I reached level 50 in Final Fantasy XIV and entered “the endgame,” that fabled zone where only the elites live. Now I can evaluate FFXIV’s version of what some vehemently insist is “the only real game.” As with any MMO (except GW2), the FFXIV endgame is a gear grind. Your basic goal is to increase the “average item level” of your gear. This in turn allows you to unlock more and more difficult instances, in which you can acquire gear with higher item levels. (735 words.)

I’m sure you’ve all heard the news about SOE closing down Vanguard, Wizardry Online, and two other MMOs. Vanguard is a game that I always wanted to play more, but I could never seem to keep it on any kind of daily schedule. I always thought of it as a “crutch” game - I knew if there was absolutely nothing else to do, and I didn’t want to spend any money, I could always fire up Vanguard and be entertained for a little while. It had its faults, though. Mostly I think it suffered a lot from a slow, laggy combat system. But one thing I will always credit Vanguard for is introducing me to those deck-building card game thingys that everyone but me seems to play. After playing with Vanguard’s Diplomacy, I suppose I now understand why people go nuts for games like Magic and Hearthstone and whatever fifty million other card games are out there. (227 words.)

I am blatantly stealing TAGN’s post subject here, which is the question of who to boost to 90 for Warlords of Draenor. My situation is a lot different than his though, because I only play WoW when I’m really bored with other games, and my highest-level character has only recently broken into the Wrath of the Lich King era of the game. Hunter? This was the second character I created when I started WoW in 2006, and my second-oldest surviving MMO character. (The first oldest is a warrior that I never play and should delete, but, well, he was my first WoW character.) He’s around level 72 now, having just left Outland for Northrend. It would be interesting to bump him up to 90, but then I would probably never experience any of that solo content between 72 and 90. I think I’ll pass on him. (508 words.)

I read Scree’s A Snapshot of Pantheon, an excellent summary of the things that Brad McQuaid wants to do with Kickstarter MMO Pantheon: Something of Something. I’ll save most of my comments on Brad’s game vision for another post, or never, because I don’t think it will get funded. The part about changing the Holy Trinity model is what stood out to me today. Apologies for quoting so much of this: (914 words.)

Due to a devastating blizzard of perhaps a half an inch of fine powdery snow, I had 2 extra hours one morning to look at The Origins of Madness, the new Living Story content for Guild Wars 2. I patch up, log into my Necro, and I have mail telling me to go to Lornar’s Pass. Naturally it’s one of the places my Necro hasn’t been so I can’t fast-travel there, so I get out my Norn Ranger, who has been all through those wintry mountains. I go to lookup the location in Lornar’s Pass again, only to find that the mail was not sent to my Ranger. Nice. (1056 words.)

I read a fluff article on MMORPG.com about 5 Things Rift Must Do In 2014, which got me thinking. What would it take to get me to play Rift again on a daily basis again in 2014? Well, the answer is pretty simple: Give me an expansion with new zones and more levels. (Alternately, if I totally ran out of stuff to do in other MMOs I’m playing, I would probably play Rift.) (497 words.)

My Miqo’te archer is closing in on 50. With the crazy ridiculous bonus experience gained from a Low-Level Duty Roulette, she should get there tonight, Friday the 17th. (I write most posts in advance, by the way.) My archer has been going through some seriously odd fashion phases in the last ten levels. Everything was fine at first. She had a suitable outfit that reflected her spunky, squirrel-tailed, no-nonsense, tomboy attitude through most of her leveling. (189 words.)

I’ve been trying to figure out the optimal length of a dungeon run. There’s a point beyond which the dungeon goes from “this is really fun” to “oh god I can’t escape and this is never going to end.” It’s usually a hard line, too. It’s never a gradual process. One minute things are great, and the next minute it’s a life-draining death march from which you can’t escape. For me I think that mark is around 30-35 minutes. That’s about the maximum amount of time I can stay focused and alert in a dungeon run. After that I just want it to be over. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never particularly pushed myself to do a lot of raiding. (The other reason being it’s hard to find guilds that are serious enough to complete raids, but casual enough not to be elite jerks about it.) (368 words.)

Have you ever wondered why there are so many MMO guides out there? Step-by-step walkthroughs and so forth? I think I know the answer. It’s because without Internet guides, most MMO game players would simply stand in one place and stare at the screen, paralyzed and unable to figure out what to do or how to do it. You can tell this from watching the global chat of a game that is in closed beta. It’s filled with non-stop questions that one might conceivably fall into the “duh” variety. How do we find this or that? How do we solve this puzzle? Where do we find this NPC? Where do we get crafting materials? How do we get past this monster? There are no handy guides to turn to, and obviously reading the quest text or any of the in-game hints are out of the question in this fast-paced, go-go-go world we live in. (234 words.)

If I’m to complete a full week of FFXIV posts, I need to think of one more topic to write about. I thought I would describe a typical play session. This one happened on a Thursday night. I login with my Miqote Archer. I’m semi-embarassed that I’m still playing the adorable cat girl with the squirrel tail that I made on a lark back when I started, but I’m stuck with her now because I’m not going back to level up another character now. Maybe someday I’ll use my change-appearance potion but I’m not sure if it will let me change my race/gender, and I’m pretty sure it won’t let me change my distinctly female-sounding name. (1052 words.)