WoW Difference – Part 2

Yep, I’ve been playing it for over a month now. Although its still not a long enough period to make any solid conclusion about both of these MMO, but there are stuff worth pointing out! Last time was about UI’s and game mechanics (well a little bit). This time its more about the difference between these 2 MMO starting from the beginning.

Before we begin, meet Daggy from KI’s Art Forum [link removed, KI gone] :) She’s a Lv70 Hunter on Maelstrom.

Btw: When you click into images, they are REALLY wide. That’s my native resolution in WoW. Its that large on my screen. There are still screenshots that’s taken in 1280 x 960 but most of them now are nearly 2000px.

Out of the Box

First thing you notice playing WoW is, you can create as many characters as you like. I created Majeev on that server just to say hi to my friends. Its not really a lot of money in FF either, but the hassle of going through everything just to “Create a Character” is rather annoying.

Not only they give you infinite character creation, but they give you an official forum to discuss stuff. Their avatar is automatically generated based on your character, and will update as your level increases. Its pretty neat and elegant!

Worldofwarcraft.com is a website full of GOOD stuff. Unlike FFXI, WoW’s website is a GOOD RESOURCE for a lot of stuff. You can pretty much master WoW just by reading what Blizzard posted and their own forum. Their website is damn good for resources, especially you are just starting the game. Unlike FFXI, you can’t play the damn game just by reading the 1 page manual.

You also get a profile of your character. The website is http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com! You can browse what people merited (Talent Points), their equipment and even their HP MP capacity. Hell you can even look up if your name’s taken! Look how many people are call Ridill on WoW. 3 damn pages xD

A friend of mine name himself Serket (Swap from FFXI) and someone ask him this today lol…

No worries, you are not alone in WoW.

Price? 14.95/mth if pay monthly, 13.95/mth if you pay by 3 months, and 12.95/mth if you pay by 6 months. That’s cheaper than FFXI considering most people have 2-3 mules. Blizzard don’t charge you for creating characters just to say hi to friends on another server ;). Oh did I mention, if you invite a friend to play, you get a free month too? FFXI? I invite Tazo and get a stupid airship in my moghouse. -.- So not practical. If you don’t have friends no worries, you can still play the game with the free 10 day trial yourself. You can find the link here.

Picking your Server!

The UI difference and creating a character difference can be found on this post.

So what’s for you? Everyone know WoW as some PvP game. Yes, Blizzard made this game to PvP at the start, but they do provide choices to those that don’t like PvP at all. There are 4 types of servers.

Normal, PvP, RP, RP-PVP

RP stands for Role-Playing, so basically you have freaks that types in (FFXI Version) /em says Hello. So pretty much RP are for GEEKS! (Eg. Daggy).

Normal servers are like FFXI servers. You cannot get killed at anytime unless you

1. Deliver yourself (Walk) into an Enemy base
2. Goto Ballista (Turning on your PvP)

IF you turn on your PvP sign in NORMAL servers, this allows any player to attack you in both “Neutral” territory and “Your own territory”. Pacific Ocean is pretty neutral, so if you take a swim there, you can be attacked by any players of the opposing side (they call it Faction). If you’re American and have your PvP sign on while walking on American soil, you can also be attacked (Yes, even if you’re on your own land), because Enabling the PvP sign means (I want to pick a fight with anyone). So if you aren’t those PvP people or enjoys PvPing, normal servers are for you.

PvP servers “forces” you to turn on your PvP sign when you are in neutral territory. You have no choice over that. You do have a choice to turn off PvP on your own territory. If you’re American and walking on American soil with PvP sign off, then no one can attack you. If you do have a PvP sign on a PvP server, means “I want to pick a fight with anyone”, therefore anyone can attack you.

Of course, if people are PvPing and you’re healing them, your PvP sign automatically gets turned on. So if you don’t want to PvP, don’t assist others xD. PvP sign are automatically turned on if you engage in assisting people that’s in PvP mode or do anything illegal (such as Alliance killing Horde guards).

Official explanation of Realm Difference can be found on WoW’s website.

