It’s been awhile since I’ve had much to say about Final Fantasy XIV, so I felt it was a good time to give a frank review of the game. I wanted to do this sooner, but with how poor the quality of the game was at release, I wanted to give Square some time to get their act together. Obviously, that’s going to take a lot longer than most people had believed, so I’m going to give a review of the game from the viewpoint of someone who has played since Beta and through to the latest updates.

*Disclaimer: The beginning of this review is going to come off as a fairly harsh rant, and many of the things I’m harshest about have either been fixed or at least are being worked on presently. If you have something to say about what I post, please be sure to read the entire review before trying to tell me how Square has fixed something I call them out for here. The review isn’t all negative either.

FFXIV Limsa Daelenn

From Beta to Retail: Such a short journey

I remember while playing in the Beta for XIV many of us commented about how horrible the lag was (mostly in menu systems and inventory management) and that the zones seemed large but empty. People had a lot of other complaints as well, such as no airships or chocobos, the fact that changing regions caused zoning, the complete lack of questing, the lack of an Auction House, etc. A lot of us assumed that things were only like that because it was, after all, a Beta and not the full version of the game. Plenty of Betas can have lag issues while the companies work out the kinks with servers and the fact that there’s a lot of debugging software running in the background. We assumed that chocobos and airships would be in the retail release as well, considering we could see the airship docks and chocobo stables. Square had been discussing placing an Auction House in the game if they felt it was needed, and we figured that quests would be in the retail version and maybe the zoning was done to hide unopened areas of the game.

How naive we all were. Most of my friends that played XIV spent the extra money for the Collector’s Edition of the game and we got to start a week early. The changes that were made from Beta to Retail? They finally unlocked the hardware mouse and the rest of the story missions and class missions were unlocked… that’s basically it. Some of the lag was gone, as expected, but trying to fight your way through a menu was still a horrid chore in the game. The entire game consisted of five regions and that really was all of the world we could visit, just as in Beta. Oh yeah, and still no signs of our beloved chocobos or the ability to take an airship to another city-state.

The World of Eorzea

One thing that Square definitely did well was designing the world of Eorzea. Well.. at least in the “damn that’s pretty” department. The regions are quite breath-taking in many respects, and the character design is some of the most gorgeous I’ve seen in any MMO out. A lot of MMOs have good looking characters, but you always seem to have problems viewing the models in much detail. In XIV, the character designs are so intricate and the level of detail on almost every piece of equipment really stands out. Every piece of gear you wear is intricately detailed on your model as well, right down to the rings on your fingers.

That’s where the applause stop unfortunately. While the regions are quite pretty, they are also enormous and basically nothing but a copy-paste job all over the place. There seems to be very little variation in the look of the terrain across an entire region. The other issue I have with the regions is the horrible job done with transitioning. When you get to the edge of one area, you “zone” into the next one with a loading screen. Going from Thanalan to The Black Shroud you go from a desert setting straight into a dense forest area with a tree canopy you’re unable to see the sky through and flowing rivers and lakes. Some of that could be forgiven, but the fact that these vast regions are also incredibly empty doesn’t do much to increase the depth of the world. Not only are the monsters rather spread out, but the little hamlets or whatever you want to call them with NPCs in them are pointless (so far this has never changed either). When I say pointless, I mean that they look as though they should be small towns but the NPCs have nothing to say or sell at all.

A few other annoyances come in the form of environmental.. pathing I guess would be the word. Most of the regions are fairly open, but for some reason The Black Shroud is basically a giant hedge maze. Another huge issue is the inconsistencies found when coming upon a small cliff area. Some places have a small 5ft ledge and you are able to move up or down it without issue, yet another 2ft ledge a short ways away cannot be traversed. Now, I can understand in some places not being able to get up every ledge, but when you come across a 2ft high “cliff” there’s no excuse that you’re forced to run all the way around it instead of just hopping down.

