#What Is Going On In Critically Acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cfs-melkire · 10 months

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FFXIV: WoL, OC, and Roleplay

Since there were some questions and confusion in tags, I figured that an educational/informative post like this might be helpful for some folks, so I'm going to break a few things down for those who might be unfamiliar.

Namely, we're going to get into what "Warrior of Light" means to different people, what "OC" means in the FFXIV context, and what "roleplay" means to different people (and why those distinctions exist).

Since this is going to be a long post, click the "Read Below" for more under the cut!

Warriors of Light

"Warrior of Light," in general, refers to the main protagonist of the critically acclaimed hit MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. Lore fanatics will know that this title once saw more widespread use in-setting (to refer to the Twelvesblades but also to historical heroes in general), but put that aside for now. WoL - Warrior of Light for short, in handy acronym format - is the main character, the hero, the person you play as. You even see the XIV devs (Yoshi P & everyone at CBU3) refer to the players themselves this way, as Warriors of Light.

FFXIV takes a different approach from other MMORPGs by making the story centered around a specific individual: you, as the WoL. This shift really kicks into gear towards the end of A Realm Reborn (2.0), as prior to that, you were just one of many adventurers in the realm of Eorzea (unless you were a 1.0/1.x player; again, set that aside for now). But starting with Operation Archon, your character starts taking center stage in terms of global affairs. By the time you're into Heavensward content, the story of the Scions is, fundamentally, your story: the Warrior of Light's story.

This creates an interesting situation in which players have a shared experience with different takes on how the main character did, should have, and or would have act, acted, react, or reacted. Part of that has to do with our differing selections on race and gender for our characters. Part of that has to do with us projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto the WoL, in effect playing the game as our own self-insert of sorts! Observant newcomers may have noticed that the game progressively gives you more and more dialogue options the further along you get; we had very few of them in ARR and HW compared to later expansions! That has been a good change, and it's really helped players to see how a story could take different twists and turns depending on what kind of person would be at the helm of making those decisions as the main character.

As a result, we've seen a lot of prompts crop up on social media - on Twitter, here on tumblr, even on Reddit - about how people's characters differ from one another. How would YOUR Warrior of Light react, what would THEY have done, but also: what was their childhood like? What do they do for fun? Who do they get along with best? So on and so forth, all sorts of questions. Anyone who's ever been in fandom for any length of time knows that these kinds of questions, these sorts of hypotheticals, are very fun to explore. We've been doing this since we were kids! "Oh but what if this happened instead in my favorite film/show/story?" It's our imagination at work, and it feels great to turn something over in our heads like that.

On Twitter, mainly, these prompts came to be referred to as "WoL prompts" and were often tagged something like "wolqotd" (Question of the Day). But as folks have been fleeing Twitter in droves lately thanks to a certain billionaire manchild being grossly incompetent and generally unsafe, there's been a lot of cross-pollination between social media platforms. Since tumblr has had a historically different approach to FFXIV prompts and our FFXIV friends from Twitter seem to have developed a blindspot, I posted a well-intentioned blurb about how, and I paraphrase, "not all OCs are WoLs."

There was some mild confusion on that point, which brings us to this post. I'm gonna help clear that up right now.

Original Characters

Most of us have probably seen, at least once on the internet, some form of the phrase "OC do not steal" (often humorously misspelled as the meme "OC donut steel"). An OC - short for "original character" - is a common concept in fandom. In fandom specifically, it generally refers to any character that a fan has created for their own use, whether that use be for artistic expression, drawing doodles, writing short stories (read: fanfiction), etc. The character is original, meaning they're not part of the established setting or lore as produced and put out into the world by the makers of the show/series/novel/game/what-have-you, and the character is unique, meaning the character itself (their personality, their history, etc.) is specific to that fan and they're not just Pidgey #2761 caught on Route 1 in the years since 1998 by one out of millions of kids with no other discernible traits, features, or background details.

In the FFXIV context, OC refers to any original character made or created by a fan or player. Often (but not always) this takes the form of their playable avatar, the character they sign into the game with and play as. But there's a context, a MMORPG-specific context, in which "OC" means something more specific to folks in the FFXIV community. The best way I can explain that other meaning is to walk you through the thought process, but in short, a FFXIV OC is a character who is NOT the main character you play through the events of the game as, but rather a character who inhabits the setting and has their own life full of adventures & misadventures, with their own story to tell.

The thought process goes a little something like this: I'm really having fun with FFXIV, but I'm getting real bored of my character. Maybe I'll fantasia them. You know what, I'm tired of seeing what my Warrior of Light gets up to. I'm more curious about what the average person deals with. There's all these monsters out there beyond the city limits! How does anyone get anything done? Maybe they need, like, caravan guards. Yeah, that's cool... but what about Lalafell? They're so small compared to other people, but they get by fine. Hmmm, let me go back to the character selection screen and fantasia into a Lalafell. I'll make something really cool and cute looking. Now, where would they be from? I see a lot of them in Ul'dah, a few in Limsa... you know what, I don't see a lot of them in Gridania or the Shroud. It'd be really interesting to learn how a Lalafell ended up living there. Yeah, let's do that! Fantasia's done, now to find them some day-to-day clothes to wear. I wonder, if they're a caravan guard, where'd they pick up their fighting skills? Are they an archer or a mage? Did their family help them get into a guild? Hmmm.

On and on it goes, in this very manner, with all sorts of characters and stories. This is a FFXIV OC, and even though the player will be progressing through this game with their new Lalafell, they're not really viewing this character (or whatever race they might choose, e.g. Roegadyn or Elezen) as the Warrior of Light. Sure, they'll play to see what the Warrior of Light experiences, but there's a distinction in the player's mind: this is Toro Tororo, of Gridania, they sometimes sign up as a guard to make money but on most days they help out their family at the botanists' guild. They've never once seen or fought a primal.

This is, fundamentally, an MMORPG OC, just specific to FFXIV. This is very much the exact line of thinking that gave us Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop RPGs! Someone was playing war games, said to themselves, "I really don't care about Napoleon or whichever general I am as I move these armies around, I really want to more about THIS soldier here, this guy, what's THEIR story?" and pointed at a single figurine of an infantryman standing alongside identically uniformed troops (thank you to Dave Arneson and his players). The full story is a bit more complicated than that, but the process itself is central to a lot of our own musings about tales and stories that we then spin out into our own creations.

But who plays FFXIV like this? Who goes through all of that effort to NOT be in the shoes of the WoL, and why?

In short: roleplayers.

