Hey so points for trying to make that work at least right? no? alrighty then. A swing and a Miss. Now here is an event that i'm pleased to say held up. A lot of the events in XIV during Stormblood has been pretty lacklustre and while this one is pretty late for its intended cross over with a game from two years ago its still been a fun event. Its been a long time since i took multiple screenshots and recorded video to remember the event.
First off you can breath a sigh of relief. This is not just another dull Fate grind like Lightnings was. There is a fate where you fight Magitek Troops -or MT's- but you need do to it 3 times tops, it takes like 30 seconds to beat and nets you a currency to buy 6 Orchestrion rolls of what most would agree are the best tracks from the FFXV soundtrack. After that? shockingly its a short but enjoyable single player questline instead!
The story was simple enough. The Warrior of Light runs into a certain Lucian Prince broken down at the side of the road in Thanalan and introduces him to Cid -but not the Cid Noctis is expecting of course- to repair the Regalia. In the meantime you and Noctis investigate reports of things from Eos invading Eorzea. At first its just Magitek from Niffleheim but as nightfalls you get the first solo duty fight against a Demon, Eos' version of Voidsent for those who havent' played FFXV. Its a simple fight is smoked as RDM but tried again as BLU and while it took a little longer was still pretty easy but it was fun. After that you go camping and fishing as Noctis explores the shroud looking for something to tell the boys back home about. He even stops for a photo opportunity with you. Really, that actually happens.
The real fun comes after that when reports come in of the MT's attacking the Ixal in the North Shroud and this drove them to summon Garuda. Only for them to run in fear when it is "like our goddess, but is not out goddess!" as the Astral of the same name from Eos shows up, following the power of the King of Lucis to this shard from their own.
Honestly this fight is fun and its a shame we can't redo this one. Its a rework of the ARR Gardua fight but instead of using a close to the middle ring of stacked stones for cover you use an action move, in this case the blink strike from temporarily being given the power of a Kingsglaive from Noctis, and you blink around and link strike with Noctis for big damage. Honestly if i wasn't playing a RDM with Corps-a-Corps this probably would have seemed cooler than it felt but it was still pretty great.
You beat XV Garuda and she says Noctis passed this trial and its time to return home, just as Cid pulls up in a repaired Regalia. Noctis says his goodbyes and everyone gets a brief vision of a woman in white calling him home. He rides off into the sunset so to speak with a promise of 'lets meet again someday' and you end the brief side story with a new outfit, the Kingsglaive title and a trip to the Golden Saucer to drop 200,000 MGP on a G-Type Regalia for your troubles!
Overall i liked the event and i'm not even that big a fan of FFXV in terms of the whole series of mainline titles. It even made me contemplate reinstalling it to finish the DLC but not quite enough to bring me to do it.
I think in retrospect i enjoyed this one more probably because it was delayed. Because lets be real these cross overs are advertisements at the end of the day. They are to sell a product. This one was just stuck in dev hell much like the game its trying to cross promote so came at a time long after the games a current product on the new release shelf to be shilled. For Lightning, granted i cannot stand her character as Toriyamas tulpa waifu insert, the event felt cynical as it was right around the time Lightning Returns came out and so it felt more like an invasive advert getting in your fantasy MMORPG.
This like the FFXI events were years after the fact so were more of a 'hey i know that track' or 'they name dropped the thing, i know that reference!' type stuff that gets a smile and a prize. Personally i see the odd rare Lightning cosplay once in a blue moon but when did you last see anyone use the weapons from her event? years? ever? this feels like we will be seeing Regalias in regular mount rotation for a long time and the orchestrion music is already in the rotation at my Free Company house so clearly it did something right.
In general if i have one complaint its that the event made me want to play FFXV again right until a brief glimpse of Lunafreya showed up to remind me what an absolute mess of a game FFXV is and that its not really worth the trouble.
So yeah like i said at the start "A swing and a miss" with its intended purpose.
