Since I do play FF14 50% of my free time, I figured this deserves a post. Yes it’s actually been a year and no I haven’t quit yet 😛 Maybe because it’s not a gacha spewing shitty free Korean grinder that I was so used to dealing with. So basically this post is a year in review of my experience with the game.

When FFXIV originally launched I had mentioned about the early access disaster. Every server was full, I couldn’t play at  all. With that, me and my husband basically re-rolled our characters on the Japanese server Hades.

I made quite a number of Japanese friends there. It was a lot of fun but due to time zone issues, I only ever saw a few of them late at night, or if I had logged into the game early morning on the weekends/my days off.

Let’s face it back in 2.0 stuff was kinda hard. I was just starting out, didn’t have too many crafters leveled up. There weren’t things like roulettes to have high level players help you clear stuff. On top of that, I didn’t find out until 6 months later but I had 3 second lag on the Japanese servers. Despite this I pretty much managed to clear up to bahamut’s coil turn 2 and ultima weapon hard mode.

After my month of subscription, I had received a phial of fantasia. Being jealous of all the lala cuties around me, I decided to turn into a lala as well:

I still look back now and remember the excitement of clearing story mode primals. When I do these now I just laugh and “can’t wait to get my roulette bonus” but back then it was like HOLY SHIT GUYS WE DID IT! I remember how hard titan normal was for me until I switched my camera settings to legacy and that solved 99% of my dodging issues.

Come to think of it these guys were the reason I made so many friends. I joined a gathering/crafting link shell and because of that I made friends with everyone there and friends of friends there. I still keep in touch even though we’re on different servers, thanks to lodestone.  I recall spending a lot of time leveling up my gathering & crafting classes because I was scared I’d do bad in duty roulette. Since I was on a Japanese server I didn’t wanna be 迷惑。

Once I finished the main story, I worked on getting my crafters & gatherer’s up to 50.  Thanks to my LS friends I was able to safely watch cut scenes without people raging and locking me out of the battles.  Praeratorium was probably my favorite cause nothing fun like running around in a Magitek and shooting things =D.

The next big thing for me was getting my scholar relic – aka the level 90 weapon – which aside from coil, was the best weapon in the game at that time.  This was a bit of a hurdle because I tried to farm Garuda HM for my weapon so I’d be better geared for titan but after 26 or so tries I gave up and just went in with my Ifrit book. Needless to say,it didn’t go well. The 3 second lag made it impossible for me to dodge weight of land and I basically ended up getting carried by the 5 Japanese people who were in our party. Fortunately me and my husband were just a tank & healer, and if geared, that fight only needs 1 tank and 1 healer anyway as long as your DPS are on top of things. I felt bad and apologized afterwards for being a waste of space. With relic in my hands, I decided to venture into Bahamut’s Coil.

With some LS friends we went in but couldn’t clear it. Let’s face it, it was damn hard when most of us were ilvl 73-75. Also trying to discuss strategy and point our errors to Japanese people is a crime against humanity so I didn’t get too far. Eventually some weeks and gear upgrades later, I did clear turn 1 with friends and then cleared turn 2 in a pug because by then everyone was face rolling T2 enrage.

Unfortunately come January, it was getting harder & harder to progress. I joined a few turn 4 learning/practice parties but due to time differences a lot of the Japanese players would get tired and go off to bed even if we were making progress. Meanwhile my linkshell friends felt more distant because while we were all around the same “progression level” before, suddenly I saw them distance ahead of me. All because our timezones did not match. Even when I joined an English speaking linkshell, most people were newbies or were in Singapore/China so once again, time differences (including one of my FC members.)

Fortunately 2.1 and patches in between kept me busy with side quests and beastman dailies. Crystal Tower was also pretty exciting though the Japanese way of clearing it put too much responsibility based on what team you were – even if that team wasn’t good enough to handle their assigned role.

And so after completing all the seasonal events, getting my crafters up and realizing I’m lagged out the ass I decided to transfer servers. Not sure where to go I looked around for an FC that would take us, and settled on Behemoth.

I sent all my friends goodbye emails and waited a day to see if they had responded so I could take their emails with me. They did and I spent like an hour crying because I really wanted to play with them, but the time zone restrictions just wouldn’t let me.

