Final Fantasy XIV or Elder Scrolls Online

Hello everybody, first time post and i'm trying to get into MMOs. I have tried Guild Wars 2 and it's a beautiful game but i feel like the combat is lacking. I got a weapon and almost got all it's abilities immediately. I almost skip combat and just wander around to look at all the locales but it's not the same without a good fighting system. I'm looking into playing Final Fantasy XIV or Elder Scrolls Online. I won't mind paying the $15/month as long as the quality of the game and content is good. Has anybody played both and have an opinion on which one seems better? Thank you for your time!

A Realm Reborn is pretty good, and has a decent raiding community. Elder Scrolls is in beta at the moment and won't officially launch until April for PC, and June for consoles.

This will give you an idea of the combat, and raiding in A Realm Reborn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34KnH_UKkOM

Of course, World of Warcraft provides a heck of a lot more value for money. Especially if you're looking to raid or PVP in the long-term.

If you want to PvE play FF14 ARR, if you want to PvP then maybe play WoW. I can't comment on ESO cause I'm not in the beta.

Yeah i'm looking more at PvE. Does anybody in the ESO beta know how the PvE is in that game vs FF14 ARR? Thank you @Ballroompirate and @Lhomity for your responses!

ESO sucks ass,go for FF.

@ShepardCommandr: What exactly about it makes it suck compared to FF?

it's still under NDA, so people aren't supposed to be talking about it outside of Bethesda's private forums.

I'd love to talk about it, and find it curious that they haven't lifted the NDA yet with only 2 months until launch, but I'm sure they have their reasons. Maybe it makes it easier to sort out the competitor's lackeys. I'm pretty sure companies like Activision and EA pay people to go around the net to bash the latest MMOs as they launch. I've been around a few pedigreed MMO launches and the amount of trolls is usually ridiculously high about this time...as much as they hate the game, it's amazing how they're willing to talk about it 24hours a day. Basically big MMO launches are the game industry equivalent of election years in the US.

I just got a beta invite for ESO for Friday. I guess i'll try it out for myself and see for myself. Thanks for the responses!

Final Fantasy 14 is quite enjoyable.

I personally, have a Dualshock 4 controller via bluetooth with my PC hooked up to the big screen. It's a great game for the controller - perfectly suited.
PS3/PS4/PC all share the same servers too - so there seemingly is never a shortage of players online.


The game has little voice acting, but the story itself is quirky and enjoyable; much more so than the recent single player games (IMO)

@fatee: I love final fantasy and the lore it has. I've have played all the games since IV with the exception of the sequels to 13. I'm definitely leaning towards FF but my girlfriend loves the Elder Scrolls Series so we will try that beta out and decided from there.

I found FF to be one of the most boring mmos I have ever played. The quests were really stupid (go and strike a rock with this ability, collect this stuff, kill X etc). Long travel distance between quests (sometimes traveling back and forth between different zones just to talk to npcs). Very bland Pve and very tedious combat (3 seconds gcd wtf).

I gave up before turning lvl25.

ESO on the other hand I can't say much about due to nda but I'll probably play the hell out of that game.

@brodelin: ESO on the other hand I can't say much about due to nda but I'll probably play the hell out of that game.

yeah, I'd love to see more impressions about the game because right now, the only people breaking the NDA are the trolls (surprise!). But the press NDA was supposedly lifted this weekend, so we should see a few more "professional" (and I use the term loosely) impressions in coming weeks.

Be wary though that the expert's impressions are based on the early sections of the game and should be taken with a grain of salt (although they have some good points).

You wouldn't listen to ones complains about WoW lvl 1-20, would you?

@@brodelin:

WoW lvl 1-20, lol doesn't that take about 5 mins?

Anyway, I've enjoyed FF14 since release, always lots to do. It's early in it's life cycle, but it still keeps it interesting. All you need is one char and you can play every class. It's not for everyone, neither are alot of MMO's, but for right now, it's the only one that is worth my money for a subscription, and they have been updating regularly.

Here are my opinions.

WoW- here's your high level toon so you can skip 90% of the content and just grind for gear and show your ePeen. A chat room with graphics, that is showing it's age.

Rift- I really enjoy, best F2P in my opinion out there

Tera- also decent, but same content for every class, no different starting points

ESO- From what I see from videos and have been reading not impressed

Wildstar- Lots of promises but still old style class system, not interested. Seems like GW2 in the future.

GW2- Couldn't keep interest. Lost interest in that game about 2 months in.

EVE- Point and click excel spreadsheets with timers.

I know there is more out there just sharing my opinions, there is more info that I can give you but I wanted to be brief as possible.

