While Easter weekend itself has come and gone, it’s still smack bang in the middle of the school Easter holidays, so I have at least another week of dossing about, trying to get some writing done, playing games, and salivating over the latest Final Fantasy XIV alpha details to be leaked by a community whose idea of a Non-Disclosure Agreement is “It only matters if we get caught.”

So let’s break this down into logical chunks in advance, so I don’t end up rambling and confused halfway through!

Writing

Chopping and changing. Thats how I’d sum up novel progress currently. Part 1 of Chains of Memory is still a mess, in my opinion. I’m trying to cut out as much world-building exposition as I can without confusing the reader, and it Just. Isn’t. Working.™ So I’ve decided to take a lot of the flashback material from chapters 1 through 5 and turn it into a proper Prologue. It won’t have QUITE the immediacy of my main character sneaking into a cave full of yetis and almost getting his ass kicked, but there’s another kind of urgency in the Prologue that I can play on. Plus, once we get to the actiony stuff, then it really can ramp up constantly without these odd little world-building flashbacks breaking the pace.

Dunno why I didn’t think of this before, actually. Or maybe I did and somebody said PROLOGUE? NO! HATE! Or something. *shrug*

This means I’m up to Draft Six. And to keep everything vaguely organised, I’ve actually started writing new bits in separate documents to go back and slot in later. It keeps synching my netbook and pc a lot simpler too, for when I decide to do a bit of writing on my lunchbreak at work.

Also, Chains of Time and Chains of War are progressing steadily as well, the third book especially now I have the skeletal plot laid out. Pieces begin to fall into place, which is an excellent feeling as a writer and creator.

Art

I must admit, I haven’t even started April’s art yet. I have some ideas about what I’d like to do, but my free time has mostly been wasted so far on the two topics below. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something down on paper this coming week, as then its back to work and that always scuppers any artistic endeavours.

Games

I have been playing a fair few games over the last couple of weeks. After I finished God of War III on Normal difficulty, I ordered the God of War Collection on the PS3, and have been steadily making my way through God of War II. I played the first one a bit too, but in comparison to GoWII ’tis a clunky beast. Still great games though, and it is particularly impressive to see them running in HD with updated textures.

I also finally got my hands on a copy of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and discovered just why I couldn’t ever find one in shops — it didn’t get an EU release till this last week. Duh! For those of you who don’t know, BB is a 2D fighting game vaguely reminiscent of the Street Fighter series, but based much more in the crazy Japanese world of Guilty Gear – no surprise as its made by the same people.

I’ve played the Guilty Gear games before, and I like them for 2 reasons. 1) The character designs are outlandish, crazy, and their individual fighting styles are always impressive. 2) The music. Guilty Gear games have always had outstanding J-Rock soundtracks. Calamity Trigger, as a kind of spiritual successor, does not disappoint in either of these areas.

Although GOD KNOWS what the plot is about….

Final Fantasy XIV

And finally, the FFXIValpha began yesterday, and a huge wad of new media has surface on the web via people ignoring the NDA entirely. Sadly I have not yet got into Alpha or Beta testing (Give me the alpha/beta key, Square! … please?) so I had to make do with this leaked information and what I could glean from it. My anticipation for the game was already quite high, but having seen poorly-streamed or recorded video of it in action, I’d very much like to get a go and do some testing of my own.

Now I’ve seen what it looks like, I’m very happy with the quality. Now I’ve heard some of the music, I’m happy that that is going to be awesome too. Now I want to get hands on experience, see what works, what doesn’t work, use knowledge and experience garnered from alpha/betas of previously released MMOs to truly turn FFXIV into a game that could finally sever the ties I have to its online predecessor, as well as drag me away from that thrice-bedamned World of Warcraft.

Guess I’ll just have to wait until Square-Enix feels fit to provide me with access to the testing client. Patience is a virtue, after all.

Of course, this assumes I’m very virtuous…..

Let me make one thing apparent from the start: Final Fantasy XIII rocked my socks in many good ways. But I have not yet ‘finished’ it. While I have completed the main storyline, a whole host of post-credits play options are enabled in FF13 that will take many more hours to complete. I shall mostly be keeping this thoughts post free of spoilers.

