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I'm gonna have to look into it and give it a shot, it sounds pretty promising actually. Looks like a game I can have a lot of fun with (I'm down with MMO's, I was all about WoW and a few others in the past), yet you talked about annoyances. Is it just the SE update difficulties you mentioned or are there gameplay flaws? Just curious for if I end up purchasing the game."
There are flaws. SE don't always make sensible choices in their updates, but they can later fix them. The forums themselves are full of constant arguing and pessimism, I would avoid it, most players aren't like that. Sometimes it's not always well balanced, but if you seek to compensate for any weaknesses and not moan about it, you'll do fine.
Also, SE do put in some big time sinks, if you're a gear whore, you will spend a lot of time trying to acquire said gear, but it is manageable for casual players like myself.
But the gameplay itself? It is pretty much Final Fantasy in an MMO environment, though very out dated. There's a strong emphasis on story and the storylines are interesting and can be great fun completing. The music is Nobuo Uematsu, so you know it's good. The environments, though dated in graphics quality are atmospheric and you'll find your own favourite areas. The game itself is huge, but it's had 10 years worth of content. The battle system, it's in some ways similar to FFXII, there is even a system similar to quickenings, the animations aren't as epic looking, but they're called weaponskills and you can chain them off of other players to create skillchains and mages can cast spells on top of the skillchains to create a magic burst.
Each job class does feel unique to play, which I think is the main reason I love it. There are hybrids, but SE tries to keep them unique in their own way. So, for example, I've got a Scholar, which is a hybrid of black mage and white mage because it uses both schools of magic...also like a red mage does, yet, it doesn't feel the same to play. A Scholar is meant to be a tactician, as it's the lore behind the job class in the game, so it uses what are called 'stratagems', these will modify your next spell, you can cut its casting time, increase its potency, turn it into an AoE, cut its MP cost and so on. So you're adapting how you're casting magic to your situation. Plus, there's exclusive spells, like helices (which provide heavy DOT) and weather spells, which allow you to change the weather (weather affects spell potency).
Also, your roles in a party are less clear cut, in WoW you might now be used to thinking: that's a tank role/spec, that's DPS, that's Heal. But you don't have your own spec, you can do job combinations (there's a subjob system, where you have a second job class at half the level of your main job class, for example you can be a Scholar 90 with 45 Red Mage sub...so you get access to all red mage skills up to level 45). A Ninja/Warrior is a great tank and so is a Monk/Ninja, but a Monk/Dark Knight is a terrible tank (I tried it) but a great damage dealer.
The system is more about tactics than button mashing and macro rotations and there isn't necessarily a perfect set up or a perfect tactic. A good linkshell (same as a guild) will build teams based on people's skills and plan based on them rather than make them have one particular set up or one particular play style.
Sometimes SE likes to make things genuinely difficult, but in recent years they have softened up a little bit. Still, they're difficult enough to still be fun. The hardest thing you may have to do is beat your level 70 fight (you can't get past level 70 without it), which took me several attempts over 3 weeks to beat. Depending on your job and how prepared you are the difficulty varies (Samurai find it easiest), but it is a solo fight vs an enemy of the same job class and level and they won't pull any punches.
There's actually a LOT things related to the game I can talk about and could make this post extremely long, but it's £10 on Steam with all the expansions, it'll give you 1 month of game time, I would judge it for yourself. Levelling to 99 these days is now a walk in the park, which is a shame to be fair. When I maxed my first job at least levelling up was a more challenging affair. The game is now more about the end game content. Levelling tends to be done in large groups of people rather than solo content. There are levelling camps and they're actually a great place to meet people and join a linkshell.
Which leads me onto one great thing I like about the game, there's a lot more sense of community, people are sociable, friendly and helpful. There's trolls and general idiots as to be expected, but it's still easier to make friends. At least, out of the MMO's I've played I've found it to be the one with the better communities...except the forum. (I hope Matt Rock, a previous TGC president, doesn't read this because he's my guild master in SW:TOR
).
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If you did decide to give it a punt, I'm on the Asura server and could get you into a decent linkshell and would be happy to help get you started.
