Thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV So Far

My game time these days has become significantly more focused on Final Fantasy XIV.  There doesn't seem to be that much more content to explore on SWTOR at this point.  I'm working on finishing maxing all the professions, but I'm almost fully complete with that at this point.

Sort of strange that I will end up maxing all the professions in SWTOR but won't end up doing so in World of Warcraft.

I continue to really enjoy FFXIV.  My Arcanist / Summoner is now level 40 and working through the main story quest line.  The XP boost that is currently in place has me far outpacing the levels of the main story quest line.  The quests that I'm currently on are for level 27.   It creates this interesting situation where I'm the appropriate level to do the next few parts of the summoner quest line, but I'm nowhere close to far enough along in the main story quest line to unlock things that I need to do those quests.  

I'm finding the story really engaging and I'm looking forward to continuing my Arcanist's journey, at least until Shadowlands drops in late October.  I'll be very interested to see how far I get on the Final Fantasy story line before that happens.  I'd love to get current with it, but we'll see.

For those of you that aren't familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, here are some key differences from other MMO's that I've found interesting so far.

• You start off with a ton of inventory space right away, and also pretty quickly add retainers, which are sort of like portable banks, auction house toons, and mission table followers all wrapped into one.  
• There is a separate inventory section for gear, which is extremely necessary as I'll discuss in a bit.
• You get quests from your class and job trainers that unlock certain things, but you learn new spells automatically as you level.
• You can choose to be all the various classes on a single toon.  You have to join the guild for that class, do some quests and build a set of inventory, but there's no limit other than that.
• Each class and each profession (called jobs in FFXIV) requires a different gear set.  The game has a pretty decent gear set saving interface which helps, but if you want to switch from cooking to fishing, to botany, to alchemy, you need to change gear each time you switch.
• Dungeons are required frequently at various points of the main story quests - so if you don't tend to like running dungeons through group finder type things, you might have a problem with this.  I've had nothing but great groups so far though.  Everyone has been really helpful and friendly.
• The scaling can be a bit weird to get used to.  There are certain points where the game will scale you down to the appropriate level for a quest (especially if you're running ahead like I am).  The thing that can be odd with that scaling is it will remove any abilities that you get that are higher than that scaled level, so if you've gotten used to a rotation with those higher level abilites, it can be a bit of a shock for a moment.

I've been enjoying the game a lot and would highly recommend it, either to folks that have tried it before, or to folks looking for something new and different right now while there may be content draughts on other games that you're playing.

The enjoyment that I've been finding in both FFXIV and SWTOR has me thinking about cutting down the number of alts that I level in Shadowlands.  Maybe down to my original core Horde characters and possibly one Alliance character, just so I continue to see things from both sides.

For now, I'll continue to find enjoyment in the games that I'm working on.

Cheers,

Joar