Roleplay

Let's get the giggling out of the way. You've probably seen ERP referenced - short for "erotic roleplay" - and that has a long history that spiraled out of playing pretend in the bedroom & early internet chatrooms. But no matter what big streamers or people on Aether datacenter might tell you (I'm looking at you, Gilgamesh), that's not what most people mean when they talk about roleplay. ERP is only a very small facet of roleplay in general, the same way the horror-thriller genre is only one genre among many genres of film.

Roleplay is, fundamentally, writing in a collaborative setting where one or more writers act out the parts of one or more characters and make decisions for them.

You've seen this a lot, and have probably roleplayed without realizing it. Constructing a castle made out of Legos and having the knights fight each other, or setting up Barbie and Ken at the pool for a relaxing day and some barbeque, is roleplaying. You and a friend grabbing notebooks and writing out stories or drawing comics about your favorite characters from a popular series is roleplaying. Sitting around a table and playing Dungeons & Dragons is roleplaying, even if you're not doing character voices like the folks on Critical Role. Exchanging prompts about your WoL on social media is roleplaying.

Roleplaying within the actual game of Final Fantasy XIV is an extension of the above! Some folks really like to use the tools that MMORPGs gives them - character models, emotes, a chat box - to visually play out stories about all sorts of characters. FFXIV is particularly well-suited to this due to some crazy quality-of-life features, like target tracking (not only your character's head but their eyes move to follow whoever you target), multiple idle poses, an enormous range of emotes, being able to sit or lay down on furniture, etc. So when Felicia signs in on Toro Tororo, exits Gridania, and mounts up on their chocobo to head down to Bentbranch Meadows to meet her fellow player, Diego, who's on Heuloix Durendaire in order for Toro to sign up for the latest caravan down to Highbridge in Thanalan... that's roleplay!

There's such a breadth of stories to explore in any fictional setting, and FFXIV is no exception in that regard. It's often easier to make an OC who isn't saddled with the WoL's baggage in order to explore stories like this. Maybe someone wants to roleplay an Allagan who just woke up after being on stasis for 3,000 years. Or maybe someone else wants to play a Roegadyn pirate out on the open seas, and they put into port in places like Limsa and Kugane. Maybe Rockfist and Deathstaff want to host a fighting tournament to figure out who's the baddest of the bunch, or maybe the hardworkin' Miqo'te fellow wants to head into the Goblet for the evening to find a nice restaurant for a good meal and a nice drink, and maybe avoid being pressed for conversation by anyone other than the wait staff and that bartender who used to be their childhood friend.

Roleplayers make OCs to explore settings via collaborative writing, and often times those OCs aren't WoLs.

And sometimes they are!

And sometimes people roleplay via prompts or over Discord/messaging rather than in-game!

All valid. All good.

I could go on ad nauseum, but that just about covers it. If there are questions, please ask. In comments, in tags, via Asks, etc. I'll try to answer... or point folks to people who can provide better answers than I can.

Thanks for reading!

#ffxiv #ffxiv oc #rp #ffxiv rp #roleplaying #oc #wol #collaborative writing #having fun

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yuri-is-online · 2 months

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Since we’re talking about Idia now, I want to talk about the Phantom Ortho scene from the new update. What’s your thoughts on the scene? Personally, I think it was part of the dream rather than Idia actually talking to the dead Ortho.

I’ve got a couple of reasons for this. First, Idia was being dragged down by the darkness associated with the dream realm. He’s still physically in NRC. And it’s not that strange to think that this is another deeper level of the dream realm. It’s also been established that the dream’s purpose is keep the dreamers there, so changing its method now that the original method of acting as though the tragedy didn’t happen no longer works wouldn’t be out of place in my opinion. Our Ortho showing up shattered the illusion, dredging up buried memories even if Idia was still holding up some form of denial.

Second, it’s more fitting for his character arc for it to be just a dream. Choosing to neither stay in the Underworld with Phantom Ortho or stay in the dream with the RSA Ortho solidifies Idia’s commitment to no longer wallow in the guilt of the tragedy and to allow himself to move forward. He’s rejecting both pretending it didn’t happen and continuing to punish himself by allowing himself to be dragged down by his mistakes. I feel that takes away from the moment a little if it’s dead Ortho giving him another kick in rear to not be swallowed by guilt.

Sorry if this is incoherent and rambly, I’m still soaking in Idia freaking out over his mom searching his computer. What did he have on there???

-🦐

>I’m still soaking in Idia freaking out over his mom searching his computer. What did he have on there???

Top teir weeabo shit and commissions of his ocs. But tbh it could have been literally anything, I would freak about my mom going through my pc now and it's mostly just art refs.

I'm glad you are back shrimp annon, I was wondering about your thoughts. I have two distinct threads of thought on it if that makes sense? The first is about whether or not it was a dream and the second is about the darkness. Also um... have any of you played critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV? With a free trial now on xbox? Because the best way I can think to explain why spoils something from Shadowbringers...

Was Phantom Ortho Real or Not?

I have no idea. Genuinely. I personally think that this was a part of the dream so no, I don't think that Phantom Ortho is the same as the one we fight in Chapter Six, but does that make him less real? There is a reality where he could be the same I suppose? The idea of your soul leaving your body when you dream is a concept that's decently common in mythology, so it is possible that Idia astral projected into the Underworld?

Malleus specifically says Idia will "be swallowed by the abyss" so there is a chance I guess that he gets sent to take a nap in the Underworld while Malleus re-writes the spell? But! Malleus is the "ruler of the abyss" while Idia is "the ruler of the underworld." They don't share a title so it makes sense for the Abyss to be it's own place separate from the underworld. And yet the underworld is where Phantoms come from... so just what the hell is the abyss?

Now it is time for me to do a bit of spoiling for FFXIV so uh. I'll toss it under the cut.

To give some brief context for what I am about to show you, at the very end of Shadowbringers, due to various reasons we will not get into here, you find yourself in a projection of a city the villain has created based off of his memories. Said city is populated by Phantoms, all of whom do not realize they are magical projections, except for one:

"...[he] allowed a few stray thoughts to distract him while he was recreating me... '[he] would surely realize the truth.'" I think that's more or less what happened with Idia's dream

Malleus's magic allows the illusion to take place, but it is based off of Idia's memories. While being in denial about Ortho's death, and not wanting to process the trauma, his mind would know that Phantom Ortho would realize the truth. The phantom Hythlodaeus isn't real, but he might as well be from how he acts. The same seems true of Phantom Ortho, Idia wasn't confronting the literal Phantom so much as he was a manifestation of his own memories and guilt, the stray thought that "Ortho would surely realize the truth." Would be enough to make that happen.

