Well it’s been nearly 2 months since Endwalker hit and I had some stuff on my mind I wanted to write somewhere that wasn’t going to spoil it for my entire Twitter timeline. (;^ω^) Then I remembered I have a blog! Anyway as usual, spoiler warning if you’ve not yet finished or plan to play it yourself.

Before I get into the story I just want to talk about the logistics. I’ve been through 4 expac launches in FFXIV, 5 if you count the initial 2.0 release. I will truly say that this was the worst logistical release since 2.0. I wouldn’t say it’s “worse” than 2.0 since 2.0 was actually unplayable, but the playability of 6.0 launch was extremely rocky. Like the kind of rocky you feel on a bus riding through the Danish country side and you’re ready to vomit all of your lunch by the time you get off.

The first early access week queues on Gilgamesh were in the 7000 – 9000 range. Additionally the queues weren’t even properly working and would frequently boot you out of the waiting line with error 2002, which not only forced you to shut down your client, but also forced you to then requeue so at one point, my husband got d/ced, waited in queue for 3 hours, got to spot #1, error 2002 -> back in line at 4000. He just gave up for the day and went to our Japan alt, which had a queue of about 5. I took a lot of days off so I was able to login in the morning and play like a maniac all day non stop so I wouldn’t disconnect (they had a 30 minute AFK kick).

But then it happened. I got to that one scene at the end with Emmet and Hythlodeus and we’re about to save the god damn universe, and what do I get? A Fuckin’ 90k error followed by a 4k person queue at like 9PM at night. I wasn’t coming back to my character that night and I went to continue the MSQ back early on my alt instead. The entire mood was ruined, and even though I was thrown right back into the cut scene the next morning when I was able to get back in, the initial feeling and emotion (and tears) I had were completely gone.

Honestly it was such a disappointment, and on top of this because I was so afraid of getting disconnected, I never got to stream my first play through. All my fresh reactions to things like everyone turning into monsters in Radz at Han, or Matsya running with the baby, all of that was not captured during my 2nd run when I already knew what was gonna happen. I only streamed my 2nd run because I knew it was safe that if I disconnected my queue on Japan would be less than 20 and by then players on Japan servers loosened out so there was no worry of congestion. Meanwhile, the congestion on NA pretty much continued right up until the middle of January. Yes a month and a half of bullshit queues, macros to stop yourself from logging out and being unable to get into my house to water some plants I was trying to grow for an earring. ಠ_ಠ

Needless to say it was a very stressful expac launch and honestly it just wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fun having to rotate my entire day around logging into the game. It wasn’t fun thinking that if I want to say clean the house in the morning and play in the evening, I had to make sure my chara was logged in and spamming some stupid keyboard macro to make sure that I didn’t have a 3 hour queue in the evening. It wasn’t fun logging into the game and seeing people afking and using cheat engine to make impossible sitting/sleeping poses at the Limsa Aetheryte while I was desperately trying to catch up on gearing for endgame ex primals, dungeons and raids. It fucking sucked and it ruined the experience for me.

But still, it’s FF14. I’ve been playing the game for nearly 9 years now and it’s hard to hate something you’ve been invested in for so long. It’s not the writers or animators fault that Yoshida made a poor decision of ignoring the NA servers for years even though we’ve had expac congestion literally every single fucking expac. (Raubahn Ex anyone?) It’s not the voice actors or character designer’s fault that he decided each Japanese data center needed 10-11 servers while each NA server had like 8. So I had to put my technicality rage aside and I DID enjoy the story. The only shit parts were that shitty Garlean instance:

The fact that it was so shitty they had to extra nerf easy mode, which I happened to do on my 3rd character yesterday and this time, the fuel tank is literally right behind the magitek so you don’t have to run around lost in the entire area looking for it. 😂😂 Shoulda been like that in the first place ain’t nobody got time for dat! And the 2nd part that still enrages me to this day as I do the MSQ a 3rd time: Labyrinthos. I just hate everything about Labyrinthos (except Mr. Shaggles). I hate how you have to go through this stupid long cave to reach the top and bottom parts of the “top” area. Then you have to do a lot of the MSQ to even get to the bottom area and then you have that shitty “find all the researchers hiding behind building” bullshit quest. (ノ# ﾟдﾟ)ﾉ ┫:･’∵:．┻┻:･’．:∵  And then the worst thing of all: that horrible CIRCUS MUSIC. Seriously we are in this synthetic environment that has a fake sky and sun and is all technological and what background music do we get? A god damn circus.

My favorite part of the story was of course not only resolving the Zodiark/Hydaelin thing but also the fact that we got to see them as actual people, and why the final days happened. All the shit we saw with Emmet Selch in Shadowbringers that made me cringe, was finally justified and explained…and I’ll be damned if I didn’t admit I began to love him as a character.

The entire Elpis arc and the trip here was just an absolute joy for me. Having Hythlodaeus be voiced by Hoshi Soichiro was also great and so fitting for him.

I know it’s technically fucking Hermes’ fault for sending her on this horrid mission, I just never became a fan of Meteion. Well I thought she was cute uguu daughteroo at first, but then she goes into goth mode and all the cuteness kinda jumped out the window for me. 😂 Not only that, but I always complain how certain RPGs (especially in Final Fantasy universe) have that “Seymour” character who comes back over and over no matter how many times we kill him. Well we finally had a Seymour in this game and nope it’s not Zenos. It’s god damn Hermes.

We have to fight this literal clown 3 times. First as Zodiark, then as Hermes and then as Amon, and 4 if you consider the fact that we already fought him as Amon in Syrcus tower. 🤪 I was actually starting to get sick of Matsuoka’s voice even though I normally really like Matsuoka’s voice!!! And it got even worse when I started farming the exprimal which required me to use a piece of paper to get his idiotic trigonometry mechanic through my thick skull.

