MMO News Roundup 2

Final Fantasy XIV 4.2 releases January 30. Yay! The nostalgia part of this patch means nothing to me, as I’ve never played any other Final Fantasy game. But I’m looking forward to continuing the story. I don’t care much about any of the “progression” aspects, though. I have the gear I need to do the Main Scenario and that’s pretty much all I care about right now.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, since I’ve repeatedly said FFXIV is the best subscription game to subscribe to, I’m thinking about cancelling my FFXIV sub before it renews on February 18. I’ve already cancelled all my extra retainers (I was paying for 4 extra over the 2 included). I haven’t played regularly in a while, so that money is about 99% wasted. I’m pretty sure I’ll be done with the new content in 4.2 before the 18th. I can just re-sub for a month every quarter when the new patches arrive. I might once have fretted about losing out on the Veteran rewards but I’ll be honest, I haven’t used a single one of those rewards, like, ever. Certainly not the longer-term ones, which are exclusively costume items.

Devilion is closing. It’s probably my fault. I only played about 45 minutes of the open beta and never returned. On a more serious note, it’s very classy of them to enable bonus events as long as the game remains running.

Conan Exiles will be launching May 8. This is the first time I’ve heard a launch date. I’ll give them points for at least getting within six months of their projected one-year early access period. Most interesting to me is their decision to completely revamp the combat system right before launching. That sort of suggests the game will continue with frequent bug fixes long after launching. :)

Fragmented is in maintenance mode. I actually bought The Repopulation on Steam so I also got a free copy of Fragmented. I played it for a few hours once. It actually wasn’t bad. Better than a whole lot of other survival games. Kind of a shame to see it dying out.

Age of Conan is getting a progression server? Well, it’s not the game I would have picked for a nostalgia server, but okay. It still plays much the same now that it played at launch, last time I checked, so what’s the point of a progression server (besides publicity)? My highest-level AoC character is around 50 I think, though it’s possible I used a level boost of some kind recently-I don’t have it installed right now so I can’t check. I’ve always liked AoC. The only problem I ever had with AoC is the unrelenting onslaught of quickly respawning mobs you have to kill to get to and from quest objectives, making every little quest an hour-long marathon. I said “AoC” repeatedly by the way to make the point that Age of Conan is the game that was on the market long before Ashes of Creation.

Speaking of Ashes of Creation, they revealed a preview video of the UnderWorld. I wasn’t going to include this news, but it dovetailed nicely with the previous paragraph. The video looks fine I guess, but it didn’t blow me away, because it continues to illustrate my personal belief that the folks at Intrepid have never played an MMORPG before. “The UnderWorld” looks quite a lot like Rift’s Goboro Reef, and I would swear there is at least one place in WoW that looks similar, too. Maybe one of those Night Elf zones? I can’t remember.