Well this one has been a long time coming hasn't it? over 2 years since its release in November all the way back in 2016, and boy thats flown by hasn't it?, FFXIV is finally having the crossover with the last mainline single player entry in the franchise. A little bittersweet since the actual release of FFXV was kind of a hot mess in some ways. The game launched pretty unfinished, the had to patch in scenes from the movie Kingsglaive to try and explain events, the story goes nowhere then falls apart trying to wrap up a story that barely began, strange wastes of time and money on things like an Assassins' Creed tie in and generally trying to be this "jrpg as a service" that helped contribute to a colossal multi million dollar loss for the companies fiscal year that saw the games future content cancelled and the creative director left or was let go from the company. So not only has general interest in the game as the new hotness faded but in general its taken a place for some as the new worst entry in the mainline series that for most was held, depending on who you asked, by FFXIII or FFIII.
So just like Lightning showing up in Eorzea was met with groans as it was used to advertise what rumours suggested was a Valkyria Profile sequel -something fans of that series have been crying out for for years that got reworked because FFXIII's production overproduced assetts that needed to be flipped to make a profit while Agito XIII came out as the forgotten on release FF Type - 0 and 'Versus XIII' was considered dead until it would later be reworked into the frankensteins monster of a title FFXV limped out of a loooong production hell- with Episode Ardyn seeing the finale of the whole disastrous "Project Fabula Nova Crystalis" the connotations to FFXV and Noctis showing up might seem less like enjoyable fan service and more of a reminder that the single player games in the mainline series haven't really been good since XII and haven't been truly exceptional since IX back in like 1999.
Not that groans and eyerolls at another failed mascot will put people off chasing a flying car thats a four player mount right?
What we know so far is that the event starts next Reset. Outside the Immortal Flames Gand Company building you will find an NPC named 'Kipih Jakkya' who starts the quest "The Man in Black". You need to be lvl.50 and completed the Ultima Weapon questline ending with the fight against Lahabrea at the end of A Realm Reborns pre inital credits roll MSQ. All we know so far is from the trailer. You fight the Imperial Soldiers and mechs, do some camping and fight a different form of Garuda. The camping suggests that this might not all be farming the same two fates for tokens like Lightnings event was.
The rewards shown thus far are Noctis' outfit, his hairstyle, his Triple Triad Card, half a dozen Orchestrion scrolls and of course the Car Mount which rumours suggest has been datamined to cost 200,000 MGP at the Manderville Golden Saucer. Personally i'm sitting on nearly 500k as i work my way through the last couple of things i dont have but i just save it from the super easy challenge log stuff. It probably won't be that hard to get during the event and i imagine it was made in such a way returning players can easily get it, maybe as part of the event the MGP buff comes back or something?
Personally i like the mount well enough, we already have Clouds Motorcycle, a Magitek Walker AND Claw to fly around on so at least this actually has a flying mode compared to the Bike or the bloody Elephant from the Ananta! i am surprised there thus far doesn't appear to be any weapons though. The Engine blade is kind of a bland, forgettable weapon but they tried to push it in a bunch of stuff the year after release like in Nier Automata and a boatload of Square Enix owned Gacha Mobile Games.
All in all i'm predicting a lot of foot traffic at the golden saucer for many, i know a few people who took long breaks coming back just for this, but also thing those of us who have the MGP already will breeze through the quest. So if its time limited and not something like monster hunter i'll take some screenshots, maybe record some footage and then back to the usual routine.
I swear i'll get Paladin to cap by Shadowbringers! Maybe.
aaaaand its finished already. Did you blink? you may have missed it then. I kid but i logged in, got the 'put time aside for this' message and was expecting another ARR/HW 2+ hour deal. Instead we get two solo duty fights and a little bit of exposition and then credits. Unsurprisingly this left people a little down going "was that it?" but honestly i was expecting this considering the nature of the ending this time.