Here’s how I play a typical FF game. I go through the initial motions, exploring the areas the game tells me to go to for the story, perhaps getting sidetracked by side missions, until at some point the game gives you an airship or something that lets you travel around the world map more freely. At this point, I forget the story for a bit and go all out power levelly, farming in huge amounts of XP, or farming AP for weapons, or mastering the Junction system, or working my way around the Sphere Grid, or unlocking everything on the License Board or…well, you get the picture. The reason I did this for FF12 was truly because you had to. The game kept jumping unevenly in difficulty throughout, and this in fact contributed to the main drawback of my of these games. It gets to the point where I massively overlevelled the content and, unless the game had secret bosses to complete, I mostly ended up hitting the end boss with a fully powered up party, and whupping their ass into oblivion. While the end sequences in any FF game are almost always epic, this trivialisation of the final fight often dampens the worth of the achievement.

Enter FF13, who — as I’m sure you may have read — is an entirely linear beast until a good chunk of the way through the game. This features is being criticised left, right, and centre. Here are some of the more common criticism of the game, in fact:–

1) It’s too linear. The maps are all just corridors you run down and fight enemies.

2) You only get to control one party member. The other two fight on their own AI.

3) You can’t change your party leader until much later in the game.

4) You can’t assemble your own party until much later in the game.

5) The battle system doesn’t have depth.

6) The game just doesn’t look as good as other modern titles.

I’ll stop there. Let me address some of these points.

Yes, the game is linear. I won’t lie here. Up until the 29 hour mark I spent almost the entire game running down very very pretty corridors, watching a story unfold, swapping between the points of view of various characters, seeing everything come together, learning the intricacies of the Paradigm system, and expanding my abilities along the Crystarium, 13‘s version of the Sphere Grid.

Character progression is blocked by certain story points, to prevent completely overlevelling content and blasting through the later stages of the game with no challenge. In my mind, this is a good thing, but FF traditionalists will undoubtedly say this makes it not worthy of the FF name.

All shopping is done at save stations. There are no shops to visit, no real towns to explore. Again, people have criticised this and said ‘It’s not real FF if it doesn’t have a gazillion sidequests in these stupid little hidden towns everywhere’. Most of these people haven’t reached Chapter 11 where the Ci’eth Marks (similar to FF12′s mark hunting) comes into play, the world opens up drastically, and you get much more freedom before you get funnelled into the final areas of the game.

I’ve read of people complaining about linearity and giving up 5 hours into the game. Five hours into FF8, which I shall use as an example simply because I got it on the PSP the other day and played a bit of it before FF13 was released, and I’m still in the starting section of the game. I’m doing my first SeeD mission, in Dollet. I’ve just fought Elvoret at the top of the tower and had silly conversation with Biggs and Wedge. There’s almost nothing you can do in the game 5 hours in, so to give up on a FF game after such a short time is daft.

Sure, fifteen, even twenty hours in, you could justify this position, but hopefully you’ll have been swept away in the story by this point.

And what a story it is. I can honestly say that it has one of the better FF storylines. The world has a lovely deep mythology, and because I spent so much time being forced to experience everything from different characters’ points of view, I had a better understanding of the world, and cared a great deal more for its characters. Sure I spent the last twenty hours of the storyline with my main trio of Lightning, Fang and Hope, but I had a lot of fun with Sazh and Vanille too. Snow’s a dick. A well-intentioned dick, but still a dick. Sorry Snow fans.

Most of the points in the above list are addressed by about halfway through the storyline. About twenty to twenty five hours in I could change and make up my party however I want, in preference to my playstyle. I could also experiment with the Paradigm system to make plenty of combinations of classes to switch to on the fly. FF13‘s battle system does not lack depth. It requires forethought, planning, and a fair chunk of strategy. I admit, it can get a little repetetive, and a good couple of the major boss fights stretch on for a little too long, but then I remember spending 30 minutes fighting Sephiroth because he kept repeating his Limit Break move thing and the animation too 4 minutes to play out. Or I had quad-Knights of the Round, which you couldn’t skip the animation for either.

