Much Ado About Mathosia

Much Ado About Mathosia

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A few days ago I wrote about the upcoming zone event that had been advertised for Rift, called Mayhem in Mathosia.  So I have to say it sounded really cool, major invasions going on for a few days in certain areas of the world.  I did not have a chance to log in Friday night, but after running around town I logged in yesterday evening and participated for an hour or so.  I have to say overall I am extremely disappointed.  I expected there to be more going on than there actually was.

I wandered around Freemarch did several major invasions and quite honestly the entire time I was wondering why exactly they made a big deal about this.  The invasions themselves felt absolutely no different than the ones that NORMALLY happen in Freemarch.  As far as the loot that was supposedly available, I saw no sign of that either.  The only thing out of the ordinary I managed to get were a bunch of gifts that you could give to the people of freemarch.  I am guessing there is an achievement for giving these out, as it did not seem to really do much of anything otherwise.

Maybe after doing FATEs in FFXIV I have come to expect more out of an event, or maybe I had just worked this up in my mind to be something bigger than it actually is.  In either case I found the experience overall disappointing.  I fear that in order to see any of the loot they are touting you would have to literally grind events for hours… and the frustrating part there is there was a significant amount of time that passed between the spin down of one event and the start up of the next.  The event so far seems like “much ado about nothing”, and while I am sure I will pop in and participate in some of the other zones… it is no longer a priority for me.

A Fitting End

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Since the Rift event was a massive disappointment, I ended up back in FFXIV with the guild.  For awhile now we have been trying to get eight players to 50 so we could finish out the storyline.  The final arc takes place over the course of two eight man dungeons, and I really wanted to experience it with my guild members and freshly.  One of our members got impatient and finished things up on his own, since he was the first 50… but he has generally been really good about keeping the surprises silent so we can experience dungeons together for the first time.  Dallian was the last to reach 50 of the 8 man team, and as a result we spent a bit of time last night killing random stuff in Northern Thanalan to push him across the line.

The conclusion felt as epic as this game deserves, and the fact that it takes place over two eight man dungeons and an eight man trial only adds to this feeling.  There has only been one other MMO that I have played that had anything close to an ending, and so far this game sets better with me.  At the end of SWTOR you had a nice clean tie up… that went nowhere… nothing in the world changed around you.  However in Final Fantasy you essentially have completed one chapter of the game, and are treated to a nice epilogue.

This would have been cool enough alone… but the moment you finish the sequence… you are given the NEXT set of quests to start carrying on AFTER the events of the finale.  The peace you just fought for is only the opening act of a much more dangerous tale.  The thing is… while you are playing out the finale, at no point does it feel like anything other than the end of a game.  You are even treated with credits upon finishing the quest.  It feels like finishing any other Final Fantasy game, but in the continued traditional of being the most inappropriately named series… there is nothing final about it.

I am really looking forward to seeing new content released.  It has been rumored that the 2.1 patch will include a new 4 man, 8 man and the 24 man raid content.  If we can somehow manage to keep our entire guild interested… we might someday be able to do the 24 man content by ourselves.  At very least we seem to have a really well balanced 8 man team.  The two 8 man dungeons were a bit of a letdown in one area however.  The 8 man guild hest was extremely awesome in that there was no main tank… and as fights progressed both tanks were equally active.  However in the two Garlean dungeons, there was definitely one main tank and one tank dealing with everything BUT the boss.  After how equitable the division of labor was in the hest, it was disappointing to see it fall back to the old standby of main tank/off tank.

2 thoughts on “Much Ado About Mathosia”

  1. I don’t know that the Mayham event is even remotely close to what we experienced at the launch of the game. Of course, there’s the distinct difference of the majority of the players being mentored level 60’s who have skills and gear that make them way stronger than we were 2 years ago when we were facing these things for the first time. Rifts open, and the mobs get bombarded with AoE so quickly that sometimes the mobs don’t even appear on your screen until they’re dead. If you don’t have AoE, switch characters or switch souls or else you’re going to have a hard time getting credit for participation.

    Overall, the event is basically just like any other day in Rift, except that there are more rifts than usual every 30 minutes or so. There’s a weekly quest to seal 35 rifts in whichever zones the event is currently going on in, and I’ve finished that on 3 different characters now. The item you get at the end is where most of the cool stuff can supposedly come from. I didn’t get anything special in any of mine, but my wife got a spider mount that was pretty cool.

    I did find about a handful of the special “rare” items that you can get from the events themselves, which are primarily dimension items and costume pieces. None of them really thrilled me, honestly. There’s a pet and a mount that you can get, but I’m not big on pets and the mount is the Ki Rin dragon-goat-whatever thing that I personally really can’t stand the look of and would never actually ride.

    The good thing about the event is that you get your choice of sourcestones when you finish the weekly quest, including the option to get 650 Inscribed Sourcestones. You can choose that option on a low level alt, get an escort up to Iron Pine Peaks, and then convert that into 6,500 planarite which can get you loads of gear or can be put towards Omen Sight or whatever the other faction calls it, that lets you see the red artifacts. Normally characters earn the planarite to purchase that somewhere around level 35-45, but this one quest gives you half of what you need and can be turned in at any level.

    There’s a different weekly every time the zones change (every 2 days) so even a character around level 20 can earn enough for the Sight ability pretty easily.

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