360

Ah, the glamorous life of an adventurer.

I started this evening in my home city of Bastok, so ran straight out to kill things. Which wasn’t very easy, given the entire geek population of the earth had decided to do the same thing. I found enough things – worms mostly, the odd bat – to get me up to level three… and then I got killed by… oh, this is humilating… by… by a Walking Sapling. Yes, a tiny, baby tree salughtered me. It did it with ease, too. And while I was trying to run away.

So when I reincarnated myself back in Bastok I sold everything I could and bought a sword. A cheap, bronze sword worth half as much as a simple potion – yes, even potions are well out of my financial league right now – but a sword nonetheless. I felt better straight away. A sword is always going to be better than a dagger. I don’t care about stats, it’s better because it’s bigger and longer.

Yes, I have issues. Sue me.

Anyway, I ran out into the world and picked my way through the massive crowd and found a vulture. I readied my new sword and… died within seconds. Again I ran out into the world and after five minutes or so I found a rock lizard and I readied my sword once again and… died with seconds. Again I ran out into the world… and stuck to any worms and bats I could scavenge until my sword skills had reached level one and I’d reached level four.

And then I stopped playing. Level five seems a long way away, I’ve got no money and so no hope of saving up for any new clothes or anything. I’ve still not got any new spells. I assume you have to buy them, but I’ve not seen a magic shop. I bet they’re not cheap, either. I still don’t know why there’s a question mark before my name.

And I still haven’t talked to anyone. I did see a familiar name run past – Beertiger. I would have said hello, but I couldn’t be bothered to reach for the keyboard. Maybe if there had been some sort of voice chat…

I don’t feel like an adventurer. I feel like a slum dweller who has to survive each day by going to the rubbish tips and hoping to find trash worth selling before the million other people there do. It’s really not a life of high excitement and great deeds. It’s frequently boring, full of annoyances and yet… and yet… I played it for a good hour and a half this evening.

Well, I’ve checked the Internet for guides to the two tasks I had. (I normally wouldn’t, but, well, it seems okay because this is a beta, somehow.) For the mission, I was being an idiot – I’d completely forgotten to check one part of the city, which – obviously – turns out to be where I need to go. The quest, though, really needs the Internet FAQs. There’s no way in-game of knowing that it’s actually a level 20 quest – and after the initial conversation, there’s no way to know that it’s set in a mine that isn’t the one that’s in the town where you get the quest.

Maybe that’s been purposely been designed to get people to work together, but it just seems like rubbish game design to me.

But then in MMOs I’ve generally been a lone wolf who teams up with people now and again when the circumstances fit, but who generally likes exploring alone. (Mainly because I often have short play sessions and need to leave at a moment’s notice.) So I sense that FFXI might not be the game for me, which is a shame. Okay, it does seem to do some things very wrong (from my point of view) but there does seem to be a nice game there.

I’ve not played it yet.

It’s been installing on my 360 for an hour or two and there’s still half an hour to go.

I’ve had to sign up to Sony’s Play Online service, too, which seems absolutely horrible.

I bought a keyboard this morning, too, more or less just for this game and the registration process. Taking into account the cost of the magazine with the game disc it’s becoming very expensive for a free beta.