Multiple jobs might work if you feel like you're cheating yourself out of the levelling experience, when the best way to level healers in Stormblood was queueing the same dungeons in a row, ahhhhhhhh. God forbid you play a class that sucks ass before a certain milestone and it gets a crumb of aoe.
Realised I had some sort of starter's ring equipped which was giving me EVEN MORE XP so I've taken that off and things are settling down a bit. Switched to Arcanist and that's a lot more fun than Thaumaturge, I even got to do a few side quests though I'm still levelling up fast.
A lot has changed though. Have they removed the requirement to level a second class as well before you get your proper Job at 30?
Yes, that's been gone for ages, no idea what Arcanist does for SCH and SMN now since you level one you basically get the other for free, only reason to multi level jobs is gir your own fun and flexibility, if you ever log in to your old account 80% of your hotbar will be greyed out
Been really enjoying FFXIV. And by "really enjoying" I mean "hopeless addicted to, all over again". It's really stood the test of time well, hasn't it? It looks great for a game that originally came out on the PS3 and while I'm aware that the original Realm Reborn content is far from the best the game has to offer, it's still really good fun.
I've come to terms with the excessive amounts of XP by levelling multiple jobs up at the same time, switching between them every time I outlevel the MSQ by more than a few levels. So the net result of having extra XP is that I'm making really slow progress! Currently got a Black Mage, Summoner, Marauder, Paladin and Lancer all between levels 27 and 32 (a couple of them still to get their full jobs) and I'm still outstripping the MSQ so I might have to go back and level up a Ninja or something too. Every dungeon I do just levels me up by about 6 or 7 levels at the moment, which is ridiculous.
Of those, I love Summoner and I'm enjoying the two tanking jobs a lot (they are very similar). Black Mage is a bit dry and Lancer is dull as fuck. I'm sure they'll all change as they level up though. Jobs in general seem WAY simpler than I remember, I recall my original job at 50 having bar after bar of different moves and chains to remember and timers to hit. But that's fine, I guess they need to spread the content out now over 100 levels and that wouldn't have been sustainable. And you used to be able to use abilities from other jobs you had levelled but that also appears to be gone now.
It's much more of a single-player game than it used to be too. Comms are restricted on the free trial anyway but I haven't once felt the need to plug in a keyboard. Duty Support is a great feature and allows you to familiarise yourself with the dungeons without the stress of a party of real players who have run them a thousand times before and just want to do them as quickly as possible. It's more immersive this way, too.
Anyway I'm loving it and I can't believe they give away the whole game and three full expansions for free. That's hundreds of hours of play, minimum. It certainly shows confidence in the game and that people will still want to subscribe after all that time.
Don't forget the new jobs, i dont know if you can access it without having reached Shadowbringers or Storm blood but you get Samurai AND Reaper in Ul'Dah, Reaper is extremely fun and feels like you're ripping things apart
If you're a FF8 fan there's the gunblade tank too!
I think they are level gated at the very least so you get a couple at 50, a couple at 60 etc. Then you need to have the appropriate expansions for the later ones too. Some of the new jobs do look very interesting.
You're a very long way off but you might like Pictomancer for casters, also when you get Dark Knight in Heavensward, please please do their 50-60 quest line, its amazing
Also worth noting that this game is perfect for the Steam Deck. I had thought the text might be a little small, and it is, but it's actually more readable on the Deck screen than it is on a TV across the lounge.
I'm using Xbox Cloud Streaming to play it and it's absolutely perfect. (It's not a Game Pass game but it's on there for some reason, I think they've gradually been adding other stuff). It's a hassle to set up on the Deck but you only need to do it once and I'm surprised how good it is once you've got it all up and running.
I actually played a bit of FFXI on a Steam Deck, a bit awkward but also pretty cool!