I gave up on FF a realm reborn at lvl 18. Super boring quests, lots of back and forth and the story and characters in world I really didn't like. Then the subscription on top of that turned me away. I then got guild wars 2 and for PVE it's so far the best MMO I have played in years. I used to play these games a lot as a kid, but the last generation I played non other then WOW for a couple of months.

Guild wars 2 is the only MMO I can suggest that's seemed to hold my interest enough to get past lvl 20. If PVe is what your looking for I'd say give it a try for sure.

I've been playing Korean MMO's like TERA and Vindictus lately, and I'm enjoying the combat system so far, certainly a lot more than WOW and FFXI. I haven't tried out either FFXIV or ESO yet though, so can't compare just yet.

Tera and ESO offer different combat but with a lack of end game well I can't see me playing either but hey at least with Tera it is free to play so OP you could give that a try.

im looking forward to eso but i havent played it so idk

im playing ff14arr and its pretty great, doesnt have as much content as something like wow but thats to be expected since wow is old as fudge, but for what it is, it is great.

watch some "lets play"s of both, if one interests ya, well there ya go, if neither do...

I was hoping for the best with ESO, but all the gameplay vids I've seen make it look like, well, more Elder Scrolls. Given my negative overall feeling on the direction of that series post Morrowind, I'm pretty sure I'll be passing on that one. I was big into FFXI Online, FFXIV looks brilliant to me, and I already have friends on it via PS3 I'll be able to play with. So that's a no brainer.

@rcmdawg: ESO is great. Don't listen to all the haters. They are probably fanboys of other mmo's (probably lots from WoW) that can;t admit when another MMO is better. The haters are also comparing a game that is still in beta to games that are many years old. I have been in the beta since the beginning and the questing is the best I have seen in an mmo, the story is great, combat is great, community was nice and graphics are great. I was very surprised I liked a game in beta more than established games.

well you get a lot of fanboy chatter whenever a big MMO launches, so it's expected. Part of the problem was ZOS keeping the NDA in place so long, which had a the dual effect of making it seem like there might be something wrong with the game AND silencing the people who were actually enjoying it.

Another problem is they haven't really been updating their beta build, so it seems more incomplete than it actually is because more recent tests are running on a build that is months old. So a lot of complaints I hear are about how many bugs there are this close to launch, when in fact most of these bugs have already been fixed. I'm hearing that we're supposed to get a much more recent build for the next beta weekend, which includes the very desirable collision patch, so I look forward to that.

I've put tons of time into already. Love it; can't wait to play the final version. I'm conflicted as to whether I'll be going sorcerer archer or Sword/board DK for my first toon at launch. On the one hand, I love tanking, it's what I usually do and sword/board DK seems a likely choice. On the other, sorc/archer just seems like a fun concept. In any case, as an MMO player who loves to roll tons of toons, I love all the flexibility ESO gives you for making a character. It really is one of the things I most look forward to about an MMO.

I also look forward to exploring the many lands of Tamriel. It really is a beautiful game given the technical limitations usually imposed on this genre.

@Ish_basic:

@Ish_basic said:

@lutarian said:

@rcmdawg: ESO is great. Don't listen to all the haters. They are probably fanboys of other mmo's (probably lots from WoW) that can;t admit when another MMO is better. The haters are also comparing a game that is still in beta to games that are many years old. I have been in the beta since the beginning and the questing is the best I have seen in an mmo, the story is great, combat is great, community was nice and graphics are great. I was very surprised I liked a game in beta more than established games.

well you get a lot of fanboy chatter whenever a big MMO launches, so it's expected. Part of the problem was ZOS keeping the NDA in place so long, which had a the dual effect of making it seem like there might be something wrong with the game AND silencing the people who were actually enjoying it.

Yep. Totally agree.

Another problem is they haven't really been updating their beta build, so it seems more incomplete than it actually is because more recent tests are running on a build that is months old. So a lot of complaints I hear are about how many bugs there are this close to launch, when in fact most of these bugs have already been fixed. I'm hearing that we're supposed to get a much more recent build for the next beta weekend, which includes the very desirable collision patch, so I look forward to that.

During the last beta (I played nearly 20 hours) I only ran into one bug. The collision patch for the NPC's is already implemented. However, a collision patch for players would suck. Can you imagine trying to get to a merchant or a quest giver with tons of people blocking your way? They are also giving a way to bypass the starting area if you wish and go back to it later on if you want to experience it. I thought that was pretty smart.

I've put tons of time into already. Love it; can't wait to play the final version. I'm conflicted as to whether I'll be going sorcerer archer or Sword/board DK for my first toon at launch. On the one hand, I love tanking, it's what I usually do and sword/board DK seems a likely choice. On the other, sorc/archer just seems like a fun concept. In any case, as an MMO player who loves to roll tons of toons, I love all the flexibility ESO gives you for making a character. It really is one of the things I most look forward to about an MMO.

