Compare with WoW, where you might have a 100% chance of getting something if you complete some difficult task. There are plenty of instances in WoW where you'll have to use a large set of abilities to manage to succeed. Fail, and you can try again very quickly instead of packing up and waiting until tomorrow. That's hard, but not due to a time requirement, due to a skill requirement.
I have to disagree with this and point out something here. You're saying that WoW has "do this hard task and you get an item 100% of the time" and FFXI is "try for this item once a day for the 20% chance of getting the item." This is true, but the opposite is also true. WoW has its share of "try this every week for a small chance at a drop" (20 or 40 man instances that you can only run every week) and FFXI has the 100% items from quests.
The truth lies somewhere inbetween, as the typical endgame FFXI or WoW both involve running through some sort of dungeon/instance/dynamis/limbus situation with a group of people that meets one or two times a week, and when an item drops that you want, you compete with the other people for a chance to get it, usually within some sort of point based system to reward constant attendance. In other words, do something long enough and you'll get what you want.... eventually.
So, please. Explain your statement. The rest of your post I agree with completely, I just want to understand why you think WoW "dumbed down" gaming. If anything, WoW is harder to play than FFXI in terms of skill - although not time.
And now, my somewhat biased opinion to counter your biased opinion. Yes, FFXI takes more time to get to the end game than WoW, but once you're there, they take an equal amount of time to get the end game gear, but what I've found from personal experience is that in WoW, the gear you have make a huge difference as to how well you do, but in FFXI, skill takes a much larger part. I'm not saying that skill makes no part, but the difference in WoW between a level 60 with all greens and a few blues vs. a level 60 with all purples is huge, two people with equal skill and vastly different gear will be vastly differing in power levels, but in FFXI, two level 75s, one with good gear and one with cheap gear, will be closer in performance if played by two players of equal skill. In FFXI, it takes skill to stand out from other players.
If you say that WoW is harder than FFXI, I challenge you to finish the Chains of Promathia expansion missions.
Also, one other thing to keep in mind is that WoW is really two different games. One from levels 1-59, and another at level 60. Level 60 WoW resembles FFXI in a lot of ways, but levels 1-59 more closely resemble a console RPG, albiet a bit longer and larger in scope. And with other people running around trying to kill you.
(Yes, I have a level 60 character in WoW and a character in FFXI with two level 75 jobs. I do know what I'm talking about.)
I play FFXI quite a bit, and Real Market Transactions have been around for a while. We had almost a year before it became prevalent, but now it's everywhere. Square-Enix seems to make a passing effort to remove RMTers -- there was one big purge where they did a surprise deletion of a bunch of accounts, not giving them time to move their loot elsewhere. So they just restarted under new names and have gotten back to where they were or past it since.
People argue against RMT in many ways, most of which have already been mentioned: People who buy gil are not as good of players, they haven't "earned" their gear. There are two I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1) Buying gil condones the unsportsmanlike behavior of the RMTs. Most RMTs are brutal in their tactics of obtaining their items. There are a handful of notorious monsters that appear only every few hours, or even up to 24 hours, that on my server, the RMT have monopolized. When the time is ready for them to appear, the RMTs are there, and will bully people out, use the other monsters to try and disrupt other players, stand around and make things difficult, and in some cases, use client hacks to make their chances of getting the claim when the monster spawns higher than the average user. All of these actions are against the Terms of Service of FFXI, but even when reported, Square-Enix does nothing most of the time because they did not witness it.
2) Buying gil reduces the value of that gil. This is a big personal pet peeve of mine, and something that isn't easily measured. Lets say you spent a month farming and earning 1,000,000 gil. You then go to the Auction House and try to buy an item that you've been wanting for a while. That item's last price in the history was 800,000. You try bidding 800,000, and you don't get it. So you bid 810,000 and you don't get it. You try 850,000... and you still don't get it. You realize that if you go up to 900,000, that's another hour or so of work farming for that gil, so you hold off, and hope it will come down in price and you'll try again later.
Now, think of someone who just paid $50 for that 1,000,000 gil. They bid 800,000 and nothing happens. They bid 850,000 and don't get it, then 900,000 and get it. That extra 50,000 to them is only $2.50, so why not? So now, they have the item, but damage has been wrought. Now, the last listing in the history is 900,000, so when the next person comes along who wants to sell that item, they will probably sell it for 900,000 not 800,000.
If you extrapolate that to every single item in the game, you get a horrible inflation effect, which is what has been happening. Granted, there are other factors causing it, but in the last two years, items have gone up in value by factors of ten, sometimes doubling withing the course of days. It makes keeping up very diffucult for someone who doesn't buy gil.
My bottom line: Please don't buy gil/gold/influence/whatever. It's bad, mmmkay?
Okay, here's another one, which has definitely been in the Palm OS since before July 2002 (date of Patent filing):
Push the address book button, it goes to the address book application. Hold it down for a second or two, and it beams your personal business card through the IR port so you can send it to someone easily. (Anyone remember the commercial with the guy and the girl on the subway trains?)
Slashdot Mirror
Aw, and you were so close to the three digit club.
The Apple G4 Cube, of course!