Elder Scrolls Online challenge difficulty has finally launched, and it's pretty transformative. There are 4 levels of difficulty, and I've gone for 'Seasoned', which makes you 100% squishier and makes enemies 50% stronger. I'm not a glutton for punishment; this just feels like the perfect balance where combat is still easy enough, but you actually have to think about the game's mechanics now. I spent last night doing stuff I've literally never done before in ESO: using healing/shielding skills, thinking about buffs, applying DOTs. It's always been bizzare to me that they included all these mechanics, then made the combat so easy that you never use them.
You can ignore the challenge difficulty, of course. There's more gold and experience for using it, but the real reward is that it makes the game genuinely enjoyable to play.
I know I'm the only current WoW player here, but Forever is very exciting. They're basically going back to the original WoW and capping the player level - 'forever' - at 60. So instead of expansions that introduce new lands, and force players to abandon the old continents, instead they'll create new zones and content within the existing landmasses.
Horizontal progression, as it's called. It works brilliantly in Guild Wars, so I'm very excited to see if Blizzard can pull it off. The 'forever' aspect is very appealing, because it means you'll never be behind the curve. Everything you fish, mine, kill, discover, and wear will still be relevant in a decade. The new stuff will be different, but not better.
Plus they've given the old world a lick of paint, which is always welcome.
As a FFXIV diehard I have to say I'm intrigued…
It's included in a normal WoW subscription, no additional game to buy. So you could always sub for a month and see.
I think I still have a few months left on a 1-year game card I redeemed a little while back…
What do you do in WoW if you're not a raider?
I don't raid. A few things!
Firstly, there's an incredible amount of story content. You can zip through the main quests of an expansion (they have icons like FF14) in 30 hours or so, but there are thousands of smaller quests that often hide wonderful storytelling moments. I complete as many of these as I can, even though the rewards are irrelevant by the time I earn them. The quests themselves are the reward, I suppose. Unless you're into achievements, in which case you also get a dopamine ding every time you complete quests that are off the beaten track.
Because the game is (or was) split down faction lines, there's also 20 years of expansions that have another side to them, which is worth creating alts to experience. WoW makes alts very enjoyable. Pretty much everything is shared by your 'warband' (all your characters). So any currency, rep, outfits, mounts etc that you earn on your main are immediately available on your new alts. And you can choose which expansion you'd like to level through - the game then plonks you into it via some lore-appropriate 'time walking' mechanic where you level about 20x faster than usual. So you'll hit max level in the space of one expansion.
Then there are delves, single-player dungeons that offer some serious loot, and have a season-long story running through them. The more you delve, the more story you unlock. And the rewards really are great, I haven't raided at all in this expansion and my gear is pretty on par with hardcore raiders. We're talking a few percent weaker.
That's a few things, but WoW is the biggest MMO of all time. So they can afford to spend a lot of money pumping out a LOT of content. It introduces new zones, stories, mini games etc faster than any other live service game out there. I just found an entire Dave the Diver homage, complete with its own loot and about a hundred fish, that I didn't even know existed.
And of course there's Classic (soon to be Forever), which is installed as a separate game but part of your sub.
Mileage will vary, but it's easily the best value-for-money thing I buy.
Oh wow, that's a lot, something I'm not sure I'll have time for but I'll see what I can do even if not at launch!
Obviously I'm still a XIV guy despite being on a massive break, I'm also really looking forward to Evercold, but if there's one MMO I'd like to have enjoyed as it 'happened' I'd say FFXI still sounds like the best MMO to me based on what I've played. I've thought about trying the Dragon Quest X trial too but I'm not sure how annoying the fan TL patch is to sort up, I've mentioned DQX a few times in this thread I think, it's just something that I know I could probably live in for months if they ever felt like giving it to us…
All that said, from all those, WoW is clearly the easiest one to get up and running in which is why I'm interested.
I'm not actually anti raid or anything, I'll probably do the easy ones but from someone who used to raid full on with statics and then recently tried to pug it, it's not really for me anymore to burn away what little free time I slaved away for at work banging my head against a brick wall.