Spoilers for those who didn't attend or watch the JP fan fest stream -which i will be writing about after this post- but Shadowbringers begins with our character using something related to the Crystal Tower to make the jump to another of the shard worlds created by Hydaelyn, the First in fact. So no long trip running from Uldah to Ishgard on the lamb, no waiting for the Ala Mihgan resistance and the whole Shinryu deal to go down. We are going in direct continuity from the end of Stormblood where we wake up in Ishgards Chirugeon's ward to grouping up with the Scions at Rising Stones to go find the way to the First. I'm sure in the future when its not during the awkward waiting period it will flow well and have a sense of immediacy to the urgency. You finally get a lead on whats been afflicting the other Scions and its time to jump on it and continue trying to solve the mystery! For now? we wait. Finish off levelling jobs, clear Eureka if you want, do the side quests and the FFXV tie in event when it hits. We still have stuff to do but for a story heavy game like a mainline Final Fantasy it is going to leave some people feeling like the waiting period came too quick. Personally i found it short, but i understand why.
As for the MSQ itself? well no shocks here we beat up Elidibus/Ze-not just like in the Shadowbringers trailer but then that creepy Echoe like effect occurs mid battle and strikes you down. Before you can be killed by "Zenos" however you black out. When your character wakes up you are greeting to a scene right out of kingdom hearts including an appearance by a character whos design may as well come from there as well. A hooded man with a crystallised arm tells you that oblivion is coming wether you win or lose the war with Garlemald and the only path to salvation is through him. He has left a 'Beacon' at the Crystal Tower for you to find. You wake in Ishgard to be informed by Ser Amyeric that Estinien showed up to save you, which we get shown in a single still image which honestly seemed a little lazy, and then you return to the Rising Stones where Tataru and the gang welcome you and set off to the Crystal Tower to find this Beacon and 'Open the Gate' to the First.
What do you mean "and thats it?" well mostly. There is a final scene back in the throne room in Garlemald. The emperor, those suspicious as hell twin bodyguards we fought in the last dungeon and Zenos are there alone. An uprising of sorts is starting due to the rumours of a demon possessing the heir to the thrones body and the Emperor "will not fight for the throne a second time". They also mention that curiously Solus, scene chewer de jour, is absent with neither the Emperor nor the Ascian knowing where he is and assuming he is 'using this chaos as an opportunity for his own ends'. The scene ends with the chief scientist making a return to confirm the Black Rose is ready to begin production again. Ending with a strange fade to black and static close up on a manic Emperor reminiscent of Kefka and Spehiroth to a lesser degree. Wether this was to show his internal, hidden feelings or to suggest some form of mania or possibly even some form of multiple personality syndrome we can't say for sure but it was a bit of a jarring shot to end the expansion on as the very, very long credits roll for a good 20+ minutes after this shot.
Finally for the after credits we see Zenos aka 'EleZenos' cut down a Garlemald soldier and look at the flag nearby to state it is "time to reclaim what is rightfully mine", his body or the throne or both we don't know while lamenting that he missed meeting "his friend" again and hopes we "grow more savage" on our jaunt on another world. Finally our character stands on a hill and stares up at the Crystal Tower and a closing comment of "Sow the Seeds of darkness" marks the end of Stormblood, along with Tataru giving you the most Edgelord outfit for a none DRK player since the Void Ark raid gear sets were the in thing.
Combined with the events of 4.5 i mentioned a little while ago my overall opinion remains the same. I am interesting in where its going, i find the increasingly cartoony jumps to make the Emperor evil shallow and a bit of a bruteforcing that wasn't needed. I'm glad we didn't get a character death just for dramas sake as i was honestly expecting them to try another Hauchefant with Hien at the end but thankfully they avoided that one.
So all in all the main story quest of Stormblood was fine. Not exceptional, not emotional like Heavensward was to a lot of people but just fine. Not quite the usual standard we expect from the team overall but i've said many times that trying to fit two major stories into one really seems like its been a detriment from the outside looking in. The characters were likeable and the world building was great but i would be lying if the minor trip back to Ishgard to see the Heavensward characters wasn't much more impactful than anything related to the current story, for me at least.
Beyond the main quest we have the Beast tribe finale, the Hildibrand Finale and the associated Trial to round off the expansions wrap up phase. The Beast Tribe questline involves Hancock inviting the Ananta to Kugane, no doubt for some kind of trade deal, with you dragged along to be a tour guide of sorts but naturally for this series a familiar face shows up to ruin everything. You know the drill. Its a greatest hits victory lap, though in this case the animation kind of outdoes the MSQ finale honestly.
