Pie and I have been plugging away at FF14, not seeming to make any significant progress but having fun nonetheless. Though we haven't even reached our prospective secondary classes, we're still merrily getting pulled in various directions as we explore what's offered.

A huge highlight of the game has been the community. So many people we've met have be incredibly welcoming, helpful, and aren't adverse to just chit chatting; an aspect oddly missing from many MMOs. Pie and I surmise that a big part of the stronger community is based on the fact that there are reasons people would want to go back and visit older zones and progress through old content on their main, many times only, characters. Since you can do everything on a single character and pay a lower subscription price for doing so, I feel it does a lot to help keep people connected. Also, since group content is synced, it's possible to play with a high level friend without making it boring for either of you.

With the release of the Gold Saucer this week, the casino has been abuzz with activity as people congregate to partake in the mini-games in the huge homage to FF7. Though Pie and I were worried that SquareEnix would be a little shameless about feeding off of fans' nostalgia, we've never felt that it was heavy handed. Rather, the game does a good job mixing in many different elements from the series in a oddly cohesive whole while still presenting something new. I've often felt that I was playing a mix of some the older games in the series, but with others online and with a new and interesting story. It's pretty exciting!

Crafting has been consuming a lot of my time because it's been built to be a rather enjoyable little mini-game in its own right. In the world, many items come in normal and high quality variants and if you want to make your items HQ, you need to carefully craft the item through proper skill and reagent usage to achieve the desired result. Sometimes luck plays a part in it, but many times you can take the luck out of the equation by utilizing HQ reagents, which many times come from older, easier to produce, recipes. This is rather welcome because I swear this game lies to you about the success rates; it's preposterous how often I've failed dice rolls that were 90-95% success chances. It's like a RNG Tonberry is waiting in the dark and decides...yup...he won the roll but i'mma stab him instead. Then you wake up, your stuff is gone or broken and all you have to show for it is a gaping knife wound.

Okay...well...the wound IS pretty cool.