Which Server?

There’s a few things you can do here… you can

1. Look up your friends on the Armory.
2. Check up the server population on WoW Census! [This is my server Gurubashi]

Its important to check your server. If you want a bit more protection but also wants to play on PvP Hode, you want to pick a server with “More Horde than Alliance”, the opposite for if you want to play in “Hard Mode”. But most of the time, you just pick the server that your friends play anyway…

If you got no preference, you can always come join me :) Jayashaya and Daranoon (from FFXI) also plays on this server xD!

Game Mechanics.

First thing you launch WoW is… you realize you can JUMP! O m f g! It will be the coolest thing ever for the next few hours jumping around. My 1st death in WoW was playing with Jumps… here’s what I did

Jump off the bridge –> Dead xD! I was on top of the Tauren Town (Tauren’s town is on top of a hill), so I just jump off the cliff xD! My friend Tokamo (RL friend) also died with me hehehe :) for fun ^^;

Dying in WoW

Deleveling sucks huh! Won’t happen in WoW. Dying in WoW is nothing. If you play on a PvP server, get used to Lv70 raping Lv20. Dying in WoW is like… asking for a WHM Teleport. Its pretty common and sooner or later, you get used to it. When you die, you get to spawned at the nearest Graveyard (HomePoint) of where you die. If I die in Meriphatud Mountain, you spawn again as a Ghost at the Meriphatud Outpost, if I die in ZiTah, I’ll get spawned at the ZiTah outpost. Graveyards aren’t that far as outposts. Maximum walk from your corpose from graveyard (so far for me) isn’t more than 3-4 minutes.

You do loose what’s call Durability. All items in WoW can break. Similar to Diablo II, if your sword is 0/75 durability (HP), you cannot equip your sword because its badly damaged. You loose 10% durability on each equipment if you die to a monster, but 0% if you die to a player PROVIDED you go pick up your corpse. Picking up your corpse means running back to where you die in Ghost form. You are invulnerable as Ghost so no worry. If you are lazy and want to be brought back to life at HomePoint, sure! In FFXI, you loose nearly 2400 exp, in WoW, you don’t losoe xp, but 25% durability for each equipment, so basically means, they charge you gil for HPing. Gil is nothing in WoW, looking at 1% of your asset. You also get sickness similar to FFXI, where delay’s increased, and lowered HP and MP pool.

Raise are also possible! 3/9 class (jobs) in WoW can Raise. Raise is similar to FFXI, you get to get up again! They work slightly different, the druids (rdm imo) raise can only be cast once every 30 minutes, but the idea is, lots of jobs can raise! Most of the time, its faster to just walk back to your corpse though :)

Warp II (D2’s)

Blizzard don’t make you pay or walk. You start your character with a Warp Cudgel (Hearthstone) that auto recharges every hour! You can Warp every hour to your “HomePoint” :) Homepoint in FFXI serves two purposes, its where you pop when you get warped, and its also the place where you come alive should you choose to give up your life and return to your homepoint. In WoW, they are separated. You get revived at graveyards, and you get Warp to your Inn. Inn’s are Hotels! Like Homepoint’s your home, WoW character live in da Inn’s. It wont’ cost gil, just a name given to a place :)

Its still damn nice to have free Warps. Done playing for the night? Warp! Need to go now? Warp! I don’t need to wait for damn Warp Cudgels to charge up or beg a BLM to Warp II :)

Controls

You will also realize, controlling a character in WoW is so much different. Back to first person shooting style, the wasd! Unlike FFXI, WoW (or generally Blizzard) makes control that mostly uses left hand for buttons and right hand for the mouse. In WoW, to cast a spell is simply pressing “1”. In FFXI, pressing “1” launches the message box. Honestly, I kind of got used to the FFXI one. But there’s reason. FFXI encourages people to interact to each other whereas WoW is very PvP, you must be on-guard 24/7, so making spell casting simple is essential. Not a big deal, I got used to it.

I did try to make WoW to be like FFXI, but don’t do it. You need your damn mouse! Enough mechanics, well pretty much covered, game play time!

