Consumer to Creation

It's been bothering me for some time now that I've been pretty much exclusively a consumer in life, having contributed little to my community or society as a whole.  I think of all the authors, games, movies, and music that I love, and have realized that I would like to contribute something back.

So far, I have attempted to write and rewrite the same novel for nearly ten years now, and although progress has been slow, I think I've improved somewhat, but what I really need to do is sit down and develop a strict regimen.  Distractions are always too tempting, or it's too easy to feel discouraged from pushing ahead.  I have to set those doubts aside, pick up the metaphorical pen, and write, draw, and imagine again.

To anyone reading this post; most likely my wife and no one else, thanks!

Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Impressions

Been a while since I posted on my blog, but figured I would give it a go. I am also writing from within Word and posting to Blogger, so we'll see if this actually works!

I figured since I have been putting some time into trying out the open beta for Final Fantasy XIV, I would leave a few of my impressions before the retail game goes live.

If you didn't already know, Final Fantasy XIV is the second MMO in the series, the first being Final Fantasy XI. While I tried out XI a couple of times, I could never really get into it. The game seemed too punishing for casual players or people who like to do lots of solo content while looking for friends (or strangers) to play with. XIV does much to alleviate that problem with the guildleve system, which is basically a quest hub that allows you to specify the number of players that will be participating in a given quest, and the challenge is adjusted accordingly. After a leve is initiated, the player is pointed in the direction of his/her objectives and must perform various tasks, such as defeating monsters, protecting individuals, or acquire materials for crafting within a thirty minute period of time.

I was happy to see that this quest system has departed a bit from the formula that has been well formulated since the inception of World of Warcraft, and during the course of a leve the music amps up and gives a feeling of some urgency to the game, which is a nice touch.

Speaking of music, and graphics as well, Final Fantasy XIV is gorgeous. While it will bring most computers to their metaphorical knees on high settings, even the lower settings still appeal to the eye and imagination. A bit of forum research has revealed that the game should run better on retail release, but we'll have to wait and find out.

Aside from leves, there are main storyline quests, which are the best I have seen in an MMO. At least in the beginning of the game, you are presented with glorious voice-acted motion-captured in-game cutscenes in which your newly made character partakes. Whether Hyur, Taru, or one of the game's three other races, you have a choice of three starting areas to choose from, and any combination of classes is made available to you from the get-go. The class system is entirely dependent on what you are holding in your main hand, so if you are holding a bow you will be working on the archer class, if you are holding a blacksmithing hammer you will be able to craft armor and weapons, or if you possess a staff you can dabble in the arts of magic. Anything is possible for a single character in this game, which is a great idea.

I do have a couple of gripes with the game, but mostly it revolves around bugs and interface issues that remain to be ironed out. For someone who traditionally uses the mouse/keyboard format for any PC games, myself included, FFXIV has yet to include hardware mouse support, and the user interface forces the player to go through layers of menus to get to their journals and inventory screens. Additionally, the UI is a bit laggy, but even that has improved over the past week or so. Square-Enix has promised hardware mouse support, and I hope they will grant the user more keybinding options so that things can be done like binding the "j" key to the journal pane and the "c" key to the character pane, etc.

Despite the problems, I found myself really enjoying Final Fantasy XIV when I wasn't expecting too. I had to give it time and pay attention to what was going on in order to understand what the hell I was doing, but that is a nice change of pace from the commonplace MMO dynamic. I may not purchase the game on launch (since I need a job), but I think it will be a pretty solid experience a couple of months in.