beta. It occurred to me that Landmark is essentially an endgame gear grind from the moment you step into it. (600 words.)

Super fastly-written thoughts on ESO. It’s awesome! Even more awesomer that I thought it would be! That’s probably just first-day excitement talking though. But still, it’s pretty good. And new. Anything new is good, if you ask me. At least for a couple of days. Smoothest launch ever. No network-related problems. No queues, no lag, no disconnects. None, zero, zip. Got in five minutes before 7 AM without issue. Many problems I had from beta were fixed. For example, I no longer get launched into the air as if from a cannon when I walk up stairs. I no longer get stuck in NPC dialogs. (671 words.)

As you’re reading this, I’m undoubtedly playing ESO. (Actually I’m probably at work, but I’ll be playing it when I get home.) I’m enjoying that magic time in every MMO when you don’t yet know all the things that make you want to quit playing. I won’t bore you with my impressions of ESO because a) I’ve already posted them, and b) you’ve already got it because it’s a new MMO and you know you can’t stand not playing a new MMO that everyone is talking about, no matter how many bad reviews you’ve seen or how much you oppose a subscription model on principal. (367 words.)