My Life As A Gamer: Final Fantasy XIV-A Realm Reviewed (Part Four)

Naivete Begets Predation

The youngest of the Scions, Alphinaud Levelleur, decided that the Scions--being about seven people--are too little to be the rapid-reaction force needed to stomp out the Primal threat and assist the city-states in maintaining order in the realm. What does our genius decide to do? Form a private military company of his own. Not just some handful of mercenaries, oh no, but a full Grand Company--a standing army--whose only loyalty is to the Scions.

The only naivete more shocking than this was the reactions of the city-states' respective Heads of State. Granted, all three are allies of the Scions and rely on them to do what they cannot (because they are too weak-willed to do the needed work themselves) so they can--and do--convince themselves to go along with it out of necessity, but the gangsters of Ul'dah--the Syndicate--rightly see this as a direct threat and immediately get to work sabotaging it.

They do it by making a mockery of the funding rules--funneling money through a myriad of weak front companies--and putting a man they own on top as the company's field marshal, the second-in-command after Boy Wonder himself.

They put their man to the task of setting up the Scions for getting framed for the murder of their immediate cockblock to Real Ultimate Power, the Sultana of Ul'dah and her attack dog Raubaun, CO of the Grand Company the Immortal Flames. They do this by having their man lead a real and successful counterintelligence operation to expose a Garlean spy in the Flames, making Raubaun look like a fucking idiot and damaging his credibility (and by proxy the Sultana). They do this while keeping up the lawfare pressure on Her Grace to act as they dictate and not as she wishes.

As a second plot thread, they funnel reagents needed for summoning to an Ishgardian heretical cult knowing this would keep the player--you--busy being God-Killer while they turned the Scions' PMC into their pet wetwork team. It worked. The Scions take the fall for the Sultana's murder--yes, folks, I know about HW's changes to this--and all but the player, Alphin, and Tataru Taru (the receptionist) escape to take refuge in Ishgard. Thus is HW set up.

I could not help but find this satisfying. The heroes and their allies got got and they deserved it. They refused to do what must be done to permanently end the Primal threat. They refused to do what must be done to end the political instability of the city-states. They refused to do what must be done put down the Imperial threat in Eorzea. Their enemies, sensing weakness, pounced on them and punished them savagely for refusing to finish the job when they had the chance. This rout--and it was a rout--was entirely of their own making, and to the writers' credit Alphinaud has a serious change of character going forward because of this. Dead predators can't predate, morons.

But Gameplay

Levels 40-50 is when your character's gameplay really takes off. You get the rest of your Job's skills, the rotations start feeling like you're always doing something during a fight, and when you hit the arc between 2.0 and HW--the aforementioned Wonder Boy Fuckup--you get to test that skillset against a much-expanded array of dungeons, trials, and raids as you play through the various episodes of the 2.0-to-HW interval. Much of the narrative you experience here is foreshadowing for later expansions (e.g. Crystal Tower for Shadowbringers), but the type of content you first experience here will become more frequent later on; getting introduced here is useful, therefore, for multiple reasons.

You are also introduced to a taste of endgame with the access to ARR's endgame gearing being unlocked, and I am still using some of that gear well into HW, so go ahead and snag some of that. (Start with your weapon and pick up others as you wish.) Exactly what currencies you will use will vary with expansion, but the overall structure remains the same: get widgets, find trader NPC, trade for gear, done.

My experience at this point was that I really began to enjoy the gameplay by this point, having passed the early game hump and now needing to go into the UI customization to mess around with keybinds to make it easier to execute the Bard rotation and be an asset to my group. (This paid off; got plenty of player commendations.) I also began digging into some side activites, as I knew that if I were to level another Class or Job I'd want to have those activites available to me to make that easier to accomplish since I had not the MSQ to easymode my XP gains.

My complaint at this point is that, while other players are frequently friendly to new players, they are not communicative. They do not tell you things you need to know about boss mechanics, so you can and will get murked by something out of nowhere and no one will say anything unless it's a wipe and you have to restart the encounter entirely. This is the case even when you specfically ask for that information. Veteran players vastly overestimate what is common knowledge and then wonder why the new guy eats floor.

The game itself is fine. The side activities are plenty capable of delivering depth and breadth, but if you just want to play the MSQ you can and no one will care. Sub for a month, play the story, unsub- it's fine. Which leads me to the biggest selling point for FF14: the game and the audience respects your time. There is no "falling behind", there is no "dead content", none of the stupidity that afflicts WOW or other MMOs like it. Is it for everyone? No, thank God. Is it for people who want some multiplayer in their single-player? You bet. For people who want to be social while playing for an hour or so at a time? Sure. For people who dream of a crafting or gathering system as detailed as fighting is? Hell yes, you're golden. For PVP? Nope, PVP is an afterthought in FF14, and will be for some time.

It is for me, so soon I'll convert from a Trial to a Regular account, and come January I'll leave WOW behind for good.

Verdict: ARR is a solid 8 of 10.