Sometime around 10 years ago, MMOs seemed foreign to me. There was always something – my internet cap was too low, my connection was too slow, but worst of all was the idea that I would have to play with other people. I tried, occasionally; a few off-brand free-to-play MMOs occasionally caught my eye, but I never made it much further than level 10. With the advent of high internet caps and UFB, it seemed pointless to put it off. Why not try it again? I got to level 25 in Star Wars: The Old Republic before fatigue set in, and that seemed almost sad. I didn’t really want to go out searching for other players to play with, and the grind of it all was wearing me down.
All that changed with A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy XIV.
A Realm Reborn is, as you can gather from the name, not the first iteration of Final Fantasy XIV (technically, it’s called Before The Fall: Final Fantasy XIV at this point, and it won’t be long before the release of Heavensward: Final Fantasy XIV). A Realm Reborn is the game’s patch 2.0, a massive revision to what was largely seen as the worst-executed commercial MMO in recent memory (The Elder Scrolls Online seems to have vied for this title, but most accounts suggest it’s starting to learn lessons). A Realm Reborn is an almost fundamental rework, rebuilding everything from the ground up in the wake of version 1.0’s ‘calamity’, which conveniently resulted in massive destruction that let the creative team change even the landscape itself.
While the old realm of 1.0 is lost to the ages, A Realm Reborn doesn’t waste too much time catching you up. Sure, it’s full of WoW-style fetch quests and diversions, but A Realm Reborn is much more interested in immersion than progression. It’s a particular style that makes it easy to spend weeks in the world of Eorzea than you’d think – as you climb the ranks of the adventurer’s guild from small tasks like helping shop keepers move stock, to more prolonged and intense 8-person battles, A Realm Reborn aims to get the ‘roleplaying’ part of MMORPGs right. Sure, it’s not always as effective as it could be, but to a newbie like myself the traditional RPG elements felt very much like a welcome.
Part of why I felt so at home in A Realm Reborn was its attention to the history of its series. While it might be Final Fantasy XIV, the correct name is something like Final Fantasy XLIV. As Square-Enix’s flagship series grows, so too does its internal sense of history. XIV plays like a love letter to fans, littered with returning elements, reinvented characters and an onslaught of in-series puns and references that make anyone from a casual player to a long-time fan dizzy. Why not visit Final Fantasy VII‘s Gold Saucer, coming in patch 2.5.1 this month? Why not fight Ultros and Chupon, from Final Fantasy VI? Or Gilgamesh, from V? Do you want to wield the series’ strongest weapons, like the Excalibur, Gae-bolg or Nirvana? How would you like to cross swords with recurring summon-and-enemy Odin, here in his darkest incarnation? The entire plot revolves around these sorts of memories, leading to a game that doesn’t just want to welcome you, it wants you to feel at home. Maybe you just want to wear a suit and look cool. The game’s more than happy for you to do that too – and if you do it right, you won’t get killed by Ifrit in the process. A Realm Reborn wants you to play the game your way, and it’s damn fun getting there.
The most off-putting part of MMOs for me, however, will always be other players. It’s hard to get around the simple fact that if you’re playing an MMO, you have to deal with real people. I hate other people. They’re generally awful. In fact, the worst online experience I’ve had came from a tirade of misogynistic abuse from another player in this very game. My female Lancer wasn’t killing a boss fast enough, and (despite only playing a female character) I was at the receiving end of something awful. What happened next, though, was what surprised me. See, I’d been matched with 3 other random players. Final Fantasy XIV has a ‘Duty Finder’, in which you can queue for any of its dungeons or trials without having to pre-find other people to help you. It pulls them from any server near you, making it faster to get in to the areas of the game you would otherwise have to wait a long time for (even if the wait is still not swift, it’s much better than it could be).
When I was getting railed on by some asshole in the middle of a fight against a dragon, the other two players didn’t like it. They stood back and let the asshole get eaten. Suddenly I felt an odd camaraderie, and it’s typical of A Realm Reborn‘s player base. The 98% are there to have a good time, even if there’s still 1-2% bad apples in the bunch, and it more than compensates for strife. When I ran a dungeon called ‘The Aurum Vale’ for the first time, I was paired with two other first-timers and one experienced player. It was one of the most fun experiences I ever had in the game, as we three newbies struggled and the old-hand gave us tips and pointers, and a particularly well-timed accidental dodge on my part won me several “woah”s of praise as we scraped past the dungeon’s hardest fight. Here’s a shot of us talking about the next boss, working out the strategy we needed to follow (and yeah, we trounced him).
Obviously, there’s always going to be a stumbling block here. Not everyone likes RPGs, let alone grindy or fetch-quest-y ones, and while FFXIV does its best to mitigate that, it’s only as good as the mechanics it’s built on, which definitely draw from the World of Warcraft style. Yet when I wander through Eorzea, and take in the (frankly beautiful) sights and ride my giant bird through waves of enemies, it feels like a much more old-school RPG than it is. It has the mechanics of a new-style MMO, but its heart is in the community and its backwards-gazing love for its own series. I’ll be riding through Eorzea for some time, even if I have to die a few thousand times in the process.
Jon D Arthur plays as Squire Seneschal on the Gilgamesh server. You can get A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy XIV from Steam, as a direct download from FinalFantasyXIV.com or you can try the free 14-day trial here. Still not convinced? Check out the in-game screencaps and selfies in the slideshow below and try not to drool.
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