[Marchosias]

Cal, if you find anything good let me know. I, too, am in pretty dire need of something to do, but no MMORPG out there sounds too enticing. I did some TR open beta, mostly just to try out the gameplay 'cause I wasn't really feeling the whole world they created... it wasn't my thing, and if I can't like the world I'm not going to be able to play the game. Aside from that, the game, while very unique, seemed to lack the kind of depth it would need to stand up to extended play. Again, though, this was just my early impression of the game... could be completely untrue.

As for FFXI, the group-based play is what turned me off to the game. I started playing it quite a while after it came out initially, and what I ran into was what seemed like elitism and fairly harsh discrimination against newer players. It took me longer to just find a group than the groups would ever last, since I didn't have a static or anything going, and trying to make my own never seemed to pan out. It just made the game really hard to play for someone that didn't want to invest large single blocks of time into the game... I really felt like I couldn't just pick it up and play for an hour. It seemed to me that if I wasn't playing for at least 2-3 hours I shouldn't even bother. That said, the grouping aspect of the game was, actually, a load of fun when I would finally manage to get a solid group going. I'd like a game where that's the fastest means of leveling, but only slightly so, to encourage people to do it, while making it possible to progress by yourself if you don't want to put a lot of time in, or if you don't want to rely on other people in your static to be on whenever you are...