Then we have the finale of a certain Manderville Man's latest investigation. To this point i have felt like Hildibrand has kind of been on a declining level of entertainment since A Realm Reborn. I still get the odd chuckle but you can tell this was something they wanted to do once and it was just so popular, which is understandable, that they are not feeling forced into doing it and it kind of shows at times. This time around the culmination of the questline honestly feels longer than the MSQ did for this half of the update. The Yojimbo trial was fun, effectively a remix of two earlier trials but felt like it was over very fast compared to the other trial fights this expansion. Story wise i got some laughs out of it and overall i think this storyline held up better than the GiGi storyline of Heavensward which felt like late in Development they decided to rush a Hildebrand questline out because they noticed how popular he became during A Realm Reborn. This time around it felt a bit more planned out and varied plus it gave us more time in Kugane which adds to it overall and its a shame we didn't get more stuff in Rahlgrs Reach the same way as the expansion went on. But some Thavnair interaction was neat and the ending to it was a real "oooh, thats how they are setting the next one up" moment that was a nice nod back to FFV.
Overall it was a brief maybe 4 hours of new gameplay content but with the expansion over its really just tying up loose ends at this point. It still feels like Ultima was the finale of the expansion and this is just set up with little actual shock value compared to things like Nanamo and Papalymo's events in the past.
But i guess thats Stormblood over and done. Still got one more job to get from 60 to 70 and some cleaning house on a couple of side things before i call it all done and dusted and give it a write up but hey we still have the FFXV event to go before we are truly done with Stormblood so still a little to go before we are waiting around for Shadowbringers eh?
Well it took a while what with the crazy number of excellent videogame releases lately but as usual i have cleared all the content in the current update (outside of Eureka that is) and feel i'm ready to ramble about the update that really feels a lot like "Stormbloods over, this is the set up for Shadowbringers" in retrospect.
Overall the quality feels like a marked improvement over 4.4 which i believe is the only time "boy, lotta spelling errors in this update" was part of my review of a big budget MMORPG's content update. Without the Doma/Ala Mhigo split the story is no longer serving two masters and it feels far more obvious here than last time that this is seeing an improvement to content quality. So as usual lets start with my go to content on patch day:
The Story
This is a story that, much like the expansion as a whole, felt very divided. There are two story hooks here and one only got more interesting after the extended Shadowbringers trailer while the other just fell flat to me. Overall it flowed well and left me wanting more but it really is night and day between the two storylines.
First off you have the big story teased in the patch trailer. War has come to Eorzea again and the new Emperor might be revealing a shocking twist! Exciting right? is he going to turn out to be some anti hero thats been waiting to turn on Solus (aka Not-Ardyn) all along? Intrigue and double agents on both sides? No. No he's just a humanity first nazi analogue. Thats it. All the set up just for a 'muh master race' villain. Its not quite the 'the church is evil all along' level of bland but in terms of jrpg tropes that were old on the PS1 this is pretty up there.
The question of course is why fart out such a lame 'twist' at all right? and i think the best way to explain this is to drop a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure spoiler so hey fair warning This spoils part of Jojo Part 7: Steel Ball Run. Jojo part 7 stands out for a few reasons. Its a universe reset, its a western, its Joestar character is actually the sidekick of the protagonist and so on. Most importantly however is the change it makes with its villain Funny Valentine. The President of the United States of America. Yeah you heard right. In a series who's previous villains range from Vampires to Serial Killers Araki decided his series reboot needed a villain shake up as well and the way he did this was simple: Make the reader almost agree with the villain.
Valentine is chasing the stories maguffin that will allow him to increase the powers of his Stand ability 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap', which allows him to hop between parallel worlds and timelines, or pull things from them. With the maguffin upgrade this would allow him to grow strong enough to actively alter the world around him so his timeline is always the most beneficial course of events.
The example given is that if someone tried to shoot him the gun would misfire but somewhere else in the world a soldier in a warzone has his gun go off by accident and shoot a child to karmically balance this out so to speak.
