Final Fantasy XIV, in itās original incarnation, had been a rushed, bugged, and ultimately failed attempt at a FF game. Their servers could not hold the meager demand for players, the interface was difficult to navigate, and there was so much erroring and downtime that the developers had to give subscriptions away for free just to keep people playing.
Yet in spite of this, I wish I had the opportunity to play FFXIV version 1 prior to it going offline, even if it was shite, just to be able to witness the final moments of the in-game world. Not only did the developers acknowledge that the game needed a serious reboot that would take months to implement, but they figured a creative way to write this into the gameās lore.
The main storyline told of an enemy trying to bring Dalamud, one of the worldās moons, to Hydaelyn. The players would uncover more of this plot as they days went on, revealing the inevitable destruction of the planet a la Meteor.Ā Over the course of several patches, the game gradually changed. It started with unusual weather patterns, a red moon inching itās way towards the blue one commonly seen at night. Atomos began to spawn in common areas, bodies of water dried up, others appeared. Monster mobs changed, they became higher in level and more numerous. Imperial soldiers appeared in formerly allied areas.
Then during the final days, the sky opened up to reveal the falling moon. Enemy airships flew over common skies. Giant monsters only battled in end-game dungeons spawned in towns to be fought. The Battle of Carteneau brought players from around the world into one field to fight off Imperial Soldiers. Messages from the battlefront, āConfound it! Weāve lost contact with the main host!ā signaled the falling of the allies in Carteneau.
All of this led up to the final ten minutes, where everyone online watched all hell break loose; not simply a moon falling from the sky, but Bahamut breaking through it. The characters you had met along the storyline were there, doing their best to contain the destruction, only to fall short of sealing the dragon away. Bahamut defeated the āHeroes of Lightā, and destroyed much of the land.
And all at once, the servers went offline. Players could no longer log in. They had just witnessed the end of an era, standing together on cliffs and overlooks, watching this among friends and allies, listening to the hymns distorted by the march of battle and the foreboding storm.
I wondered what was going through their minds as they watched this, knowing that in a few short hours, everything they had accomplished and worked for would be gone untilĀ A Realm Reborn was finally released. Some speculated if it would never be released, citing the ultimate failure of the current game.
But it returned, better than ever, addressing the issues of the previous game with a better interface, game mechanics, and servers. FFXIV: ARR now stands as one of the most popular paid-to-play MMORPGs on the market, and with good reason.
Leave it to Square-Enix to roll with a failure to make things better.
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