Chapter 1: A Realm Reborn
So, I’m gonna keep it real with you — I have tumbled deeply down the endless rabbit hole of Final Fantasy XIV and I don’t ever want to leave. While I’m down here, I figured I would write what will likely be the first of many blog posts from the depths, sharing my experiences with the game from the perspective of someone who is completely new to the Final Fantasy series. I may not be very knowledgable yet about this game or this series as a whole, but I hope these posts will be entertaining, enlightening, and maybe even a little educational once I learn the ropes. With the light of the crystal as our guide, let’s begin our journey through the land of Eorzea!
ᵀʰᶦˢ ᵖᵒˢᵗ ᶦˢ ᵃ ᶜʳʸ ᶠᵒʳ ʰᵉˡᵖ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵇᵒᵈʸ ᵗᵃᵏᵉ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵃᵐᵉ ᵃʷᵃʸ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵐᵉ ᵇᵉᶠᵒʳᵉ ᴵ ˡᵒᵍ ᵃⁿᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ⁵⁰ ʰᵒᵘʳˢ ᶦⁿ ᵃ ʷᵉᵉᵏ ᴵ ᶜᵃⁿ’ᵗ ᵖᵘᵗ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵍᵃᵐᵉ ᵈᵒʷⁿ ᵒʰ ᵍᵒᵈ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ʰᵉˡᵖ
Something you should know about me is that I absolutely adore MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. From ArchAge, Black Desert, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Phantasy Star Online to a plethora of browser-based MMOs throughout my youth like Realm Of The Mad God, Adventure Quest Worlds and Club Penguin, I can’t think of a time in my life where I wasn’t heavily engaged in an MMO, or at the very least watching a friend or sibling playing one. I have played dozens upon dozens of MMOs over the years with a large variety of sizes and styles, and I am always on the hunt for a fresh new multiplayer experience.
My extensive history with MMOs makes it all the more surprising that I completely overlooked both of Square Enix’s MMO games: Final Fantasy XI, and Final Fantasy XIV. What makes this less surprising is that I had never owned a Playstation, thus missing out on the Final Fantasy series during a time where it was mostly exclusive to Sony’s consoles. I had always been curious about this corner of the video game world, dipping my toes in the water every now and then, but never fully took the plunge.
All of this changed in January of this year when I discovered a documentary series about Final Fantasy XIV, charting its tumultuous history, death, and rebirth as what would eventually become the biggest MMORPG in the world. This documentary led me to a cutscene from the game set during a time of great calamity. An enormous red moon was slowly crashing towards the once thriving land of Eorzea, and I was watching its final moments.
What I would soon learn is that this wasn’t simply a chapter of the game’s story, this was the real-time shutdown of a struggling online world that happened 10 years ago, in 2012. This sacred place where people all across the globe gathered, talked, played; It was all being washed away. Laid bare before me was the purest example Ive seen of the boundless beauty, heartbreaking tragedy, and ultimately, the fleeting fragility of these online game worlds we inhabit. This world was crumbling before my eyes and I couldn’t look way. I was enchanted.
I rushed to find out more about the game, making my way to the Final Fantasy website where I discovered that the game was rebuilt from the ground up after this great calamity under the name Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. What followed was 4 more stories told over the next decade, culminating in the latest expansion to the game, Endwalker. While browsing the site, I noticed that the buttons to purchase the game and start a free trial where greyed out, so I curiously clicked them.
“SUSPENSION OF SALES, FREE TRIALS, AND ADVERTISEMENTS DUE TO SERVER CONGESTION"
I couldn't believe what I was reading... The game was SO popular in this moment and SO congested with players that it had literally been REMOVED FROM SALE for over a month in an attempt to curb the long player queues, which where in the 4000+ range and climbing!! Players where often left waiting for HOURS just for the chance to log in to the game! I laughed. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was all I could really do as I was struggling to wrap my head around this. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video game make a turnaround quite like this before, going from a struggling game that was panned by critics and fans alike, with its developers trying to make the most of the broken pieces, to suffering so much from its own success that it needed to entirely halt its sales in hopes of renewed server stability. I was in complete awe. Is this really the same troubled game that was shut down a decade ago? From this moment on, trying the game myself was all I could think about.
The day was January 25th. After weeks of eager anticipation, the suspension of sales had been lifted. I was, of course, excitedly downloading the game. I’m the type of person that tends to spend a LONG time in the character creator messing around with all the options, focusing on every little detail and trying to make the coolest character I can with the tools the game gives me. After a few hours of deliberate character building, I logged into Eorzea for the first time as my oh-so-cool elezen archer lady, Astrelle Solazeau.
In FFXIV, your starting area is determined by the job you choose, like Gladiator, Lancer, Mage, and so on. Astrelle is an archer, so she began her journey in the sleepy woodland village of Gridania.
I fumbled around the floating crystal in the center of Gridania, bumping into people as I got the hang of FFXIV’s complex controls and vast array of options. When playing on keyboard and mouse, the game has pretty standard controls for an MMORPG. Where FFXIV differs is extremely intuitive controller support. This is one of the very rare few MMOs that I could happily recommend playing on a TV while you kick back on the couch, rather than being locked to your computer desk. This is both a blessing and a curse, as you will be more inclined (and reclined, lol) to put extra hours into the game. If you aren’t careful, these hours will slip away and before you know it, you’ve been online for 8 hours straight.
As of this writing, I have leveled Astrelle’s archer job to 21, and made solid progress through the MSQ (Main Scenario Quests). I even got access to airship travel yesterday, allowing me to travel through the clouds to Eorzea’s other city-states, like Limsa Lominsa and Ul’Dah! I will definitely be talking about these city-states in more detail in future posts. I already quite miss the lovely people of Gridania, and I hope to return there someday for quests or even to just hang out in the town square to take in nature, with the sweet sounds of a local bard’s harp strings filling the air. Gridania is starting to feel like a 2nd home to me. The appeal of Final Fantasy is truly starting to sink in, and I am beginning to understand what makes this game series so beloved by so many people around the world.
FFXIV is a game that I can’t help but get immersed in, and despite being nearly 50 hours into the base game, A Realm Reborn, I feel like my journey through Eorzea has just begun. FFXIV has been pretty lively since the release of the Endwalker expansion in late 2021, and with the Valentione’s Day event around the corner as well as the upcoming “Letter From the Producer” live segment from the game’s Director/Producer Naoki Yoshida, there is much to talk about. Expect coverage of these current community happenings peppered in with longer retrospective posts like this one, reflecting on my time spent with each chapter of FFXIV’s story from the perspective of a total Final Fantasy newbie (for now!) To wrap a nice little bow on this post, here's Astrelle hangin' out with some pumpkins. May the light of the crystal guide us all!
-- Stay tuned here at the Jo's Tomorrow blog for more Final Fantasy/MMORPG ramblings and all things FFXIV; Happy Reading!--
