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.
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!
So allow me a minute to feel a little smug about this one. Since the rumours of it or RDM for Stormblood my theory on BLU and how it would work was constantly met with "thats stupid, you are stupid, they would never implement a class like that!". However Fanfests announcements have come and gone and after waiting for the 4.5 special site to show up for confirmation i can whip out 'smug_anime_girl.png' in any forum argument over it with a great big 'told you so' on this one.
With that moment of smug ass behaviour i earned out the way lets get to Blue Mage and why i didn't shit out some heated reaction like so many other people i know over this 'Limited Job'. So what is a 'Limited Job' in this regard?
Essentially it is a job with a specific focus or you could say 'market' of user. There have been MMORPG's in the past that to some measures of success or failure introduced new classes with a focus on being a pure pvp class, or a support in a game with nothing else outside the 'holy trinity' of traditional roles. Theres are intended to not be the endgame class for every activity and to not really excel in the same ways as others. Just to throw a twist in the mix and give players something to do as a fun alternative. Like how you can level by quests, fates and dungeons on an alt Job or if you want to just hit the Deep Dungeon train hard. Kind of.
Basically it goes like this: Next month when patch 4.5 drops a questionable looking trader will spawn somewhere in the 2.0 areas. He claims to come from 'The New World' which if memory serves has only been this strongly name dropped before by the Mamool-Ja in Wanderers Palace Hard Mode and is assumed to either be an analogue to the undiscovered Americas of the world or a reflection of Vana'diel in the same way our Ivalice is to the Tactics games setting. He has brought with him strange new Soul Crystals that confer a new type of magic neither White nor Black but one that taps into the aetherial abilities of monsters. Simply put 'Monster Magic'. For a price, as in Gil not some kind of Bloodpact mind you, one of these new sketch as fug Job Crystals can be yours. You get one starter ability and then its on your way as a new lvl.1 Blue Mage!
So pretty much this is mechanically at least exactly what i predicted. Like Quina or the Warriors of Light from FFV you go out into the world, fight monsters and some run ins give you the ability to learn some Monster Magic. Cactuar will give you 1000 Needles, Malboro/Morbol will give you Bad Breath and so on. Treated like drops some skills are common, some very rare and some inbetween. There are -to begin with at least- 49 skills out there to find.
Once you have gained a skill it can then be dragged onto a cross role style set up to allow you to arrange up to 24 of those 49 skills to form a loudout of sorts to match the activity or simply your tastes. Maybe there is a situation where 'Lvl.5 Death' is super useful but close range skills are pointless? Maybe you are going to constantly be dropping in and dragging out Spells and Abilities for every kind of situation. Not that you will be doing every kind of situation mind you.
See this is what has some peoples jimmies all up in a rustle and i'll touch on that in a minute but the BLU mage is 'Limited' in the sense that it isn't a class you rush to 70 and jump into the final Ivalice raid with. In fact upon release they will be hard capped at lvl.50 with level increases coming during Shadowbringers. Perhaps this is so its not a balancing nightmare they dont need when it would just need the same again in 5.0's system wide combat revamp. Perhaps its never intended as something you take to endgame like the other three Mage Jobs at all?
The only clear cut thing to go on from Yoshi and the team right now is this: The Job is going to have some ridiculously overpowered moves and will not be allowed in Party Finder. Period. Does this mean you will have to stick to PUG's for some content or you just cannot enter at all? Does this intended the class to be a way to get more life out of older content as a move hunting minigame? we just don't know. In some ways it almost makes BLU feel more like a combat version of a Disciple of Land Job than a traditional PVE MMORPG combat class. Not that you are just revisiting old content that is.
Announced with the Job is a new activity called 'The Masked Carnival' which they seem to be teasing as BLU specific Guildhests but lets be honest anyone who has played World of Warcraft from Mists of Pandaria onwards can recognise this: Its the Brawlers Guild. A enclosed single player PVE combat scenario with increasingly challenging bosses or combinations of enemies right out of the Olympus Tournament from Kingdom Hearts. I doubt it will be for everyone but after seeing the Brawlers Guild grow a fanbase and knowing how crazy the min maxers can get with things as simple as materia melding alone i could see this having some ridiculous speed run style competitions as people try to get the right combo of abilities and tactics down to shave time off the servers high score for a clear or something.
