I've been writing a multipart MMO design article series and have been posting 1 part per day up on Medium until it is finished. Currently up to part 3.

https://medium.com/@SoaringMoon/convenience-killed-the-virtual-world-the-lost-art-of-mmo-friction-part-1-preface-fast-travel-b548ecd23a77

Currently shows 5 total parts, but I have a lot to say so there will probably be more.

I'll post the first part in full here so you don't have to click out just to read the first part.

---

Convenience Killed the Virtual World — The Lost Art of MMO Friction — Part 1: Preface & Fast Travel Sucks — MMO Design

Preface

This will be a massive write-up on MMORPG design, a multi-part series posted daily until it's finished.

Over the last two decades, the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG) space has undergone a slow and insidious metamorphosis. What used to be living worlds of community-driven exploration have been reduced to disconnected lobbies full of solo players.

"MMORPGs" of today are largely glorified slot machines, and while I enjoy myself some good gamba, tying it to real cash purchases is a cancerous practice that needs serious reconsideration. Daily log-in checklists and battle passes with credit card swipe advancement have proven to me that the culprit of this degradation isn't a lack of technological advancement, nor a lack of creative vision. The culprit is convenience, and to an equal extent, predatory monetization practices.

This article isn't going to be "about" predatory monetization, but it is a significant symptom of a much larger systemic problem. In the designer's pursuit to smooth over each rough edge and eliminate every moment of downtime, we have catered to the most impatient of player impulses. This article also isn't about MMOs as a third space for socialization, although there is something to be said about that missing as well. Someone else will have to write that article.

AAA game developers have designed away the very friction that gave the virtual worlds the pseudo-janky texture that we fell in love with in the early 2000’s. What this article will cover is why we should be designing friction back into MMOs, intentionally this time, as a design element and gameplay feature. The original title of this article was "An MMO Design Manifesto", but...

Isabelle Ruins Everything (Animal Crossing Parody) — hotdiggedydemon YT

If you are a designer of an MMORPG, this article is written specifically for you. You should read it in full, as the information it contains should be of value to your work. Even if you don't find it of value, you'll get a thorough opinion on the matter that you can form arguments with. At the very least, I've tried to make this wall of text as thought-provoking as it is informative. I can only hope it is as entertaining.

If you are specifically Josh Strife Hayes, I've watched the entire "Worst MMO Ever?" series four times, and have had it playing as background audio many more times than that. You do a much better job of describing how MMOs create social spaces than I ever will.

I am Shawn Fluhr, an author, worldbuilder, and game developer. I go online by SoaringMoon. Not only have I been designing roleplaying video games and tabletop games almost my entire life — 25+ years' worth of practice — I've had at least 20,000 gameplay hours across many MMORPGs and MMO-Lite games. I've played almost everything the industry has to offer, and my favorite games among all of them are what I feel is the consensus opinion: Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Star Wars: Galaxies (I also played SWTOR), Old School Runescape, Archeage, Ragnorok, Asheron's Call, Elder Scrolls Online, and my personal favorite Phantasy Star Online which I started playing on Dreamcast and still play on private servers to this day as PSO: Blue Burst.

Muh Friction Bro, It's Gone!

In this new age of MMOs, distance has been entirely eradicated. With a couple of clicks, players are whisked away through automated matchmaking systems into raiding squads in instanced long-form dungeons. Because of their open world's generous size, characters move at breakneck speed. Sometimes they are deposited instantly at the feet of a boss and are skilled up to kill them in seconds; then teleported back to a central hub. They often don't have to run around to collect loot, as it is automatically deposited into their inventory. Their party, if it doesn't disband, re-queues after a run, ready to do it again.

This has turned into a tragedy of expedience. The world a player wants to escape to has ceased to be a world at all. Everything is a menu: friends, locations, items, characters, minigames, shops... In the case of most gacha games, which often have MMO-like components, the game is almost entirely menu, with one major exception. The massive explorable world these games often have. This is one of the reasons they are big money makers, aside from the other two big money makers.

Because I know you're gonna ask, the name of the game is \"Cross Core\".

