FF11 VS. LOTR online

[HiddenStupid]

Final Fantasy 11 or Lord of the Rings Online?

FF11 questions:
1- How is ballista? is it royal rumble with both mobs and players? Is it fun enough to keep me stick on it for a long time rather than questing?
2- Do the PC version have high definition feature like the 360?
3- What can we customize besides hair?

[newconroer]

Surprising to see FF11 matched up with LOTR. At least in the MMO community, it would be more like WOW vs LOTR. WoW because it's heralded as so popular it must be the "OMGZ BESTEST!" LOTR because it's new.

So I will tell you about both games briefly, and then make a comparison after.


To your questions:

1. Ballista is...moderate; in the sense that quite a few people still get involved, but it's down to really which jobs/classes are playing in the match. Like any PvP oriented system, it has it's ups and downs, but I would say, despite my dislike of the game itself, that Ballista is one of the better combat/arena style PvP of any MMO game. There's also an arena to setup custom style matches different to Ballista.

2. The world rendering and texture detail is not that impressive in FFXI, whether on the PC, Ps2 or Xbox. You will get the obvious benefits of higher resolution with the PC. The player models, shapes and detail is overall better on the PC.

3. You cannot select your look beyond your race, face type, hair and body size (take note: as of 2006, changing body size when creating a character, did not yield an instant result. Meaning, if you went from short to tall, your character would not display it. You'd have to fully create the character and enter the game(suffering a non skippable cut scene) and hope you chose a body size that you are happy with. Otherwise you have to start all over again.

And keep in mind also you cannot 'customize' per se. You can only change based on the preset options.


FFXI, turned out to be better than I had initially imagined. I put enough time into it, to see it through it's good and bad times. "End Game" is not bad, but there's little in the way of new content, or rather they don't provide it soon enough.

I would give it a 7/10 on an MMO scale.

Pros:
-Job switching
-Group mechanics/ability chains
-Combat mechanics
-Controls
-Part of PlayOnline system
-Accessibility

Cons:
-Lack of higher end content
-Aging graphics
-Quests reward only items/scrolls, but not experience
-Travel across world, too easy
-Server downtime


LOTR, I haven't had as much experience with, which for that I am glad. I have been involved in BETA and the most recent release stages and was sorely dissapointed.

I'm not going to be able to give you the same scoring run down as with FFXI, but this is what I noticed with LOTR.

It suffers the same problem story wise, and will suffer the same fate as FFXI and WOW. They are novelty games built around a pre-existing world or theme, and with such, will run out of room to grow(or at the cost of changing the original theme/story).

The graphics were better than FFXI, but were not as streamlined. They seemed butchered, tacky, like a dress hurridly made right before a fashion show. The performance even on higher end machines was dismal. Community / social options and features were very limited. Combat was bland. Camera was frustrating. Too many cutscene involved instances or quests.

There are a few neat features:
The visuals offer you some blur effects and other amenities, but without a good basic visual aspect to begin with, it's a moot point.
It's nice to travel and see new places, while the texturing might not be so lovely, the layout of some of the zones/areas is really nice. Then again, you can achieve this sceneric feeling by just buying a new MMO, doesn't have to be LOTR in particular.



If I had to choose, even going back in time, for PC MMO the list would go as:

Everquest (Before Shadows of Luclin expansion)
Everquest II (Before Echoes of Faydwer expansion)
Dark Ages of Camelot
Final Fantasy XI
Everquest Online Adventures
Lord of the Rings Online
Matrix Online
Horizons

[HiddenStupid]

apreciate the in-depth answer, review and opinion

see http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=35197 for more happy answering.

[bassmasta]

ffxi is definetly the way to go, but lvl 1-10 is boring, lvl 50-60 is irritating, and 75 is all about questing and story lines.... this is where all the good stuff comes in, but few people make it here before they quit. i quit at 52 as dragoon because I couldn't get help with some things that were required to continue the game.

be aware that ffxi takes a fair amount of time out of your day, but if you decide to complete everything it has to offer, it is more than worth it.