Believe it or not, there was a time before World of Warcraft dominated online gaming.
Square-Enix announced at E3 this year that it aims to compete with Blizzard's MMO in 2010. And we're slowly learning that Final Fantasy XIV will be a very different game from World of Warcraft. New updates to the gameplay section of the Final Fantasy XIV website reveal how the PlayStation 3 and PC MMO will approach a few of the problems that plague online games.
Players will be able to change their character's skills and class on the fly by throwing on new gear. Four disciplines can be sampled at will: "War" for straight combat (pictured above), "Magic" for spell-power, "Land" for resource gathering and "Hand" for crafting. This flexibility ought to make it easier for players to quickly change roles, rather than forcing them to build an arsenal of "alt" characters for every occasion.
Objects called Guildleves act as a sort of license for accomplishing quests and missions. By coordinating the kinds of Guildleves each party member is carrying, friends can embark on group adventures. At first blush, these doodads seem to help make group play productive for friends who are on different quests.
Overall, these features seem like imaginative attempts to make MMO gaming less rigid. Final Fantasy XI (which launched in 2003, prior to World of Warcraft) started off quite strict, but eventually evolved new ways to play that made it a little easier to find groups and play with friends. This early peek at Final Fantasy XIV seems to indicate that Square Enix has learned more than a few lessons from their last foray into online play. And they're coming at these problems from a fairly unique angle.
And what are Guildleves, exactly? Why, they're "stained-glass crystal set into a frame of precious metal, each depicting a virtuous deed of one of Eorzea's patron saints." Leave it to Square-Enix to come up with a baroque alternative to the everyday magical whatsit.
Image courtesy Square Enix
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