These expansive worlds serve as backdrops to games which are, in large part, menus. That isn't a bad thing, but there used to be a time when menus supported the game content and occasionally appeared. The philosophy used to be that the only things in front of the player were what was vital to gameplay. With differing opinions as to what is "vital". Cue the obligatory World of Warcraft add-on screenshot.

Halloween Spooky UI Contest — Preach Gaming YT

Here is how this is going to go. I'm going to make a complaint, then I'm going to give suggestions on how I think those complaints should be fixed. The expanse of modern MMOs in fast travel, movement speed, and grouping options is all too convenient for the player. If a player is matchmaking automatically, they aren't getting to know the players on their server; they aren't asking questions, and they aren't meshing with the personality those people might have. Ruining any hope that those players might interact before the start of a party raid.

Once within the raid, fighting a boss, they often don't have time to type in chat. They are moving at a blistering pace with space ninja flippy moves, running without the ability to stop lest they fall behind, pressured by the game itself with a literal objective completion limit timer, and expected to know every secret corridor or puzzle combination and hit it at the right time or sequence. This has been mitigated in games like Destiny 2 with in-game voice chat, but you'll notice that it is a popular and, until recently, successful, live service game. Kind of proving my point.

For games where this isn't the case, I personally don't like the idea of having to be forced to use voice chat in my MMOs. Grouping should occur naturally at hubs, outposts, towns, and dungeon entrances. Places where players are in the same place, at the same time, for the same reason. If the game you are making can get away with it, I'd throw out queuing and matchmaking altogether. They tend to be a source of frustration and make the game look empty when it doesn't work, and when it does, it rarely gets used outside of loop farming a boss for a specific drop or EXP. If your gameplay loop has the endless running of a single dungeon, you need to rethink your design strategy.

Parties should enter instances after communicating and grouping together, and this should happen automatically when entering each new location. Trading one form of slippage, a word I am going to use in place of "lubrication" throughout this write-up, for another. In this case, removing matchmaking in favor of dynamically created instances. The idea being that the MMO world feels full and lively before the content is played, and close-knit and cozy during the action. They should be making friends and inviting guildmates to make treks through gameplay alongside them. If a player wants to play with people, they are social and will want to speak to people. Taking away their opportunities to do that hurts your game.

For players who are playing alone, because there are a lot of those, forcing the player to engage with others isn't how they want to play. We shouldn't tell players how they are allowed to enjoy their time in worlds we create for them. Always give them an option to play alone. This means not requiring raid bosses for specific equipment options.

Fast Travel Sucks

Back in my day, to get to the dungeon I had to walk 15 miles, in the snow, uphill both ways. Games want to remove the space between spaces and get the player right into the action. While this, on first glance, is a trivial, low-hanging fruit optimization of the gameplay experience, it naively removes the world around the player. Should we as developers force the player to walk everywhere? Probably not. However, I've played many games where this is the case; nearly all of them have been made better for it. Giving the option of fast travel shows the player a clear efficiency option in their gameplay, and they are penalized for not using it. Not fast traveling wastes time. You can mitigate this by limiting the number of times a player can fast travel.

If fast travel removes the world the player can experience, the best solution I can come up with here is just not making the player walk as far. This doesn't mean making a smaller world. Teleports, if they exist at all, can be limited to broad categories of area, central hubs, or exploration zones. You skip the parts a player has already explored, providing checkpoints for progress, and bring them directly back to areas that contain content or threat. Diablo and Path of Exile do this with portals, where I am forced to walk through vast swaths of enemies from location to location, but can return to my hub zone that has most of the things I need all in one place.

Another good solution to this is having all of the world's areas branched or linked in a way that navigating through them doesn't cause players with a high level of power to move too far; a fractal structure. The following image is going to do a lot of heavy lifting. It depicts a map of a game world separated into zones by player level. The player levels are 1 through 150, with the level of the node being the max enemy encounter level of that area. Each of the cyan colored nodes does not have to be a single map; they can represent multiple connected maps or linked instances. Nor does it have to be exactly increments of 10; this is just an example.

