WoW Forever: I Was There The First Time

At some point, keeping track of the different versions of World of Warcraft starts to feel like a game of its own. There is the current game, Classic, the various trips through old expansions and experiments with the original experience. Now there is WoW Forever.

I’m going to sit this one out.

For anyone else trying to keep the versions straight, Forever builds on the original WoW foundation with new content while retaining the older game’s design and pacing. It is another direction for that version of Azeroth to develop, alongside the current game and Classic. So there is more going on here than simply opening another set of servers and asking everyone to start over.

Even so, the appeal depends quite a bit on wanting to spend more time in that earlier version of WoW. I was there at the time, and I don’t feel much need to revisit twenty years ago.

That is really the deciding factor for me. I don’t have enough gaming time available to play everything that interests me now. Adding another version of WoW means taking time away from something else, and the prospect of returning to the original era does not make that a particularly difficult decision. There are current games and current stories I would rather spend that time on.

New content within the old framework may be exactly what some players want. I can understand the distinction between preserving the original game and giving it somewhere else to go. But understanding the appeal does not mean I feel it myself. I don’t need another opportunity to try to recapture my gaming youth.

There is also something a little confusing about following a franchise where going back to the beginning now comes with several different options. I’m sure the differences are clear enough if you are invested in those versions. From where I’m sitting, it is getting harder to explain which WoW someone is talking about without a follow-up question.

What I’m actually playing

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to play a little Aion 2 and getting caught up on the new content in Midnight. So WoW is still getting some of my time. It is just the current version that interests me.

FFXIV, on the other hand, has lost me again. I have officially unsubscribed.

The problems I discussed last week were enough to bring this latest return to an end. Waiting nearly an hour for a trial required to progress the main story felt like a colossal waste of the limited time I had available. That came on top of the feeling that much of the main story involved watching scenes and clicking through dialogue, with relatively little actual gameplay outside the dungeons and trials. Then, when I reached one of those, I had the wait to contend with.

I wanted to get caught up, but that combination was not working for me. There is only so much of a gaming session I want to spend waiting to play.

For now, a little Aion 2 and catching up in Midnight are enough. Forever can carry on without me. I already did my time in that version of Azeroth, and I have other things I want to play.

Cheers,

Joar

An Hour in Queue is Not Playing The Game

 

I've been making some progress catching up on the Final Fantasy XIV story since resubscribing a couple of weeks ago. I've now made it through the portion of the post-Dawntrail content that concludes with Calyx and his rather bizarre primal.

And in the process, I've been reminded of some of the reasons I stopped playing FFXIV in the first place.

The biggest issue came when I reached the trial that concludes that portion of the story. It's a required part of the MSQ, so there's no getting around it if you want to continue.

I spent almost an hour waiting in the queue.

An hour.

I realize that queues have always been a part of playing MMOs, particularly when you're catching up on older content. But with the relatively limited amount of time I spend gaming these days, sitting around waiting for a group to form feels like a colossal waste of time.

And it brought another frustration into focus.

Am I Playing a Game or Watching a Movie?

FFXIV has always been a story-heavy game. That's certainly nothing new, and the MSQ has always been central to the experience.

But as I've been catching up, I've been struck by how little actual gameplay seems to be involved in much of it.

There are long stretches where I'm essentially watching a movie, except that I have to keep clicking to advance each line of dialogue.

Then, eventually, I reach a dungeon or trial where there's some actual gameplay involved. Except now I may have to sit in a queue for a substantial amount of time before I can continue.

It's a strange combination.

I spend a lot of time advancing dialogue, and then when I finally get to the parts where I actually play the game, I may spend almost as much time waiting to do so.

I'm not suggesting that FFXIV should abandon its focus on storytelling. That's obviously an enormous part of its identity. But I do find myself wishing there were more opportunities to actually play my character as part of the MSQ, rather than moving from one conversation to the next.

It also helps explain why Dawntrail was the expansion that finally caused me to step away, even though I couldn't entirely put my finger on the reason at the time.

I haven't finished all the content I want to catch up on yet, so I'm not ready to make a final judgment. But the experience so far hasn't exactly convinced me that my earlier frustrations were misplaced.

Meanwhile, Aion 2

I also downloaded Aion 2 this week and have spent about two hours playing it.

That's obviously nowhere near enough time to form a serious opinion about a new MMO, but I've enjoyed what I've played so far and expect I'll spend more time with it.

It's an interesting contrast to returning to FFXIV.

With Aion 2, I'm starting something new and seeing whether it manages to hold my interest. With FFXIV, I'm returning to a game I know extremely well, trying to work through a backlog of content while rediscovering some of the things that made me leave.

I'll be curious to see where the two games end up.

I'd still like to finish getting caught up on FFXIV and give the post-Dawntrail content a fair assessment. But I'm increasingly aware that the amount of time a game asks me to spend doing things I don't particularly enjoy matters a lot more than it used to.

Especially when I could be spending that hour actually playing something else.

Cheers,

Joar

September Month In Review

Another month, another instance of me screwing up my TempusGameIt data.

The official total for September is 3 hours and 10 minutes, but that isn't quite right. When I reinstalled FFXIV, I forgot to run a new scan, so there's probably about an hour and 15 minutes of FFXIV play missing.

That puts the real total somewhere around 4 hours and 25 minutes.

Still not exactly a huge gaming month.

Guild Wars 2 accounted for about two hours of the recorded time, while World of Warcraft managed all of 29 minutes. FFXIV doesn't really show up at all because of my tracking mistake.

I already wrote about most of the reasons behind those numbers last week, so I won't go through all of that again. The short version is that my attempt to catch up in Guild Wars 2 came to a frustrating stop, WoW continues to give me very little reason to stick around once I log in, and I finally reinstalled FFXIV and started working through the story content I've missed.

So, despite what the tracker says, FFXIV is probably the most interesting part of September.

Looking Ahead to October

For now, that's where I expect most of my gaming time to go.

I'm going to keep working through the FFXIV content I've missed and see how far I can get. I'm enjoying being back so far, although I haven't played enough yet to know whether this return is really going to stick.

The potential obstacle is gear.

At some point I may hit a wall where I need better gear to keep moving forward. I'm not particularly interested in getting back into a regular raid cycle just to catch up, so if that happens I'll probably see how far I can get using tokens and other upgrade paths instead.

I'm mostly interested in seeing the story and getting myself current again.

Guild Wars 2 is still sitting there if I decide I want another shot at it. WoW obviously isn't going anywhere. But neither one is particularly high on my list for October right now.

Of course, given how my gaming plans have gone lately, check back in a month and see if I actually did any of that.

Cheers,

Joar