In a sense you could say that this Phantom Ortho is still real as it is more or less just Idia fighting his own overblot phantom, which we know to be born of magic and extreme emotion, but I don't think he fought his brother's soul exactly. The affirmation of their promise probably reached Phantom Ortho in the Underworld though, even if he wasn't physically there to hear it.

What is the Darkness?

So if I recall correctly, the darkness also swallows Lilia in the previous update, which is where we get the flashback about how he found Silver. It seems like the darkness draws out what we could call a person's defining character moment? For Lilia that's traveling the world and realizing he doesn't hate humans, for Idia it's the death of his brother and his overblot. If I had to guess I would say it's because the dream needs to reset its narrative? So it needs to put the person back in the mindset of focusing on what they value or what needs "fixed."

The exact involvement Malleus has in giving out dreams isn't clear either, but I think they seem to need to be set in Twisted Wonderland, and tend towards being basic at first but then probably get more detailed the further the person falls into sleep and the more data can be taken from the abyss. It is also clear that some level of outside interference is needed to disrupt the dream weaving, kind of like you need to interrupt the dreamer's train of thought.

Since I am also rambling-

Yuu and Grim are physically present in the same dream, they both risk falling into the abyss... and neither gets a dream that they mistake for reality. Unless they did and we weren't actually physically present in Mickey's dream at all? What would have happened if they had fallen into the abyss?

Does Yuu and Grim sharing a dream imply they share a soul? If so how and why?

I need to go to sleep but tl;dr, shrimp friend I don't think you're off base saying you don't think that was the real Phantom and I want to know what the abyss is, k please thanks.

#<3 asks #twisted wonderland #twst theory #twst spoilers #shrimp annon #i have seen some romanticism of the dream malleus gave yuu but meh #i think that's a bit silly #to be clear i don't think malleus hates yuu or sent them to the house of mouse maliciously #i just think that a) his magic might not be able to account for settings outside of twst's reality #and b) he subconsciously doesn't want them to go home so his magic would not have allowed them to dream of a world he wasn't in anyway #i do think it would be interesting if yuu had sort of gotten lost in the abyss and malleus only realizes that after waking up #and goes a bit insane trying to find them #but eh it's whatever #he's in his toxic girl era let him live his life

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soliloquy-unforgotten · 5 months

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Final Fantasy XVI - Martyrs, Individualism, and other Review-like Stuff (Spoilers!)

As one might suppose by the title, I've recently finished Final Fantasy XVI. Playing the game I had a lot of Thoughts, which isn't uncommon, and happened to encourage me to create this little blog for me to store these thoughts for posterity. Therefore, while I'm not yet sure who this introduction is even for, at least it's over. Onwards!

I will start this by getting the easy part out, which I have prior dubbed "the Review-like Stuff" - how "good" are the game's, y'know, things. I'll be pretty direct on this paragraph: visually and musically, the game is a whole meal. The scenarios look amazing, the big magical effects look, well, big and magical (in the best way! also very colorful). I just don't dig the character design all that much, personally, but it does deliver on the sort of realistic medieval fantasy air they set out to deliver - and hey, Jill's clothes actually look like functional female fighting clothes! Progress, I suppose. And the music, of course, delivers just as well - Masayoshi Soken, not content with putting out banger after banger for Final Fantasy XIV (the critically-acclaimed MMORPG, etc) decided to grace XVI with a series of adequately epic-sounding tracks, going as far as to reference musical motifs from prior entries in the series and toss us franchise fans some delicious treats. Yum.

Alright, onto the meat of what I actually wanted to write here - the story and gameplay. I'm gonna bundle both of these up because I think they're intertwined to an extent - or at least, some of the criticism I have about the gameplay is a direct product of how they wrote the story. But I suppose I might be putting the cart before the horses here so let's take a step back.

When playing FF XVI, you control a single character - Clive Rosfield, Ifrit's Dominant and certified Chosen One. You get other companions fighting alongside you here and there, and for most of it you're also accompanied by bestest of boys Torgal, but you never get to control any of them, they have no customization in terms of equipment, and actually the effect they have on gameplay is very minor - mostly making it less annoying to fight large hordes of enemies. So much so that you also never choose who's tagging along, they just join or leave the party automatically according to the story beat.

I recall being a bit disappointed when the previous entry in the franchise, XV, came out - because I had three buddies with me for the journey but I never got to play with them, only edit their equips and perform some dual techs with them during fights. XVI seemed to double down on this departure from party member control, straying even further from the molds of a party-oriented game and coming closer to the likes of Devil May Cry, the Witcher, both of the Nier games, and so on. I should note the influence of the first I cited is quite noticeable.

"Alas, Daka, it could not be helped!", I hear you say. "For Clive is one of only eight people in the world who can freely use magic, AND even if he parties up other Dominants, he'll drain their power eventually! So it can't be helped!". Well, voice in my head who is trying to predict an argument, that's still just a narrative choice they made. Had they decided to make it a party-oriented game, they could easily have written the story in a way that doesn't have Clive strip other Dominants of their power (and even that's kind of finnicky, because Jill is still added to the party for the DLC, far after Clive absorbed her Eikon), or just strip them of the power to Prime but leave their magical ability intact. Or have his fellow party members all be non-Dominants like Gav. Or have them share Clive's power through some sort of covenant, like if he could donate them the power of any Eikons he's not currently using (you do end up with five more Eikons than you can wield in combat, after all).

All this to say that they made a very conscious choice in making Clive's journey be so solitary - he wields the power and bears the burden for it, since being magical in this setting comes with a side effect of slowly turning into stone. Even when he has his (long overdue and very awkwardly paced) romantic development with Jill, she doesn't even try to dissuade him from bearing all of the burden himself - just reassured him that she believed in him and would be by his side to the end. Kind of bold words when you're speeding your new boyfriend along the route of becoming an Ifrit-shaped piece of rock, but it sort of cements the narrative that Clive is the very special Chosen One, and it's useless to try to relieve him of his burden - best to simply give him emotional support when necessary and help in whatever ways a mere mortal can.

Eventually, the narrative reveals that what's been killing the land all along (through a drying out of all life called the Blight) is the usage of magic itself. It's been happening ever since a different race discovered magic, ages ago, in what one may call an Original Sin (!) of sorts. Clive's battle is to, ironically, amass as much of the capacity to use magic without crystals into himself as possible, to then destroy humanity's creator, who both discovered magic and gave humans the means to wield it, and finally use all this accumulated power to destroy the ("sinful") practice of magic and die in the process, overwhelmed by the weight of this feat.

So our dear protagonist is, to recap, a Chosen One, born to be the physical vessel of a godlike being, and he sacrifices himself to cleanse humanity of the sins that are plaguing them. You know who else reportedly did that? That's right, baby: it's Jesus Christ.