One criticism I will make of FF13 is the Eidolons. Each character has its own specific ‘summon’, and these are woefully underused in the game. I think I actually summoned Odin three times in the entire game. This isn’t going to stop me changing my party leader in post-credits play to see what all the others are like in action, though, as while they may not be as useful as Rydia’s summons in FF4, they’re damned impressive Transformer-like things. Also, one of the later CGI cutscenes in the game features all the characters and their Eidolons and its simply gorgeous. I actually made sure I had a unique save point for that, as I will be going back to watch that one again and again.

And on the subject of graphics. I read not half an hour ago a review saying that FF13 simply cannot compare to other current next gen titles. I have two words for that. Bull and shit. Uncharted 2 is an absolutely gorgeous game, of this I have no doubt. God of War 3‘s demo from 6+ months ago was also visually stunning, so I look forwards to seeing what it is like when it is released end of next week. But FF13 is right up there with them. There’s not a trace of slowdown in FF13, even when everybody is tossing off Thundaga and Firaga spells in the centre of a mass melee. In fact, the spell effects are utterly spectacular in FF13. Brilliant purple lightning crackles across your weapons after casting Enthunder. Loose shards of ice slide across the floor and melt after Hope unleashes a Blizzaga spell. Bodies disintagrate into black specs after devastating the area with a Firaga explosion. I found myself thinking several times that if FFXIV had these kind of spell graphics, then I would be an extremely happy MMOer. Of course, reality would dictate that this is unlikely to be possible in an MMO, but I can dream.

So now what? Well, I’m looking at the Trophies list for FF13, and it seems I have a long way to go before unlocking that Platinum. I’m not even sure I will. I estimate it’s going to take somewhere in the region of 40+ hours of post-storyline play to complete all the missions, unlock all the upgraded weapons and accessories, visit all the unexplored areas, figure out how to ride chocobos, and master all the characters. One of the silver trophies requires that you max out all six classes for all six characters. That’s somewhere in the region of 20+ million CP I need to get. And then I’ll almost certainly have to check out a guide for the weapons and accessory upgrading…

I have a fairly simple system for assessing whether a game is value for money. I take the price of a game in pounds, then halve it, and that is the number of hours I find just about acceptable for it to play out. Mass Effect 2 was excellent value for money. I paid £40. I’ve got (so far) 60 hours of gameplay out of it. Dante’s Inferno I paid £45 for and got 20 hours out of, so not so good. Final Fantasy XIII I paid £60 for the collector’s edition of (and I really need to find somewhere to stick my l’Cie decals) and have got 46 hours worth of gameplay out of so far. Was it worth it?

Hell yes.

I am a long time fan of the Final Fantasy series of videogames. I, like so many others, was introduced to the franchise through Squaresoft’s seminal Final Fantasy VII in 199…7? Ish. I think. However, I didn’t finish it until probably 4 years later. I thought it was too cliché, and the already rampant fanboyism about the game’s main villain was very offputting. In fact, the game that really dragged me into the series was Final Fantasy VIII which, in 1999 when I was just starting out at Lancaster University, was the game I spent many late nights playing to combat my initial shock at a complete change of location.

I can also credit FF8 as being the game that first inspired me to write. Sure, its storyline makes about as much sense as the guy who goes into a board meeting and introduces the Chocolate Teapot Deluxe as this century’s next big innovation. But the setting, style, and unique magic system hooked me, and after some research, I soon found my way into the various other worlds that the Final Fantasy games have invented. Some of them I’ve only played once. 1 and 2, for example, are now so old-fashioned and out-dated that even I struggle to revisit them. Others, like FF4 and FF6 are, in my opinion, triumphs of storytelling and game design, and I’ve played through each thrice (counting the Nintendo DS remake of FF4 in that tally).

To date, then, I have played every single numbered Final Fantasy title. (The ‘numbered’ is important, as there are several spinoff games and series I have never played, nor ever intend to. Sorry Crystal Bearers…you held much promise but your reviews were frankly terrible.)