So he's just a self centred villain out for some form of personal gain right? actually no. Quite the opposite. Valentine wants this power to use it to protect the entirety of America. He is a former civil war soldier and patriot that deeply loves his nation and its his own sense of 'justice' that drives him to ensure a conflict like the one he barely lived through will never happen again. His actions to get there are evil. He will assassinate people, rig elections, lie, cheat and steal to get to the goal, but his goal is "no American child will experience loss from war ever again, no more bloodshed will happen on American soil, as the President this is my solemn vow".
He is arguably doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. You can imagine how the character has been twisted in recent years for the whole 'make America great again' deal online but at the end of the manga when his back is against the wall he gives an impassioned speech about how he has no personal gain he is chasing, he sincerely wants to be the best President he can be by making America a nation that experiences everlasting peace using his abilities rather than some form of authoritarian or facist control. The interesting part? the protagonists actually back down.
Even for a minute the villain of the series who has killed people close to the heroes has them think "maybe he is actually right" and that leads to an agonising dilemma for them and that is superb writing. When the villain can argue that he actually believes he is doing the right thing and can almost convince the hero that he is in fact trying to do the right thing you have a character you can invest in.
Why do i bring up this Jojo character? well because many people i know including myself who read Steel Ball Run felt like the Emperor role was going to end up like Funny Valentine and we were ready for the Garlean leader to be someone we would stop, even for a second, before readying weapons for the inevitable loot pinata style Trial boss to ask ourselves "is he even the villain at all, or just a puppet of Solus ready to turn on his master and make the Garleans truly free for the first time?"
We wanted him to sit down the leaders of Eorzea and reveal he wasn't a 1 dimensional villain doing evil because the villains must be evil but make them wonder if theres more to Garlemalde in general than being the generic Final Fantasy villainous Empire trope again.
He isn't though. He is just fantasy Hilter now and thats so lame. Its a massive let down and while i still think there are some interesting hooks to come, his two female bodyguards that totally aren't XIV's version of Melti Gemini for example, in a vacuum it was maybe the most disappointing story reveal since "Oh hey Nanamo never died, its only been a few quests since then in the MSQ but lol jk jk :p" and i thought FFXIV's writing was better than this. Which brings me back to 'the why' of it.
This is personal opinion, though i've heard it elsewhere since the patch dropped multiple times, but i believe that because people were expecting a reverse heel turn the writers tried to brute force 'this character is evil' upon the players in the laziest way outside of setting fire to an orphanage full of children. He is literally talking about genocides and a master race, do you get it? DO YOU GET THIS IS THE EVIL GUY?!? and yeah we do. Message received. But it was a poorly delivered one and not up to the standards of the game or the series in general. People wanted General Leo and got 'really shitty Kefka' instead and its just such a black mark on the story which is pretty famous in MMORPG's for being solid enough to be comparable to its single player outings. Usually it is at least. It left me disappointed and feeling a bit let down by the writers who resorted to such a easy cliche to bruteforce opinion on a character who could have had depth and is now reduced to little more than a cartoon. After Yotsuyu or Fordola its a objective step down that clearly annoyed me enough to rant about it, sorry about that.
Its not all bad however. Conversely the other side of the story was very interesting. The fate of the Scions, the confirmation that -shocking nobody- the Shadowhunter is Gaius Van Baelsar- and the knowledge we have from the extended Shadowbringers trailer is starting to pull these threads together to make for a very exciting prelude to our next big story as the Warrior of Light. Well, y'know, Warrior of Darkness i guess but you know what i mean.
We have some solid character development for characters like Alisae and Gaius. The sense of helplessness and urgency throughout creates a tense vibe that can make you forget this is an online game that limits developments to a patch cycle so there is no real pressing for time and any mmo story that can make you get so into it that you forget its an mmo is a success in my book.
There isn't too much to say since it feels largely like set up for what i expect will be a shocking reveal in the 4.5 part 2 update coming in the next few weeks. I don't think any of the Scions are at risk of dying or in some severe peril from a writing standpoint, but i think these events are all leading up to a factor involving the Echo which has not been given as much time as the whole 'relive the memories of others' aspect has overall.