Did I write several paragraphs just to arrive at this allegory? Perhaps. But pointing out the symbolic connections between Clive and ol' J.C. is important to eventually arrive at my main argument regarding FFXVI and its place in the franchise: it is very Western. It is prominently influenced by an occidental zeitgeist and ideology (which are indissociable from Christianity as a cultural system of rules and values). This manifests in the narrative itself, yes, which also has a big focus on defending "free will" and rejecting what sort of amounts to what one might describe as, uh, spiritual communism; but it also manifests in the gameplay itself, which is both emblematic of this narrative (via having you control a solitary martyr upon whose shoulders solely relies success or failure), but also more literally influenced by the West - with the gameplay mechanics and quest dialogue structure more closely resembling western action RPGs than any other game in the franchise.

My intent here was not to say FFXVI doesn't have any community-oriented themes (many sidequest chains are explicitly about that), but to point out the ways in which the tone and feel of the game reflect certain staple Western values - individuality most of all - beyond the simple fact of the game's European fantasy setting. I'm also not saying that's a bad thing, just that it is a thing, and these are some of the elaborations I arrived at when I tried to ask myself questions like "why does this feel the way it does?". I'm also very particular about not saying things like "this feels or doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy game" because this is a franchise that loves nothing more than reinventing itself, and XVI was but the latest one to do just that. And for what it's worth, the game was great! I had a blast. I have my nitpicks about it but, hey, none of them was a dealbreaker.

...I do wanna have a party again for the next one though.

#video games #final fantasy xvi #ff16 #ffxvi

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jazzpostsrandomthings · 5 months

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Journey Retold: My First Days of Adventuring

<;< Previous Entry

So, my hardest exam had just passed (and I did pass it, gladly), and I had also finished Endwalker on 18th of December, which means that I can go back to writing about my experiences in the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV once again! I will talk about EW when I will reach it during this series of diaries, however.

Btw, now this series of entries has a name! It's 'Journey Retold'! It came to my mind quite suddenly but I really like the sound of it.

And now, without fruther ado, let' me look back at my first days of adventure in La Noscea!

My second day begun with me finally leaving Limsa Lominsa, not before taking the blue quest at Arcanist Guild as I was instructed to by my two companions. Now, I don't remember how was I actually doing that quest, but I remember really liking the whole quest-line. I found K'lyhia to be a fun character, and her growth during the story quite nice. The conclusion to the questline was also very satisfying.

Anyways, I remember starting the main story quest at Summerfold Farms, then getting side-tracked by Arcanist quest... which resulted in me opening half of the map of entire La Noscea in a day. Yes, even the areas that were too high level for my level 11 lalafell without a proper equipment. Yes, I was that stubborn and I also wanted to see more areas this place had to offer that badly. You just can't help it when you are especially fond of exploring fictional worlds.

But according to my screenshots, I eventually came back to MSQ after I made a safe return to Summerfold Farms from Costa del Sol on the same day. Here I ran around the area, helping to get people to work and to make sure the oranges got delivered in time. Then time came to investigate a grotto nearby...

I am the waves that bear. I am the winds that guide. I am the evening stars. I am the morning sky. I am born of the sea. And there shall I die.

As my character turned around, he saw a peculiar white-haired catgirl approach... what was the race's name again? Meekotee?... Mino...te? Ah, right, "miqo'te". A white-haired miqo'te woman with a branch for a weapon approached me, mentioning something about the way the citizens of Limsa Lominsa live with the wordes carved into the stone in the middle of the grotto. But before she could say more, a giant rock-like monster ran inside the cave and we had to fight it.

This was my introduction to instanced duties. I don't really remember seeing those in MMOs I've played through before, but maybe I am misremembering or something, but it definitely felt new to me. Either way, we made a quick work of the frenzied goobbue (that's the name of the rock monster from what I've gathered later) and it seemed to have dropped something... some blue crystal, to be precise. Pi picked it up, the head started to hurt, and then he seemingly got transported into a dark void.

Some weird sigil appeared underneath my character's feet, and the blue crystal got inserted into one of the six slots. "Aha, we need to collect those to progress the story", - I thought immediately, because I was already familiar and comfortable with that sort of progression in other games.

Then the dark skies clouded, and stars begun to fall from above. I didn't understand yet what that meant, and frankly I didn't give it much significance at the time, because immediately after, I heard a familiar voice...

Hear... Feel... Think... Crystal bearer...

I am Hydaelyn. All made one.

A gargantuan crystal was now right in front of Pi as he floated through the void. The crystal introduced herself as Hydaelyn, and told my character to go banish the Darkness with the power that was now bestowed to him, and soon after, he left the place to return back to the grotto.

This was the first scene that captivated me in a way. It's nothing special, but the huge shiny crystal of light talking to me with a gentle, almost motherly voice really did make me go "woah" at it all first time I saw it.

Also right then my friends asked how far was I into the story, and once I told them I talked to a giant crystal, they...

The player of the self-proclaimed Emo Catboy: That's mom, don't forget her. The player of the stern-looking Auri man: Yeah that's mom. Say hi to her for me.

"A mom, huh? Sure enough, I will keep it in mind", - was my reaction, and I continued the MSQ. Ended up finding out that one dude who couldn't delived the oranges in time had gone to a cave with his pals and got beaten up by some Serpent Reavers guys who knew him previously. I had shown up quickly enough, the dude's head was still on his shoulders, and I did find it funny these grown-ass guys just didn't laugh outloud at a little child with chubby little body, but again, lalafells are just dwarves of this universe so they have to be used to seeing them.

Some Organization XIII looking ass then does an evil chant (and you know it's evil because it's written in red), summons a Golem and scares Serpent Reavers off. Pi fights and successfully defeats it, the black hooded guy vanishes and the white-haired miqo'te from earlier arrives to help the beaten up guy with the relation to Reavers. Then Pi's head suddenly starts to hurt and... a scene change occurs? The woman is in Limsa, going around the city, but...

...the lesser moon, Dalamud, that fell from heavens the five years ago, was still in the sky.

Oh my god, we can now look into others' memories for different characters' flashbacks, dope.

Either way, once Pi wakes up, the miqo'te woman gets a call from someone. Sure, medival fantasy with walkie-talkies, I will take it. And before she goes, she introduces herself as Y'shtola. Now, it took me a while to figure out how to actually read it, originally I thought it was "Ee-shtoe-lah", but it was actually "Yash-toe-lah" all this time. It's a nice name.

After going back and forth for a next hour or so, I decided to end this playsession. I picked it up the next day. My friends wondered if I was enjoying the game so far and I replied with an "yes, but running around on foot is tiring". That's when the person controlling the white-haired lizard man decided to "Uber" me.

