aspiring new player,convince me to play! :p

This has been on my mind since release,I love the FF games,liked the beta a lot but SOMETHING keeps holding me back...I don't know what.

Could be the server issues at launch or because none of my friends wants to play or because I don't have enough time for a sub game...

Anyway.

Why should I buy and play this over all the other mmos out there?

CONVINCE ME! :p

I'll be playing on a euro server...are there many players still running around?
Is there a lot of grind?
Hows the pvp?
Game economy?
End game stuff?
Server issues?

1 - Not sure about euro servers but there are alot of people that play this game. Its still a work in progress but im having loads of fun with it.
2 - There IS grind but thats optional really. Also depends on how many classes you make on one character since you can only do the quest once.
3 - I honestly think the pvp right now sucks unless you have a good team to play with.
4 - Economy is pretty bad with the housing system and RMTs and such. If you are a buyer then you will be happy since stuff is cheap.
5 - Havent gotten too far into end game but so far its intense. Of course if you are a hardcore player and memorize the scripted fights then its easy mode.
6 - Server issues depends on where you live and such. I live in east coast US and i have 0 delay on dodging, while my friend is in mid west US and he has a bit of a delay.

I hope this helps and hope that some people will respond with better info than what i have haha.

are there pvp battlegrounds or arenas?

is there a real money shop by the way? I don't intend to spend any money on extra items and such

I'm also not that much of a hardcore player...I don't really care about endgame or gear hunting...most of the fun in mmos I get out of levelling up and exploring

could there also be a price cut or deal coming soon? I know that 16 euro for a digital version or 24 euro for a boxed version isn't that much for a game like this but would still be nice to know :)

1 - I believe there is only 1 right now called Wolves Den or something. Just a 4v4 arena. Ive read somewhere of plans to add new stuff, don't quote me because im too lazy to find proof haha.

2 - No real money shop that i know of since you pay monthly. There is an option to pay like 2 dollars less a month but you can only have one character. (Doesn't matter too much since you can have every class on one character).

3 - Leveling up was interesting. Had a pretty nice story (people have different opinions). You can go about it diff ways. Queuing for dungeons, grinding, questing, or spamming fates. Or even a combination of everything. Also they have these things called Battle Leves that are like little quest you can do over and over. The world is beautiful so exploring everything is nice, but it is a bit linear with many boundaries and worst of all everything is zoned.

4 - Not sure of a price cut, i remember them doing one for Christmas i believe.

to be honest i can't answer you questions because i'm only level 27, but what i recommend is give the game a try, the first month is completely free. and when your time is up you will have 3 options, 1. if you don't like the game at all simply quit. 2. if you enjoy the game but don't want to pay monthly, you can play for free every weekend. 3. resubscribe and enjoy the game.
as for servers i play on Cerberus EU very friendly,active English speaking community, though from what i hear odin and moogle are the most active EU servers.
hope to see you soon =)

Personally, I'd save give the game another six months and come back.

WAIT WHAT?!

GAME IS FREE ON WEEKENDS?!?

that changes a lot of things as I'll propably be doing 80% of my game time on weekends but was heavily worried about sub!

I require more info on this free weekend thing :)

oh shoot i'm so sorry, i misunderstood that, it was only for 1 weekend from 11/01/14 to 13/01/14.
again i'm terribly sorry that was misleading

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Originally Posted by Deifact

Personally, I'd save give the game another six months and come back.

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Why? The op has barely even started yet. There is PLENTY for them to do.

Anyway, sounds like you're already going to start anyway so.....*nudges in that direction :p

The free weekend in January was a promotion for the release of the 2.1 content patch. The only players who qualified were those who had already purchased a copy of the game (either for 1.0 or ARR release) and were not currently subscribed. We might see a similar promotion for content patch 2.2 in March, but it is just speculation at this point and I can't say it'll be applied to everyone.

Convince you?

Sorry buddy, I can't give you a reason to play. Neither can anyone else for that matter.

Either you like what you see/hear about the game and want try it out or you don't. It's that simple.
Playing because of someone else or because someone "gave" you a reason isn't god policy. It will only lead to resentment.