But while I have indeed played them all, I am ashamed to admit that I cannot claim to have completed them all. In truth, this isn’t actually as bad as it sounds. I’m only missing a checkmark against one game: Final Fantasy XII.

Now, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with FF12. The soundtrack is awesome. The CGI is as impressive as ever. And the characters of Fran and Balthier are inspired pieces of character design. I really like the battle/gambits system, too, and the open-endedness of the License Board system. But, try as I might, I simply can’t get into it. The story itself just doesn’t inspire me at all, which is strange, as it isn’t actually that bad of a story either. It certainly isn’t any worse that FF7‘s.

With FF13 out this Tuesday, I decided today that I really should finish FF12, so I dug out the PS2 and — after borrowing my brother’s PS2 controller as mine seems to have gone walkies — cranked up the game. Immediately I found myself humming away to the music I know so well after listening to the soundtrack god knows how many time. But, after not having played for 6 months or whatever it has been since the last time I tried to finish it, I once again found myself at that “Now, what the hell was I supposed to be doing…” stage of the game.

It took me a good 10 minutes of running round, looking through menus, talking to NPCs, trying desperately to recall what I was up to, before I pulled up the world map with SELECT and discovered the helpful hint at the bottom of the screen reminding me what to do. D’oh.

So anyways, I got myself to the right location, even pulled out the official strategy guide I bought last time to try and at least finish it… and promptly played for maybe 45 minutes before my attention waned and I got bored, saved, and turned the console off.

This got me thinking. I have, of course, kept myself abreast of the incoming reviews for FF13, and one of the big beefs people seem to have is linearity in the game’s opening 30 hours of gameplay. Now, I’m 37 hours into FF12 according to the save screen, and I can’t help but wonder if I would have been more engaged, or less, if the opening 30 hours of FF12 had been more linear.

It has been said that Square-Enix have tried to make the opening sections of FF13 into an engaging, cinematic experience, like playing a movie, relating to characters, et cetera. It has also been said that ff13′s plot isn’t all that good, but I realised a long time ago that what the general public’s opinion of good storytelling in games is, and what mine is, are often completely different. (Though, as an addendum, I like to think I know a bit about good storytelling in general.)

Is linearity necessarily a bad thing these days? Mass Effect 2 is critically acclaimed, but its linearity is only thinly veiled. Games like Bioshock 2 and Dante’s Inferno are by their nature linear beasts. So why is FF13 being so heavily criticised for its opening being linear? I read one forum post today saying that a kid had played 16 hours into the game and given up because it is too linear. 16 hours. How did he not figure out he didn’t like it sooner? Did he not read the very internet site he had posted on about how the game opens up into more of the free world we are used to about 30 hours in?

Are people looking back at previous games with rose-tinted spectacles? It took an incredibly long time in most of the previous Final Fantasy games for the player to have free reign over where they went and how they got there. Hell, it wasn’t until the fourth of four discs in FF8 that players finally gained the ability to freely explore every nook and cranny of the world map. Maybe the linearity of those games was better hidden with sidequests, I don’t know. Nor do I know exactly how much FF13 has thrown out of the window either, so take everything I currently say with a grain of salt. Maybe by this time next week, I will have a very different blog written.

But back to my confession. I really really want to finish FF12. Not because I care about its plot or characters anymore, but simply so I can return to saying I’ve completed every numbered Final Fantasy game. I find this quite sad.

I got into MMO gaming through Final Fantasy XI. I still have an active account, even though I rarely log in anymore. The game is coming up to its 8 year aniversary this year, and I’ve been playing it for a good percentage of that. Or rather, I’ve had an active account for much of that. Either way, the game still has a special place in my heart, and thus even while I don’t play, I’m always interested in what direction SquareEnix is going to take the game next.

VanaFest 2010 is SE’s annual event for all FFXI-related announcements. Sure, they do quarterly game updates, but the VF announcements always tend to be bigger. So what did we get this year?

Well, for starters, SE is finally raising the level cap from 75 (as it has been for what, 6 years now?) to 99. An extra 24 levels. The release will be staggered, with the first increase coming in June, a second in September, and then finally the 99 maximum hit in December. From a marketing standpoint, this makes sense. FFXI has a very devoted fanbase, and SE wants to keep them paying and playing, even after FFXIV is released some time later this year.

