Valentiones Day has come around once again and while the usual stories of ooey-gooey love and longing are the norm for the Seasonal Quest and the return of its 2 player Puzzle Dungeon -which is the kind of design i wish we got more of as a regular kind of side content, though maybe its once a year nature grants it some charm?- and you know the gist of it by now. You do the dungeon, get your chocolate hearts and turn then in for some decorative housing items.
and thats... thats it? No mount? no gear?
Welllll kind of.
See this year they are trying something different, its easy to miss -most folks i know did- but something i'd like to see more of. See you would be forgiven in thinking that its just some lame tabletop items for your house, because you totally want to be "That Guy/Girl" that decorates their house in valentines stuff all the time like some form of Crazy Coeurl Lady in training right?
A more observant player might notice that there are quite a few npc's around this year, including the fortune tellers from the super awkward "form a couple with other players for romantic fortunes" event thats now been retired. Difference is theres now a new addition to the event. To the left of the Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre Atheryte Crystal there is now a shading looking "Furtive Fortune Teller". A crotchety old woman who gives fortunes for the people wandering around alone in full "tfw no virtual gf" mode. After a brief cutscene she mentions that she has concocted a "Magical Elixir" for these lonely times and for the low price of 999 Gil you can purchase it for its unique properties. You are going to want to purchase two of them.
Next take the Aetheryte to the Lancer's Guild and follow the path up the hill to a closed gate. Look to the rear balcony of the small building on the left to see a curious new addition to the location. A "Magical Pot" imp monster right out of the Labyrinth of the Ancients.
A jump over to the balcony will let you talk to the Imp. It will demand Magical Elixirs from you and turns out to be a unique secondary vendor for the event! Instead of chocolates from the couples quest it takes these bitter drinks from the loners instead and what does it get you?
You get a Gigas Greatsword, the giant blades used by the Gigas that roam the crystal wastes of Mor Dhona and a Tonberry Knife for Culinarians. Two weapons used by lonely monsters known for bearing grudges like a curse. How anti-romantic!
The event should have ended by now but due to the server issues with Eureka causing all instances to crash they have kept the event live till the 19th so even if you don't care about the actual valentine couples stuff theres now an extra 4 days to get these items in this 'secret quest' as well!
Personally i love stuff like this, even if i hate that i can miss it as a completionist. I was just showing a Sprout player around who was lost and on my way back to the Atheryte noticed the new NPC. To see an NPC and go on a little exploratory jaunt that ends in finding a secret vendor for unique weapons that will be gone -outside of the mogstation no doubt- is a really cool thing you only really see in MMORPG's from a bygone era for the most part and it was a really nice little thing to stumble upon. So while the info in this article will be useless a week from now its still a nice thing to talk about and i hope we see more of these 'secret quests' to stumble on in the future. Honestly i would love to see some Limited Jobs get this treatment in the future, can you imagine how fun/frustrating that kind of scavenger hunt would be?
So for those not in the know World of Warcraft is not doing so hot. There are a number of reasons why. A over reliance on RNG, too much time gating stretching content out purely as a "sub trap", trimming abilities away in a fashion that makes classes less enjoyable to play and general designing as though its mechanically looking at mobile games rather than rpgs for design ideas. Given some of the developers comments about preferring mobile games to pc or consoles this might not be far from the truth but regardless of reasons the games not quite the unrivalled monster it used to be. Which brings us to the topic today. A situation leading to the term "Wowfugee" and the growing stereotype associated with it.
Now i played WoW for about a decade before FFXIV and i've mentioned it on more than one occasion and maybe in the past i will have mentioned that while they are both basically similar hotbar combat MMORPG's the biggest difference comes from the WoW userbase on the whole being absolute poison outside of an insular Guild environment.
Theres plenty of reasons for that. Cross realm zoning, the ability to jump characters on the fly since everything isn't tied so often to one main and lack of ramifications means theres no actual reason to not be an asshole in World of Warcraft since you can get away with it all the time scott free and that has basically lead to it becoming the norm. Newer players then come in and see its the norm and behave the same to propagate it and this vicious cycle not only continues but from Wrath of the Lich King onwards has only appeared to exacerbate year over year. Compared to the literal in game queueing mindset of FFXIV its a world of difference. I will revisit it once per expansion and be astounded that every time it is worse than i remember it being the last. Every single time. Compare this to FFXIV where by and large you have one character and as such one name and face your in game reputation will be associated with and i believe that only compounds this sentiment of "you wouldn't behave this way irl, why is it okay here?".
