PANCHIRA! PANCHIRA! PANCHIRA!1!

Howdy!

After some self speculation and some brief time in beta phase 1 of Final Fantasy XIV, I decided to begin a blog about my general experiences playing said game. I personally want to tackle it not only as a player, but as someone who is eager and curious behind the design and mechanical development of this iteration of the series.

faiyt please, dis only da beta and u already in pantyflash mode

Whooo ok. Awesome. I'm not playing alone though, as Oriza has a super friend in Faiyt, another Mi'quote out to tank the world of Ezorea. His contributions will be featured in this blog from time to time.



FFXI:
I began XI right when it launched in North America. I was a complete fan of the FF series in general and I was willing to follow this foray into the MMO world for the first time. I'd have heard of other MMO's but had not desired to play one until I figured now I had to because I was eager to follow the series and give it a shot.

I spent three years of my time on there. I managed to reach an end game linkshell in a non popular class. The journey to level cap wasn't easy (and not much else of the game was either to be frank), but since it was my first MMO, I just went along with it, being reluctant to level a job that would have made it easier on me.

Because that game was so dependent on reputation and keeping good standing, a sort of unspoken code of conduct developed as the NA populace began to keep up with the JP counterparts on the server in terms of progress. It was an interesting MMO, but also incredibly frustrating.

Part of FFXI's many reasons for its failures in my eyes was the complete lack of communication and outright disregard for their NA community and many of our valid issues. To be fair though, from my understanding, the JP community managed to penetrate (heheheh) those extremely valid issues/concerns once in a great while to FFXI's dev team who would in turn fix the issue(s) about 3 patches later.

The whole community > developer relationship was non-existent back then. Well it did... sort of. I attended XI's very first Fan Festival in 2006 and I clearly remember the development Q&A was a waste and a joke. Good questions to the panel were rare and mostly met with with non-answers ("If you believe it's true then could be, maybe! BELIEVE!").''

"oh man elvaan f pantyshots are the best" said no one in ffxi ever

Yikes.

WoW:
My 628th Salvage trip through Treasures of Aht Urghan I decided I had enough. I made the jump fulltime into World of Warcraft. I had began it a few months earlier and I found myself logging on to FFXI less and less. When I first began WoW, and finally got into the swing of things, it was a very liberating experience, especially in terms of what WoW did great and what it didn't do in comparison to XI. I didn't lose experience when I die? I can resurrect at my body? I just have to walk there? Sweet! Not to mention the community was being actively engaged regularly by the development team and coming from a game where that didn't exist was pretty damn amazing.

I reached a good pinnacle of my raiding time in The Burning Crusade, managed to get full T6 twice, and reached a decent clear of Sunwell (up to M'uru) before it was hosed to the ground. After that expansion as far as I was concerned WoW began a steady decline for me personally. I could go on into the reasoning but I'll touch on it if/when necessary.

It's now 2013, and in the midst of Mists of Pandaria. I couldn't say that WoW holds my interest so much as before, I know Faiyt and I have become restless over Warcraft, even devoting some time into Diablo III (which warrants its own fail tribute... but tis another can of worms). I think we had both reached a point where nothing at Blizzard held our interest, not to mention the MMO's that came and went during WoW's stronghold grip over the market. 

FFXIV 1.0's Shutdown:

I took everyone's advice and avoided the game like the plague after its initial launch. I have no regrets, especially when my FFXI pals constantly lambasted it. 

When I heard the announcement that FFXIV's staff would be shitcanned I was in a bit of a shock. After thinking about it though, I shouldn't have been so surprised. It would only be a matter of time before this archaic stonewall and lack of utter communication towards the people that actually paid to play your game would ultimately catch up to them. The consensus was that Square Enix would rather not have a tarnished Final Fantasy game and understandably so. After all, there are so many devoted fans of the series. And SE apparently did not want a black mark on their record. 

I had not paid any attention to most of what was going on at this point because I had no reason to believe that they would learn from their mistakes in trying to re-boot the game. 

Until I read Letters from the Developer.

Could it be? Could Yoshi be the one man to pick up the pieces and make something awesome out of something blegh? It sure sounded like it the more of these letters I read. Every installment would be absolutely refreshing to read and I realized that if this ideal he had been building in his head could be pulled off in live... sparkle unicorns... everywhere.

Two weeks ago Faiyt and I received the first emails for the start of the beta phase. Thus began the first trip into the new world of Ezorea.