The fact they chose a bike and then decided to take off into the skies made me think of Harry Potter lol.

But yeah, we got around MSQ much quicker that way. They also showed me a few other mounts like a giant gorilla and a flying armchair that made me think so much about Dist from Tales of the Abyss lol. Then my other friend joined and was helping me with the enemies while chilling and chatting with two of us over VC. He too was a Free Trial player at the time.

Now, nothing much of note had happened during that time. We (Pi and Y'shtola) fought the hooded guy again and killed him. He left behind a purple crystal that I didn't really want to pick up (but my character was interested in it), but it had disintegrated before my lalafell could touch it.

After that I had my first encounter with the Admiral of Limsa Lominsa and... hoo boy, she was testing myself. I am sorry, but that woman is incredibly badass and I wouldn't mind it at all if she was my companion for the rest of my life. Anyways, she acknowledged Pi's recent successes and invited him to a banquet, where she found out Pi was like one of those legendary Warriors of Light who no one remembers but to whom the entirety of Eorzea owes their lives to, all because of the crystal from Hydaelyn. And then another headache happens to show a flashback back from the time Battle at Carteneau occured. It had a lot of characters I haven't seen yet, but I knew I will meet them eventually because they seemed too important to be already dead lol.

Once Pi woke up, he got told that Admiral has a mission for him, a mission that requires one to travel to different capitals - Gridania and Ul'dah, which were the other starting cities.

And thus we took off into the air and traveled to the lands beyond...

Next Entry >>

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #ff14 #lalafell #ffxiv wol #ffxiv journal

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nhaneh · 10 months

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I watched a youtube video last night that posed the question of where exactly the consciousness goes when we loose it - where do the awareness that is "you" go whenever you get knocked out or fall asleep - and I can't help but feel like it's a bit of a malformed question?

Like the problem is that emergent properties aren't really physical properties in and of themselves, but the result of other things working in tandem?

Imagine you're playing a game, such as the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV with a free trial that lets you play the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime, and you're having an epic fight against an enemy while listening to the killer music of Masayoshi Soken.

Where is that fight located? Where on your computer or the game servers is this battle actually taking place?

The truth is, of course, that it isn't, at least not directly - because that specific battle does not exist as separate element of the game, but rather as a combination of multiple systems and pieces of data all interacting to form the specific and unique experience you are then currently having. The sound and graphics are all created from data files on your computer or console, the statistics of you and your enemy, and the enemy actions and behaviour, are all provided by the game server, all while you decide what specific actions you take and when. And when that fight is over, the battle you just had doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't disappear to some specific place, it just ceases to be emergent from the situation - it's not in and of itself a physical entity so much as it is a situation that occurs out of the interaction of other things.

And this, I feel, is the problem with asking the question of where our consciousness is located, where it goes when we're asleep - because it's not a physical entity in and of itself as it is the result of what the brain does while we're conscious.

Because the reality is that we're not just our consciousness - I mean hells, the majority of decisions we make and actions we take are things we do without ever being conscious of doing them - it's just things we do, and then the process of experiencing ownership of those actions is an entirely separate process that happens afterwards.

There's a degree to which we can ask, if consciousness does not itself physically exist, what does that mean for the continuity of us as individuals? If our conscious selves cease to be when we are unconscious, how can we be sure it is the same consciousness that awakens when we come to? And for all the potential existential dread contained within that line of thought, and how much I sometimes grapple with it myself when trying to sleep, I think it is ultimately a misunderstanding of what makes us... us.

If you watch a video on a computer, and then copy that video onto your phone... is it the same video? It certainly won't look the same - it'll be very similar, obviously, but the image will likely be much smaller, the colours will likely be quite different, the sounds will sound different... and yet most of us will recognise it as the same video. And that's very much the same thing, I think - because just like a video will look and sound different depending on the device playing it back, we ourselves behave differently depending on the situation and context we find ourselves in - our environment is part of the interactions from which our consciousness emerges, and if the environment changes then our behaviour changes - regardless of whether we're conscious or not to observe the change as it happens. We do not, and cannot, exist independently of whatever environment we happen to find ourselves in at that particular time.

As much as we assume ourselves in full conscious control of ourselves... we are not. And I think that's the real issue at heart, because it often feels like we're in a lot more control of ourselves - who we are and what we do - than we actually are, and accepting that difference between experience and reality is difficult.

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oraclememehacker · 8 months

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filled it out for funsies and aww, so close!

the transparent ones are because while hibiki loves both modern and retro gaming pretty equally, he's definitely got a preference for retro and thinks turn based rpgs are fun but it definitely depends on what the devs are going for- say, xenoblade is a fantastic rpg that... would not be nearly as good if it was turn based, for example. stuff like that. and while he still really likes featherman and would totally marathon it with futaba, he also feels like he's outgrown loving it.

"So close! You just need to play the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, AND the nomination-winning Stormblood expansion up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime."

#Email Reply (Inbox Ask)#fooltrick #Hacking and Memes (Futaba Sakura Musing)#The Oracle Navi (Futaba Sakura IC)#A Hacker Queen’s Favorite Activity (Memes)#yeah it's a hard one lol #but felt it made sense IC for her #with her specific interests and all

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rubisaurus98 · 1 year

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Get to know me!

Tagged by @sasslett through the FFXIV sideblog (@dragoon-mid-jump, if anyone’s curious), but this is going on the main first!

Share your wallpaper:

‘Tis a Genshin wallpaper of a character chilling in the forest playing his lyre with the sun shining down on him. It’s relaxing to look at without the desktop icons. (Shameless sideblog plug: @yae-mikos-toebeans)

The last song you listened to: Transformation from the The World Ends With You OST.

Currently Reading: Or at least, attempting to read....Book of the Night by Holly Black. Modern urban fantasy involving shadow magic. I am not that far into it and I’m trying to consistently read more....

Last Movie: It was most definitely Wakanda Forever. Had an effect on OC developments.

Craving: Nutella. My family’s been eating through a package of cookies and they’re almost gone.....

What are you wearing right now: Hoodie and jeans.

How tall are you: 5 ft even (152.4 cm). I’m small.

Piercings: Small gold earrings that clasp around my earlobe.

Tattoos: None, but maybe one day.

Glasses? Contacts?: Contacts over glasses.

Last drink: Strawberry hibiscus lemonade smoothie.

Last show: That I actively sat down and watched? The Owl House. Season 3, Episode 2. I love this series so much and I wish it didn’t get fucked over having 3 40-something minute episodes for a Season 3....

Last thing you ate: Dumplings for lunch.

Favourite colour: I love a good dark blue color. Dark reds, greens, and purples are also cool for me. Silver and black, too.