Now we need to talk about people, shock of shocks, being mad on the internet.
So fanfest ends its opening show and already the news that BLU won't be something you can speed to max level and jump into new content for has people ranging from mildly disappointed to what i can only describe as "Platinum Tier Buttmad". A whole lot of 'not a real job' and 'what a waste of time and resources' going around. Ranging from people from XI who have been waiting to retake their old main job as i did with RDM and finding for now at least thats not going to be the case to people who honestly seem made for the sake of it.
To a degree i can get it but at the same time this is a game with a job system y'know? You aren't being locked into BLU and being left behind. Just as i have all the crafters and gatherers maxed because i want to live out muh Log Horizon production class fantasy doesn't mean everyone wants to or has to. Like Chocobo breeding/racing, Lords of Veminion or Triple Triad BLU seems less like yet another dps job in a game thats really not starved for dps right now at all but a new minigame/sub activity and personally thats fine. For me at least.
Right now if i log in i need like 2 more yellow script items and i'm done with crafting. I finished Doma and the Namazu last night after taking it real slow so after completing the MSQ in the next patch my options are going to be BLU or Eureka WHICH APPARENTLY STILL HAS ANOTHER BLOODY AREA TO COME I FORGOT ABOUT?!? so you know what i'm going to do? I'm going to walk right by the Eureka npcs as usual and go pick up that BLU job crystal. Why? because it looks like fun. Does it suck for the people from XI who wanted their main job back? absolutely. I was worried when we first heard the leaks about RDM that it was just going to be a severely limited BLM in mechanics and thankfully its a Rune Fencer with Black and White magic and while not exactly the same i got my main back. For those who haven't yeah they should be as buttmad as they wish to be and more power to them.
The people otherwise who are still acting like the sky is falling? i say what i say when i recommend the game over its competitors: Your character is your account, not your class. You are never locked into anything so if BLU sucks its a shame but at best it cost you some gil and time. Thats it. If its great eventually its level cap will be increased for more content but who cares if its fun right now doing the 50 levels of stuff it has to do now? it honestly beats the SB 60-70 of "do you want to spam like 3 of the possible dungeons inbetween the daily roulettes? again? 14th times the charm right?" alternative right now. After a year of that yeah i'll go stomp around our ARR grounds on a BLU vacation till Shadowbringers.
Who knows, if its popular enough and can be balanced or given a 'locked in for duty finder content' rotation maybe 'Limited' wont be a prefix forever?
right now i'm excited for the job after enjoying it in multiple other games in the series and worst case scenario i don't care for it and simply don't take part in it longterm. Considering the fact it scratches my completionist/collector itch and offers a unique activity i'm going to guess its probably my kind of thing but who knows right? roll on January so we can all get our hands on it and find out!
Well i let this sit for a while rather than vomit out a word salad like a fair number of places i visit in the last week or two. All in all this fanfest has been an interesting one. We have an expansion name and rough release window, but we don't know where or even when its set. We have a new job, but we don't know what its for. We have new mechanics, but we don't know when we will be using them.
Its not like people are upset, its just a lot more vague and i imagine some of that is because they dont want another thing like the previews to Heavensward that spoiled the absolute shit out of the shocking twists at the end of A Realm Reborn. I guess its just an unusual feeling for FFXIV to know about content, but also to know comparatively little when put up against the fan fest reveals of Heavensward and Stormblood.
So anyway. Shadowbringers. Guess the leaks were legit thus far huh? What we know however is pretty slim. The trailer shows the highlander going through all his jobs from 1.0 Archer to 4.0 Samurai/Monk while talking about becoming the warrior of Darkness. We see Thancred with a Gunblade, perhaps as the rumoured Soldier job escorting a young girl and -something which i feel people haven't really touched on that seems important- both Thancred and the warrior of light are being attacked by Amdapori constructs. Last time we saw them was when the magic levels in the ruins of Amdapor were going haywire and the SB Summoner questline where you find out Kuribu was in part connected to a summoning ritual rather than just being an animated statue. I can only imagine the latest patch talking about the aether being drained out of the land is related to this. Beyond that very little story. We know Zenos/Elidibus will be the final big bad of Stormblood so thats no spoiler. It was nice to hear Sokens theme since Uematsu is on a break but on the whole it was a great teaser trailer that ultimately tells us very little and thats weird but new content is new content so thats that announced.
