WOW! WoW!

[Don Francisco]

Stole this straight from Allakhazam's FFXI General forum. It does a poor job of actually addressing WoW's actual faults... but it is still pretty funny.

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Its a world, its at war. I have no idea what the craft part is.
This review originally appeared on www.cjdaweasel.com as part of the series "Curse of the MMOs".

World of Warcraft is an MMO designed for just one thing: Taking your money, and lowering your IQ. Okay, that's two things. See? I'm getting stupider by the minute. No matter what you're doing in WOW you're going to be constantly pelted with requests to do things that you don't want to do. If FFXI was about complete jerks with 15 dollars a month of disposable income and an internet connection, then WOW is about a secret government project to make everyone who plays it as mature as the plot to a Power Rangers episode. It's working.

My Story Begins

I started off playing as a female Night Elf. Anyone who has played the game already knows where this is going, so feel free to skip on to the next section. Everyone else, read on.

I spent most of my time denying requests to remove my clothes and dance. Which, if you have any life outside of videogames you will realize that this is not only a waste of time, but kind of sick. One person even went so far as to follow me all the way across one of the continents demanding that I remove my clothes, and even offered me a few silver if I did. I finally gave in and that's the story of how I bought my first set of Druidic robes. THE END.

I wish. I figured that the higher I rose in level, the more this kind of thing would taper off, so I did my quests, built up an ignore list of pervs, and continued on with my pretend life. It seems though, that I just traded one type of harassment for another. One day, I s*** you not, someone requested that I have sex with their character. Naturally I turned them down, because I have a girlfriend, and that is kind of like cheating, even though there's no real sex involved, and its not me doing it anyway. Of course this is all just rationalization for the fact that having sex in a game is probably the saddest thing I can think of this side of Beanie Baby collecting. I can only determine that WOW breeds polygon molesters. They're freaking everywhere.

Stay Away From Me

The worst thing about partying with anyone on WOW is that you have to put up with people who try to make their characters do things that they're not supposed to do. I'm all for customizing characters, but a Rogue (think Thief) is NOT a healer. I don't care how many Goblin Jumper Cables (an item that revives a fallen character) you have, or how high your First Aid skill is, you are not "TeH HeelR!!1!" You are "TeH imbecile!" If WOW were a benefits package then Druids, Paladins, and Priests would be Full Coverage, and a Rogue with Cables and First Aid would be an HMO. A bad HMO. There is at least one of these people in every Town, and usually two in any decent guild.

If you're not in a guild, prepare to be harassed until you join one. Once you're in a Guild, prepared to be harassed by duel requests. Actually, just prepare to be harassed. Everyone seemed to want to fight my Healing Druid. Why the heck would you want to fight me? What am I going to do? Heal you to death? That would be like a Tank Battalion challenging a MASH unit to some War-games.

How To Take A Game Too Seriously

WOW also has different types of servers, such as PVP (Player vs. Player), Normal (ummm... Normal), and RP (Roll Playing). My favorite is RP. These people take the game far too seriously, but since its an RP server, they don't feel so bad about it.

More often than not, in an RP server, you are greeted by someone in the following fashion "I am Cabados of Stormwind, warrior of our King". No. You are Greg of Ohio, maker of Slushies. You can't really blame them though. It's far more interesting to be 'Cabados, the warrior of Stormwind" than "Greg, Manager of 711".

But to all the Gregs out there, listen to me. When we're having our imaginary characters fight a pretend dragon in a fantasy world, it is NOT the time to RP. I highly doubt that in Feudal times, if they were fighting a Dragon they would have used a phrase like "Tis a fine fireball hurtling towards you me lady. Would you care to step out of the way?". More than likely they would have said something along the lines of "Get out of the way! F***ING FIREBAAAAALLL!!".

Where are people getting some of these accents and language from? In any given sentence from any Greg, there's usually a bit of Olde English, a few modern English words, Scottish word or two, or some French mixed in. You don't sound like a Medieval warrior, you sound like some backwoods British retard. Take an Olde English literature class, then try to play along. As it stands, there's not a single European from any century that would have a f***ing clue what you're saying.

AC: 30% If they're not pestering you to take off your clothes, then they're harassing you to duel them. If they're not doing either of those, then they're either trying to get you to join their guild, or get you to quit your guild and join theirs. There are of course, some that are just plain a******s.

LLA: 70%-80% No one in Wow could type a complete sentence if they were reading out of the manual and they received electrical shocks to their groin every time they hit a wrong key. I think that this is partly due to the fact that almost everyone who plays WOW is 13.

LSR: "Creepy Uncle Jim" The only reason to play WOW for longer than a month is if you like hanging around little kids. There's only three types of people that like to hang out with children: Other children, serial killers, and child molesters. If you're over 16 and you haven't killed anyone, then my advice to you would be to stay the h*** away.

My Character: I played a female Night Elf primarily, among many others. My favorite race were the Jamaican Trolls. Being a Troll is about as close as most people will ever come to being cool.

Conclusion

By the time you've played WOW enough to get your character to a level that isn't laughable, you've effectively dropped two years off your maturity. To compensate you'll try to talk like your from the 1300s, but you'll just end up sounding like you learned European English from reading Fantasy novels. I want to leave you with this thought: If you are not part of a class that is designed to fill a certain role in a party, please don't try, and whatever you do, don't talk like you're from Feudal Times. You'll just make yourself look like a fool, and even the Gregs will laugh at you.