Now this is something most recently touched on with Xenos turning into, as the fanbase calls him, EleXenos but this secondary aspect to the Echo first showed up waaay back in Patch 2.2: Through the Maelstrom and has since largely been forgotten. In the MSQ of that patch Melwyb leads the Scions to a Sahagin cult that is working to summon Leviathan lead by a Priest that can use a version of the Echo with a dark purple aura. He is quickly killed but rather than his soul returning to the planets Lifestream he uses this Echo to transfer into a body of a nearby worshipper and supplant the victims consciousness with his own. Claiming the Echo has made him 'Immortal'. After seeing things like "Master Matoya" in the Shadowbringers trailer, the fact the story hook was brought back with Xenos and whats going on with the Scions i think its a safe guess that someone is using the Echo to forcefully pull the Scions souls from their bodies to bring them somewhere or somewhen else. We just need to wait a few more weeks to get an answer but that Kingdom Hearts looking image in the trailer that wasn't in this update at all and the general 'Throw open the Gate' line has a couple of tinfoil hat theories going around in my head but for now all i can say is the Scion side of the story was very interesting and left me going "no come on, give me more of this!" which is always a good sign in patch based storytelling in my opinion.
So overall the story is a mixed bag. Some very nice set up, some very disappointing reveals. Heres hoping part 2 of this patches story will end up more of the former than the latter. With the story out the way its time to move on to the other content starting with the good old Dungeon crawling! The New Dungeon
Dungeon singular this time but boy is it a doozey. The Ghimlyt Dark is an very visually striking dungeon. Blending World War 1 trench warfare with a suggestion of conflict on a size comparable to the Cartenau Flats conflict at the opening to ARR when Bahamut nuked the continent. It feels desperate, oppressive and urgent. I noticed people seem to treat it almost like a speedrun, but not in the usual 'i want to get my bonus fast and bounce' way but its almost as though people act like theres a countdown going on. So stark and urgent is the vibe you get during the dungeon. The dungeon itself is about average. Lots of chain pulling required as staggered mobs spawn at choke points. Lots of ally NPC's fighting with you which is probably testing some stuff for the Trust System to a degree and while mechanically quite easy the bosses, particularly the last one is a treat to fight. Overall its not the most challenging dungeon around but in terms of tone setting and vibe it feels very much like Scaling Baelsar's wall to fight The Griffon back at the end of Heavensward. As for the final bosses this time? i'm guessing they are showing up later as a fused flesh horror nightmare creature thats a recurring monster in the series. Those mirrored red and blue helmets? tell me i wasn't the only one getting mild Xorn and Thorn vibes off those two.
Seiryu/Wreathe of Snakes
Sadly not much to say about the new 'not-primal' fight. Its as competently made as usual but while Suzaku's Rhythm game fight is up there with Titan or Ifrit Extremes as fun, challenging fights. Seiryu is just a little bland and more on the same tier as Ramuh, Susanoo or Knights of the Round. Visually impressive, also little in the way of interesting mechanics. Its not good, its not bad. Its another Zurvan the Demon. It ends a storyline on a bit of a downward note thats not as interesting as its predecessors. Just as Sophia felt like she should have been the finale to the Warring triad i feel this should have ended with Suzaku who also felt the most actually outraged over her connection to Tenzin.
The story meanwhile was okay, lacked the mystery of the masked child from the Triad but i got a few laughs out of it and it was some neat worldbuilding too. Like Seiryu the story as a whole was competent if a little too safe and dull.
The Raid
I began this section in the last patch with 'Omega has been a mixed bag for me' and while i would say the same about Ivalice's Orbann Monastery raid i mean it in a positive way rather than negative. This really felt like the follow up to the Void Ark Trilogy people wanted. Some challenge, gorgeous level design and music and a story that really hooks you with its nods to the worlds past and the series itself. I'm a huge Ivalice fan and this ended on a series of 4 great boss fights ranging from good to excellent and an ending that i'm sure would be a bit of a tearful moment for those who grew up playing the Tactics games.