Current obsession: Have you heard....of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV?

Unrelated Obsession: Well, my sister pushed me into the game Limbus Company recently, so there’s that.

Any pets: I used to have a Bischon Frise named Winter who passed almost 2 years ago in May. Now we have some stray cats who like to hang out in our backyard. There’s one with brownish-grey stripes on their (her?) back and a white belly and paws that my sister named Skrunkle. There’s another purely brownish-gray cat, their brother who likes to jump on this blue beach cooler we store out there, that we named Alphy once we figured out that he was male. As for why that name....

Me: “Like from Fullmetal Alchemist? Alphonse?”

Sister: “No, that elf boy from Final Fantasy.”

Me: “...Alphinaud?”

Sister: “Yeah, him.”

Do you have a crush on anyone: Ahahahaha.....No...No, I don’t.

Favourite fictional character: *sighs and unfurls a long list of characters*

The last place you traveled: Italy! Went there for a vacation. Went to Venice, and then Rome. Personally, had a lot more fun in Rome.

TAGGING! .....Alright, if you see this and wanna do it, go nuts.

#Rubi says things #Tagging game

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husbandogoddess · 6 months

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Still Shining is a very emotional game. What do you think the future would have looked like for Cade if things had been different?

AHHHHH!!! Anon, that's a really good question! And emotional one too. 😭

If that night had gone differently, I can imagine Cade taking classes for filmmaking and scriptwriting, but end up dropping out of college after realizing it's not for her and that there are better ways for her to learn and improve at their craft: watching movies and studying their scripts and cinematography, listening to interviews with directors, and collaborating with the local filmmaking scene.

They would work continue working on their script (the one they talked about in the game and never got to finish) while making short films to post online. After a while, once she felt confident enough in her work, with MC's help, she would finally pitch the screenplay to various studios. After getting faced with some rejection, a small film studio would agree to help finance and produce their film and show it off at a film festival. :)

Oh! Cade would also play the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV with MC and probably hate the current state of the meta. 🤣 (I'm going off what my friends say since I don't do raids, and I'm trapped in Shadowbringers.)

#my games #still shining #ask

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outeremissary · 1 year

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oh oh for the dashboard osmosis thing especially since u mentioned it i gotta ask about xiv. what do u reckon is the plot of heavensward

Oh wow this is like FFXIV challenge mode. I think it's the expansion I know the least about. It was right before Endwalker, right? So it's gotta be. State of the world for Endwalker. Can I reverse engineer Heavensward from that and random guesses.

After doing lots of politics in Stormbringers (Stormlord???), tensions remain high in the reborn realm. Our hero, the Warrior of Light, continued their quest to restore peace to Eorzea and stop the muscular scythe bishie once and for all. But because this isn't Endwalker, they aren't going to make it very far! Instead, they meet a bunch of other guys instead, possibly including an absolutely fucking sick assassin lady who turns into a moon rabbit and tries to kill everyone (I have it on good authority that it was fine for her to do this so I say: good for her!) and the bishop of elves, who is bisexual and has an emotionally intense whirlwind relationship with the WoL for the two months they know each other. In the background, shenanigans continue with the monocle detective and his trusted magician's assistant looking sidekick as their rivalry with a guy from other Final Fantasy games reaches new heights. The red elf teen learns martial arts but continues to shafted by the plot in favor of fan favorite blue elf teen. Unfair! Let her bite and kill, I say. There's a guy named Curious George who for many, many months I thought was a super duper popular WoL but is actually just a real guy. As far as I can tell, Curious George is a romance option who is wooed via fishing trips. A humble man! I respect it. And of course, the redemption arc of the most dark knight looking ex-major villain of a past expansion continues as that guy finds himself in the desert and adds a major character to his roster of new adopted children. This protagonist (I forget which one) begins to reflect that maybe the dark knight really has changed, and they part ways on good terms. Hooray for friendship!

Oh! Also there are girls in love in that one, I think. I'm pretty sure that's the one with the girls in love! The girl who is an ancient being like the WoL and reawakens because of an abusive ex or something? But through the power of yuri he is made to fuck off and she continues to just be the person she is in the present. Yay!

Overall, Heavensward is an expansion worthy of its popularity, adding vibrant new characters, great beaches and rivers, and continuing to ramp up the plot of the critically acclaimed MMORPG with a free trial up to level 60. Emet Selch is presumably there, but I don't know where. Just imagine him in the distant background of every shot.

#I'm hoping that at least one thing I described. is in heavensward.#ask me emithing #ask game #kuroimarzipan #edit: just checked my work with a local expert and I am wrong.#heavensward is about dragonfucking.

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ot3showdown · 1 year

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azem/emet-selch/hythlodaeus infodump (ffxiv spoilers up to and including endwalker abound)

these three are regularly described as emet-selch's closest relationship. emet's got terminal old man tsundere disease in the body of a 20 something and he has two partners(not canonically romantic but definitely implied enough that most read it as such) who lovingly bully him abt it relentlessly. while we do not see azem on screen, the way they are talked about by other characters regularly confirms this, and we see it directly with hythlodaeus. despite emet bitching about it, hyth literally tells the player "just say please emet selch and he'll do what you want" when he's reluctant to do a task

when the world ended and azem was split into multiple guys and hyth was sealed away in the ancients' god, everything emet-selch did was to bring back his people from his memories, which heavily involves his love for these two. honestly after seeing what a beautiful man hyth was who can fucking blame him lmao. dude was literally causing world ending catastrophes for those he loved

additionally depending on ur wol u can get reincarnated lovers trope with azem as azem is reincarnated again and again, including as ur wol when u meet him

when emet recreates the ancients' city for u, he also made shades of everyone who lived there. however, hythlodaeus was made with the fact that emet knew hyth so well that he knew hyth would see through the fakeness of it, and so the shade of hyth is fully aware he's a simulation of the original

in ancient society, someone chooses when they die, and it is typically when they've fulfilled their purpose in this world, after which they release their aether back to the world. it's seen as a beautiful thing by most in that society, even if its a little fucked up to some of them+outsiders. hythlodaeus however only has the goal of helping the other two achieve their dreams, at which point he wants all three of them go together

in short, your honor they're poly and i love them

(im gonna do the same joke again bc my brains broken today)

wow all this happens in critically acclaimed mmorpg final fantasy xiv which has a free trial and includes the entirety of a realm reborn and the award winning heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime? Cool.

#asks #ship propaganda #ot3 showdown #ffxiv

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selenityshiroi · 4 months

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My adventures in FFXIV: finally reached the end of ARR edition

So...a fair few years back I, a huge Final Fantasy fan but not so much a fan of MMORPGs, heard that the critically acclaimed MMORPG FFXIV was available on a free trial (up to level blah blah and including expansions etc insert rest of meme here). And I figured I would give it a shot.