I hear you. I tested out a few build. Check this out. I rolled a Sorcerer and gave him sword and shield. So I would run into a mob of 2-3, each each one with the puncture which reduces their armor, then activate lightning splash and then hit each one with mages fury. Totally dead and barely a dent on me. If you run out of stamina you have plenty of magic and when you run out of magic your stamina is back up and vice versa. :) I also rolled a dragon knight and turned him into heavy armor, fire mage tank. SO many types of options. The big decision I am having it trying to figure out the weapons I like. I like weapons with flashy skills that look cool.

I also look forward to exploring the many lands of Tamriel. It really is a beautiful game given the technical limitations usually imposed on this genre.

Yea. Looks great. When I hear people saying the graphics are garbage they are watching a youtube channel that does not show off the graphics properly, or they have a crappy video card....or......they are just a fanboy of another game that is going to hate anything new. :)

I think what got me the most was the questing. It was like an RPG more than an MMO. So awesome. There were times I was trying to figure out which decision to make. Like destroying the crystal or not destroying it. I did destroy it and the orcs loved me but alot of the pirates hated me afterwards. HA! Loved that there was some sort of consequence to my actions, even though it was small. I just hope all the great questing with voice overs is throughout the entire game.

Looking forward to it. Counting the days. Look me up. I am sure you can guess what my name will be.

ESO hasn't even officially launched so it can't be fairly critiqued IMO and no one gets the full flavor of an MMO in beta.

What's scary is that in the ESO beta they made no effort to separate it from other MMOs which could be catastrophic.

However the character customization, being able to detail your character from eyebrow to mustache and zooming from first person to third person and anywhere between are really big perks to this game. Three different factions with shared classes and different races for each as well.

Graphics are going to be really good but the game play is what seems to be called into question mostly here .

From what i played the abilities were boring. I didn't get excited about using anything or killing anything really. Felt like a grind way too early.

Then again I didn't get to any end or any mid game tbh so I hate judging an MMO on its early game.

I'm hoping it will have a solid fanbase on the Xbox One.

@lutarian: The collision patch for the NPC's is already implemented.

the patch I'm referring to was only on the PTS server. Nothing changed for the weekend beta players in this past weekend...same old collision. I don't really have a problem with where the collision is now (and by "now" I mean the 3month old beta build), but I certainly wouldn't have a problem with them improving it.

It is nice to see them responding so rapidly to the community, too. Just the fact that players will be able to skip the starter areas after Coldharbour if they want. A lot of people (including the people writing for this site) complained about how slow and limited they are. I didn't mind them, but they definitely aren't a good example of the mainland gameplay.

PvP is also very fun. A lot like GW2, and quite frankly I like some things about ESO's PvP better, but then others I prefer GW2. Both are very good. The one thing is that ESO has far less culling than GW2, which is great and leads to battles that look like this:

The dominion held us there. It was a misguided assault with AD firing siege from the high ground and forcing us to funnel into a rather small area. And that's not even a keep or anything...that's just a random bridge on a road. Had they not met us there, we probably would have taken the keep further up the road with the numbers we had.

I couldn't bring myself to get past the starting area. Perhaps I'd enjoy it more now...

So word in from the PTS testers is that leveling 1-50 in ESO takes about 100hours. There are also Veteran levels in this game, which according to ZOS will take about 100-200 hours to max out. That's pretty remarkable considering the trend in recent MMOs has been max-level in a week.

There's also news about so called "Adventure Zones" which replace your typical MMO endgame treadmill. Here's a leak about it from the foundry:

Picture a new zone like Auridon (or Stonefalls). Now cut that zone down to about 2/3rds that size. Next make everything approximately veteran rank 5-10 (sorta like level 52). Now take those mobs, and make 4x as many in each group. That would be the overworld of the zone.

Now within that zone there is usually an instance dungeon for 4 players (Spindleclutch or whatever). Now take that dungeon, and make the same changes as above (excluding the size I would imagine). The zone is now stuffed full of mobs that are veteran rank 10+ and various bosses that are tuned for 12 players. This is were things get foggy for us – all we know past here is that we can imagine they are close in scale and difficulty as “raids” in past MMO’s (WoW).

However, I don’t think WoW has an example of an adventure zone really. They seem to go back to more of an EQ/DAoC old school raid zone type of deal – with the added innovation of instancing of the actual raid bosses. The zone will be sort of like an extremely huge 4 man dungeon (that is not instanced) , and the “Trials” will be like Black Temple or possibly something like Mount Hyjal (Hyjal seems like a better bet to me with the ESO system I have seen thus far).

Excited to try it out. I've become exceedingly bored with the modern MMO endgame, to the point where I just ignore it and reroll a character or PvP, so it's nice to see someone taking a different tack.