This seems to be a pretty fervent topic lately what with outernauts coming out on facebook recently, arguably one of the nicest facebook games available.  
 
It is... The energy system, effectively putting a block on "hardcore" players who sink their time into a game hour after hour. Its gotten mostly disdain from us and less so from casual players, and people who can steal energy by spamming messages and having a large amount of active friends that also got roped into the energy system. It's almost like a quarter effect in arcades where you must sink in more cash to keep playing if you want to. The difference is this is a device coupled with failure, urging the player to continue on after defeat. Energy couples itself with progress, urging a player to continue playing the game even though they already want to - which is gross to me. Now from our perspective it's disgusting and rightfully so, if we have the time to invest in some bad facebook game ( in insomniacs case a good one ) then gosh darn we want to and not feel limited or pressured into spamming people or spending money on continuing to play the game.  
 
Now final fantasy XIV for awhile put a cap on experience you could earn in the day. A similar progress stopper that was eventually removed but it was coupled with a monthly fee so there was no point in impeding the progress of people with this. The energy system is almost a way to handhold you into making sure you don't spend time on the computer to long, almost, since they allow themselves to take money from you to continue playing if you so desire than it sometimes is more expensive than a monthly fee. It's a really horrible way of using the F2P model, if we look at Team Fortress 2, Super Monday Night Combat, and an MMO I've played for a while Vindictus, personally I've put money in all these games, Team Fortress 2 is a jerk for making crates that need keys you must buy, BUT HEY I buy them because I want to, and SMNC lets you buy characters so you can use them without the weekly rotation limits, vindictus is the standard MMO cosmetic and booster thing. People spend a lot of money in these games and are more encouraged I think because they don't have to, it's an option. Recently Mike Krahulik posted about this and that's what made me start thinking about it, he gave the examples of League of Legends to outernauts saying the same thing.  
 
It's a time sink that we can't sink into, but it protects some people from spending to much time with it... but people bypass that with the gross system they've put in place which is energy, the evil modern day arcade quarter pump. This is just another rant of mine, but I'm scared that when "hardcore" and "casual" bleed together systems like this don't get worked out and purged from the new generation of games and their push towards free to play games. An example of that I can think of is Spiral Knights on steam, it gives you so many points to delve into dungeons and at a certain point you can't progress and grind out materials and exp, impeding my progress. It's a cool little game and I like it's style and combat but that system kills my desire to play because I can only play for the set amount of time they decide for me. I don't think this system will stay in place as games continue to be made, maybe it will keep on social networks like facebook and G+ but currently I don't like it and it needs a look at from companies. I was hoping insomniac games would be the ones to look at it and change it, but they plug into the same power supply, our wallet. 

Final Fantasy XIV. 

Why am I playing this game you may be wondering, because final fantasy XIII-2 came out and the first thing that came to mind was "I always wanted to play XIV." If my memory serves me right the game came out with very poor reception, and still has a negative look on it. This is why it's being released as XIV 2.0, which in game lore wise means the end of a world, very interesting. I may have not been there for a the beginning and didn't have the hype that fans had and chopped out from under them, but reading up on and a quick impulse buy from gamestop set me in to see the end and beginning. 

I've been playing the game for a while now, with college and work it's been random amounts of time ranging from maybe an hour to on a weekend sometimes 6 or more. I haven't clocked my hours but I'm not very far in, first of all I chose a Lalafell 

Jahan Shark, Jahan is my stupid default spelling of my name John when playing fantasy games. Anyway, Lalafells are my Lilties of this world and I always like to pick the shortest characters in games because I'm a short dude. 

I read up and chose Besaid as my server, and Ul'dah as my hometown that was on the up and up on population (at the time of the forum posts I was reading) with the poor reception of the game I suppose that's why there is so little people roaming around the towns and such, and anyone in the game now is higher level doin' whatever those people do. I couldn't talk anyone into investing the money to play FFXIV with me so me and my Lalafell were taking this journey by ourselves. 

As far as I can tell, most guides and forums posts about this game are old and outdated, people aren't trying to figure out how to play the game because they're not playing, or have been in the game long enough to figure it out. So explanation for many of the mechanics in the game are explained through The Lodestone website and in game text, without it I'd be completely lost. Quests are scattered about Ul'dah and I've been following this main story quest so far, a few I suppose side quests of "collect the sleep nuts from nutgrabber marmots" which can't be taken seriously, seriously. Also crafting, so much crafting, I figured out how to start crafting things and that's led to many of the hours i've played running around for ore veins and trees for lumber, which wouldn't be to bad if I didn't have to change my equipment everytime I wanted to do a new task, auto equipping my tools for me would be amazing. The class system is wild, you are the class of whatever your primary weapon is, so gladiator is a 1h sword or a skillet would make a cook. You can change class at anytime and they all level separetly, even the skill points you get after a certain level are separate from the other classes. It's put me in a daze as to what I should do, leveling this so I can keep my equipment up to date, or leveling here so I can fight these, or leveling this so I have the materials for that. I suppose if I had many friends who were taking different jobs I wouldn't have to try and play to everything but that's what it is for a lonely mmo player in the ending era of a world.

I'm going to keep playing, mostly for the special mount that you can get at level 30 that can't be attained after the 2.0 wipe, but also because I like this final fantasy, Tactics/Chronicles kind of setting. As far as an mmo, it's an mmo, it's got some different things that make it cool, and some that don't make it cool. In terms of mmos that doesn't mean a whole lot, at this point in time it's playing WoW or finding one you like setting wise, or where all your friends are. In this case it's setting for me, and seeing out to the end to see the era change. People may not like how the game turned out, but I like how they are handling this rerelease in terms of actual games lore. I'm not sure why I'm playing an MMO by myself, broken down it seems kind of sad, but I keep leveling up, eventually I'll have to find some people to help me at some point, but until then it's just another lonely day for this XIV player.

I just bought devil summoner 2 and from what it seemed the plushies were still in stock so HERE'S HOPE'N I GET MINE WHEN IT ARRIVES WOOOOOOOOO

the game looks pretty fun to me despite vinny and jeff's reaction to it even though I felt the nerd rage subside when they claimed "it seems like one of those games you'd like if you got further into it" so fair's fair. 

I do indeed have the atlust a little more now that this endurance run has been going on and I've loved every atlust game i've played so far which has mostly been the persona series but I've branched out a little more I even liked dokopon kingdom! :O

but ya I hope I do get that plushy I can later hand it over on the proud day I find a female to have a child with, and my son or daughter will have nothing but smiles on their face. Or I'll just sit it on a nice shelf in my lonely apartment and play atlus games and be happy (>w<)b

I get on the ol' internet and I'm like "y'know what'd be cool?" Then I answer myself by saying "if giantbomb was up" I click on my bookmarks and load up giantbomb and "BOMB-OMB!" i'm hit RIGHT IN THE FACE WITH AWESOME and now I must explore this paradise given to me by these fine fellows.


cheers.