How Final Fantasy XIV Took Me Prisioner While Setting Me Free

Long time friends of mine know my troubled and turbulent history with MMORPGS.  From Ultima Online to Lord of the Rings Online, I always wind up ending my relationship with these games in hatred and emnity.  But I think the worse offender in this case was World of Warcraft.  Particularily because it's such a good game.

Part of the reason MMOs have never jived for me is the discrepancy between single player and multi player games.  In my gaming career, I spent 99.99 percent of the time playing single player games.  One of the rules in a single player game is that if you work hard enough and are skillfull (or lucky) enough, you can experience 100% of what a game has to offer.  As games got larger, this became more difficult, but the basic tenent stands.  If you invest enough, you can get a perfect experience.  MMOs work the same way too.  It's much bigger than the biggest single player game, but if you had unlimited hours, you can also experience all of what an MMO has to offer.  That's one of the driving principles behind my gaming.  I don't get 100% on all the games I play.  Not even close.  But I like the idea that it's possible.  That it's fair.  But MMOs have one thing that pushes the fairness factor to the other end of the scale.  Namely, people.  Other people.

Of course, other people are what you play an MMO for.  It's just that, at the same time, you are also totally dependent on them.  In the case of WoW, I wanted to see all the game has to offer, but the obstacles coming from other players often prevent that from happening.  This isn't so much a blame game as it is an acknowledgement.  For instance, it all came to a head when, after months of playing, I finally got the chance to run the Molten Core.  Molten Core, or MC, is a 50 person instanced dungeon in World of Warcraft.  One of the first.  Naturally, I was excited at the opportunity.  But then, people happened.  Just getting all 50 people organized took forever.  The time was set for 7pm, but by the time it was ready to go, for real, it was more like 8.  An hour wasted.  All that time, the people there were just talking.  Shooting the sh*t.  Dancing the night away, whatever.  As a classic introvert, I just kept to myself, impatiently waiting for the darn thing to get on with it already!

When the thing started, it lived up to the promise of being fun.  For about 10 minutes.  Then we got to, I think, the first or second boss.  It was a cerberus type beast.  The whole party stopped to a standstill as the leaders discussed strategy and organization.  So it was another chunk of time wasted before we can start moving again.  It was boring.  Worse was, the boss wupped the entire 50 person party, so the whole thing was a big waste of time.  I never ran MC again.  It was also one of the final straw.  Soon after, I sold every virtual item I had and gave the proceeds to my friend.  Then, out of spite, I deleted the character permanently.

It was a big lesson.  Playing an MMO isn't anything like a single player game.  To be fair, it's not the game's fault or the people's.  And, to my credit, I've also mellowed out.  A lot.  And that's when Final Fantasy XIV comes in.

Long story short, FF14 hooked me from the get go.  Back in the WoW days, I had a saying:  if they ever made anything as good as WoW, but with character and graphics designed by the Japanese, I'd drop everything and played that MMO.  Well, it took the better part of a decade, but FF14 is that game.  In a way, it's a dream come true.  And I finally learned to stop caring.  The game recently just came out with a big patch.  90% of all new content are for maxed level characters, none of which I have.  But I just ended up shrugging it off.  Afterall, there are still tonnes of things at the lower levels I haven't even touched, four fighting classes I haven't even looked at and enough crafting to make me want to level up a gathering class.  In other words, no big deal.  Let the level 50s have their fun while I have mine.  And the new 24 person dungeon recently added?  No thanks.  I'll try it once, but if I have to wait up to an hour just to get the thing rolling, I will never do it again. 

I have to thank Final Fantasy XIV for being a wonderful game.  A game good enough to justify giving up the past, starting anew, and just having a lot of fun.  And I've learned one of the better parts of playing an MMO:  playing with other people.  Shocking, I know, but being in a party of four, where everyone's progress depends on everyone elses, makes me feel like I'm a part of something bigger than myself.  Even the simple act of buying and selling on the auction house is an act of helping other's.  You're either providing what they need, or you are rewarding their efforts with your own.  It's a very spiritual thing.  In retrospect, I think I ran more dungeons in an FF party these past two months than in my six months with WoW and liking it 10 times as much.

In the end, I think life is much to short for an MMO.  That's why you just gotta play it.