On the blasted world of Outland in WoW gold game, within the heart of Hellfire Peninsula stands Hellfire Citadel in WoW gold game, a nearly impenetrable bastion that served asthe Horde's base of operations throughout the First and Second Wars. For years this gargantuan fortress was thought to be abandoned...

Frankl wrote me with an interesting idea: What if players could be member of two guilds at once in MMORPGs? For example one small guild with friends for social purposes, and one less personal but more effective big guild for raiding or keep capture RvR. Either players could switch between which of the two guilds is "active", depending on whether they want to hang out or achieve something at the moment. Or they could just be member of both in parallel, with guild chat in different colors. Guilds have more than one purpose, and the social and achievement purposes are often at odds with each other. Effective raiding or PvP guilds are large, and with a somewhat military style of organization. That breeds success, but isn't very cozy. You won't be "friends" with the 100+ members of a large guild. Meanwhile small guilds are a lot more intimate, but besides being fun to hang out with don't get much done beyond small group dungeon runs.

I wanted to test how good Death Knights are at tanking. Only problem: There are no other character classes than Death Knights in Hellfire Peninsula in the beta. But as my own Death Knight is a gnome, and thus Alliance, and all my level 70 characters are Horde, I had copied my level 60 human priest to the beta, loaded with herbs for the DK's Inscription. So I specced the priest holy, went to Hellfire Peninsula, and shouted for 4 Death Knights to come to Hellfire Ramparts with me. I was quickly taken up on the offer, and we cleared out Ramparts, with only one wipe at Nazan. Due to their good starting gear, the DKs just crush the trash mobs. Healing them is challenging, but doable for a level 60 holy priest. By some fluke of fate we found, besides one staff for me, only weapons and armor Death Knights can use. And the good new for DKs is that the stuff was better than their starting gear. Hellreaver is a good upgrade to the runesword they have.

One thing I tested during the WotLK beta was the new achievement system. It isn't fully implemented yet, you can earn achievements and achievement points, but you can't spend the points on anything yet. Anyway, my level 70 warrior I copied into the beta has 88 out of possible 532 achievements, for a total of 820 achievement points. Still a lot to do if I wanted to collect them all. Which I won't do, because for already existing characters it will be next to impossible, as they would have to repeat a lot of old stuff. The problem lies in the fact that up to now World of Warcraft kept track of some things, but not of everything. So the achievement system knew that I had done 1472 quests with my warrior, giving me the 1,000 quests done achievement. It didn't know that I had done more than 5 daily quests, as those aren't kept track of. It did know that I completely explored Outland, but it didn't know that I've been to many dungeons in Azeroth and Outland already.

In EQ you couldn't change your character class at all, without making a new character. In SWG you only had one character, but you didn't really have a character class, just a selection of skills, and you were supposed to master and then unlearn skills. In FFXI you can change character class as often as you like, but only at one place, your house (which is provided to you for free at the start). When you change your level 10 warrior into a level 1 red mage, your stats and abilities will be that of a level 1 red mage. You will have zero experience points, low hit points, be weak, and not be able to wield that axe any more, back to killing rabbits. But whenever you want, you can switch back to being a level 10 warrior, and you will have lost nothing. Later, at level 18, you can do a quest that allows you to have a primary and a secondary job, but you will always only gain xp with your primary job, and you secondary job level will be capped at half your primary level.

I had the skills that I wanted to have, and didn't want to unlearn them to be able to become something else. In FFXI I will never have to give up one thing to become the other. And I'm a lot less likely to "max out" one character class anyway, FFXI is more challenging than SWG. Character development is one of the main driving forces that makes people stick to role-playing games, the "I just want to reach the next level" fever. SWG didn't really have that. EQ did have it, but in EQ it was maybe a bit TOO hard to get to the next level, so you easily got stuck for weeks in the same level and got frustrated, if you weren't a power gamer. Again FFXI provides the most balanced approach to character develoment (although DAoC wasn't bad either in finding that balance).

Now I don't want to hide the fact that FFXI has its downsides as well. Starting with installation, account setup, and login. You couldn't have designed a more cumbersome procedure if you had tried. Installation and account setup took literally hours, although most of that was downloading 7000 files of patch to get to the current level. Fortunately you only have to do that once. Login is more annoying, because every time you first have to login to the PlayOnline Viewer, and then start FFXI. Takes far too long, especially if you just crashed and are eager to get back to your group. Many people complain about the controls of FFXI, but I found a good workaround. FFXI is originally designed for the Playstation 2, then ported to the PC. Both PS2 players and PC players are on the same servers. The interface and controls clearly reflect this PS2 history. If you never played on a console, that takes some time to get used to. But if you are familiar with the way that menus work in console role-playing games, like the Final Fantasy series, you soon get used to FFXI. If you have a PS2, buy an adapter to connect your Dual Shock controller to USB.

Since I made master armorsmith there, producing good armor that people actually want, I quickly became filthy rich. In fact, I became so rich, that there was nothing I could buy any more, armor being the most expensive part of equipment. Earning money becomes pointless when there is nothing you can spend it on. The FFXI economy seems better balanced. One reason for that is that unlike SWG or EQ, FFXI has level restrictions for equipment. So while everybody in SWG just wanted the best armor, named composite, in FFXI people are looking for armor appropriate to their level. Add to that the fact that the same character could need equipment for several character classes of different levels, and the demand for lots of different items is there. In fact, while in EQ you sold your loot to NPCs, in FFXI you sell your loot to other players via the auction house. Many things that seem useless to you, can be used as materials by crafters to make equipment. So most money circulates among players, creating a self-stabilizing economy.

While SWG certainly had some good aspects, it got most of the basics of a MMORPG, like combat, character development, and the economy, totally wrong. Mix in lots of bugs and a lack of content, although both will probably get better with time, and I can consider SWG only as a failure. SWG is good for players that are totally new to MMORPGs, and of course for Star Wars fans. But for the more experienced MMORPG player, and not even necessarily the power gamer, Final Fantasy XI is the better game. I haven't looked into crafting of FFXI well enough to be able to compare it with SWG. But that is one area in which I expect SWG to come out ahead. Collecting resources and making items out them was fun in SWG, and probably the best part of that game. SWG resources were mainly acquired without combat, and they had stats, leading to equipment of different quality.