A nodal network of in-game map areas.—SoaringMoon

You will notice in this map that no node is more than 2 areas of abstraction away from the hub. A player who is level 140 only has to walk through the level 30 encounter area to be near the end game. This does a couple of awesome things for the game.

Firstly, it mingles low-level and high-level players. A high-level player should naturally have to walk through low-level areas to reach destinations valuable to them. Players in the level 20 zone will see level 80 players pass by. Players in the level 10 area will see level 150 players with endgame equipment showing off. These players should look cool, with equipment that can be earned by playing the game, so the level 10 players are excited to get to that endgame. It gives the low-level player a sense of awe at their peer's hard-earned equipment, and communicates, "If you put time into the game, you could be this." This mingling also gives opportunities for player mentorship, when a high-level player walks next to a low-level player who might be struggling or need to ask a question.

Secondly, even though we have created friction by removing fast travel, we have solved the problem of trivializing content. Modern MMOs will often, late in their life, fast-track newly arriving players with an EXP boost or "skip to high-level" ticket. They sometimes even advertise this as a feature, foregoing their development cost and letting the player ignore a large portion of the game's content. With the malformed idea that their game is only the endgame. People who played the game when it first released should be able to respect a new player having to do the same things they had to do. These "level skip tickets" trivialize the amount of work those veteran players had to do. Perceived as "a waste of their time", building resentment.

Level 90 Boost Trailer—World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor—IGN

When games don't do this, we instead get boss rush or massive EXP multiplayer quests. Sometimes in the form of limited events, special dungeon tickets, or through monetization. Examples of these EXP acceleration mechanics are Lost Ark's Hall of the Sun, MapleStory's daily bossing gauntlet. Amatsu & Rachel in Ragnorok Online, Heaven-on-High / Eureka Orthos in Final Fantasy XIV, and the one I'm personally most familiar with Towards the Future in Phantasy Star Online which I have looped a number of times in the mid four-figures. While this is the most efficient method of leveling a character in PSO, efficient methods of leveling like this should be adversely targeted during design. If players are doing one thing more than anything else, your game will be perceived as boring and repetitive, because for them it is.

This has been Part 1 of my write-up on MMO design, and more are already posted.

• Part 2: Datamining Sucks & Trash Drops Suck
• Part 3: Stacked Items Suck, Binding Sucks, & Lame Loot Sucks
• Part 4: Progression Limits Suck & Roguelite Mechanics Suck
• Part 5: Conformity Sucks, Efficiency Sucks, & Time Sucks

Hey fellow MMORPG players, I'd like to discuss a certain topic I had on my mind for quite some time and would like to hear your opinion. Please forgive me in advance if I'm not up to date when it comes to terminology.

I've tried a fair share of MMORPGs over the years and nowadays often find myself not really satisfied. Here's a short list:

Played a lot (>300h): Runes of Magic, WoW, FFXIV, GW2

Played moderately (~50h): SWTOR, Aion, Tera, BDO

I feel like most of them have what I feel like are a lot of missed chances. Primarily, I've noticed something, which could be seen as a form of pseudo-complexity: In many mainstream MMOs there are systems, which look complex at first but every choice seems to be either irrelevant or collapses to the same outcome. I would guess the reason boils down to the game trying to be more friendly to newcomers and having more control over the state of the game this way. Here are some general examples, which apply to many MMOs:

- Gearing: Equipment often comes with substats, which in many cases don't seem to matter much until the endgame and even then only slightly change the build. Moreover, they are often calculated and displayed as one big stat and you basically always choose the higher one. This pairs with the fact that the main story quest line already gives you good enough equipment. Using the auction house or crafting equipment is often meaningless until the endgame. It sometimes feels more like a chore than a system where I can meaningfully gear up my character

- Levelling: A level-balance system where your level is projected down to match the region's level is very common nowadays. This kind of destroys the immersion and progression feeling for me, often making fights the same difficulty throughout the story. Sometimes I even like being underleveled just to have some variance to it

- Loot: This is a big one for me, since I like the feeling of being able to encounter more difficult enemies and expecting something good in return, even if they drop it by chance. This is often missing due to strict loot tables and most things being locked behind group content

I could go on, but what I find most interesting is that most common games like WoW had these systems originally as far as I understand, but now everything shifted away from it. One of my favorite games was Runes of Magic since it played like the original experience, but it has other problems being barely functional at all. I also recently have learned about the difference in theme-park and sandbox MMORPGs, although I think I have not really played a sandbox one yet.