The Combat

Let’s be honest here.. the combat in XIV is wretched. Square did some interesting things with the combat system, some I even like or at least find intriguing, but overall the system feels slow, sluggish, and fairly broken. Early on they decided to remove auto-attacking, and they even sped combat up from Alpha to Beta, but it still feels slow. Now, I’ve read plenty of die-hard fans post about how they did the right thing and auto-attacking is stupid in games because you couldn’t keep swinging a sword non-stop or you’d become fatigued, blah blah blah. Here’s a better analogy: look at something like fencing, you’re typically attacking, defending and counter-attacking nonstop. Doing things like a lunge, a parry, a riposte or simply adding a flourish to your attack or going into a flurry of blows.. these are the “special” moves. What makes less sense to me is standing still between attacks while the mob you’re fighting continues to beat on you. The more I played the game though, the less that bothered me honestly, but it does still feel weird.

One of the things I remember loving in FFXI were the skill chains you could create with special moves that were timed with other party member’s weapon skills. The weapon skills looked cool, the effects looked cool and casters could do a “magic burst” for added damage as well. In XIV the skill chains are replaced with the “Battle Regimen” system. In theory it sounds like a decent system, chain attacks, spells and/or weapon skills together for effects that vary to lowering a mob’s armor, magic defense, their attack power, etc. In practice however, they’re an extreme hassle to put into use. Turning on the Battle Regimen locks you into an automated attack pattern with whoever else joins the “queue.” This tends to slow combat down even more and can lock people out of moving if something goes wrong.

On the subject of special attacks, they’re still using the “TP” system from XI, so that as you attack you gain TP which is used to unleash some of your special attacks. This is completely fine, but what bothers me is that in XI you didn’t lose TP unless you rested (sitting down to regain hp/mp, which is removed in XIV). In this game however, you lose TP automatically; slowly in combat and more quickly out of combat. This isn’t always an issue, but when most of the “leves” have mobs really spread out or that flat out run from you to a new location.. then it becomes a huge issue. Whether I stay in active or passive mode, I usually never have TP when I reach the next mob and have to start all over with gaining more.

This leads to another issue many people have with the game: active vs passive modes. In most MMOs I have played, you simply draw your weapon and begin attacking, but in XIV you have to actively change from being in passive mode to active mode in order to do anything. Even when you’re not currently fighting a mob, if you try to heal your friends you have to switch to active mode, wait for the animation of drawing your weapon and then cast your spell. This may not be an issue if the animation took 1/2 a second, but it ends up taking a couple of seconds every time you switch and completely locks you out of moving while you wait. A better example is the Archer’s speed boost move: you have to switch to active mode in order to use it, wait for the animation of drawing your weapon, use the ability, wait for the ability animation, then start running. The ability lasts 30secs, but after you wait for the animations and can start running, the timer is already down to like 24secs remaining. They either need to scrap the active vs passive system altogether, or greatly improve the optimization of the animations so that they do not lock you out of everything during them.

Something I seriously don’t understand though, is how horrible the animation and effects from special moves and spells are. I know that Square is capable of so much better than what they gave us here, because their games always have amazing special effects, and even FFXI on the PS2 had cooler looking battle animations. Apart from the mere look of effects, another thing they seriously need to improve is the duration of castable buffs and for the love of god show us just what the hell food does for us.  I can’t understand their reasoning for giving spells like Protect and Shell a 5min duration and food buffs that they refuse to let you see what they do for us.

The Class System

On paper, the class system seems quite intriguing and has a lot of original ideas about it. In practice though, I’m still not sold on it working very well. Square didn’t want to just copy the main job/sub job system that they did in XI, which I actually liked a lot personally, so they came up with a system where you could basically level as every class on one character and mix and match abilities however you liked. Not every ability is usable outside of it’s specific class, and many of them are nerfed in some ways, but it is nice being able to play a melee character and have access to your own Cure spell in a pinch.

Before I go too far into reviewing the classes, I should explain how the system is laid out. Unlike most games that have “classes” and “crafts,” XIV has 4 “Disciplines” which consist of combat classes, gathering jobs and crafting jobs. Disciples of War are the physical combat classes of Archer, Gladiator, Lancer, Marauder and Pugilist, while Disciples of Magic are the caster classes of Conjurer and Thaumaturge. Crafting falls under the tree of Disciples of the Hand, which include Alchemist, Armorer, Blacksmith, Carpenter, Culinarian, Goldsmith, Leatherworker and Weaver, while the gathering classes are called Disciples of the Land and are the Botanist, Fisher and Miner.

