The first true modern Multiplayer game I got into was Final Fantasy Online. I have been a fan of Squaresoft games (now Square-Enix) and figured an online game based on the series would have been, ideal. Unfortunatly, I was in for a rude awakening. I cant explain my experience playing Final Fantasy Online any less than calling it self torture software. I felt like every aspect of the game was built to take up hours and hours of my time achieving nothing and leaving me miserable. This is the only game I ever played where every time I stopped, it left me in such a bad mood I wished you never started playing.

You also had to rely too much on other people. The game was impossible do any solo playing after level 10. The structure of a party was pretty set, you need a Tank (slang for someone to hold the attention of monsters), a healer, and a Nuker (In this game, a Black Mage) to do the most damage. This format was taken so literally if you were not one of those, you will almost never get into a party. It was almost virtually impossible to play with your real life friends. You had to play on the same schedule. If you were more than 3 levels apart you would not gain any experience. I ended up in heated arguments with good friends because I would level. I started to feel like the game was intentional trying to tear up your friendships.

Although Squaresoft promised you could not PK, you could still be murdered intentionally by another player luring monsters to where you stand. Whenever you died in the game, you actually lost your experience points and as well as lose levels. In other words, you’d be playing for 4 hours, you could die 4 times and you could end up with less experience than you did before you started. You could drop in levels gained and lose any spells abilities gained on the acquired level. I finally quit this game in rage when I died while fishing of all things at level 30. This death caused me to level down to level 29 and I could not equip the level 30 gear I spent all my money on. I ran from Final Fantasy Online and never looked back! This game left a scar so deep I swore i’d never touch another fantasy game again.

To Be Continued…

Tags: Mass Multiplayer, Online Gaming, Rant or Rave, RPG, Square-Enix, WoW

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under PC Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.