Have any of you encountered a similar feeling regarding the current state of MMOs?

So I have been ruminating about Infinite Axis Utility Systems for a while and during that time I realized that just because decisions cannot be made by inanimate objects or abstract concepts in the real world does not mean that is true in a video game.

IAUS is a system of drives and weights that help NPC's in video games more realistically makes decisions and flow through states based on reactions to internal and external stimuli. This works really well and is sort of like a micro neural network driving basic NPC decision making.

It has occurred to me that this system can be applied to anything and in a tiered system. where decisions from tiers above can impact the drives of entities at lower tiers (think horde > group > individual).

A horde and a group are not real entities they are concepts but in a video game they can absolutely make a decision. This brings me to the dungeon. Why can't a dungeon change and react to the players inside it just like an NPC might based on its own drives and weights? We could even give the dungeon fun skills like spawning miasma or closing off paths or opening shortcuts based on that decision system.

I dont know what do yall think?

I would like to get some people's opinions on what makes an MMORPG stand out, particularly old ones that have continued to thrive.

I'm an indie developer of a 2d mmorpg (think like tibia/OSRS) and while I want my game to be unique in it's own way I also am trying to capture the nostalgia and fun of these old games.

I never played RS much but I did play a lot of tibia and some things that really make that game stand out for me are:

Character progression
There are so many aspects of character progression in tibia that have no shortcut. Between no level cap, earned skills, and the sheer volume + complexity of quests; your time spent on your character meaningfully contributes to your progression for years.

Massive world
I guess this isn't really such a stand out anymore as most modern games have huge worlds to explore.

Death penalties
Everyone complains about it when it happens to them but I honestly like the harsh penalties for death. It makes the game feel more immersive in a way. Your character is important, you must be safe and cautious.

Pace
Tibia has mostly lost this over the years but I really liked the pace of play it used to have. If you wanted to get somewhere it took you 5 minutes just to walk there. Once there you would typically engage with mobs 1 at a time and then wait 5 minutes in between respawns.

Would love to hear about your favorite game and what is something you think makes it special for you that keeps you going back to it?

unpopular opinion maybe, but beginner friendly does not mean easy, and the genre keeps confusing the two

easy content teaches nothing, it just delays the wall, what actually helps a new player is hard content with permission to fail at it

the best onboarding i have experienced recently was a structured beginner raid group where wiping was the syllabus, hardest fight in the game, zero pressure, and i learned more in two nights than in months of solo play

which mmo has done onboarding right, in your experience? curious what else is out there

Fallen Sword II is a turn-based fantasy MMORPG and spiritual successor to the classic browser MMORPG Fallen Sword.

Combat combines fast-paced turn-based mechanics with elemental attacks, status effects, spells, summons and customizable equipment.

Players can chose between six classes : Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Guardian, Cleric and Ranger. They can also craft weapons and armor, brew potions through Alchemy and enhance equipment with the Gemforge.

Beyond solo adventures and dungeons runs known as Gauntlets, Fallen Sword II also features PvP, guilds, large-scale battles against world-threatening Titans and multiplayer activities designed to bring the community of Erildath together.

Trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfLCUMcsMx8

As per subject.

Inspecting enemies is hard, inspecting friends impossible (as you can’t target them while riding the horse) and you can’t target them dismounted if you play as healer. Will this issues be fixed with the new patch? Otherwise no real reason to come back playing.

Architect: Land of Exiles is a large-scale fantasy MMORPG featuring a vast seamless world centered around the mysterious Tower of Titans. Exploration plays an important role, with players able to travel across mountains, canyons and seas while using movement mechanics such as climbing, swimming and flying. Hidden puzzles and treasures are also scattered throughout the world.