To answer the other questions you asked...
1. I'm not really sure what the EU servers are so I can't be of much help, sorry.
2. I really don't feel that there is much grind at all. If anything, I feel as if people are leveling rather quickly. However, when you level your second DoM or DoW things slow down a bit but I wouldn't call it grinding.
3. I haven't tried PvP. A couple of friends of mine had and so far there are mixed results.
4. The economy is still kind of slow. You have to watch the market to make any sort of money. However the daily quests at lvl 50 and maps which you can start at lvl 36 I believe, can net you some nice gil.
5.I think there is quite a bit to do at end game but clearly some people will beg to differ.
6.I only run into 90k errors every now and then and occasional lag, but I can't tell if it's my fault or theirs.

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I'll be playing on a euro server...are there many players still running around?

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Technically, there are no EU-specific servers; FFXIV divides it's servers between the JP servers (which are located in Tokyo) and the NA/EU servers (which I think are located in Montreal, Canada). However, the unofficial server website http://www.arrstatus.com/ lists Ragnarock (Legacy), Cerberus, Lich, Moogle, Odin, Phoenix, and Shiva as "Europe", so make of that what you will. As I play on Hyperion, I can't say what the population of those servers is like, but there ARE server-specific subforums here that you can take a peek into and see how things look.

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Is there a lot of grind?

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There is going to be a grind in every MMO ever, that's just the nature of the beast, as making people work for a reward is what keeps people playing. This question is otherwise hard to answer, because it depends on what kind of "grinding" you're talking about. Are you talking about grinding EXP to reach the level cap? There is some, but it's not as noticeable as some other games. Even after you run out of quests to do, there's still clearing dungeons, accepting levequests, and participating in FATEs to earn you EXP. For crafting and gathering classes, the EXP from levequests is very helpful for leveling up. Are you talking about a grind to earn gear? There is this, but that's the nature of the RNG. You can stick to crafted gear, which is more readily available, but you can't get the best gear without wrestling with the RNG.

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Hows the pvp?

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Haven't played it, can't comment.

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Game economy?

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Entirely depends on the server, but right now things are "bad" because of housing. People were really expecting houses to be more readily affordable, and thus aren't spending money to try and save up for them. The price of houses have already fallen quiet a bit, and when more people feel willing to afford them and spend money, the economy should pick back up. There's also the 2.2 update, which Yoshi-P has said should revitalize the economy with new crafted items.

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End game stuff?

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Don't ever let someone tell you there's no challenging endgame. How challenging something is varies from person to person, and what might be easy for one is still hard for another. Right now, there's not a whole lot of "endgame" content outside of the Binding Coil of Bahamut and Crystal Tower raids and the Hard and Extreme-mode primal fights. 2.2 will add a new hard and extreme-mode primal fight as well as 4 new turns to the Binding Coil of Bahamut.

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Server issues?

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None really to speak of, aside from maybe some lag (which isn't always the server's fault).

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are there pvp battlegrounds or arenas?

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The only PvP right now is arena-based, with 4-8 person teams. There's a new PvP mode called "Frontlines" that has apparently been mentioned in the past, but I have no information on what that is or what form it'll take.

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is there a real money shop by the way? I don't intend to spend any money on extra items and such

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There is no cash shop. FFXIV earns it's income via player subscriptions, and thus has no reason to make people shell out even more money for things, however trivial they may be.

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could there also be a price cut or deal coming soon? I know that 16 euro for a digital version or 24 euro for a boxed version isn't that much for a game like this but would still be nice to know :)

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I don't think SE is going to drop the price of the game yet, as it's still fairly fresh on the market and doesn't even have one expansion out yet (and might not even drop the price after said expansion, either, but you never know). Buying the game digital is about as cheap as you can probably get it.

You made the first step in coming to the forums. Buy the game and try it IMO for a month.

You need to ask yourself this...do you like Warcraft? Would you like to play Warcraft with ff flare, great graphics, and story?

The economy hopefully will get fixed, and hopefully the pvp improves.

I also had the problem that many people seemed to be 'afraid' or something strange of joining the game, happened with some of the people that surrounded, some joined to me later, others not.

In my case I even had it more difficult because it's not translated to my native language (I still wondering why, It's not like if Spanish is a strange language) but despite that, I decided to join.

