Before we talk about the possible jobs in Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft, lets look at the job "types". There are 4 main jobs in any mmo. Tank, DD, Healer, and support.
The Tank is there to take damage. Their job is to keep the attention of the mob (groups opponent). This is done through different abilities, damage output, healing, etc. The hardest part is being able to keep hate, even though other people in the group are doing the same types of things. It doesn't matter how my HP (health) or defense you have, if the mob isn't looking at you, its worthless.
The DD (damage dealer) job is to do damage. The more damage you do, the faster the mob dies. This is the type of job most people prefer. It puts out the big numbers for damage. If is the most basic job to play. If you have a good tank, you can go all out. Otherwise, the hardest part is limiting your damage output so you don't pull hate from the tank.
The healers job is to keep everyone alive. It is quite possibly the most annoying job. If you have a good tank, it is easy, because you just keep healing that person. But if the mob does AOE (area attack) or hate is bouncing around, you have more people to keep alive. But if you heal to much at once, you may take hate yourself (and healers are known for dying easily). You also must have the best MP (magic) management, so you don't run out mid battle, and let people die.
The support is one of the most benefical classes, and least thanked. Their job is to make the mob take more damage (lower mobs defence), debuf the mob (slow it down, hold it in place, etc), make the party do more damage (increase attack power), buff the party (speed it up, etc), and just about anything else. They can often help deal damage and are normally used as a backup healer also. But since they don't put out huge numbers like the DD, and they are not holding hate like the tank, or being forced to keep people alive like the healer, most people rarely even notice the support job. But if you suck at the support job, anything that goes wrong in the party will be your fault.
As far as playing the jobs properly, from easiest to hardest, it is DD, tank, healer, support. Most people say you NEED a tank, healer, and DD's to kill the mobs. But in all acutallity, a party of well played support jobs can kill just about anything, as long as there is not a time limit. This goes for just about all mmo's.
There is also the "hybrid" jobs. This is jobs that can do more then one of the above. Typically, you will get a tank/DD hybrid, or a support/healer hybrid. But just about any combination is possible. Most support jobs can actually work as a hybrid of all 4 jobs if geared and played properly.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
ffxi vs wow pt 2
Gil vs Gold
This one is pretty straight forward. WOW has a more "complex" money system. Having bronze, silver, and gold. Where as FFXI has Gil and Gil. So which is easier to make money on? Well, hands down, the answer is WOW, but lets see why.
There are 2 problems with FFXI. 1 is the AH. It only allows 7 items to be posted on the AH at a time. On the plus side, the cost to post something is negligible compared to WOW. 2 is that most things do not sell for much to NPC's. The one really nice benefit FFXI has is the bazaar. Unfortunately you have to be logged in to run a bazaar, but it allows you to easily sell stuff no matter where you are in the world.
WOW doesn't have anything like a bazaar. But considering you can place unlimited number of items on the AH, do you really need a bazaar? Not to mention that you can make pretty good gold just selling random drops to NPC's.
On the servers I use, right now, gold costs about $10 per 1000 gold. In FFXI, it costs $20 for 500K Gil (remember ffxi only uses gil, it doesn't have the bronze and silver levels below the gold). So that means that 250K gil is about the same as 1000 gold. In FFXI, I hadn't seen 250K gold until I was around level 60+. But in WOW, I had my first 1000 gold before my first character was level 30.
Granted, I learned some things in FFXI that made it a lot easier to make money in WOW, but even so, WOW gold is a lot easier to come by. I make the majority of my gil/gold using a strat that I call O.P.S. This is where the unlimited number of items on the WOW AH makes it really nice, because you can list 20+ things at a time. When I first started WOW, by the time I got to Orgimar the first time (level 10), I had about 2 gold. By properly buying things and selling them on the AH, when I logged in the next morning, that 2 gold had become 54 gold. The biggest problem with this strat is that when other people here about it, they get greedy. Buying something for 50 silver that sells on the AH for 20 Gold sounds great. But when you buy 15 of them, and list them all at the same time, the market will be flooded, and none of them will sell.
So anyway, as far as making money in game, WOW is definately much easier.
This one is pretty straight forward. WOW has a more "complex" money system. Having bronze, silver, and gold. Where as FFXI has Gil and Gil. So which is easier to make money on? Well, hands down, the answer is WOW, but lets see why.