It isn’t enough to get me back into the game though. Hitting 75 on my Dark Knight was a great achievement for me, but it took altogether far too much of my life to do it, and I’d rather not have to go through the tedium again.

New missions and new areas to explore come in the form of 3 mini-expansions throughout 2010. Priced at £7.99 each, these are again a nice way for SE to keep the revenue coming in. It’s a pretty much guaranteed extra £8 a quarter for them from its players, though how effective it will be in the face of the newer, shinier FFXIV is anybody’s guess at this point.

I admire the fact that the FFXI development team are still plodding away, however. They seem to have at least another 12 months of content already being worked on. I was a bit disappointed to see that Pandemonium, the server that my FFXI characters are on, has fallen on hard times and is now classed as a low population server. I would have considered playing FFXI a bit more while waiting for the FFXIV beta to start, but the news that Pandy is going to be merged into the Asura server really just cements the fact that my time with the game is at an end. I simply can’t imagine logging onto FFXI and seeing “World: Asura” instead of “World: Pandemonium”.

Good news, everyone!

But as surprised as I was by the FFXI news, this wasn’t what I was most interested in for VF2010. We all knew there was going to be some kind of announcement about Final Fantasy XIV at the even. Myself and Dr Jones were almost certain it would be about the closed beta start date, and we were correct. Although things seem to be moving faster than we had anticipated. Email invites to the beta will be going out tomorrow, and the closed beta itself will start on the 11th March (2 days after FFXIII is released over here in the EU).

Here is the news from the VF website:

With the eagerly anticipated FINAL FANTASY XIV drawing ever nearer its beta test phase, we are excited to announce that we will be conducting a closed alpha test—exclusive to our loyal FINAL FANTASY XI users!

Those who have been selected as beta testers can expect to receive further information starting from Monday, March 1.

* The tester website is scheduled to go live on Thursday, March 11.

Those who were not selected in this drawing, fear not, for there will be other opportunities to come. Be sure to stay tuned!

Now, this can be read a couple of ways. Firstly it mentions both an alpha and beta test. The beta testing site is opening on the 11th March. Beta-testing info is going out starting tomorrow. But what about this alpha testing stuff. Are the loyal FFXI players the ones who turned up to VanaFest (99% of whom were Japanese, it being in Japan and all)? It isn’t particularly clear. Maybe I’m just reading too much into it. *shrug*

Either way, it is an exciting time. As much love as I have for World of Warcraft, there is — in my mind — nothing comparable to FFXI’s job system, where you could really get attached to your character because you could change their roles over the course of the game’s lifetime without having to reroll a new character. FFXIV’s armory system seems to emulate the success of the job system. While I will undoubtedly make multiple characters there until I find one to settle on, it is the very fact that I can settle on one and play what I want when I want to that really appeals to me.

So, let’s hope I hear something in the e-mail soon! *happy*

The Aion Experience: My Impressions So Far

A lot of people who I’ve played MMOs with have been asking about Aion, knowing I play it, and wanting to know my opinions of it. As I am a man who likes to talk a lot about things he enjoys, I decided to create this brief summary of my impressions.

Firstly, this is not a review. As anybody who has played Aion will tell you, the game has a hefty PvP-centric approach post level 25. As my highest level characters are a level 21 Elyos Spiritmaster and a level 22 Asmodian Chanter, I cannot comment on the PvP aspect of the game. But bear in mind that it is there, and it is a big chunk of the game’s premise.

Secondly, most of the ‘reviews’ of Aion that I have seen compare it to World of Warcraft. This is inevitable, it having the greatest market share with — at its height — over 11 million consecutive subscribers. Aion does a lot of things better than WoW, I shall say that now, but I don’t just write from this one perspective.

My actual MMO background starts off with Final Fantasy XI, probably one of the most hardcore of all MMOs in its heyday. I still believe FFXI does some things better than WoW and more modern MMOs, but that is by the by. The reason I stopped playing FFXI as much and went to WoW is the issue of time, and how long things take to do in the game, and that is my first point.