I downloaded it to my PS4, made my character, stumbled my way through chosing a class, got lost a billion times, and then finally made it out of the city and to my first enemies...

Where, with my lack of understanding of the controls and mechanics, thought I'd accidentally attacked another player instead of the monster and insta closed the game in shame and dishonour.

(Back then I didn't know you COULDN'T attack another player outside of PVP and the player probably just teleported away with great timing)

I didn't touch the game for another year or two.

That year or two later I was exposed to XIV again through FFXIII fans. And it was also around the time that SquareEnix started to release and advertise a beginners guide to FFXIV and it was being mentioned by many people that XIV could now be played solo*.

*not quite fully but we'll get to that

So, with these factors combined, I watched the SE vids and dusted off my PS4 and booted the game back up.

A few hours later and I was invested.

This time around I wasn't stumbling around completely blind (don't get me wrong...there are SEVERAL mechanics I would later have to Google and watch YouTube vids for because the in game experience wasn't intuituive) and I had some aims to get to. Plus I now had fans of the game, that I knew, telling me 'it gets better after ARR' so I had a reason to get through the story to 'make it to the good stuff'.

So...about that.

I proceeded to spend the last two years 'getting through the story'.

And that is for two reasons.

1. I unlocked every role and initially started to equally level them all up, not realising this was not a great idea. I eventually WHM mained at around lvl 34 but I continued an obsessive need to level up all the DOL/DOH roles.

I actually ran out of material accessibility before slowing down.

2. Solo*

I very, very quickly realised that doing anything with parties made me extremely anxious. I'm not extremely confident in my gameplay and whilst I'm happy to fail and repeat in my own gameplay, I don't want to negatively affect anyone else.

But, in the latter half of ARR, I started stumbling across content I couldn't complete without a party. I avoided those side content aspects for a while and procrastinated a little with more gathering and crafting.

But then I reached the Crystal Tower. And, suddenly, it wasn't just side content I could avoid.

In order to continue the MSQ I HAD to join a party.

And here is where I give a shout out to youtube tutorials (in particular The Scrub) for giving me a guides that I could study like I was about to take an exam. Because being able to go into coop content with some idea of what to expect did ease my concerns a little.

And here is where I give a massive shout out to the XIV player base. Because I wasn't perfect. And I did make some mistakes (although I'm also pretty sure on some duties the tank was making mistakes...) but the players were helpful and kind about it. Especially when I put out a 'sry new and on ps5' message (because by this point I had transferred my file to my PS5 and brought the game for inventory space...see my crafting and gathering obsession). I think I saw one 'ugh doing with this newbs is rough' message in an 8 man raid where it went wrong for a lot of people but even that wasn't too mean.

But the bad thing about the 'it gets really good after ARR' thing was that after the Praetorium I was expecting it to be close to the end of the expansion. And that the things after it were just trying up loose ends and simple side quest stuff. So I tried rushing through it a bit but then realised that...it kept going. And it was also full of plot. New characters, more world building etc. So I slowed down again because it had been a year since the Praetorium and, sure, I'd taken some long breaks to play other games, but I wasn't getting to the end.

Now...I had seen exactly one thing from FFXIV before playing the game at all. I have been exposed to some more spoilers since then, but the scene I had seen before playing was a complete scene that was understandable without context. Nanamo's part at the end of ARR.

So I knew it was coming and I was starting to piece together the context leading up to it before I reached it. And the longer it took to show up the more I thought 'wow...this really is the expansion that never ends'.

Until yesterday. When 'several cutscenes will play in a sequence' popped up and I knew.

It was time.

The Venn Diagram of side characters I really liked and characters who FFXIV killed off is pretty much a circle.

Still mourning Noraxia and don't get me started on Moenbryda, the character so hot even my aroace ass went 'oh'.

But it finally happened. I reached credits on ARR.

It's taken me 2 (or technically like 5) years but I made it!

The story for ARR wasn't bad, but there were sections where I just wanted to get to the next bit. It took me a while to really get into the swing of things and understand the world and it's characters. At the beginning I didn't really like any of the city leaders because there was a lot of 'let's kill all the beast tribes' talk and the beast tribes seemed sentient, so it seemed pretty genocidal. But then the sentience and right of the various races to live and coexist became a plot point and I think that was when I finally started to settle into the world building.

It probably took until post praetorium for me to really get into the Scions squad. This was not helped by Minfilia's VA who almost made me hate the character because yikes. I don't want to blame the actress, because I do believe that voice direction has a lot to answer for with dubbing. But it was so bad. I am very glad I have now reached the stage where a new cast and studio took over.

Now my new task (other than, obviously, playing HW) is to work through the tribal quests. I really like the tribes and was very happy to unlock the quests. But I didn't work through them and I forgot that you are limited in daily activity. And that they share a quest quota.

I also think there might be some materials locked behind the quests???

I also would like some money for a house. Ha. Haha. Hahaha.

I have like 560k. Houses are like 3mil at least.

But I'm missing out on so much crafting by not having a house to fill with furniture.

#ffxiv

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isayoldbean · 11 months

Note

thank you, that was helpful! knowing that the rpg part of ffxiv gets more emphasis and that it's relatively singleplayer-friendly is definitely a relief (the only other mmo I've really gotten into is swtor, which is basically just a bioware rpg in a shared online world if you ignore all the optional multiplayer/pvp stuff)

I do have a couple of follow-up questions, if you don't mind!

1) does having the complete vs. starter edition change anything about the start of the game? I had a bad experience previously with eso where I got a bundle with the first expansion during a sale, not realizing that would permanently lock off the option to start with the base game story and force me into starting with the expansion for some godforsaken reason, which pretty much killed dead my desire to actually get into that game lmao

2) how alt-friendly is it? I may have a bit of a problem with always coming up with ideas for new characters in rpgs

3) what's the female armor situation vis a vis boobplate and the like? know in advance that this WILL make or break my chances of playing the game

i don't mind at all, ask away!

no, there's no difference. the storyline of ff14 is well-beloved and critically acclaimed and they would like for everyone to experience it, so you have to go out of your way to miss any parts of it. there's options for people who want to, such as the story skips they sell in the online store, or manually skipping every cutscene, but it's something you would have to actively choose to do.