Credit to WhyMaige on Reddit
Right now though this really seems to be showing up more often in the most irritating of ways. In FFXIV none hardcore content the common sentiment is "the party can only move as fast as its slowest member" and "if someone is a 'Sprout' with a green leaf by their name then they are new and deserve the same help and patience we were given when we started". Which is totally antithetical to the modern WoW ideas of "you assholes exist to serve MY good time" and "well the party wiped once, time to ragequit the group, thanks for nothing you fucking retards" which is totally alien to the FFXIV userbase.
Sure during ARR there was a period of the "fuck you, you don't pay my sub" 'Ice Mages' that eventually got the idea that the game wasn't for them and moved onto other games and i hope they found something they enjoyed in the process but nowadays? if there is a more patient and chill online game userbase than FFXIV i can honestly say i legitimately don't know of it. Maybe Monster Hunter in none persistent content or perhaps when Animal Crossing hits the Switch unless theres a cutthroat Bell economy?
Not that this means there are not problems in our own userbase in other ways, but they are far less regular and argumentative as the situation i'm seeing lately. I still have a few jobs left to get to cap and naturally that means doing my daily dungeon roulettes for the easy xp to get those 60-70 runs down without having to spam things like Bardam's Mettle for hours on end. During that time i have repeatedly witnessed the fascinating display, almost like clockwork since Shadowbringers trailer came out, where someone with a name like "arhtass lichkinge" or "princess silvanas" -misspellings of Warcraft character names if you don't know- basically spending most of a Alliance Raid, Dungeon or Trial doing little as their character and mostly just heckling others and trying to shit on the Sprouts for not knowing things while at the same time ninja pulling and spamming "GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO" as we attempt to explain things like King Behemoths Meteors or Phlegethons Ancient Flare. The truly fascinating thing with these people is the reliable reaction from the other players.
For the most part its total silence, you ignore the dickhead whos not contributing right? not like we can't clear Crystal Tower due to one arse who didn't know Yoshi had yet to add the Keyboard Warrior job. What was interesting though was when others broke their silence. Silent until the time it was when these players started to specifically target Sprouts, trying to shame them and in cross party alliance chat try to get them kicked, choosing to generally shit on them and tell them to kill themselves. The usual "i'm an anonymous dickhead and theres no repercussions for this behaviour" bingo. That like clockwork is when the veteran players across all parties all chimed in to say some variant of "Leave them alone, grow up" or most commonly "i know this game is popular for wowfugees right now, but that behaviour doesn't fly here like it does there".
Often the offensive player just calls everyone else a 'faggot' or something equally charming and keeps going but every so often you get one who pauses and goes "doesn't every mmo shit talk the bads?" because they have been trained to treat any slip up, even when its clear the player is a beginner, this way as the norm.
Hopefully they learn thats not the case and players only get better with help and experience. Hopefully they will integrate with the community and find a more friendly userbase where they don't spend all their time on the defensive, expecting a insulting attack from other players as the norm/baseline expectations. But thats not really the point i'm making here. The idea that assholes exist on the internet should not exactly be a grand revelation should it? the issue is the idea of the 'wowfugee' becoming its own black mark regardless of the player because of these stand out douchebags.
We all remember the days of ARR and Heavensward where, after Dragoons fighting the lag on Titan, the running joke was all the "Kirito Starks" running around with 8 lines long speech macros for their limit breaks that were perfectly polite but considered the height of cringe. It became such a regular gag that the SAO/GoT characters kind of just stopped being a fad over time. Now it seems wowfugees are the running fad and sure someone named after a WoW character being a venomous dickweed to everyone does have an air of 'fresh off the boat and in the wrong neighbourhood' about them but can't that also get pushed to the point that ironically the very sentiment leading to dislike becomes the default due to stereotyping?
Like i said i myself made the jump from WoW to FFXIV over half a decade ago now. The 'asshole as default' stuff in WoW started years before that. By that logic shouldn't i have also been one of those assholes if everyone coming over is? if we default to 'everyone from WoW coming over for Shadowbringers is a douchebag' aren't they going to see it like we are being preemptively prickly douchebags ourselves?