Aion is a game that will take you considerable time to play. By level 21/22, I am already up to around 1.6 million xp needed to hit the next level. Bear in mind that the level cap is 50, and the xp per level curve increases quite dramatically per level, and you can already see that it will take a lot of hard time and effort (based on my current experience with the game) to hit the level cap.

One of the things that I both liked and detested alternatively about FFXI was the enforced partying system. Without a party, you couldn’t do a whole lot past level 10. Which meant 65 levels of partying, pulling mobs, killing them, moving onto the next one, and so on. It was grindy. Very grindy. And yet, thanks to this enforced partying system, the community on Pandemonium server where I played FFXI was very tight. You really did feel like you were playing a massively multiplayer game.

WoW had the opposite effect, sometimes. With so many classes able to solo all but the hardest of “group” quests, WoW often felt very much like a single-player game with the odd grouped instance run thrown in should you be bothered. Even then, you never really had to group to get stuff done. This was more casual, and coupled with something as simple as giving xp for quests (something that FFXI has only really recently caught onto), was the main reason why I spent so much time levelling up characters in the game. Nevertheless, I feel that — apart from the few guildies and friends I made on Shadowsong EU — the WoW community is one of the worst communities I’ve ever met. And as a secondary school supply teacher, I’ve worked in quite a few dysfunctional communities.

Aion, then, puts a bit of the massively multiplayer back into MMORPG. I’d say about 80% of the content between levels 1 and 20(ish) can be soloed. Quests give (usually reasonable) chunks of XP, but there are significant benefits to grouping.

For a start, there are no hybrid classes in Aion. Your Templar is the tank, your Cleric is the healer. Rangers, Assassins, Gladiators are your dps. Sorcerers are dps and crowd control. Spirit Masters are dps through DoTs. Chanters are the class with the party-enhancing buffs. Yeah, Chanters can heal a bit. Yeah Gladiators can tank a bit. And yes, you can customise your character a bit through Aion’s Stigma system, which is the closest thing to talent points that Aion seems to have. But ultimately the class you play chooses your role. Don’t play a cleric if you want to frontline dps. Don’t play a Templar if you want to dish out massive damage.

This isn’t to say that you have to group constantly. For Templars and Clerics, it is certainly the case that it is beneficial and faster to kill stuff in a duo or trio or group, but it isn’t forced down your throat. You can solo. You just have to choose your targets carefully.

However, you WILL have to group at points. Around level 18 for both factions, there are a series of group quests: Black Claw Village for Asmodians, Tursin Outpost (I think) for Elyos. These areas contain elite mobs, who have far more hitpoints and hit far harder than your average normal mob, just like your Notorious Monsters in FFXI, or your Elite mobs in WoW. You WILL need a group to bring these down. A trio can sometimes work, but for maximum killing power, a full group of six is needed.

I like this. To the best of my knowledge, it is practically impossible to solo these quests at the level you get them. Now, it IS possible to get to level 20 and move on to the next zone WITHOUT doing these storyline quests but a) you miss out on a huge chunk of xp (the elite mobs give tons of xp, even in a full group) and b) it would mean a chunk of grinding out xp with boring repeatable quests (sure beats FFXI’s system mind you!)

So if you are an unsociable MMO player, Aion isn’t likely to be for you. There are dungeons in the game, and a massive flight-based PvP area which you pretty much need to group up for to survive — safety in numbers as it were.

Moving on. The classes seem pretty well balanced. They all have some interesting abilities, they all get fairly unique combinations of equipment to use, and the amount of visual distinction between them is pretty high. I’ll not beat around the bush: Aion is a beautiful game. Colour me shallow, but I take great joy in exploring a new fantasy landscape and taking in the details. WoW had me hooked on exploring for a long time, and while Aion’s game world is smaller in size that the multiple contents in WoW, its level of detail is breathtaking at times. I have a folder full of screenshots that is rapidly expanding in size, though I will say that many screenshots simply don’t do the game justice. Not only is everything pretty, but the special effects are awesome and the animations are really lovely and fluid. Check out youtube for some examples of that stuff.

