Good post Shaz.
I've been keeping tabs on all of those games (signed up for Beta for all of them as well)..
FF14 will be similar to FF11, meaning no PvP. It's a PvMob game, although it will boast nice graphics and environment.
SWTOR, while being put out by BioWare, will be somewhat more of a linear MMORPG than people are used to. I've been watching a lot of Dev videos, showing in-game footage, and it seems as though players play through a story, but they are given choices along the way. The example in the video I watched was a Sith and a Bounty Hunter on an Imperial Star Destroyer, they were going through dialogue and came to a choice to either kill the commander of the Star Destroyer or let him live. They chose to kill him and it set off a sequence of events. The graphics are nice, and the gameplay looks very fun. There is terrain cover in SWTOR, just like in Dawn of War 2. When you run behind certain pieces of terrian, it gives you choices of how to position your character behind that terrain (by using opaque overlays. The game will have a lot of different environments, and will be PvP oriented. The graphics look great so far, and since it's BioWare, you know the content will be up to par.
GW2 sounds like a great upgrade from the classic. They really beefed up the plotline, and fleshed out some new races/classes. They are improving the Henchmen system to have even better AI (let's face it though, most of the henchmen AI from GW1 outstrips the average PuG's intelligence already.) I'm sure the game will still be instanced, though. But I'm not positive on that.
TERA has been in development for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGGGGG time. It was announced back during Lineage 2. I'm pretty sure the source code of TERA was stolen or duplicated from a leaked early version of Lineage 3. It's your basic Korean MMORPG, with 2 opposing races. The catch is, the combat system is supposed to be pretty unique. You can apparently mould your character into a unique form of combat that suits you. As it's a Korean game, the graphics are obviously lush, and the animations are fluid. The terrain looks amazing, as does the cities. However, no real word on the content or the level of grind. I've been signed up for the Beta for months and months, and still no word. I still get the newsletter, and the latest one said in preparation for the North American Release, they were looking for a company to do the Community Relations. So dunno really how far they are from release, but it looks iffy at the moment.
So in conclusion, if I had to judge the games on how well they would suit Chocobo (this is only my opinion), I would have to say either SW:TOR or Guild Wars 2. If by some chance, Final Fantasy 14 has some kind of PvP system in it, then that might be worth a closer look as well (cause aside from the lack of PvP, the game looks pretty sweet.)
In other news, Final Fantasy 13 comes out March 7th-9th. I actually ordered the limited edition Final Fantasy 13 Xbox 360 bundle, just to play the game, since it's looking to be as epic as 7 and X were. So I'll be spending some time on that while the next generation of MMOs come out.
As for WoW, it's always something good to spend time on when there isn't anything else to do
Cataclysm looks fun, at least.