The fact that some of the people coming over include these assholes is a sad fact indeed. But i'm a firm believer that no one person can truly represent a group outside generic comparability and no group can be representative of the single person. Its important to remember why XIV as a community has its reputation and keep up those appearances so to speak. Its easy to see someone be a totally demeaning asshole out to ruin another beginners good time and yeah the fact that they might be driving a much nicer person away is enough to get your virtual hackles raised but the best way to deal with the asshole is to remember not to become the asshole yourself. To not let that sickness infect your own community like a communicable disease. More often than not i've seen these people go quiet when they see their opinion is not the norm and won't be tolerated or outright leave. Either they do some self reflection and learn from the experience or just decide its a game full of easily offended snowflakes and try somewhere new which ain't no loss at all is it?
I guess ironically given we are about to go into an expansion where we go from Warriors of Light to Warriors of Darkness i'm saying 'Don't let others change your own disposition' in this way but its a strange situation where another game is having a sizeable drop off thats stepping their toes into other games and we just have to remember that while the standout volatile dickheads should be given a polite what-for we should also maintain our own sense of community identity because there are also people who may have played a MMORPG for 15 years and are now dejected and looking for a new home and this might be the right fit for some of them and its far more important to make the good ones welcome than assume they are another one of these assholes just because they are a "wowfugee".
Because like i said, for a very large number of us back in A Realm Reborn we were the wowfugee's being welcomed by Legacy players. Remember the story i told of the guild that tried to take over my servers economy and how we beat them by working together as a community? thats Final Fantasy XIV to me and that should be the FFXIV we welcome those people too even as we let the bad apples know the toxic elements of World of Warcraft are not and will never be welcome.
Well this one actually snuck up on me. i've been real busy lately, hence why no post yet about 4.5 since you should know by now i save my opinions till i've seen everything and have yet to complete the Ivalice raid or the last few fights of the Masqued Carnival, so i'll get to that soon as i have more free time, but in my business i straight up forgot fanfest was today. So i was pleasantly surprised to be woken up by my phone going off with people sending me pictures of a certain someone i'll get to later.
Overall bit of a quiet fanfest in some regards, but last time was kind of a info dump blowout along with the CEO showing up to announce BLU as well. We got some confirmations, some clarifications and a bit more info but it feels like they are saving the last big hurrah for the JP fanfest which isn't surprising since thats the domestic market after all. But what we were shown was exciting and i have seen so many people i know go "so where do i go if i want to start this game now?" on forums and social media this morning so i guess Yoshi and the team sold it well.
First off we get the expected reveal of the extended teaser trailer as we did for Stormblood last time around. Not too much new stuff here but what there was was interesting.
We see Urianger as an Astrologian addressing Ysh'tola as Matoya while she appears to be a Black Mage, meanwhile Thancred gets a bit more where he outright calls the young girl Minfilia. Thats about it for new stuff but it does make me wonder: Are these even our scions at all?
Some fan theories lean to them being 3 from a dark future where we fail, others see them as counterparts from the Warriors of Darkness' world and maybe the guy in the trailer is not 'derplander' at all but Arbert from Heavensward who returned to his shard with Minfillia two years ago. Its interesting we are like 5 months away from release and we still don't know the story or setting of the expansion. New landmass, alternate shard or even a days of future past style dark possible future? we have no idea and personally i find that exciting. A big problem with MMORPG's is telling you everything before you go in, shame they spilled the Minfillia reveal in that regard, but i think that one was kind of guessed by almost everyone at the moment she was shown with Thancred.
Then we have the first Job reveal and would you believe its a Gunblade user, who could have predicted this shocking reveal eh?
Jokes aside the Job is called Gunbreaker. It is a Tank which starts at lvl.60 in Gridania and also unsurprising seems based on/inspired by Squall from FFVIII.
Its nice to get a new Tank. Personally i think we can go a little while without more DPS jobs. Theres some i want like GEO but they can't keep padding the dps gear lists on bosses and not giving the people that only tank or heal nothing. Hopefully Viera bring in Dancer as a healer as well. As for GUN i'm excited. My main tank job is DRK and thats probably getting a nice revamp but VIII was my first Final Fantasy and jank as its conflicting systems were i have a soft spot for it and i can't wait to throw on a gunblade and that Squall glamour set for a while!