Combat takes a more action-oriented approach than traditional tab-target MMORPGs. The game uses a non-target combat system combining hack-and-slash mechanics, parries and different Battle Stances. Players can take part in PvE encounters, competitive PvP and larger-scale battles, alongside cooperative activities including boss raids, party dungeons and wave-based challenges.

The game also puts an emphasis on its MMO systems, with a shared world, player-driven economy.

The studio also shared multiples videos of the game on the official Youtube channel : https://www.youtube.com/@ARCHITECT_GLOBAL

I remember some key things but AI couldnt find it...

- not that popular

- SCI-FI but on a planet so sci fi armor and weapons

- Grinder with level up weapons

- Energy Pistols and normal weapons

- Starting zone was greenish with some "flys" and iirc "slimes".

- Later something with Lava and Rocks.

Ive played a ton of FFXI, FFXIV,, and a little bit of WoW, and for me I much prefer horizontally progressing gear system. I played XI back in like 2005ish and you could get a piece of gear thats level 30 that would be good at end game.

I played XIV for years and while I enjoyed it, I eventually got really tired of how gear system works. A new patch would drop and itd take me forever to get the new gear and by the time I did get it the gear would become obsolete in like a month lol.

I recently got back into playing XI but on a private server and I gotta say its so much more fun and rewarding. Yeah it can take forever to do stuff, but when you do get something done the sense accomplishment is greater because you know the gear is actually useful and will remain useful.

Also only tangentially related but the downtime in the game facilitates a better community. When i played 14 at times it seemed like a single player game. For all of its faults, FFXI absolutely does not seem like a single player game lol

So which do yall prefer? Horizontal or vertical?

I am currently 16 hours in and having a blast. The systems are all very well thought out and loop is fun, if you like grinding.

I went in with low expectations because of the sheer amount of Indie MMOs coming out these days that seem half baked, but I dont believe this is one of them.

From what I understand development started in 2016, and honestly I can tell that a lot of work was put into the systems. There is a good balance of complexity and accessibility.

Kudos to the devs on this one. They're breaking their concurrent user count record daily (today 5k) and deserve it.

One single feature that will make any game a skip for me is the vertical progression where you upgrade the same piece of gear for multiple levels. Any immersion is gone, any will to play is gone, literally the worst game desing concept in the last 30 years.

It eliminates any excitment of getting a good drop from any dungeon/raid, since you only farm mats. It's perfect for upselling "convenience". It forces players to buy cosmetics for any visual diversity.

This is the main reason I'll never play a Korean MMO. I'm interested in hearing what other features make you not even give a chance to a game?

I see top comments here often that are along the lines of "if they wouldn't had been greedy then it would still be alive" which makes me feel weird, because if SG had to do it again, then everyone involved with money would do exactly the same thing again.

Even with player base halving every 6 months and game being now on life support, the amount of money they made from whales and giga whales is beyond what a game with 5x population or 10x longer life span would have made.

And because of that I am not expecting the formula to change for future updates, iterations or clones either. The "greed" is staying and speculating otherwise will just stay as "just speculations" for the near term future.

Just wondering which is the best crafting in your guys opinion. New World had something super chill, but the gameplay was really just a click, something like old runescape. Then there’s super indepth one with abilities and rotations for crafting like FF14, but 90% of it ends up a macro game till super end game stuff. (Still super fun imo).

Or idk would a KCD2 type crafting work in a MMO?

People always talk about the fantasy of “being a crafter main” in MMOs, but is there any actual game that does it?

Hi,

EDIT: This review is more of a decision help for whether you should try/proceed playing FF14.

I finished FF14 ARR and started the first expansion and would like to share my review and opinions. Maybe this post will help people decide whether they should try FF14 or drop it right away.

I played MMOs like WoW Retail, WoW Classic, ESO, LotRO, GW2 and more. My most played MMO is WoW Retail, so my perspective might be different from others.

This post is opinion-based, be aware of that.

