An ode to new horizons, on the eve of Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail

2 days ago 21

There comes a point where, after so many hours invested into something, it becomes a facet of your life. It could be a hobby or past-time, a skill or a tradition. Little habits that define slices of your life like eras. The anime you grew up watching on Toonami. The sourdough starter you tried during the pandemic. The podcasts you listen to on the drive to work.

Games can do the same, and it’s that feeling that’s washing over me on the eve of Final Fantasy XIV‘s latest expansion. Dawntrail arrives soon, less than 12 hours from me typing this. I’ve been spending all day trying to encapsulate what that means for me, and for players eager to set off for new adventures.

To those out of the loop, it might sound a bit strange. I’ll admit, I was a late arrival to the XIV party. I picked it up during Endwalker, arguably the worst possible time to start playing the MMORPG. Servers were buckling under the weight of so many Warriors of Light, trying to log on and see their adventure through to the end. Surely that popularity alone gives people some idea of the devotion this game inspires, even if they’ve never set a foot in Eorzea.

Yet it still captured me. Not immediately; part of me just enjoyed the novelty of running through entry-level dungeons as others were hastily chewing through current content. I did love the feeling of starting a new dungeon and seeing messages remark on how they hadn’t seen this duty in ages. Players trying to remember old mechanics is a feeling I’m all too acquainted with, now.

I posted a screenshot of the first time the Warrior of Light, the player’s avatar, meets the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, a group that quickly becomes the most familiar faces and staunchest allies in Final Fantasy XIV. Long-time players replied, saying how nostalgic it felt to see them there, like that again. It was like slowly immersing myself in years of history I’d never been privy to, until now.

Weeks and months went on, and I saw it all. Dungeons, raids, highs and lows. Several cutscenes played in sequence. First, A Realm Reborn, then Heavensward, on to Stormblood and Shadowbringers, and finally, Endwalker. In the course of a year, I caught all the way up to more seasoned Final Fantasy XIV players, and finally saw the “To be continued…” on my main story quest marker.

And at this point, you’d think, that would be that. I’d dip back in for story when I wanted to, maybe stay current enough to see the next expansion, but ultimately slow down. I’d caught up. I should’ve known that was only the start.

Final Fantasy XIV is not the first game to hold me firm in its clutches. While I’d say RPGs are my primary realm of coverage, part of me always loved online games. From Quake to StarCraft, to Unreal Tournament and Call of Duty, to League of Legends and Dota 2, I could while away hours upon hours locked in online co-operation and competition.

Maybe the latter part is why World of Warcraft never grabbed me, though I also maintain I was just a little peeved we’d never see a new Warcraft RTS. But I put hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into those. So how did Final Fantasy XIV do the same to me?

Well, it happened slowly. Some events pop up, and I want another new mount or glamour. A friend wants to hang out and go check out what a Final Fantasy XIV night club looks like, and I oblige. Colleagues, including Destructoid’s resident XIV scholar Andrea Shearon, demand I play the Eden raids. (Still working on those, sorry Andrea.)

And at one point, I get obsessed with Triple Triad. That silly, superfluous mini-game from Final Fantasy VIII. Good lord, the hours I have lost to Triple Triad.

For those unaccustomed, Triple Triad is a fairly simple game where you play cards on a 9×9 grid, one at a time. Each card has a numerical value in its cardinal directions, and if you play a higher number than another card it touches, you flip it to your side. The player with the most cards in their corner wins. There are a few extra rules like Same, Reverse, and Plus that get tossed in for good measure, but that’s the short version of it.

There is a mount you can get, an exceptionally rare mount; sites that track mounts estimate roughly 3% of the player base has it. It is a flying Triple Triad mount. To do it, you have to basically engage with every inch of Final Fantasy XIV. Raids, dungeons, and trials. Tribal quests. Crafting and gathering. Tiny side quests, sprinkled throughout Eorzea, and massive areas full of optional content like Eureka and Bozja. If you see someone flying around on a Triple Triad card, they have not just played the story beats of Final Fantasy XIV. They have seen every piece of it.

I know, because I’ve been chasing that mount for ages now. Not a week goes by without logging in and grinding a new dungeon, doing some tribal turn-ins, and chipping away at some duties I still need cards from. It has, at this point, become routine. Even as my playtime waxes and wanes, I can’t help but want to chip away at it. It’s a giant flying card, not the most glamorous mount in the game, but still a bit of a status symbol.

It’s also forced me to see Final Fantasy XIV beyond that top layer. Like peeling back the onion and removing that first bit, only to find more and more underneath. What I found wasn’t just enough content to probably last me a lifetime, but all the people and the different ways they engage with Final Fantasy XIV.

Some of my friends only play XIV for the story. They hop on when there’s a new piece of main narrative, blast through it in a few hours, and come back for the next patch a few months later. Heck, I was that way for a while too.

Others are more involved. They prog high-level content. They’re omnicrafters. They digitally bartend. When I picked up the Blue Mage vocation, it wasn’t alone; I joined a group of players, all trying to grind out the same wacky, somewhat-esoteric content together. Running map nights, raid nights, any kind of night makes some of the distance feel smaller.

That’s the incredible thing, in Final Fantasy XIV. So many people I know in real life, spend time with, and talk to even in the industry, play XIV. Like other online games, it can absolutely serve as a game to play while we’re on a call in Discord on a Wednesday night. But it’s also a shared world. Seeing an orange name pass by me in Limsa is always a nice surprise, and it’s so warming to throw out a /wave and get one in return.

Final Fantasy XIV has, in its own way, wormed itself into the fabric of my life. Not just my game playing, which comes and goes as upcoming releases become new releases, and fresh games become old game and backlog entries. It’s woven into social structures. In some ways, it’s a primary forum for some of my relationships.

How do you quantify what a game means to you when it’s the catalyst for so much? When something transcends the “game of the week” you joke around in for a while and drop, to something that becomes a part of your routine? And what does it mean to take a new step in that together? Honestly, all the “Horde” and “Alliance” shouting at old BlizzCons is starting to make sense to me. XIV isn’t really just an RPG I play anymore. It’s a digital space I visit. It’s where I’ve met new people and kept old friendships strong. It’s a different kind of attachment than I feel towards something like Mass Effect or The World Ends With You; games that were pivotal in my life but ultimately finite, and not quite as defined by my social interactions so much as my internal, emotional reactions. I love the Normandy, but BioWare has yet to let me hang out on the ship with my friends and run Frontline while second-screening a soccer match.

So, on the eve of Dawntrail, I’ve been looking back through my giant album of screenshots and sure, I’ve got the big moments. Gorgeous cutscenes, emotional character lines, and incredible vistas. I’ve got more Gpose shots than any person needs. But I’ve got tons of images of raid clears and dungeon endings, or just hanging out in player housing.

Part of me hopes that Dawntrail continues to elicit those same emotions, that what’s coming down the pipe will only be additive to what Final Fantasy XIV is. The weird part is, even if it’s not, there’s still so much Final Fantasy XIV here. Maybe this game will, too, fade in time and become another “era” of my life. I’ll look back on this the way I look back on older recollections of games I thought I’d play forever.

But with new horizons comes new chances for making new memories. The nice part about getting older is you learn to cherish the good moments while they’re here, because you know how quickly they can go away. So on the eve of Dawntrail, I’m cherishing a lot of golden memories on the path here. And hopefully, many more ahead. See you all in Tural.

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