Now we come to the quickfire info:
"Multiple new jobs coming in the expansion" - Strange thing here being that BLU was announced, i'll get to it later, and thats not coming in the expansion. Its a patch job for Stormblood. So whats coming in Shadowbringers? we know a Gunblade user is confirmed but aside from that? nothing. Just 'multiple jobs' and with the leak suggesting Blue Mage, Soldier and Dancer maybe multiple just means two in 5.0 and Dancer is coming later and Soldier uses a Gunblade? who knows. Personally i'm hoping SLD is a tank and DNC is a healer as we have enough dps for now and could use more tanks and healer jobs for variety. Lots of mmos treat tanks and healers like second class customers and give them one new job every 5 or so years in general and it would be great to see FFXIV give them some more love.
"Level to 80 in all new areas" - Big question here was "where?". We have new zones listed. The Rak'Tika Greatwood which looks extremely similar to a locations from FFXII and is home to a certain race of note in that game and Amh Areng which is a destroyed castle dotted landscape similar in appearance to the final area of Dark Souls 3. Apparently a new culture, well a new old dead one that is, but beyond that we know nothing. Where are these zones? are they even connected to each other? we simply don't know anything more about them at this point. New areas are always exciting for me regardless but its odd to see an MMORPG expansion reveal without a big "and we're going to [BLANK]!" during said reveal. Maybe its Thavnair. Maybe its undiscovered parts of Aldenard. We just don't know right now.
"9 dungeons at launch and new raids and alliance raids to follow" - nothing too shocking but 9 is a solid number to start with. It feels like you only really do Sirens Song, Bardams Mettle and Doma Castle before cap nowadays in SB and the lack of variety really makes levelling alt jobs a bit boring so variety is very welcome. Big question is whats the raid storyline this time? theres no Alexander or Omega set up thus far and we don't have many large tier bosses from previous games to dust off in this regard. These speculation of time travel in this expansion so maybe it comes in there, but i feel that could just feel like Alex again even if its not clockwork and gobbos.
"Take the war to Garlemald while averting the greatest Umbral Calamity of all and become the Warrior of Darkness" - This ones interesting. I wasn't expecting Garlemald so soon and the trailer makes it hard to tell if we are the hero's or the villains of the story. Perhaps the Kuribu style entities are attacking to defend something rather than be mindless monsters attacking the player? When we were warned of 'the world being destroyed in overwhelming light' does that mean a straight up army of light aligned constructs like the amdipori creations?
"Nu Mo beast tribes, a familiar face from XII showing up in the final Ivalice raid and a new playable race" - So Nu Mo from 12, a certain character thats a 'fan favourite but not balthier' in the next patches raid and a race teased by a Bugs Bunny shirt? Hmm. I wonder what that could be? (yeah we all know its Fran and Viera, get ready for SE to make back those recent losses on Fantasia alone!). Overall its nice to see Ivalice love. Hope the rumours of 16 being a return to that setting but viera being the last race isn't that surprising. In terms of archetypal FF species they are really the only none beastial one left that could wear current gear models.
"TP is gone, freeing up the GCD and DRK getting a rework" - TP is interesting. Were it at the end of HW it might seem a bit more dramatic but considering a lot of the gauges are good for so little i can easily imagine those reworked to be a resource gauge like how RDM uses it for its melee combo attacks. As for DRK? well i've not had much issue with it right now as a casual tank but the people i know who main it and only tank have barely played Stormblood because they hate the class. Apparently thats quite common and we all know what happened to PLD and WAR in the past and with Shadowbringers looking like the DRK expansion as the current is SAM/MNK and the last was DRG/PLD leaning who knows how big the changes will be?
All in all it was some interesting stuff but nothing too breath taking. There are a couple of other things i will talk about in other entries to break this up but we all know it ended with a bit of a surprise thats left people 'mixed' in terms of reactions, shocking for the internet i know, but i'll get to that at another time. For now its more FFXIV and we have 4.5 on the way and thats also promising to make Stormblood go out with a bang so exciting stuff all around, but a bit more vague than usual and Yoshi alluded thats clearly for good reason. We just gotta wait for the next fanfest to see what it is!