If you played FFXI, some of the classes will feel a little familiar. Archer is basically a Ranger, Lancer is like a Dragoon without the pet,  Gladiator is mostly the one-handed weapon Warrior that can also tank with a shield while Marauder is the two-handed Warrior that focuses on DPS. Pugilist is basically a Monk with a few Thief abilities thrown in, but plays well as a tank, which seems to be Square trying to rectify how they saw Monk originally for FFXI. Personally, I found the absence of Thief/Rogue quite glaring and a huge let down considering A) they’re one of the staples of Final Fantasy classes and B) they’re one of my personal favorites in every fantasy game. The fact that XIV launched with only two caster classes felt like a glaring omission for many people, and lack of a proper Summoner type class was a definite let-down for a lot of people. Conjurer basically combines the White and Black Mages from XI, focusing on both healing, buffing and dealing elemental damage. Thaumaturge combines a lot of the abilities from Red Mage and Dark Knight, mixing HoT type heals with damaging spells and debuffs. One of the most “ugh” moments though, is when you see Raise isn’t learned until lvl38 Conjurer for some unknown reason.

Classes in XIV can be switched at anytime when out of combat, simply by changing your Main Hand weapon. This includes crafting and gathering classes, such as equipping a saw will change your class to a Carpenter, or equipping a fishing rod will change you to Fisher. In other words, you never have to “unlock” jobs or train for them, you simply buy a weapon that corresponds to the appropriate job, equip it, and now you’re a Blacksmith, Pugilist, Botanist, etc. It’s definitely a new spin on classes for an MMO, but if you like trying a lot of different professions, it can be hell on your inventory.

Another thing to learn in XIV is that you have both a Physical Level and a Rank Level. As you level up in the game, you’ll gain both experience points and skill points. Physical level is increased through experience and unlocks extra attribute points that you can feed into stats like Dexterity, while Rank Level is increased through skill points and unlocks new abilities and more points to use in “equipping” those skills. This brings up another aspect of the Class system: equipping skills. Instead of simply learning new skills as you level up, you only unlock the ability to equip them. Say for example, you’re a level 20 Conjurer with 20pts of space on your action bar, but all of your spells add up to 35pts. You have to pick and choose which ones you would like to use at one time (these are just random numbers used for an example, so don’t try to argue the exact points available at lvl20). This makes for some variety and forces people to make choices (although you can always switch these around when not in combat). The system also allows you to equip abilities like Cure while playing Lancer, but not all abilities can be used by all jobs since some things are tied to a specific weapon. While you can’t equip abilities as a crafter, both crafters and gatherers gain their own abilities, and you CAN mix crafting abilities with other crafts.

One of the coolest parts of the class system would probably be the class-specific quest stories that you can eventually unlock. I also like that similar to FFXI, you can level up every class on one character, which is actually encouraged since you can make a stronger character by mixing and matching certain abilities. Some of the downsides to the system however, would be the meh amount of combat classes currently in the game and the lack-luster amount of abilities you actually learn over the course of 50lvls.

Questing.. and the lack thereof

Other than just running around looking for stuff to kill, the way to gain xp in XIV is mostly handled through what SE calls Guildleves. When you go into the Adventurer’s Guild in any of the 3 main towns, you can speak to an NPC that will offer a number of “quests” called Guildleves. You can grab a couple of these and do them each day for some xp, gil and sometimes a decent reward like a new piece of gear. Most of the leves are rather bland however, and they pretty much all require you to go out to some remote camp, start the leve and then kill x number of creatures y. When you get to said remote camp, you’re then able to start and share or link the leve with other members of your party. You can also choose the difficulty of the leve from between 1 and 5 stars. 1 star is basically for solo’ing, 2 stars for duo’ing and so on, but this also varies by level and leve, since doing a lvl30 leve with 3 lvl 22′s can be hard at even 1 star, while two people can duo a 5 star leve at level.

Another important thing to know about the Guildleves is that you can only complete 8 of them every 36hrs. Originally this was every 48hrs, but SE decided to “drastically lower” the cooldown to only 36hrs. You can also pick up Local Leves, which are basically crafting dailies-and-a-half.. since they also have a 36hr reset. The one nice thing about the crafting leves is that you’re given the materials to create the requested items, so it’s basically free skill-up. Note however that you’re not actually handed the materials themselves, so there’s no trying to gain a bunch of free mats. Doing these leves also gives you points towards 1 of the 3 “factions” which also offer their own special quests at the Adventurer’s Guild. Depending on the level of the quest, you’ll need about 100pts to spend on them every 10 lvls, so a lvl30 faction quest will cost you 300 points, and you do spend them when you take the quest. The quests tend to give more gil or class points than normal leves and occasionally offer unique pieces of gear, but they can also offer horrendously crappy rewards considering their costs.