And so I arrived on Behemoth and joined that FC. Unfortunately their coil slots were full, and there was no activity of setting up a new static. I went to look for other groups/fcs to progress. Eventually I settled on one run by husband & wife team and cleared turn 4 with them. Unfortunately, in order to do this, I had to first level up a DPS. They already had tanks & healers so I started working on my black mage. Thanks to being in the right timezone, there were always parties up and I was able to get my black mage relic fairly quickly.

Unfortunately due to real life issues the FC leader girl got busy and could barely log in to the game. She left the FC in her husband’s hands an all he wanted to do was PVP. In order to use company buffs for PVP he started letting everyone and anyone into the FC which included bots. I decided to take my leave then and I heard later on they had someone even steal stuff from the FC chest. Eventually that FC disbanded but I was already in a different FC. This FC was pretty huge, so huge that just as we joined, they finally raised enough money to buy a large house. I finally got to experience housing in the game.

 

The leader is a good guy, I liked him a lot. Unfortunately he was mostly online in teamspeak and didn’t police the FC chat too much. Due to this there were a lot of personality conflicts and on top of it, I still had no raid group. He was nice and he did help me get my first titan & ifrit clear though. Ultimately, my next coil static ended up being 2 people from the previous FC and then mine and their friends. After some personality conflicts though, and after the sub leader leaving, things kinda went downhill. A lot of people started leaving the FC, including some people in my static (though our static kept in touch via linkshell anyway.) After stuff like gardening came in, and people would take stuff I planted, it was pretty much the last straw for me. I had to break it to the leader as nicely as possible, and me and my husband, the last 2 remaining in that FC packed our bags and formed our own FC once again.

It was around that time that our static had finally cleared turn 5 of coil.

Unfortunately due to arguments with our static leader, I decided I just couldn’t see eye to eye with him so I left the static. My idea was to “clear stuff in whatever way we can” but he wanted to basically “carry” everyone by doing things his way so we’d rely on him. Doesn’t sound like teamwork to me so I knew it was time to go.

After getting our FC to rank 6, we raised enough money to buy a small house in Limsa housing area. Additionally, Fantasia became purchasable and I decided to turn into an elf man. I got in touch with a friend I had made when I first came to Behemoth. We became friends through a turn 4 practice party back in January. I asked her if she had a static, and she said she did, but a lot of people didn’t show up  so they weren’t making much progress. Me and hub decided to join and on our first night with them, we helped them clear Turn 5. With great hope for progress, we dove into beating T6.

It was a long & tough battle before we had more DPS, or could get used to not dying to Blighted Boquet, but eventually after a month or so, Victory was ours! We dove into T7 immediately and once again, about a month later, Medusa was licking the floor.

We’re currently wrangling on T8 but we’ve gotten to set 6 of the towers and due to a lot of people being out this month because of vacation we had a little stalling on our progress. Hopefully we can get a T8 clear before September. Oh and also, I became a cat.

This brings us back to the present time. I spent most of 2.3 just trying to get my fishing achievements, but it’s been more than a pain to say the least. They’ve made the fish easily escapeable, only have 2 hour windows (which is about 5 min in real time) and must be caught during certain weather. In the most recent patch they’ve finally added weathermen in all 3 cities but now I’m too busy with the newest beast tribe to fish. The hunts have put a huge dent in the enjoyment of the game and have really shown the dark side of some people’s attitudes. The update has made them slightly better, but the daily FATEs still suck and now that I finally got enough seals to upgrade my weapon, I don’t really have the motivation to bother with grinding for anymore.

Our FC housing is busy with gardening for minions and soon chocobo dye. FC friends have created & decorated their rooms (and Nanamo shrines :lol:). Still need to clear Ramuh Ex but we’ll eventually get to that one of these days. Overall it’s been an interesting year. A lot of stuff happened, a lot of things changed be it game systems or friendships. I miss a few people from my old static but we still keep in touch and wave to each other when we run by. Syrcus tower hasn’t been too bad for me and I got really lucky with drops I wanted. The grinding and farming I had to do back in the day for Crystal Tower can’t even compare honestly.

So happy anniversary FF14. Thanks for keeping me entertained and distracted from otome games for the past year 😛 And please add some sands of time to Syrcus Tower or make the daily hunt FATEs less annoying to wait for.  FF14 now has a free trial for those who want to give it a go, as well as invite a friend campaign if anyone is interested in an invite. There will also be a free login period starting this weekend for those who had a sub but haven’t renewed. Looking forward to 2.4 with marriages and ninjas! (๑╹ڡ╹๑)