There are 2 problems with FFXI. 1 is the AH. It only allows 7 items to be posted on the AH at a time. On the plus side, the cost to post something is negligible compared to WOW. 2 is that most things do not sell for much to NPC's. The one really nice benefit FFXI has is the bazaar. Unfortunately you have to be logged in to run a bazaar, but it allows you to easily sell stuff no matter where you are in the world.
WOW doesn't have anything like a bazaar. But considering you can place unlimited number of items on the AH, do you really need a bazaar? Not to mention that you can make pretty good gold just selling random drops to NPC's.
On the servers I use, right now, gold costs about $10 per 1000 gold. In FFXI, it costs $20 for 500K Gil (remember ffxi only uses gil, it doesn't have the bronze and silver levels below the gold). So that means that 250K gil is about the same as 1000 gold. In FFXI, I hadn't seen 250K gold until I was around level 60+. But in WOW, I had my first 1000 gold before my first character was level 30.
Granted, I learned some things in FFXI that made it a lot easier to make money in WOW, but even so, WOW gold is a lot easier to come by. I make the majority of my gil/gold using a strat that I call O.P.S. This is where the unlimited number of items on the WOW AH makes it really nice, because you can list 20+ things at a time. When I first started WOW, by the time I got to Orgimar the first time (level 10), I had about 2 gold. By properly buying things and selling them on the AH, when I logged in the next morning, that 2 gold had become 54 gold. The biggest problem with this strat is that when other people here about it, they get greedy. Buying something for 50 silver that sells on the AH for 20 Gold sounds great. But when you buy 15 of them, and list them all at the same time, the market will be flooded, and none of them will sell.
So anyway, as far as making money in game, WOW is definately much easier.
Hobby or Business
Okay, so lets say you have a hobby where you can actually make a few bucks. Selling stuff on ebay or something you are making on the web (or even at craft shows). Legally, you have to claim all income you make from your hobby. Granted, the government doesn't worry if your only making a few dollars, but if you really start to make an income, you have to claim it or get in trouble. So whats the point?
Lets say you have a hobby and you end up making $15k in a year. But it costs you $10K worth of materials and time. If this is just a hobby, you legally have to claim $15k in income, even though you really only made 5K. At 15% tax rate, that means you should be paying $2250 in taxes... So after expenses and taxes, you end up with 2750.
So now lets convert the hobby into a business. Now you can claim all the materials as business expenses. So now you only have to claim 5K, which means you only pay 112.50 in taxes, so you actually make 4887.50. Makes a HUGE difference.
Okay, so obviously for tax purposes, creating a business is a lot better (even taking into account the expense to create the business and paying an accountant and dealing with state sales tax if your selling something).
But lets say you are just starting off. The first few years, you may spend 10K in materials, but since no one knows who you are, you may only sell 8K worth of stuff. This is even better for tax purposes, because you actually have a $2k loss. But after a few years, the govt. will say it is a hobby and not a business.
So if you want to start a business out of your hobby, make sure you know whats going on. If you wait to long, you may waste a lot of money, but if you start to early, you may lose the business.
Lets say you have a hobby and you end up making $15k in a year. But it costs you $10K worth of materials and time. If this is just a hobby, you legally have to claim $15k in income, even though you really only made 5K. At 15% tax rate, that means you should be paying $2250 in taxes... So after expenses and taxes, you end up with 2750.
So now lets convert the hobby into a business. Now you can claim all the materials as business expenses. So now you only have to claim 5K, which means you only pay 112.50 in taxes, so you actually make 4887.50. Makes a HUGE difference.
Okay, so obviously for tax purposes, creating a business is a lot better (even taking into account the expense to create the business and paying an accountant and dealing with state sales tax if your selling something).
But lets say you are just starting off. The first few years, you may spend 10K in materials, but since no one knows who you are, you may only sell 8K worth of stuff. This is even better for tax purposes, because you actually have a $2k loss. But after a few years, the govt. will say it is a hobby and not a business.
So if you want to start a business out of your hobby, make sure you know whats going on. If you wait to long, you may waste a lot of money, but if you start to early, you may lose the business.
Monday, July 6, 2009
ffxi vs wow pt 1
Learning Curve.
Well, I started with FFXI. This made WOW extreamly easy to learn. Basic macro's in WOW take a little more work then FFXI, but that it. With a simple drag and drop interface to put your spells on your casting bar, WOW is a lot easier to figure out what your are doing. Not to mention, in WOW, by the time your level 20, you have most of the same spells/actions you will be using at endgame (slight exaggeration, but not really). FFXI, you either have to type in your commands, or set up your macro bars by hand, and change them depending on what your doing.
