And how it’s given me more joy in the past six months than a video game probably ever has.
I’ve always thought that Final Fantasy was my favorite gaming franchise because of the inexplicable way it always manages to be there for me when I needed it most — VII helped get me through the toughest times, X taught me how to put myself together again, and XV helped me appreciate the little things. But my fourth favorite in the series, XIV, has given me so much joy in so many ways.
My free trial was actually way back in 2015, back when it was still restricted to 14 days and I was still a broke college student who certainly couldn’t afford a monthly subscription fee.
I truly got into the game with my brother in 2017, and played for a few months, enough to get through the A Realm Reborn content, but took a break when I got a part-time job and 2018 simply had too many other games I was looking forward to.
When I returned in January earlier this year, I had convinced a couple of my old friends from way back in high school to join me in Eorzea — we used to play games like Dissidia, DotA, and Dragon Nest together, and to me, getting back into an MMO would be perfect nostalgia fodder, a taste of the good old days, and a nice way to wind down and keep in touch as we grow into ‘adulting’.
I didn’t really expect so many of my newer college friends to join me as well, and it’s been amazing.
I actually started this piece months ago, sometime in February, more of as a consolidated guide for my friends to use as reference, but taking care of my final semester in college really put this on the back-burner, and I ended up playing more than writing during my spare time, so this is more of a personal anecdote now.
I’m from the Philippines, and play on the Tonberry server — which has the highest English-speaking population in a Japanese Data Center. Most English-speakers here are from South East Asia and Oceania, and though the language barrier has to be overcome with the in-game auto-translate dictionary when we get matched up with people who only speak Japanese, and there are some Japanese-only and English-only restrictions on the Party Finder, I think the cultural diversity here is more of a positive than a negative.
The one thing I love about XIV the most is the community — from developers themselves, and the content creators outside the game, to the in-game people you randomly run dungeons with, it’s almost always been such a pleasure. Sure, there’s a bit of salt or uncomfortable encounters once in a while (I can count maybe two, the entire six months since I’ve come back, and even those were very mild relative to other online games I’ve played).
Those small bad moments pale in comparison to all the positive ones, to be honest.
In the chat log here, I was in my earliest hours of playing my first Tank (a Dark Knight), and had trouble maintaining enmity (aggro/hate) and also ended up dying so I unfortunately caused us to wipe — I’d been so nervous the entire time after, to the point of questioning whether I should just give up on tanking altogether. I exited the dungeon quickly after typing in an “I’m sorry” through the in-game auto-translation dictionary. Moments later, the Whisper (Private Message) notification pinged. I was fully expecting to be hated on and berated — but encouragement was what I got instead.
This was only my first super-positive experience from a random person, and since then XIV’s player base has really shattered my expectations for online communities — so many people are nice, accommodating, and patient, that I can’t really see myself going back to my old online games where toxicity was more of an expected norm than the opposite. And paying that kindness forward has never felt so naturally easy.
Here on this second one I was trying to learn a Healer (a Scholar) and had one instance where I wasn’t able to top up the Tank and they died — they spoke only Japanese though, so I had to convey my apologies through auto-translate and emotes, but reassurance was what I got in return.
Around late January, I had the lucky accident of being invited to my current Free Company (Guild) back then we only had around 18 members if I remember correctly— funnily enough, because I miss-clicked one of the FC officers, so my character ended up staring at his for a while while I was busy reading a different window, and saw the FC invite after I tabbed back in — and now, six months later, we’re 50 members strong, and it’s been the first time I’ve made true online friends, which is quite a feat, since I’ve never used voice chat in online games with people I didn’t know IRL before this one.
You got greeted every time you log-in and log-out, people readily helped others when they needed to clear content, and we all got to know each other little by little. Soon enough, the FC’s house in Shirogane has become something of a second home, and sometimes I log on just to hang out and chat. It’s also something of a cultural eye-opener — I’d learned a lot about the daily lives of people in other countries, from the way Singapore’s GrabFood actually has Starbucks, to the wonders of Ba Kut Teh, good destinations when visiting Japan, what it’s like waking up before the rest of the world in Australia…
What really brought the FC together (and got us on voice chat) I think, was two of our members getting married in-game. I remember there being some scheduling issues, getting the time wrong — but then most of the FC decided to stay up through the night into the morning when the actual time of the wedding was going to take place. I managed to overcome my usual initial awkwardness with online interactions because it honestly just felt so safe.
Oh, and the wedding was a blast.
One of my all-time favorite memories in-game, alongside our first Seiryu Extreme clear (which took a lot of failed runs across one weekend) was actually a night where me and some FC-mates played hide-in-seek in our FC house, and then went and visited some really impressive housing builds. There’s a lot to love in FFXIV, from the more hardcore to the most mundane.
The community also has some player-organized events that are pretty fun to witness — there are players that have insanely-detailed, amazingly crafted houses that are open for visiting, some Bards that hang out in major cities just to play some tunes, and random things like a parade in Rhalgr’s Reach.
And just yesterday, as a last hurrah for Stormblood, some players organized a glamour (transmog) contest to usher in Shadowbringers.
Aside from that, XIV has been one of the best Final Fantasy games I’ve had the pleasure of playing — the story is kind of a slog in the beginning, but picks up once you get to level 50, and from there only gets better and better, epic in scale and with a memorable cast of characters. There’s plenty of laughs, tense moments, geopolitics and world-building, while putting the player character at the very center center. The music is beautiful, the gameplay is very engaging at endgame, and there’s a lot of attention to detail in the zones and cities. Let it never be said that all MMOs have a crappy narrative.
It’s already great for anyone into MMOs, but much more enriched for a Final Fantasy fan — there’s a lot of references littered around the world, in the quests, and even in the raids. The Return to Ivalice Raid Series is such an amazing love letter to both Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII.
All that, plus a clearly passionate development team that actually listens to it’s playerbase and constantly updates with a breadth of new content every patch cycle like clockwork, while also giving us events like Fan Fests, Live Letters, and a lot of communication.
FFXIV has certainly come very, very far from it’s disastrous 1.0 launch, and it just keeps getting better and better. I can’t wait to see what Shadowbringers has in store!
If you’re on the fence about FFXIV, take the free trial (lets you level through all the jobs available until level 35)… and well… just give it a try! The game has a little something for everyone — whether you’re into in-game raiding, casually going through the dungeons, an in-depth crafting and gathering system, a player-controlled economy, meticulously detailed player housing, or just spending time in the in-game theme park playing mini-games all day.
I never thought I’d feel so attached to a game that isn’t a single-player RPG, and I’ll always value FFXIV the most as an incredible way to stay in touch with my friends now that I’m (finally) leaving college behind.
See y’all in Shadowbringers!
