Final Fantasy XIV - To Buy or Not To Buy...?

It's September...I have my pre-orders in for Valkyria Chronicles II and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep Limited Collector's Edition - the latter of the two somewhat (actually pretty much) grudgingly. You must wonder why I even bother buying a game, let alone the collector's edition, that I'm not too fond of...and I'll cover that another day - actually, I just thought about the content of this post and you'll most likely find out why a little later on.

One game I'm not sure about putting my hard-earned cash towards is Final Fantasy XIV. I'm probably not the only one who thinks this, but from what I've seen it looks like Final Fantasy XI repackaged - why would I want to pay for an essential clone? I'm not fond of MMORPG's - I see the upside of community, teamwork and playing with real people, but for me the downside lies in monotony, subscription fees and playing with real people. Why would playing with real people be a plus and a downside? Well playing with people is fun, you can talk and login for reasons other than hacking away at enemies and progressing the story - you can complete sidequests together. One fond memory I have of FFXI is when I was around Lv. 6 or so and I logged in to meet a friend, I had somehow earned the aggro from a Goblin and it nearly killed me when my friend swooped in and killed it at the last moment. Totally something out of an anime.

What I'm not too fond of when it comes to playing with people is 'teamwork'. If you're unlucky and end up in a crappy group, everyone will be out for themselves, or there'll be an evident imbalance in the team make-up. What frustrates me is that the very nature of the game forces you to play with other people and it's nigh impossible to play on your own after a certain point. Sometimes, well me in any case, one needs to be able to login and hack a few things, perhaps progress through a quest without the help of someone else, simply because rather than waiting for a team to be put together, I could handle it more quickly solo.