As far as communication and transactions, they are about equal.
Easy of use gives the mark to WOW.
Leveling to max level.
FFXI has 75 levels and needs just over 845,000 EXP to cap. WOW has 80 levels and needs a bit over 26,105,000 EXP. So from that, it looks like FFXI has a huge advantage on leveling speed. But the numbers can be misleading.
From level 61-75, base XP for FFXI solo is 300 per kill (this is the most you can get for a single kill with no bonuses). With some effort (and EXP rings), you can pull off a little over 1000 EXP on a single kill, but this can only happen on a rare occassion. Also, don't forget that every death in FFXI will cause you to lose EXP. Depending on your level and the way you resurrect, it can cost 10% of the levels needed EXP. Losing 4400 EXP because you died at level 75 and didn't get a raise, means you add in another 15 kills to make it up.
From 70-80 in WOW, getting 1000 EXP per kill is quite simple. If you log off for the night in a city, you will get rested EXP bonus, so it is not much work to pull it off.
Another benefit to EXP in WOW is quest XP. In Outland (lvl 60-70), most quests give around 10K EXP. In Northland (lvl 70-80), getting 20K per quest is quite normal.
To give a (not very accurate, but gives an idea) rundown of kills. FFXI would need 2817 kills. WOW would need about 26,105 kills. But when you add in the HUGE number of quests available in WOW that give the same EXP as 10-20 kills, and take away the EXP loss for death in FFXI, it really brings the gap down.
Lets look at kill times also. In WOW, at 78, most of the mobs giving 1000XP take about 20-30 seconds to kill. In FFXI, most jobs can't even solo a mob that will grant them 300 XP. Those that can, it will normally take upwards of 10-20 minutes. So killing max XP mobs in FFXI is a really bad idea.
The idea for soloing XP in FFXI is to find the "sweet spot" for your job. On average, most jobs can solo 2000-3000 EXP per hour. BLM can pull off closer to 10K per hour (thank god, since they can't get parties much). BLU, SMN, and BST can all pull off 8-10K at certain levels when played correctly.
In WOW, if you want to solo XP, you go find things needed to kill for the quests you are working on, then take care of business.
So if your goal is to solo XP to max level as fast as possible, WOW is the winner hands down. With all the quests involved, it makes the grind seem a lot less tedious. If you want to solo XP (or party smartly), and have a game where how you play can tend to change every few levels, then FFXI wins out by a small margin.
Well, I started with FFXI. This made WOW extreamly easy to learn. Basic macro's in WOW take a little more work then FFXI, but that it. With a simple drag and drop interface to put your spells on your casting bar, WOW is a lot easier to figure out what your are doing. Not to mention, in WOW, by the time your level 20, you have most of the same spells/actions you will be using at endgame (slight exaggeration, but not really). FFXI, you either have to type in your commands, or set up your macro bars by hand, and change them depending on what your doing.
As far as communication and transactions, they are about equal.
Easy of use gives the mark to WOW.
Leveling to max level.
FFXI has 75 levels and needs just over 845,000 EXP to cap. WOW has 80 levels and needs a bit over 26,105,000 EXP. So from that, it looks like FFXI has a huge advantage on leveling speed. But the numbers can be misleading.
From level 61-75, base XP for FFXI solo is 300 per kill (this is the most you can get for a single kill with no bonuses). With some effort (and EXP rings), you can pull off a little over 1000 EXP on a single kill, but this can only happen on a rare occassion. Also, don't forget that every death in FFXI will cause you to lose EXP. Depending on your level and the way you resurrect, it can cost 10% of the levels needed EXP. Losing 4400 EXP because you died at level 75 and didn't get a raise, means you add in another 15 kills to make it up.
From 70-80 in WOW, getting 1000 EXP per kill is quite simple. If you log off for the night in a city, you will get rested EXP bonus, so it is not much work to pull it off.
Another benefit to EXP in WOW is quest XP. In Outland (lvl 60-70), most quests give around 10K EXP. In Northland (lvl 70-80), getting 20K per quest is quite normal.
