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Final Fantasy XI's August update is live
At long last, players in Final Fantasy XI won't need to use macros to handle gear-swapping; the game's August update adds an equipment set manager to let you swap sets easily and painlessly. Oh, and it adds new Seekers of Adoulin missions as well as a variety of other content, so that's nice. But really, no equipment-swapping macros any more -- that alone should change people's lives. The update also adds Alluvion Skirmishes, new alter egos, and new NPCs to direct players toward quests, tutorials, and maps. Players will also benefit from a variety of job balance improvements and new ways to spend job points, not to mention the addition of new items as both craftable items and battle rewards. Whether you've been playing the game for a long time or just started jumping into it recently, there's plenty to enjoy within the update, and it can be downloaded now.
The Daily Grind: Do you get emotionally involved in MMOs?
Massively reader sty0pa offered up today's Daily Grind question to us, and it was too good to pass up: "In which MMO quest or event have you been the most emotionally involved? I was just reading You Awaken in Razor Hill and thinking that World of Warcraft was pretty good at poignant quest lines, and it made me wonder what people had found in other games." I agree that for a game lately panned for its pandas, WoW has some great storylines. The coin in the image above still gives me goosebumps of sadness when I read Jaina's hopeless wish. But then again, I've never stayed up until 4 in the morning because of a game's plot; it takes a player-driven roleplaying plot to really get me that emotionally invested to the point that I have real tears in my eyes for characters that are entirely fictional. What about you? Do you get emotionally involved in MMO stories or lore or quest lines? If so, which one stands out the most for you? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
WoW Archivist: Vanilla WoW's most hidden quest line
WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? The southern coast of Arathi Highlands is mountainous and all but impassable. Most players leveling through the zone in vanilla never bothered to explore beyond the steep ridges. Yet if you were curious, you might have discovered a tucked-away area known as Faldir's Cove. To find it, you either had to swim along the coast or discover a small cave tucked away in the hills southeast of Stromgarde. The area wasn't labeled on the map, and no NPC sent you there. Explorers were rewarded with perhaps the least-known quest chain in vanilla. Other secret quests such as Message in a Bottle were "hidden" in plain sight in high-traffic areas. You were bound to notice The Matron Protectorate if you ran Blackrock Spire enough -- or someone would helpfully point it out to you while you were grouped. The only one that might be more obscure was Sully Balloo's Letter, but that wasn't really a line of quests, and you didn't do anything but talk to some NPCs. Therefore, I give the title of most hidden quest line to Faldir's Cove.
Breakfast Topic: How often do you read quest text?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. If you have played WoW for more than five minutes, you have done a quest. It is nearly impossible to avoid doing them altogether. Since the option has been implemented to have instant quest text and the options tracked on the map by Blizzard's default UI now, most players see the exclamation mark, click on the NPC, accept the quest, and go get the items -- whether it be someone's head, 10 rocks, or going to kill a certain number of creatures -- without paying attention to the why. We want the gold, experience, achievement, or perhaps a quest reward, but we cannot be bothered with why we need to commit genocide on a population of wild animals. We would rather crit the mobs required for the quest than be crit by a wall of text. I am as guilty of this as the next person: Oh, bring you murloc eyes ... Sure, why not? Kill a bunch of boars? Whatever. However, when I recently went back and finished off Loremaster, I found myself actually paying attention to some of the quests, and I realized there can be some great stories there. The Burning Crusade, Wrath, and soon Cataclysm have come a long way in terms of making the quests feel like they are leading somewhere, as opposed to killing these random mobs for no apparent reason. While working on Loremaster, I was like, "Wow, that was a neat little storyline in that quest chain!" It made me both impressed and a little sad, wondering about all the possible nuggets of story I had simply ignored just so I could level a couple of minutes sooner. Do you actually read the quest text? Do you ever want to know why we have to kill the creatures we kill and why the NPCs want these seemingly inane items? Or do you just do it for the XP and money and could not care less?