Next up they move onto talk of areas, no Moon says Yoshi "maybe for 7.0", but we do see the Rak'Tika Greatwood. A clear analogue to the Golmore Jungle from FFXII. Home to a certain bunny eared people, wonder if they are showing up somewhere...
Its a nice enough looking zone but i wonder about both the ancient ruins that don't match any culture we know of and the burnt out buildings that look decades old at best. We still don't even know where this is. Is it on the edge of Dalmasca and its a burnt out imperial fort? or is this somewhen rather than somewhere and thats a familiar location after years of disrepair yet to occur? not in a video i can find yet was also 'Il Mheg. The more bright and Sea of Clouds feeling area home to the Pixie Beast Tribe who worship the Primal Titania.
Someone people are quick to point out bears a certain resemblance to Allisae. The last, and really only caster Primal in XIV is Ramuh and that will be a full half a decade ago almost dead on by the time Shadowbringers releases which will be a refreshing change of pace. Its only on reflection you notice how many of the Primals are no more a caster than a King Behemoth casting Meteor is. Unless plumes Make Titan a wizard rather than beefed up Elemental? i mean maybe Lakshmi counts too but you just can't beat a giant boss with a staff raining spells down on you in a fantasy MMORPG can you and we've been starved of that for a while.
It got a little bit more bullet points in its pacing after this for a bit:
-New skills from 70 to 80, naturally
-The Battle system revamp will be revealed around May
-World visit should be in 4.57
-Trust NPC's are dungeon only, maybe too many made Fates a nightmare like ole' King Behemoth and the Chobobo issue back in the day?
-Preorders start next week, expansion releases on July 2nd
Then we got the last two big bits of information. First off, surprising nobody we see the next playable race for FFXIV and if you played the current Alliance Raid content the race probably wont surprise you even if you missed the bugs bunny shirt at the US fan fest.
So yeah. Thats bunny girls alright. Guess now we know how the companies $133 million loss is going to be recouped. Hope they have the fantasia stockpiled. Shame Miqo'te will probably go the way of the Elezenn after this. Seems like a mono gendered race thus face but maybe they are saving something for the JP fanfest in a few months?
Finally after all that we get the last big surprise. There had been rumours of Yoko Taro, famed internet gif producing crackpot and tortured mind behind the 'DarkeNier' games, working on something Final Fantasy related since last year. People seemed to assume he was just being given the reigns to FFXVI after the attempts to make XV a strange 'jrpg as a service' that fell flat. Turns out he's working with the FFXIV team instead!
Yes thats real and not an early April Fools joke. The Alliance Raid storyline for Shadowbringers is going to be written by Taro and be a Nier story. For some this is a gross level of cross over that kills their immersion and its gotten some people upset. Personally i have been a fan of Taro's games since the buggy but memorable mess that is Darkengard/Drag on Dragoon and while i love Automata a lot the original Nier Replicant/Gestalt is the rpg i wanted from Square during the PS3 generation that i got while games like FFXIII were massive let downs. Taro's storys defy traditional rpg conventions and are often about loss, morality and the choices we make that are rarely the same kind of basic moral quandaries rpgs throw at their protagonists and more, in his own words, 'if you believe you are doing the right thing then you can do great evil for the most selfish of reasons' and maybe that thinking really resonates with the core story of Shadowbringers?
All i know is Taro is jrpg equivalent of a Hideo Kojima level Auteur and i cannot wait to see what we get out of multiplayer Nier content. A bit bigger than the Lightning Returns style fate people asked for an expected all of last year huh?
So with that the shows over. One more fanfest before the expansion releases and we know more but we still seem to know so little outside of the mechanics/features side. Which to some is probably frustrating but personally i hope they don't just blow their load and give us a massive reveal of all the story like they did with Stormblood. I remember the ending to A Realm Reborn had people in a mad panic and all we knew was "we go to Ishgard on the lamb" and it made things feel more like an adventure than another tier of levelling content. Hopefully we get that back again as Stormblood seemed to lack that feeling of 'mystery' and has not kept people as interested as Heavensward did. So i really hope this is a return to form in that regard. Beyond that i'm super excited, all the more so with Taro doing work for the project so bring in June!