First off we have Mustadio the Machinist. The weakest fight overall, recycling a fair bit of what we just had with Omega but with a neat twist on the positional mechanic. It felt a little more like something that should have been in the Lighthouse raid both thematically and mechanically but its a fun intro that keeps you on your toes.
Second is longtime fan favourite Agrias the Angel. A very enjoyable fight that uses the extra action button to great effect as something more than the 'oh shit' button to avoid a wipe its been in the past. Its visually exciting and doesn't feel quite like any other raid boss in the series yet and letting people do things related more to the other two roles than their own was a refreshing shake up. Be it healers swinging a sword to kill ghosts or dps dropping a big shield of light to block a ridiculously powerful aoe attack for example. Its at this point you get the idea that this raid is a straight incline of complexity and difficulty last seen to this degree of success in the Weeping city of mhach, to this day considered a fan favourite raid in the games growing list of them.
After Agrias we move on to what can basically be summed up as "Ozma 2: wipefest Boogaloo". A boss simply named The Thunder God. A boss fought on a floating ring around him, sound familiar?, with nooks and crannies to drop aoes or simply to avoid his multiple forms of sword strikes that either swing around the out of the ring, the inner edge or in repeatedly slams roatating clockwise or anti clockwise around the board. It even has a section where you are transported to another place to fight 3 large adds. Its visually different but it is straight up Ozma all over again. Parties wiped. A lot. However over time people got 'the dance' down and when pulled off its another extremely enjoyable fight just like Ozma which proves these 'ring arena' fights are always going to be a solid go to design choice in MMORPGS'.
All of which was just a precursor leading up to the final Raid Boss of Stormblood: Ultima, the High Seraph. A visual blend of Garuda, Sophia, The Ultima Weapon and Yunalesca from FFX. This compared to Alexander Prime, Omega M/F or Diablos Hollow really feels like an end of expansion boss fight. Not so much in difficulty, though it is challenging, but in terms of what goes on and where. We begin the fight with the boss embedded in a wall of Magicite. She regularly spreads walls of the stuff to seperate parties and box you in while aoes and plumes drop to make for some very tight spots to get around, this then escalates to summoning in the Eidolons Famfrit, Hasmal and Belias from Rabanstre. Hope you remember the signature moves from those fights because now they are all going off at once! After that she bursts out of the wall revealing her upper angelic portion hides a sinister, monstrous lower half kind of like Anima in some respects. Then she reduces the entire room to a aoe deathtrap and you must all run to a tiny bubble where even then healers must battle through constant raid wide damage as the entire raid fights through a dps check to repel Ultimas strongest attack. After this the final phase begins where she uses mechanics from all the raids bosses in increasingly fast rotation which turns the fight into a positioning race that must be a nightmare for jobs like BLM or WHM. Thanks to procs i had a much easier job as RDM but even then there was a lot of time in this phase spent cancelling a spell to move than successfully casting one. All in all its hectic and feels like a true endgame boss fight that you feel a real sense of accomplishment for beating.
Beyond that the story was a safe but satisfying epilogue to the bittersweet ending of Final Fantasy Tactics, War of the Lions. I found myself just saying "god Square Enix just really needs to give us a new Ivalice game" because after FFXII's rerelease last year and this i was left only wanting more from a setting that honestly could pull of an mmo all by itself. It was a nice ride to revisit versions of these places and see nods to versions of beloved characters from Ivalice games passed, though it was a bit sad Lea Monde and Vagrant Story got no love in the end, but overall i enjoyed the storys finale tremendously and i wonder if Fran will be showing up in Shadowbringers since her people are now confirmed to be the next playable race. I doubt she will be a faction leader like Raubahn or something but hey you never know with FFXIV right?
After all that the really big thing left to talk about is Blue Mage but i think i'm going to make that its own article since there is a lot to write about concerning SE's first experiment with a 'Limited Job' so for now i'll say this patch had some let downs in writing but in terms of engaging content there was a lot to love here and it left me eager for more in the second half coming soon!
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.