Questing

Quest in FFXI suck balls. Do you even hear the word “Quest” on a daily basis? Anyhow, I don’t know about others, but here’s the quest I’ve done in the past 4 years in FFXI.

• AF’s
• LB’s
• Mog House Expansion
• Outposts
• Maps
• etc…

Pattern: Compulsory Quests. Quests that you “have to do” because its making life so inconvenient. Quest in FFXI is a push factor. Its not a matter of motivation to do them or not, you “have to do them” in order to survive.

Quest in World of Warcraft, beats the crap out of FFXI quest 100000%. Types of quest in WoW includes…

Controlling Toys (My quest was to control this robot, go steal some water from the enemy’s base and return)

Picking Chests (My quest was to find these chests that’s guarded by lots of mobs)

Finding Materials (My quest was to find a specific herb that only appears in this Instance [Assault])

There are numerous other types of quests, such as “Stealing Pumpkins”, “Deliver this package to Maat from Windy”, “Get Maat drunk so you can steal his Cap while he’s sleeping”, “Go dig some shells in Valkurm Dunes”. Really nice and simple stuff. Their rewards is nice too. If the quest is estimated to take you roughly 45 minutes, they will reward you roughly 4-5k equivalent in FFXI. If 44,000 is required to ding from 74 to 75, that means roughly 9-10 quests would level you up!

Blizzard don’t make people do quest, especially essential stuff to be quested. Maps are given when you “Explore” the area. Extra moghouse space can be purchased with Gold (Gil), Outposts (Flight Path in WoW), are given as soon as you talk to the NPC for the first time. Quests in WoW are constructed in a “pull” factor. They “attract” you into doing them, not “forcing you” in doing them.

Some quests are better in pairs too, such as “Slain 10 Steelshell.” I mean sure I can solo them slowly, but if you have two, it will increase the speed by a lot. You don’t need the killshot to count as kill +1, being there and part of the fight = kill +1.

Not only quests in WoW is fun, but its easy to track! When I mean track, means when I kill something or pick up something, it instantly tells me what quests its for.

Screenshot: Center of screen, I can see my friends’s questing status, he already killed 3/5 Robber Crab required for the quest. On the right is MY quest status, I can see what I still need to do!

When I abandon the quest, the quest item also disappears too. Unlike FFXI, sometime you have all these weird Rare/Ex, and you wouldn’t know what they do until you allakhaZam it!

Questing in WoW > Questing in FFXI by 100000000%. Period.

Instances

Biggest word of WoW, Instances! Its like a zone in FFXI. Instances in WoW has no requirements to enter. You walk there, you zone into the dungeon. The difference between zoning in WoW and zoning in FFXI is, when you zone into an instance, the “place” is all yours. You know how you do assaults, you connect to servers and you get teleported? Its that style. No one can block you from entering (unlike Dynamis / Einherjar), and there’s no requirements to enter.

Instances in WoW serves a few purposes.

• Important quest item, such as Brown-Belt items are placed in Instances.
• Rare/Ex “for-your-level” gear are placed in Instances. Leaping boots will drop from a Lv15-20 Instances. Emperor Pin will drop from 20-25 Instances (example).
• Your Exp mobs are placed in Instances.
• Quests are available in Instances.

So what’s the deal? Instances provide items that you need! Instances allows you to grind for exp, so you’ll never have to worry about damn xp camps or if its taken or not. Instances are dynamic, you don’t stick in an exp camp and wait for puller to get you mobs. You move around and kill things and…. Instances are actually REALLY nice dungeons. Some makes you feel like you are playing Tomb Raider, like swimming from one side of the wall to the other.

It provides another way of exping.

On next WoW Difference… I’ll introduce you stuff that FFXI don’t have…

• Battleground (makes Rook the WTF concept)
• Meeting Stone (probably the most damn good invention ever)
• RMT Issues! (pretty lol)
• World PvP (Raid Cities)
• and lots more :)

I’ll have videos too :) So its not just talking, but seeing it for yourself ^^