 

[Don Francisco]

The FFXI version! This one sounds more like a Maddox-type rant - he doesn't really address any of the issues of FFXI except that grinding is boring and there's a ton of assholes who play the game. Also, I thought I should note that I would classify myself as an idiot/masochist.

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Final Fantasy XI Online: In case you confused it for FFXI Offline

I would like to start off by stating that if you are considering purchasing FFXI (Final Fantasy 11) I would advise that you take your keyboard, and beat yourself senseless with it. Not only will it be less painful, and far less time consuming, you'll have an excuse to spend $50 on something that you will actually have fun using. Frequently your activities in FFXI will degrade to spending hours making numbers pop out of creatures until you level. For the uninitiated, leveling is where you gain abilities and increase stats. The higher the level, the better the character. Do not confuse level with maturity, they usually have little to do with each other.

Trying Very Hard to Get This Party Started

In order to do ANYTHING in FFXI you have to be in a party. Which means that you'll get a group that will consist of a warrior type character who doesn't know the meaning of the word "wait", a twelve year old male playing a female character, a thief who will steal all of the good equipment (aka a "ninja looter"), a 65 year-old who plays like they've never seen a keyboard in their life, a total dick (required), and you. If you notice the dick missing from your party, that means that you're probably it.

Also it is required that at least one person be on dial-up in any given party. This allows the party to catch a rest every 30-45 minutes while they wait for the player to come back.

A Job That You Aren't Paid For and The Love You Get

Grinding is where you run around and kill things for experience (which is required to level). The experience is similar to building a tower out of playing cards, except the typical response to the results of grinding are "You Loser" rather than "Cool Card Tower". FFXI does everything but force you to Grind. Be Cool. Don't do Grinding, kids.

When you aren't wasting your time trying to get that last bit for your next level, you're usually attempting to socialize. Whenever you ask any question, no matter what the subject, you will get at least one, sometimes up to 10, people who will decide that its their duty to keep new players away. Usually, roaming in packs of three, because they have a third of brain each, they'll attack you for anything ranging from "What level do I have to be to get X job" to "Who here likes kittens?". Typical responses also range from "DOOd youz stoopid!!11" to "Uz TEh suk" and sometimes the ever poetic "shut up noob". Most, if not all responses are far from winning any literary awards.

Playing Something More Fun, Like Solitaire

If you're still playing after 15 minutes, then you are one of the following: A loser, a loser with nothing else better to do, someone reviewing the game, a masochist, an idiot or an idiot game reviewing masochist loser with nothing else better to do. I recommend that you buy a back up game such as one of the other Final Fantasy games that was actually good (Final Fantasy 10 would be a good choice). If you have a really good imagination you can pretend that you're playing an online version of FFX. The only tip off would be that the players would be helpful and speak in complete sentences.

But really, FFXI has nothing to do with the other games in the series, does it? It seems to me that if you're going to make a sequel, the game should be SOMETHING like its predecessors. Imagine that they came out with a Die Hard 4, but they made it a romantic comedy. Now pretend that they charged you $50 to watch it and the entire time you're in the theatre, people all around you are telling you how much you suck. That's a pretty good idea of how it feels to play FFXI.

Lastly, I'm obligated to mention the job system. Jobs are like classes. They define what kinds of abilities that your character will have, like swordsmanship, dancing, and the highly coveted super happy fun fun teriyaki eating ability. Some of the jobs you can become include: Monk, Paladin, and Ninja. That's right, Ninja. I hate to break this to the developers, but Ninja isn't a job. Pizza Delivery Boy is a job. Breast massager for Lacey Chabert is a job (no, that's a dream come true, but I think that you get the point). Just think, if you work hard in ninja high-school, graduate from a good ninja college, and get a good ninja internship, you too can be considered fucking insane for thinking that Ninja is a job.


Scorecard:

AC: 60-110% FFXI is probably the most unfriendly community I've had the displeasure of playing in. I figure that most people that are assholes on the game are actually enough of an asshole to count for a few more people. So the ratio of actual assholes to perceived assholes is probably around 60%, while it feels damn near 110%.

LLA: 30% once you filter out the 20 or 30 people that type like they learned English from a shorted out Speak-N-Spell, you're left with people who probably speak English pretty well, but can't be bothered to type out all 4 letters in a word. If you're (notice its not 'ur') to lazy to type out all the letters in a word, don't bother. No matter what you say, you sound like a goddamn idiot.

LSR: "Public Masturbator" Grinding and Public Masturbating are very similar in that they both waste time, are frowned upon by most of society, and nobody really wants to watch you do it.

My Character: I played a monk, which is about as exciting as it sounds.

Conclusion
If you lie awake at night wishing that someone out there was making you arrange their toenail clippings in order of size while shouting obscenities at you, then this is the game for you. Otherwise, simulate the game by multiplying 2x2x2x2... for 2 hours a day 30 days consecutively and burn $50 in the fireplace (or flush it down the toilet). Trust me, given a choice, anyone would rather listen to a string of Pythagorean numbers than hear your FFXI story. No really, we don't care. Shut Up Noob.

 

[aaron]

neh. its really not like that at all. i guess its been awhile since i was new at the game, but still. i play with new people all the time and for the most part people are friendly with them. the only valid point he has on ffxi is that people that waste their time with it suck at life. the WoW one was just funny.