Aside from the optical and hard drives, it's totally silent.
Compare with WoW, where you might have a 100% chance of getting something if you complete some difficult task. There are plenty of instances in WoW where you'll have to use a large set of abilities to manage to succeed. Fail, and you can try again very quickly instead of packing up and waiting until tomorrow. That's hard, but not due to a time requirement, due to a skill requirement.
I have to disagree with this and point out something here. You're saying that WoW has "do this hard task and you get an item 100% of the time" and FFXI is "try for this item once a day for the 20% chance of getting the item." This is true, but the opposite is also true. WoW has its share of "try this every week for a small chance at a drop" (20 or 40 man instances that you can only run every week) and FFXI has the 100% items from quests.
The truth lies somewhere inbetween, as the typical endgame FFXI or WoW both involve running through some sort of dungeon/instance/dynamis/limbus situation with a group of people that meets one or two times a week, and when an item drops that you want, you compete with the other people for a chance to get it, usually within some sort of point based system to reward constant attendance. In other words, do something long enough and you'll get what you want.... eventually.
So, please. Explain your statement. The rest of your post I agree with completely, I just want to understand why you think WoW "dumbed down" gaming. If anything, WoW is harder to play than FFXI in terms of skill - although not time.
And now, my somewhat biased opinion to counter your biased opinion. Yes, FFXI takes more time to get to the end game than WoW, but once you're there, they take an equal amount of time to get the end game gear, but what I've found from personal experience is that in WoW, the gear you have make a huge difference as to how well you do, but in FFXI, skill takes a much larger part. I'm not saying that skill makes no part, but the difference in WoW between a level 60 with all greens and a few blues vs. a level 60 with all purples is huge, two people with equal skill and vastly different gear will be vastly differing in power levels, but in FFXI, two level 75s, one with good gear and one with cheap gear, will be closer in performance if played by two players of equal skill. In FFXI, it takes skill to stand out from other players.
If you say that WoW is harder than FFXI, I challenge you to finish the Chains of Promathia expansion missions.
Also, one other thing to keep in mind is that WoW is really two different games. One from levels 1-59, and another at level 60. Level 60 WoW resembles FFXI in a lot of ways, but levels 1-59 more closely resemble a console RPG, albiet a bit longer and larger in scope. And with other people running around trying to kill you.
(Yes, I have a level 60 character in WoW and a character in FFXI with two level 75 jobs. I do know what I'm talking about.)
I play FFXI quite a bit, and Real Market Transactions have been around for a while. We had almost a year before it became prevalent, but now it's everywhere. Square-Enix seems to make a passing effort to remove RMTers -- there was one big purge where they did a surprise deletion of a bunch of accounts, not giving them time to move their loot elsewhere. So they just restarted under new names and have gotten back to where they were or past it since.
People argue against RMT in many ways, most of which have already been mentioned: People who buy gil are not as good of players, they haven't "earned" their gear. There are two I haven't seen mentioned yet:
1) Buying gil condones the unsportsmanlike behavior of the RMTs. Most RMTs are brutal in their tactics of obtaining their items. There are a handful of notorious monsters that appear only every few hours, or even up to 24 hours, that on my server, the RMT have monopolized. When the time is ready for them to appear, the RMTs are there, and will bully people out, use the other monsters to try and disrupt other players, stand around and make things difficult, and in some cases, use client hacks to make their chances of getting the claim when the monster spawns higher than the average user. All of these actions are against the Terms of Service of FFXI, but even when reported, Square-Enix does nothing most of the time because they did not witness it.
2) Buying gil reduces the value of that gil. This is a big personal pet peeve of mine, and something that isn't easily measured. Lets say you spent a month farming and earning 1,000,000 gil. You then go to the Auction House and try to buy an item that you've been wanting for a while. That item's last price in the history was 800,000. You try bidding 800,000, and you don't get it. So you bid 810,000 and you don't get it. You try 850,000... and you still don't get it. You realize that if you go up to 900,000, that's another hour or so of work farming for that gil, so you hold off, and hope it will come down in price and you'll try again later.
Now, think of someone who just paid $50 for that 1,000,000 gil. They bid 800,000 and nothing happens. They bid 850,000 and don't get it, then 900,000 and get it. That extra 50,000 to them is only $2.50, so why not? So now, they have the item, but damage has been wrought. Now, the last listing in the history is 900,000, so when the next person comes along who wants to sell that item, they will probably sell it for 900,000 not 800,000.
If you extrapolate that to every single item in the game, you get a horrible inflation effect, which is what has been happening. Granted, there are other factors causing it, but in the last two years, items have gone up in value by factors of ten, sometimes doubling withing the course of days. It makes keeping up very diffucult for someone who doesn't buy gil.
My bottom line: Please don't buy gil/gold/influence/whatever. It's bad, mmmkay?
Okay, here's another one, which has definitely been in the Palm OS since before July 2002 (date of Patent filing):
Push the address book button, it goes to the address book application. Hold it down for a second or two, and it beams your personal business card through the IR port so you can send it to someone easily. (Anyone remember the commercial with the guy and the girl on the subway trains?)