Every 5-10ish levels you’ll also be able to do story missions for the main story line, as well as class specific story quests, which are really the game’s saving grace. Unfortunately the missions are so spread out during the long leveling grind that you can easily forget what was going on by the time you get to do the next part. What the game seriously is lacking is a standard quest structure that basically EVERY other MMO has. Granted, the typical fetch quests, kill quests, escort quests etc in games like WoW get extremely monotonous, but without quests the game feels incredibly empty, like it’s full of useless NPCs with nothing to say and a total lack of lore.

SE finally did add some quests into the game long after I started writing this review, but so far they were implemented horribly by all accounts. Randomly placed NPCs around the world with a cartoony looking exclamation point above them will offer quests, after you go through a ton of text and they get to the point. They tend to reward some gil or lvl appropriate gear and are typically kill quests that send you to some far off area. Basically they’re just more Guildleves that you can only do once, oh and you get no xp for killing the quest mobs.

Crafting and the Free-Market System

Crafting in the Carpentry Guild

Crafting in FFXIV is… interesting. What makes the system really cool and interesting is that it’s highly realistic in some ways, which is also what makes crafting such a horrible pain in the ass and too complex for a video game. One of the biggest problems Square Enix has always had is that they try to make the things that don’t matter too realistic and the things that do matter not realistic. Example: in real life, people jump and can step over an inch high vegetable in their way, in FFXI the same fruit would stop you dead in your tracks. Now let’s take crafting in XIV, here’s the recipe for a lvl11 Red, Cotton Cowl:

• Cotton Inner Cowl (Red)
• Cotton Outer Cowl (Red)
• Cotton Hood (Red)
• Hempen Yarn
• Earth Shard x6

The short list seems easy enough and realistic… now let’s see what you actually need for all of these things:

Cotton Cowl (Red)

• Cotton Hood (Red) 1
  • Cotton Yarn 1
    • Cotton Boll – 2

    • Lightning Crystal – 1

  • Mesa-red Cotton Cloth 2
    • Mesa-red Cotton Dye 1
      • Mesa-red Dyer’s Moss – 1

      • Alumen – 1

      • Distilled Water – 1

      • Water Shard – 5

      • Fire Shard – 2

    • Cotton Yarn 3
      • Cotton Boll – 2

      • Lightning Crystal – 1

    • Water Shard – 3

    • Earth Shard – 7

  • Earth Shard – 4

  • Wind Shard – 3

• Cotton Inner Cowl (Red) 1
  • Cotton Yarn 1
    • Cotton Boll – 2

    • Lightning Crystal – 1

  • Mesa-red Cotton Cloth 3
    • Mesa-red Cotton Dye 1
      • Mesa-red Dyer’s Moss – 1

      • Alumen – 1

      • Distilled Water – 1

      • Water Shard – 5

      • Fire Shard – 2

    • Cotton Yarn 3
      • Cotton Boll – 2

      • Lightning Crystal – 1

    • Water Shard – 3

    • Earth Shard – 7

  • Earth Shard – 4

  • Wind Shard – 3

• Cotton Outer Cowl (Red) 1
  • Cotton Yarn 1
    • Cotton Boll – 2

    • Lightning Crystal – 1

  • Mesa-red Cotton Cloth 4
    • Mesa-red Cotton Dye 2
      • Mesa-red Dyer’s Moss – 1

      • Alumen – 1

      • Distilled Water – 1

      • Water Shard – 5

      • Fire Shard – 2

    • Cotton Yarn 6
      • Cotton Boll – 2

      • Lightning Crystal – 1

    • Water Shard – 6

    • Earth Shard – 14

  • Earth Shard – 4

  • Wind Shard – 3

• Hempen Yarn 1
  • Moko Grass – 2

  • Lightning Shard – 6

Earth Shard – 6

So… yeah, crafting is both realistic and incredibly cumbersome. Honestly, the sheer amount of materials required to make some items wouldn’t even be that big of a deal.. except for how crafting is done in XIV.

