PixlBit

I have only been playing FFXIV for a little over a week now, but it seems to have taken over my life! This should come as no surprise though as it is the first MMO I’ve commit more than a few hours to. Obviously, MMOs are infamous for turning regular people into motionless slugs hunched over their computers but I never thought it would happen to me. I’ve always been a big fan of RPGs, yet it is very rare that I get addicted to any of them. The last one was over five years ago when I did a 100% completion run on FFXII. After spending months and 200+ hours doing that, I have since sworn off 100% runs on RPGs!

Interestingly enough, FFXIV feels a lot like an MMO version of FFXII. Of course, FFXII was of sorts a pseudo-MMO, but this game feels similar even down to the massive, but detailed environments and the epic dungeon crawling. I do miss the Monster Hunter like hunts from FFXII though.

I wish the developers would have taken their inspiration even deeper from FFXII by including the various races from those games (such as the man-lizard Bangaa pictured above). To be fair, XIV does have a race near identical to the battle-armoured Judge Magisters, I’m not too sure you get to play as them however.

If I haven’t lost you up to this point, might as well mention that right now I’m a level 23 Lancer with the Miqo’te race. It’s female too! I’m not big into actual “roleplaying” as many people do with MMOs. If I have to play as a character for countless hours, I might as well make them attractive!

Honestly, since I’m finished college, there couldn’t be a better time for me to fall victim to an MMO. The fact that it's the Final Fantasy brand and on the PS3 was also a deciding factor. I did want to play FFXI, but by the time it came out on 360 it looked like a pile of garbage and I didn’t have a credit card anyway. With a $13 subscription fee, I can’t imagine I will subscribe to FFXIV for more than 3 or 4 months. I can afford it, but it’s basically twice the price as Netflix and other streaming services. A single MMO is not a better value than any of those, no matter how much I play it.

I do worry what little of my social life will suffer if I get too addicted to this game, but such concerns are petty for a gamer!