General Info

FF14 = Final Fantasy 14

ARR = A Realm Reborn, basically the base game without the expansions.

Free Trial
There is a trial for new accounts. You can play ARR and the first three expansions, Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers, for free, up to level 80. That is a lot of content. After that you need to buy the game/expansion and pay a subscription, or just stay on the Free Trial and enjoy the available content.

Limitations of the Free Trial
There are some basic limitations which won't hinder your experience when trying to understand the game. These limitations are:

• Maximum of 300,000 Gil (the in-game money). This won't hinder you at all while progressing through the game. Depending on how you play, this limit can be reached around the end of ARR.
• No Market Board and no direct trading.
• No Free Company (guild).
• Some chat interactions are disabled, like /tell, /shout and /yell.
• No PvP and no Ultimate Raids.
• You cannot create your own Party Finder group, but you can be invited by others. You can also use the Duty Finder (dungeon finder) without any issues, so no worries.

Story is the first block and imo the most important roadblock you should think about

This is a very important part of the post. While FF14 is often described as an MMORPG, it is completely different from WoW, for example.

1. Story-based, story is the core of your early journey

FF14 is a JRPG first and an MMO second! This is probably the most important thing you will hear about this game. Let me explain.

This game is heavily story-based. A lot of its content, even dungeons and raids, is locked behind the MSQ. The MSQ is the main story questline of this game and it is long.

This game is not like WoW where you can choose your leveling area, skip everything and just play for the endgame. Dungeons and raids are locked behind the story questline. If you plan to skip dialogue and cutscenes most of the time, then this game is probably not for you.

One example of how important the story is to the game: There are Main Scenario dungeons which you can queue for in the Duty Finder. Those dungeons have long unskippable dialogue and cutscenes. Even if you grind them for something, you are forced to watch the dialogue and cutscenes. Unlike earlier dungeons, these are basically half story/cutscenes and half actual gameplay.

But don't worry, not all content is like this. It should, however, show you how important the story is to the developers and to many of the people who mainly play this game.

While this game has action, I would sometimes describe it (FF14 players, please forgive me) as a visual novel with some action and some MMO elements. If you don't read the dialogue, you will literally run from A to B, talk to NPCs back and forth, and this will become extremely boring.

So if you only want to play this game for its endgame or its dungeons, I do not recommend it for you at all.

If you are okay with that, then let's go to the next part.

2. The story gets better, but does not change its core gameplay

You will hear this a lot: "The story gets better."

It does! But this won't make the ARR experience flip completely. If you heavily disliked ARR, like really heavily, then the later content might not suddenly make you like the game.

The problem with ARR is mostly its pacing. It might be a little boring for many people, but if you're thinking "okay, that's boring, but not bad, this could become a fun story", then you might like the story later.

You will run around a lot. There is a famous cheese and wine collecting questline where you literally run around collecting wine and cheese before a boss fight.

That is why you have to be kinda invested in the story. You don't have to completely like it from the get-go, but you need to accept the game system that is already shown to you early on.

MSQ quests will be your life for the next hundreds of hours. The MSQ also contains dungeons, but these are also heavily connected to the story.

For example, one of my friends played the game and kinda rushed it, but didn't skip dialogue. He didn't like the story at all, but was hoping for the famous "it gets better". The story got better, but the core gameplay didn't change much.

Again, this is really important, which is why I'm kinda repeating myself. This is a game where you are supposed to get invested in the story.

3. The best way I enjoyed the game

When I first started the game, the story was boring to me. I rushed everything and got bored somewhere around level 40.

Years later, I started a second character and played the game more like a story-focused game. Slow, steady, getting involved in the story.

That's where the game is good.

That's why liking the story, or at least being interested in it, is important. If you don't like this kind of experience, I don't recommend this game.

The Community

I didn't have that much contact with the community since, especially in the base game and early on, you are mostly solo questing and the dungeons are usually rushed through and easy to play.

Cities

In the evening you will always see large numbers of players standing around the main city teleport crystals, which looks cool. You see other people, their armor, outfits and characters.