Both crafting and gathering skills begin a type of mini-game when used. The gathering isn’t too bad, and all three gathering skills utilize a variation of what is basically a “hot and cold” guessing game. Following the text prompts during each attempt, you can somewhat gauge if you are getting closer or further from a good spot to try gathering. Crafting on the other hand, is a much longer process, and like XI, has a decent chance for failure. Switching to a crafting tool (and gear if you hope to succeed very often) will bring up a new option in the menu: Synthesis.

Synthesis is an incredibly drawn out process which basically involves these steps: Open Menu > Select Synthesis > In new menu on left, go to Materials and click on 1 of the 8 empty slots > Choose material from inventory prompt, repeat for each item you need > Return to Material window > Choose Main Hand or Off Hand > If synthesis is possible, menu opens for you to choose the recipe you are going to make > New menu pops up asking if this is the item you want to make and the crystal/shard requirement > Begin Crafting

If that sounds like a lot of menu choices.. it’s actually less than it was originally. Also, all of that is to just START crafting, nevermind actually craft something. Once you begin crafting you will see an progress bar with a durability number and quality number as well. Another bar ticks down to the left, forcing you to quickly decide between trying to do a Normal Synthesis, Rapid Synthesis, Bold Synthesis or Wait. Normal and Wait is about what you would expect, Rapid gives a better chance at higher progress and bold gives a better chance at higher quality. The object of the “game” is to reach 100% progress before Durability reaches 0 and the item breaks. You’ll have to decide how to proceed on your way to 100%, and every attempt will change the color of the orb you are working on. There’s a ton of threads on various sites that will try to explain how this works.. some have good info, some are full of superstition.. basically it’s a lot like crafting was FFXI.

Now for the free-market part of this post. First thing to address: no auction house. The auction house worked just fine in XI, yet SE decided to scrap having one in XIV. This seems to be a combination of their desire to make the game different from XI and their total fear of RMT. The problem is that without a centralized auction house in an MMO, finding what you need becomes an incredibly frustrating scavenger hunt. They wanted the economy in XIV to be completely player-driven, and hunting for a bargain can be addictive, but the lack of an auction house can make crafting incredibly difficult. In the place of an auction house, SE has brought back the Bazaar system and created a new Market Wards section in each town.

Browsing the Market Wards

At first, both of these systems were horrible. The Market Wards were just tossed into the game with various names for each floor, but of course the top floor was always super crowded and impossible to find what you wanted. Later updated with proper names that were like categories in an Auction House, this helped to alleviate the “everyone on the top floor for maximum exposure” syndrome, but was still difficult to find items, especially with such awkwardly named areas. Another update added the ability to search for items before zoning into the wards. This has basically turned the Market Wards into an Auction House, but you’ll still need to search through multiple menus to try and find what you think you’re looking for, select that item to be searched, then zone into that ward and look for the marked retainers and see just what they have and for how much they’re selling said item.

I will give SE some credit though, cause the retainer system is actually rather cool, and a welcome addition to the MMO genre. You basically go to the Adventurer’s Guild and “employ” a retainer from a certain NPC. You can choose from a number of models from each race and give them a name. The retainers act like both a bank and a salesman for you. They have a large inventory where you can dump all of your extra materials and gear, as well as their own bazaar slots that you can fill and then place the retainer in one of the Market Wards. What makes this feature really nice is that you can leave them in the Market Wards 24/7 whether you’re online or off.

As for your own bazaar slots, you’re given 10 slots where you can place items for sale, and they don’t take up your own precious inventory space while in the bazaar. The neat thing about this is that in addition to selling items, you can also flag items that you’re looking to buy and for how much, as well as place gear to be repaired in your bazaar. The downside is that you can only set items you’re looking to buy if you already have the same item in your inventory.. yeah, it’s as asinine as it sounds. Another HUGE peeve I have with the bazaar system is that you have to be standing still to open someone’s bazaar, so if a person is moving and you can’t click through a ton of menus lightning fast, you’re basically SOL. You can always try to send them a tell however, if you caught their full name of course, and if they happen to speak the same language as you (world-wide servers, did I mention that?). Another issue with the bazaar is that I could be 50yds from someone and view their bazaar, yet I have to move within maybe 15yds to actually buy them or be told I’m too far away.

This review is getting rather long, so let me start wrapping it up with a final rant about general issues and where the game is headed.