To give a (not very accurate, but gives an idea) rundown of kills. FFXI would need 2817 kills. WOW would need about 26,105 kills. But when you add in the HUGE number of quests available in WOW that give the same EXP as 10-20 kills, and take away the EXP loss for death in FFXI, it really brings the gap down.
Lets look at kill times also. In WOW, at 78, most of the mobs giving 1000XP take about 20-30 seconds to kill. In FFXI, most jobs can't even solo a mob that will grant them 300 XP. Those that can, it will normally take upwards of 10-20 minutes. So killing max XP mobs in FFXI is a really bad idea.
The idea for soloing XP in FFXI is to find the "sweet spot" for your job. On average, most jobs can solo 2000-3000 EXP per hour. BLM can pull off closer to 10K per hour (thank god, since they can't get parties much). BLU, SMN, and BST can all pull off 8-10K at certain levels when played correctly.
In WOW, if you want to solo XP, you go find things needed to kill for the quests you are working on, then take care of business.
So if your goal is to solo XP to max level as fast as possible, WOW is the winner hands down. With all the quests involved, it makes the grind seem a lot less tedious. If you want to solo XP (or party smartly), and have a game where how you play can tend to change every few levels, then FFXI wins out by a small margin.
Friday, July 3, 2009
ffxi vs wow preview
Well, since this is the preview, I guess I should give a little overview. I have been an avid rpg gamer for many years.
For MMORPG's, I started with Final Fantasy XI. Though I haven't had much time to play lately, I am still the shell holder for one for one of the most effective Dynamis linkshells. I have done other endgame activities, but most of them didn't interst me as much. Camping a ground king for 3 hours a day against 150+ people, many running bots, hoping to get the claim for a 10 minute fight that doesn't drop anything you want, and probably won't drop anything the rest of the LS wants... it just wasn't my idea of fun.
As far as WOW, I have only been playing it for a few months. My highest character is a level 78 Orc Death Knight. I can't really say much about the endgame, because I haven't been involved in it much. I have done a bit of PVP though. Playing on a laptop using a tracpad and not having a numeric keypad does make things difficult. It is kind of hard to jump around and move while hitting the numbers to do different commands.
So I am going to compare the two dealing with the stuff that I actually can compre. Leveling, questing, making money, parties, jobs, etc.
For MMORPG's, I started with Final Fantasy XI. Though I haven't had much time to play lately, I am still the shell holder for one for one of the most effective Dynamis linkshells. I have done other endgame activities, but most of them didn't interst me as much. Camping a ground king for 3 hours a day against 150+ people, many running bots, hoping to get the claim for a 10 minute fight that doesn't drop anything you want, and probably won't drop anything the rest of the LS wants... it just wasn't my idea of fun.
As far as WOW, I have only been playing it for a few months. My highest character is a level 78 Orc Death Knight. I can't really say much about the endgame, because I haven't been involved in it much. I have done a bit of PVP though. Playing on a laptop using a tracpad and not having a numeric keypad does make things difficult. It is kind of hard to jump around and move while hitting the numbers to do different commands.
So I am going to compare the two dealing with the stuff that I actually can compre. Leveling, questing, making money, parties, jobs, etc.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Google Voice, Google Friend Connect, Google Adsence, Google Sites, Blogger, Orkut, Wave, Apps, Desktop, Earth, etc etc.
How do they all combine?
Google does a great job with many of the projects, but a few fall short. It is not possible (as far as I can tell), to use Google Friend Connect on a Google Sites site. But then with the future turning to Wave, it may make some of the other programs obsolete.
I must say though, I am very excited about Google Voice. Now that it is finally being rolled out. Not sure how far they are through the list, but I got my account a few days ago from back when I signed up to Grand Central. As I go through and use it more, I'll write more about it.
Along with that, I'm (trying) to set up a Google Sites site for the classes I teach. I haven't been too happy with the interface for that yet, but we will see how it goes.
How do they all combine?
Google does a great job with many of the projects, but a few fall short. It is not possible (as far as I can tell), to use Google Friend Connect on a Google Sites site. But then with the future turning to Wave, it may make some of the other programs obsolete.
I must say though, I am very excited about Google Voice. Now that it is finally being rolled out. Not sure how far they are through the list, but I got my account a few days ago from back when I signed up to Grand Central. As I go through and use it more, I'll write more about it.
Along with that, I'm (trying) to set up a Google Sites site for the classes I teach. I haven't been too happy with the interface for that yet, but we will see how it goes.
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