Even after long inactivity, this game still amazes me.

My brother, stationed in Connecticut is being given new orders to San Diego for shore duty and is here visiting me in Maryland before he goes over to the east coast. Of course, he sees my new computer and asks me to show him what I've got. He wants me to impress him. I load up the games with the best graphics. Crysis 2 was first on the list, then Portal 2. Then I load up Final Fantasy XIV which I spent the night prior to his arrival updating.

Wow...

I haven't played this game in months, not even checking the forums, and coming back to show my brother the game reminded me just how awesome FFXIV looks! The fighting, the few uncompleted storyline quests in my journal, THE RUNNING (lol), cooking, and the awesome fashions I can make my Galka-looking Roegadyn model in. It really made me think about how much potential this game has.

I stopped playing because of final exams and other MMO's caught my eye. I plan on coming back once things start to pick up in content. Sure, I haven't played the game in months, but I certainly won't remove FFXIV from my programs list. FFXIV is still the best graphically pleasing game I have played since it was released in September 2010.

Point of this post? I'm not sure... I suppose I just wanted to express my positive outlook on Square Enix's path. ;) SE has a "diamond in the rough", I can't wait to see how things turn out.

Yeah I felt that way when I started.

But now it's a month later and it's kinda worn off.

I'm not surprised, but I'm going to continue to AFK it until it picks up in content though. It's a beautiful game, I can't deny that. Much more beautiful than the crap MMO's I've been playing in my absence.

Aion had an update on the 25th, with a better graphic engine and all.
got all excited to see the new graphic and how the game over all will look like.
It does not even come close to FFXIV.
I thk they are using cryengine 2 or something, it is far more hardware intensive the FFXIV

FFXIV looks good.

It's such a pity the game is boring and the engine fails to perform in many other areas.

I agree, the graphics are stunning.

The water could definitely be better, take the water from GTA4 for example.

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/227...stretchye9.jpg

The small things make the difference to me.

Much agreed here. Squeenix is definitely the company to beat when it comes to these things. XIV did not fail to deliver in that regard. The models, art work, textures, and fluid animations are on their own level completely in the MMO world today.

I have yet to run into the pits polygon angle, or the cheesy crunchy shoulder move (pretty sure those are the technical industry terms..) no matter how awkwardly I try to position my guy, or how high my arm raises.

All the modelers, artists, and animators involved definitely get my full respect.

That being said, I'd love some environmental shadows please.

If you look through the extras DVD in the collector's edition, you find out that they used motion capture for all the character movements, which is why they look more natural than a lot of other games.

Also, a hall mark of the crystal tools engine is that it can load the entire area at once by simply loading a set of resources which are replicated across the map. Downside is you get a copy-pasta landscape, but upside is that it is smoother and simpler to render, resulting in a prettier image.

Sure the game looks nice enough but we all know take more than nice graphics to make a good game.

Seems they made 80% of their team work on making the game look nice and forgot to add the important stuff /sigh

witcher 2 says hi :P

Just to note in the JUNE 1.18 update they are adding Dungens for Rank 30 and 50. Along with the gear that goes with them. Not sure what other stuff their adding with that update but i suppose that will bring back playing for awhile.