2. it's extremely alt friendly! most people i talk to in game have alt disease. the basic plan only allows 8 different characters per data center, but the standard plan allows 40. you are formally invited to go ham in character creation. (most people who don't have alt disease have fantasia disease, which is an item that allows you to completely remake your character if you want to. so either people have tons of alts, or they have one character that they constantly fantasia into their numerous alts. but they do all have alts)

3. the female armor situation is a little mixed. none of it is boobplate amounts of bad, to my knowledge, but there is a frequent complaint about things like 'gear that appears as pants on male characters magically turns into a skirt and thighhighs on a female character'. it's not so ubiquitous that it can't be avoided, especially with the glamour system that lets your gear take on the look of other clothing, but it is there and it's extremely annoying to encounter. that being said, this is something that has improved significantly since the earlier days, and the devs have actually commented on trying to do better. also in the past there were a lot of outfits that were genderlocked, but every patch they release updates to unlock some of them. i think there's very few genderlocked outfits remaining, actually. so i'll let you decide how you feel about that. if you're on the fence, i will also remind you that critically acclaimed mmorpg final fantasy xiv has an expanded free trial and that you can play through the entirety of a realm reborn and the award-winning heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime

hope this answered all of your questions, and once again feel free to let me know if there's anything else i can answer for you!

#asks #Anonymous #Final Fantasy XIV #ff14

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jazzpostsrandomthings · 5 months

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My introduction to FFXIV

Hey, after posting the thing about the stress test server a few weeks ago, I got an idea to try and go down the memory lane, trying to recall everything that had happened during the time I've spent playing Final Fantasy XIV. I hope that someone would find my story and experiences interesting. After all, I found out that I enjoyed seeing other people's reactions to the game itself as well.

But in order to tell my story, I have to start somewhere. And I can't find a better way to do so than to tell you how I learnt of the game in the first place.

Not sure when exactly did it start, but I remember my friend mentioning that he was playing FFXIV during Summer this year, I think. I wasn't too interested, after all I had prior experience with MMORPGs like Aion, Tera, Black Desert, ArchAge and even that Digimon Masters Online or whatever was it called, and I didn't go further than level 30 in any of them (which meant I was playing for less than a month or a month and a half at max for Aion (the 2010 version prior to becoming the cash shop simulator with no story) and Digimon Masters). Why was I trying so many MMOs out in the first place? Well, my mom is actually into MMOs herself so I was visiting the titles she was playing as well (minus Digimon Masters) to help her and just find a title I would like, but it never clicked so I thought that maybe I wasn't into online gaming in the first place.

So when I heard that my friend was playing an MMORPG that was also a part of a franchise I didn't know much about, I kinda wanted to join... but I hesitated, knowing that it would probably end the same way as it did for five other titles I've listed above.

Fast-forward to the beginning of September 2023, September 2nd to be presice, when I saw some hentai-loving douche from a Russian Megaman Discord server saying how much the old gaming and MMOs sucked in comparison to perverted gachas he was playing with and how the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV was actually trash. Needless to say, the guy was banned for posting hentai there. But either way, what he said about FFXIV was actually a good advertisement for the game so I remembered what my friend was saying and decided to reach out to him, saying I am willing to give it a shot. I did mention that I might not stay for too long here due to my track record with MMORPGs, but he said it was fine and that I can leave if it doesn't light up the spark in me in a month. He then made a group DM with a friend of his who actually was a person I saw on a different server a few years ago so that was neat.

I made a SquareEnix account that same evening, downloaded the game and then logged into the Free Trial for the first time, getting hit with this game's version of Prelude (even though I wasn't a fan or FF series, I knew the tune) and feeling a sense of tranquility, staying on the screen for a few minutes and continuing to listen to it while fiddling with settings.

I watched the opening cinematic (it was great but I was wondering if the game even had Japanese voice acting because I like playing games and hearing their original language, be it English, Japanese or something else, just a personal preference) and got to the character creator. I was looking at the races, finding a liking to exactly the three of them -- cat-eared people with furry tails known as Miqo'te, tall and slender horned people named Au Ra and short child-like folk with long ears by the name of Lalafell.

Also I was struggling a lot with trying to read most of the race's names at first. It took me at least a few weeks to memorize them even.

At first, I wanted to make Axl as a cat boy here, thinking that I probably won't stick for long anyway (and I did make him in the game later, I still have his preset saved), but I decided to actually choose the race none of my friends picked up (one was a Miqo'te, other was an Au Ra), so I went for a lalafell and made my boy Pi from ROCKMAN ZERO - Chapter: AXL here to the best of my ability. One of the two friends was certainly really happy I chose a potato according to her messages when I had announced it :D

After getting freaked out by the game asking what my deity was (picked Oschon because Pi has a thing for exploring and learning new stuff about the world), I decided to pick the Healer class, before getting told not to do that because it would make early combat really annoying, and then my friend told me I can go for Arcanist since it would become a Healer class at level 30. Needless to say, I went for the book, then chose the Atomos server because my friends were there (ping wasn't bad here at all, even though everything tends to freeze rarely due to my internet provider screwing me over) and thus had set my eyes towards the seaside jewel of Eorzea -- Limsa Lominsa...

I didn't know there was a different opening for each of the city-states at that time so I had some flashbacks to ArchAge when my character, Pi Peataan (I REALLY didn't think much while giving the character a name), but then we had actually arrived to the city and... I realized I underestimated my PC with the potato graphics settings I had supposedly set for it. Those bushes took me out of it for a moment.

So, I arrived to Limsa, fixed the graphics, met Baderon Tenfingers (still giggling at that name), took notes that pirate speak is indeed quite hard for me to read quickly, then went to the main plaza with giant aetherite where I was met by my friends, the self-proclaimed 'emo catboy' Miqo'te Summoner/Scholar and an immensely tall black-scaled Auri Dark Knight. They greeted me, which made me feel all shy because before that I've only seen these people as 2D avatars and text messages, and now they could ran around me and kinda interact with me... ahem. One of them added me to the friends list (other couldn't, he was still in Free Trial), and then went their own ways while I had one hour left before the bed to explore the city.

I didn't know yet that you don't need to do yellow quests so i just picked up all the quests that were available in Limsa before proceeding with the main quest. I was getting lost in this giant city A LOT, which was the result of me having what I call "topographical cretinism", but I was... enjoying it. I ended the day without setting a foot outside the starting area, but I was looking forward towards tomorrow to explore some more, drifting to sleep while the main menu theme kept ringing in my head, accompanying me into my dreams...

Hope you enjoyed this entry. I will try to continue this series. I had a lot of fun remembering the details of the first day of FFXIV for me and what was I feeling during it all. Playing through it again with my friends that cannot play FFXIV or don't want to sink so much time into an MMO, and looking through the backlog of messages and screenshots in Discord I left while going through all of that certainly helped to assemble these memories back in a proper order.

Next Entry >>

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #ff14 #lalafell

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