Alpha First Look: Video 3 - The Black Shroud

[Endigiont]

I just mean for myself one of the major let downs of XIV was it was basically only 5 zones, 5 huge barren copy pasta zones...

Yah I get that it's only the Black shroud in the Alpha, but I'd like to see some screenshots or something to know how the rest of the world is coming along, and I hope some places don't exude a lot more polish and redesigns than others.

[Aion]

I just mean for myself one of the major let downs of XIV was it was basically only 5 zones, 5 huge barren copy pasta zones...

Yah I get that it's only the Black shroud in the Alpha, but I'd like to see some screenshots or something to know how the rest of the world is coming along, and I hope some places don't exude a lot more polish and redesigns than others.

[Elexia]

I just mean for myself one of the major let downs of XIV was it was basically only 5 zones, 5 huge barren copy pasta zones..

Don't play MMOs, especially ones by SE because they're not going to release 720 areas at launch, they'll release 20 areas at launch, then 20 in first expansion then 20 in second and so on with 4 new areas in between in patches based on content addition.

but I'd like to see some screenshots or something to know how the rest of the world is coming along, and I hope some places don't exude a lot more polish and redesigns than others.

All MMOs suffer in world design after awhile...but if you look at even FFXI you could see that they do just fine with world design and don't "slack" on it even if you only ever see one city. XIV 1.0 was just lazily done compared to its predecessor.

I don't know about High Quality, it looks pretty bland and washed out to me, maybe they are playing on a PS3?

Don't sugar coat it..the graphical direction of ARR is bland in the sense it really does look like a generic MMO now. So there's a chance due to missing shaders it looks like that..or it's simply how the game will look.

[KiriA500]

I just mean for myself one of the major let downs of XIV was it was basically only 5 zones, 5 huge barren copy pasta zones...

Yah I get that it's only the Black shroud in the Alpha, but I'd like to see some screenshots or something to know how the rest of the world is coming along, and I hope some places don't exude a lot more polish and redesigns than others.

Well, I recall reading that we'll have 40 zones in A Realm Reborn (Source). We'll still have the 5 regions to my knowledge (based on the official Final Fantasy XIV page), so that'd be about 8 zones per region.

Final Fantasy XI launched with 55 zones (source), some of which are very small, like Horlais Peak, Altar Room, etc.

That means we'll have 15 less zones (given the "40 zones" thing is accurate, as there's no source cited on the Wikipedia page), we don't know how big they'll be in A Realm Reborn. Going off of the Alpha footage we've seen so far of The Black Shroud, it appears at each part (2 shown so far) are quite large, I'd guess about the same size as Sarutabaruta from FFXI, only with more stuff littered around instead of vast open spaces of nothing.

I have no doubt that the zones in A Realm Reborn will be quite massive with plenty to explore.

[Endigiont]

Well, I recall reading that we'll have 40 zones in A Realm Reborn (Source). We'll still have the 5 regions to my knowledge (based on the official Final Fantasy XIV page), so that'd be about 8 zones per region.

Final Fantasy XI launched with 55 zones (source), some of which are very small, like Horlais Peak, Altar Room, etc.

That means we'll have 15 less zones (given the "40 zones" thing is accurate, as there's no source cited on the Wikipedia page), we don't know how big they'll be in A Realm Reborn. Going off of the Alpha footage we've seen so far of The Black Shroud, it appears at each part (2 shown so far) are quite large, I'd guess about the same size as Sarutabaruta from FFXI, only with more stuff littered around instead of vast open spaces of nothing.

I have no doubt that the zones in A Realm Reborn will be quite massive with plenty to explore.

Yah and 55 was quite a bit, considering the level cap was 50 at launch so you had more than 1 zone a level. Also think of how different all those field zones were and even the dungeons zones (Low level, and High level Beastmean dungeons, 1 for each of the 3 main beastmen races).

I guess my problem is I liked how different the zones (Even the zones in the same region) where in FFXI, from beaches to snowy mountains, to swamps and forests. Where as you just don't get all that geographical variety in 14 yet.

[KiriA500]

Yah and 55 was quite a bit, considering the level cap was 50 at launch so you had more than 1 zone a level. Also think of how different all those field zones were and even the dungeons zones (Low level, and High level Beastmean dungeons, 1 for each of the 3 main beastmen races).

I guess my problem is I liked how different the zones (Even the zones in the same region) where in FFXI, from beaches to snowy mountains, to swamps and forests. Where as you just don't get all that geographical variety in 14 yet.

Yeah. 1.0 really lacked in world design. Hopefully this will all be fixed with A Realm Reborn. I'm kind of glad we only get to see Gridania/Black Shroud so far, because I'd like a little more of the game to be a surprise to me when it's finally out!