The other thing is the entire theme of the game is utterly depressing. You have this robo bird thing go out into space to find the meaning of life and all she finds are a bunch of dead/dying planets who tried to destroy “conflict” and in t he end destroyed themselves or died due to apathy after having only peace in life and getting bored of living in peace.

So ultimately both the message of the game and of Hyadelin/Venat was that humanity needs conflict in order to survive. It’s overcoming the conflict that gives people the motivation to keep going and without it there’s no progress or evolution. It’s why the ascians would just be like “ok my work is done I’m gonna go bugger off and someone else can take over my “role”. Hermes also didn’t like this, in fact he was like so depressed about the entire thing that my headcanon is that Meteion is just a figment of his depression that he set off to try to convince himself that there’s more to life than just “doing you work and dying”. Turns out there wasn’t and he had a meltdown, and his depression figment had one too and decided it would be best to just “spare everyone” by killing them off so they can just die instantly.

So one of the big themes in the game along this is the meaning of Aether vs Dynamis. All the ascians have thiccc Aether so when you jump in time to Elips, they think you’re some minion familiar because yours is so thin – due to the fact that all creations have more dynamis on them. The earth, coined as Etheris is protected by a layer of Aether, but there are holes in this layer through which Meteion managed to send a huge amount of Dynamis through. An overabundance of Dynamis is basically what happened with Amourot and the final days which is why they created Zodiark to balance things out and why Venat split the world into 14. You need a balance of Dark & light which is why we had to save the 1st in SHB from too much light. Similarly you need a balance of Aether and Dynamis, and so too much Dynamis would turn people who are in their utter despair into monsters. So yea just imagine a bunch of depressed people suddenly turning into some raging beast and going on a rampage.

And so one of the weak places with the current hole was Thavnair so the place became a final days hell hole and it’s also the reason Hydaelin started to try to recruit as many warriors of light as possible to fight these beasts in the case this were to ever happen. In case this plan failed though, she had a plan B – to bring all survivors to the moon – where Zodiark was being chained. But yea you know Hermes, Asahi, Fandango freed Zodiark, forced us to fight it, we kicked his ass and now with no Zodiark the Dynamis/Aether balance went to hell. But have no fear, the bun army is here and they have been in cahoots with the Sharlayans for hundreds of years preparing for the final days to house all the humans of earth on the moon!

Unfortunately despite hundreds of years of preparation, they prepared nothing useful. They still assumed that humans are the same size as the ancients rather than being like 1/16th the size. All their food was just different colored carrots that give different effects and nutrients and their entire operation is filled with buggy robots gone out of control. 🤣🤣🤣

But yea all is forgiven because they are so god damn cute and also PUDDINGWAY 🍮🍮

And that’s pretty much the story, we end up defeating goth daughteroo (ex version coming in 6.1 probably to kick my ass) and I basically spent the next few weeks farming ex primal mounts and fate tokens as there’s now a mount that basically requires you to complete like 7,000 fates or something. 🥺

I loved the homages to FF4 even if it wasn’t on my favorite FF game list. The BGM in the bun area and the end game outfits for all the characters (though disappointed Rosa never got anything and it’s just a recolor of Rydia’s.)

There’s currently an overdue Halloween event running right now where you get clown outfits and hats that as usual, Vieras can’t wear. Speaking of Vieras, bun boys definitely created a catboy extinction event, but I think a lot of my Japanese mutuals are going back to their previous races now. On NA though, bun boys still going strong.

Even though I’m not a huge fan of the Sage playstyle, I loved the bun boy in the quest. 🥺♥️♥️ The reaper quest was really good too  and I know those jobs are super popular on NA (though Sage more on NA than Japan while reaper is really popular on Japan.) At the moment job balance is kinda weird where tanks are fine now that they buffed Paladin, DPS are ok except SMN still feels kinda weak and lol MCH, but I’m thankful they buffed the one DPS I am good at which is Dancer. Healers are another story. I have every healer at 90 and right now it feels like Scholar is OP if you can play it, but I suck at it – though the expedient skill everyone made fun of has saved many lives. Sage does good dps and is great for things like dungeons or trash mobs but in oh shit moments, it becomes a useless sack of potatoes so I’m not a fan.

Astrologian has gotten much better since they made it a pure healer so it wasn’t half assed at either one and now it puts out a lot of heals with very little MP usage – something I complained about since Stormblood. Cards are easier to tell thanks to the blue/purple coloring and the Divination (party buff) RNG is now gone. Unfortunately AST DPS is still kinda shitty and for some weird reason they turned Minor Arcana into 2 buttons??? And finally my main job, White Mage. Seemed ok at first, but as I began doing ex primals I quickly realized my MP pool is as bad as AST was back in SB. What gives? WHM was so strong in SHB and now just spamming glare for 30 seconds you can see your MP just plummet to 50% and your only way to get it back is half assedsize and lucid dreaming. Is this a joke to you SE?! So because of that I started playing AST more because I feel like I can hold the heals on it better and it’s much better for recovery when shit hits the fan. There’s supposed to be a new balance patch in 6.1 that will hopefully address these things but I don’t know, sparkly shit and Urianger kinda make me wanna play AST as my main healer again, though I miss my big dick white mage DPS 😂.

Anyway my brain is melting from literally leveling like 7 jobs via only fate grind for the damn mount so I decided to cut my sub off in about 2 days to continue playing Psychedellica BB and other steam games in my backlog. Fortunately at least I don’t have to rotate my day around FFXIV login periods anymore but other than FATE grind, there’s nothing to do for me so it’s time for a change of scenery.