But maybe because I had limitations on what chat I could see, almost no one was talking. Everyone seemed to be whispering to each other and not really engaging publicly.

It is a weird experience. It reminded me a little of Goldshire on WoW RP servers... (don't google that if you don't know what I mean).

Sometimes I tried to make small talk with people and was usually ignored, even though they weren't AFK. I wouldn't call that toxic behavior though, maybe they were all on their second screen?

Dungeons (ARR 15-50)

Like in most MMOs, dungeons are more of a rush-through experience. They are all kinda easy, so communication isn't really needed.

I only had some small talks when someone was watching a cutscene.

One thing I found kinda nice is that people usually wait for others if they are watching a cutscene. There is a symbol over their head showing that they are watching one. People don't kick the player or become toxic towards them.

It's like an unwritten rule that you wait before pulling the boss if someone is still watching the cutscene.

There were some wipes. An inexperienced tank pulled too much, but nobody quit, nobody talked badly about them, everyone was relaxed.

Compared to WoW, where people might quit the dungeon or insult the tank, this was pretty refreshing.

There was also basically no ninja pulling from what I've seen so far. People let new tanks pull on their own and experience the dungeon at their own pace. Sometimes the healer might write something like "you can pull more :)".

So from my experience, you are rarely in bad company.

Outside the game

This is where I find the community kinda problematic.

If you enjoy the game, and if you are one of the people who enjoys most parts of the game, you are in good company.

When it comes to criticism, however, it's kinda a mixed bag. There sometimes seems to be a certain "toxic positivity" vibe.

You also have people who don't really explain why the game gets better, or why they think it is better than MMO X.

Maybe I was unlucky, but I went into the game with completely wrong expectations. I expected a more WoW-like MMO experience.

The heavy story focus and the "JRPG first, MMO second" aspect should, in my opinion, be one of the first things people tell new players.

Some people do, but others just praise it as the best MMORPG without giving that context.

Overall, so far, I found the community to be great if you like the game.

Gameplay

All classes on one character

One amazing thing about this game is that you can play every class on one character.

You choose your first class, level it and, after meeting some level requirements, you can play another one by basically just changing your weapon and job crystal.

The classes have different levels, but you level faster if one of your other classes is already at a higher level.

The classes/jobs also have their own storylines, identity and looks.

Combat

The combat is very slow in the early game. The global cooldown is around 2.5 seconds!!

Most of the time you will do something like 1-2-3. I am not joking.

Around level 50ish you start to get more abilities, but as far as I could research, many classes really start to come online around level 70/80, where you have more buttons and off-global abilities.

As a White Mage, for example, you will literally press one damage button most of the time while questing. Only later do you get a little bit more.

So choosing a class that is fun to you is really important.

There are "classic" classes/jobs like Warrior, Paladin and White Mage (similar to a Holy Priest in WoW), but also more unique ones like Red Mage and Samurai, which you unlock later.

I don't know how much better the gameplay will get by level 80, but until level 60ish, which is my experience so far, it is pretty slow and scripted.

1-2-4, buff for 30 sec.
1-2-3 for the next 30 sec.

The bigger cooldown abilities are used more rarely, depending on your class.

Only in later level 50+ dungeons do you kinda start pressing more buttons, but it doesn't change that dramatically yet.

Dungeons and Raids

While the early dungeons are very simple, later dungeon bosses become more engaging.

There is a lot more movement and mechanics appear more often the further you progress.

I actually enjoyed some of the later boss fights more than some bosses in WoW!

Last words

I don't have too much more to say, since I am only done with ARR and currently in the middle of Heavensward.

If you still don't know whether you can enjoy the game or not, I recommend playing until around level 15.

If you are already extremely bored at that point and don't care about the story at all, then you can probably quit and maybe come back later if you feel like giving the dialogue another chance.

If you're around level 15 and kinda okay with the story, then proceed.

Around level 44ish, things start getting more engaging and urgent. This is where you start to feel more like an on-demand hero for difficult tasks rather than the guy who delivers pretzels like in the first few levels.