Noone needs to convince you, only knowing that it has an awesome system of classes that allows your character to be almost everything if you want to accept the challenge, knowing that it's a Final Fantasy game online, and that it is monthly fee, so no garbage shop or paying for items is enough for joining the game in my opinion.

Grinding is not bad, I like to grind, but you won't get bored because even when the quests are done you can still going to dungeons or doing FATEs (random events in every map) with your side-classes.

I play in Lich, EU server. And despite I'm playing from an island closer to Africa than to Europe the connection to that server is really good and I rarely have lagg connections. I'm always able to dodge perfectly the attacks of the enemies.

Oh, but it is not the same with the Ps3, there is a bit more difficult to dodge attacks in my opinion, but rather is a FPS thing of the PS3, not internet connection.

Even if you still having doubts, as I had at the beginning (I was the only one of my group that decided to play) When you buy the game you have 30 days free for testing, if you didn't like it you would only 'lose' 25 euros, much less than trying any other game you'd buy and don't like.

Lich is in my opinion a good server for starting because you'll find a lot of new players joining and playing everyday. I have been doing sometimes a quest, and another player joined me, doing also that quest, and it happened to me very often, it is an awesome feeling because you know you are not the only one starting.

PS: Sorry for the bad English, I didn't take the bothering of correcting the final result, and I'm Spaniard.

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Originally Posted by RayLeonheart

what i recommend is give the game a try, the first month is completely free.

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No, it's not free. Purchase of the game includes one month of access to it, and then after the month that you paid for that way, you can buy additional months through the Mog Station. But just because you're buying them through a different place doesn't make either free.

I do, however, agree with the advice to give it a try. If you're interested enough to come here asking the question, you're interested enough that it's worth giving a try, and that's the only way to really determine if you like it. I wasn't sure when I bought the game whether I'd stick around for long or not, but based on how much I like the single-player FF games, I decided there was enough likelihood of liking this game to be worth the initial purchase. I had enough fun playing that first month that I decided to renew my subscription. After five and a half months, I'm still here, still playing nearly every day, and still enjoying it.

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Originally Posted by Nahara

Technically, there are no EU-specific servers; FFXIV divides it's servers between the JP servers (which are located in Tokyo) and the NA/EU servers (which I think are located in Montreal, Canada). However, the unofficial server website http://www.arrstatus.com/ lists Ragnarock (Legacy), Cerberus, Lich, Moogle, Odin, Phoenix, and Shiva as "Europe", so make of that what you will.

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Even though both EU and NA servers are located together in Canada, they are designated separately. I think this is in order to make it easier for players to sort themselves onto servers with others in similar timezones (or at least that's one of its effects, whether it was the reason or not).

So if the concern over wanting Euopean servers has to do with ping times on your connection to them, there's no difference there between NA and EU servers, but if the concern is over being in the same timezones of other players, you can pick the appropriate server group for wherever you're at.

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Originally Posted by raziel4635

This has been on my mind since release,I love the FF games,liked the beta a lot but SOMETHING keeps holding me back...I don't know what.

Could be the server issues at launch or because none of my friends wants to play or because I don't have enough time for a sub game...

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My guess is that if you liked it during beta, you'll still like it now.

Although the server issues at launch were pretty atrocious (and I'm sure we lost a lot of players who gave up on the game in that first couple weeks) they did get resolved and have not resurfaced. Now we don't seem to get any more server issues than what any MMO would. i.e. There are occasional lag issues, though those seem to affect some players more than others. (I myself have only had noticeable lag once in the last five months, and it only lasted a few moments.) There can also occasionally be an error when connecting, but that, too, is quite rare and (unless there's a real reason — like the servers being down for maintenance) can generally be resolved simply by trying to connect again.

As to whether you have enough time for a subscription based game, that's something only you can decide. This game can certainly eat up a lot of your time if you let it. If you have a lot of other interests and don't necessarily want one particular game to use enough of your time to be worth a monthly sub, you could perhaps get the game and subscribe somewhat sporadically. So buy it and spend your free time that next month playing, then let your sub expire and focus on other things for a month or two, then re-sub and play this for another month when you expect to have some more free time for it. Of course, whether that's a viable pattern for you or not depends on what else is using up your time.