FFXIV hmm.. epic? Hard to make up my mind.

Well it seems the launch blues are behind us, well for most of us. I have gotten my character to level 30, done a bit of crafting, joined a FC, done available dungeons, and had a pretty good time. However, I have not made up my mind about my log term commitment yet. 

FFXIV is a pretty fun game. While I am not a big FF fan I have played a few of them and really like FF7, FF10, and FF12. I like a good story but FF has been a bit to story driven for me. I am not saying that is a bad thing but I like a bit more quick action. I played FFXI for a few months and thought it was a pretty good game just did not take me from EQ2 or WOW. My experiences with FFXI did open my eyes to the potential of a good FF mmo. When FFXIV 1.0 came out I jumped right in and well we all know how that went. I then with caution enter the FFXIV beta and was surprised at how much the game changed and appealed to my mmo tastes. So all login issues aside I danced merrily into the FFXIV release. 

The game is beautiful. I have a high end rig so performance is not an issue, thanks to Alienware. After the first "oh wow" when I looked over what appeared to be a never ending vista I was disappointed to find it was all zoned. I come from eq2 so I can live with zoning but i was a bit saddened. The world looks huge but feels small. The ambient sound effects are awesome some of the best and equal to the amazing sound design in WOW. Music is pretty good fits and feels like FF but not a rich as WOW or EQ2 but still very good. So over all the visual and audio design of the game are top notch and worthy of a AAA companies efforts. 

Game play is fun and solid. While I realized SE was not reinventing the mmo experience, I am experiencing a bit of deja vu. I will not blame SE for this but I guess after over a decade of mmos, I still want the familiar but I also want to be excited too. Dungeons are fun but not that exciting. I am only level 30 and I am told they get a lot more challenging but it is less about the challenge as the way they are laid out. I have yet to get the grand epic feeling of some the the design in WOW or even EQ2. I am a raider in WOW and there is an epic feeling the SE does not capture in FFXIV.

I have never been much of a crafter, I get bored to easily. I am also not to smart so thank goodness I am good looking. For me to comment of crafting would do FFXIV an injustice. I have done a bit and it was ok. 

So you see I have tried a good portion of the game to level 30 but something is missing. I just can not put my finger on it. SE has delivered a great product despite it's rough start but I feel a bit wanting. I will not compare it directly to WOW but what keeps me still coming back to WOW after 8 years is the epic feel to the world, raids, battles, and dungeons, it just feels epic in scale which is important to an open world mmo. FFXIV while it feels good, well made, polished, pretty, and deep just does not feel epic. FFXIV seems to be missing scale. All the ducks are in a row but they are not swimming at the same pace.

I will continue to keep playing FFXIV even though my mind is not made up as to how long I might commit. Last night after a quick login prime time I played about an hour then next thing I new I was on the Isle of Giants killing a huge t-rex with 40 other players and it was epic.