The combat system is fun. And it has to be, because it takes slightly longer than you might be used to to solo kill mobs. On average it takes me between 10 and 20 seconds to kill stuff, but I admit I am not playing the main DPS classes so it may well be all over much quicker for others. Unlike WoW where you basically spam abilities as soon as they’re off cooldown, it is actually beneficial in Aion to weave your auto-attacks in between your abilities. Aion’s abilities work on a Chain Skill system. Here’s an example from my Chanter’s repertoire.

Hallowed Strike (level 1 chain) > Heaven’s Judgement (level 2 chain)

Or

Hallowed Strike (level 1 chain) > Booming Strike (level 2 chain) > Incandescent Blow (level 3 chain)

As you can see, using a level 1 skill opens up the option to use one of two level 2 skills. Heaven’s Judgement has a short-term stun effect, while Booming Strike opens up the possibility to add a third chain skill into the mix. This keeps the combat fresh, interesting, and quite tactical I’ve found so far.

Plus with the wonderful animations, I imagine Aion is actually quite fun to watch. Again, check out any HD videos you can find on Youtube to get a better picture of just how dynamic combat is.

The question, therefore, is “Should I play Aion?” and my answer to that will really depend.

Firstly, if you are a big crafter in MMOs, Aion has a very robust crafting system. It is easier than FFXI’s ludicrously irritating crafting system, but no way near as easy as WoW’s. It is, however, more rewarding. It creates gear that is up to 10 levels ahead (in terms of stats) than what you will be getting from mobs of the same level as you. It is, however, painfully slow at times to level, and it will cost you a big chunk of monies.

Secondly, do you like having a well-defined and rounded role for your character? If yes, you might also enjoy Aion (as well as a ton of other games on the market!)

Thirdly, do you like playing games that really push the boundaries of visual experience in the MMO genre? If yes, Aion is definitely worth a look.

I’ve really enjoyed my time with Aion so far, but as I’ve mentioned in past blogs, I’m not really a competitive PvP-style player, so my opinions of the game might change dramatically come level 25 and my first forays into The Abyss, the game’s major PvP hub.

Check back for (hopefully) a followup to this at a later date.

Ladies and Gents, loyal readers, August is upon us already! To say this year is going fast is an understatement. I put the speed down to me measuring time as intervals between appointments with various NHS-related people trying to “fix” my back.

So what have I been up to recently? Well, a variety of things really.

1) I’ve had some fits of guilt and nostalgia and have taken it upon myself to try and get in touch with friends from years gone by, see how everyone is, and get up-to-date contact info for everyone on the off chance that they want me to visit. Some of these people I haven’t heard from since I left college 10 years ago, so its really good to know that some of them are doing well, and I must confess to taking a guilty pleasure in knowing that some of them are as undecided about their futures at 27 as I am.

2) I’ve been reading books. Mainly re-reading Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books, in completely the wrong order. I’ve also been dipping into the world of Graphic Novels, working my way the the Watchmen in preparation for the movie release, as well as catching up on Slaíne.

3) I’ve been continuing to work on a particular painting. I’ve kinda got into a bit of a rut with it. Turns out it was a bit TOO ambitious for my current skills (and attention span), but it IS progressing slowly.

4) I’ve also done some writing, albeit not a lot. I’m currently working on a big fight scene towards the end of the novel and, unfortunately, its not going well. I’m finding it difficult to visualise the scene. I blame this on the painkillers which I’m currently taking too many of to block out the big spikes of pain that are happening (fortunately) infrequently.

5) I’ve been playing too much FFXI. As you might have gathered if you actually check my main site, a lot of the blogs/updates recently have been FFXI-related and thus not written about on this here Life Blog. Toddle over to the FFXI blog for updates on that.

That’s about it for now. Not the most exciting of updates, but I did feel I was bending my new year’s resolution a bit by counting the FFXI blogs as part of my “one blog per week” thing. Updates to this blog, and my website, will continue. Have a gander at the updated art gallery if nothing else. Some newish pieces in there from this year that most people haven’t seen. ^_^

~Jon