Ranting and Raving in General

There’s honestly SO many issues with the game right now that I can’t possibly remember them all for one review.. and that’s an issue that altogether sums up the state Final Fantasy XIV is currently in. With that said.. I’m still gonna try to list what else really rubs me wrong right now:

• No windowed-fullscreen mode – why is SE about the only game company in the world that cannot manage to make a PC game without a windowed-fullscreen mode? This wouldn’t even be such a big issue if you could.. you know.. tab out of the game in fullscreen without it crashing the whole damn thing..
• Why do I have to be outside the game and open a separate config program to make some basic changes that other games can handle inside the interface?
• The entire game was built with a controller in mind, even though the PS3 version was going to be released 6 months after the PC version. Why was there no keyboard/mouse optimization created for XIV considering it was released for the PC first, especially considering it IS an MMO and no amount of marketing and begging from SE is going to change the game from being a mostly PC-based game.. I’m sorry but MMOs don’t generally do well on consoles. Give us a damn UI that works like EVERY other MMO on the market, don’t reinvent the wheel and try to be a special snowflake when all it really does is irk the hell out of your player-base.
• It’s currently 2011.. learn how to make a proper “guild” in your MMO. Considering there’s not even a physical “pearl” to give people in order to join your Linkshell anymore, WHY do we have to be almost on top of someone to invite them to join?
• Not only do you need to be standing on top of people to invite them to your linkshell, they need to be online and near you in order to promote/demote/kick from the linkshell. That’s going to lead to some huge issues if it’s not addressed.
• Why does EVERYTHING need to be macro’d in order to be used? Ok, not everything, but seriously, I shouldn’t have to create 2-4 macros just to swap jobs. There seriously needs to be an easy equipment manager system and a smart UI system in place.
• When I say “smart UI” I’m referring to switching jobs and have my action bar “remember” how I want it set up for each job. Right now you either have to remove everything and load new abilities one at a time, or create a serious of complicated macros that will switch everything for you.
• Speaking of equipment macros, why does a gear swap take FOREVER to switch? The game will only process the macro one line at a time, and each piece of gear removed/added requires the game to redraw your character model. Learn to program guys.. seriously.
• Quests.. add them, they add to lore and give us things to do. Guildleves in XIV are way too repetitive and boring and honestly not worth even reading.
• The chat system is still incredibly clunky. There’s a reason the game seems so quiet even when there’s 30 people standing in one area.. typing is a pain with your chat box.
• Fix the laaaaaaag. Character collision.. seriously? Considering you can still move through people, there is NO reason to have character collision turned on when collision detection is one of the most resource intensive things a game engine has to calculate.
• No dungeons or raids? Hell not even PvP? Once you make the game playable, don’t forget to add in something to actually DO in the game.
• Scrap the whole color system for what a mob “cons” cause really.. it makes no sense, especially when you can solo one mob that shows yellow and then turn around and a green con kicks your teeth in.

The Future and SE’s Response Thus Far

So far Square Enix has been pretty upfront that they’re not happy with the game’s quality thus far. Originally extending the free trial period all the way through November, they realized the game was still nowhere near the quality expected for a flagship title in the Final Fantasy franchise. In response, they replaced a ton of the staff on the game, including the director and producer. In addition, they tossed the PS3 release on the back-burner indefinitely and are leaving the game free to play until they deem it worth charging a monthly fee to play.

In the past 8ish months since the game was released, SE has been pretty open with their fans about upcoming changes and the amount of effort going into fixing things. This is a night and day difference for a lot of people that played XI during its heyday. One of the biggest complaints back then was over SE’s continual silence and complete lack of communication, so a lot of props for SE in coming out of their hole and actively engaging their community.

Despite the game being international, and their reasoning for not having an official forum being the language barrier, SE actually did answer the frequent requests by the community and created their own official forums connected to the Lodestone website. Now people of all nationalities can go to one place and whine and bitch equally, just like all the other MMO forums. Sarcasm aside, it is nice to see them making an effort, and the devs do actually make posts which are translated for all languages on the forums.

Even with all of my complaints about the game, I do still believe that it shows promise, as well as some really progressive ideas. My main hope is that they can speed up the updates and start showing off a better future for the game. So far the updates have been rather meh, but they have promised some major changes in May and June, so keep an eye out for that.

What do you think so far?