Eorzea, Ho!

Vana'Diel, the world of FFXI, is perhaps my favorite in video games. It won't be around forever, though, and it's game systems are getting stiff in their old age. It was time I really gave Eorzea a shot as a replacement in my life, if not in my heart.

Eorzea is the titular reborn realm of FFXIV, a legendarily troubled game, at launch. The relaunch sometime later has gone on to become a very successful game, and one living very near to the top of the subscription MMO genre. This is no accident.

With A Realm Reborn, and the two expansions out at the moment, Heavensward and Stormblood, S-E has just about nailed the fusion of FFXI and WoW that they seem to have been going for. XIV retains a lot of what made XI great in the flavor of the world, characters, writing, and overall spirit, not to mention a flexible class system. It also rounds off much of what made XI difficult, if not player hostile, in its heyday. This is where I see the influence of WoW. The experience of getting in game and leveling my character up to 30 has had much more in common with Blizzard's MMO than S-E's previous.

I am fine with this. In fact, this might be the platonic ideal of the genre, in my book. I have played a lot of WoW, and really enjoyed it, but never grown attached to the world. I have only ever stayed around as long as the desire to level up lasted, and never felt and draw to go back and revisit any parts of the world I had previously played in. By contrast, just about all of my affection for FFXI is tied up in the world of Vana'Diel, with consideration to the friends I made in my time there. Melding very strong systems and game loops and structures to very strong world building is just good sense.

I watched the noclip video series about FFXIV on YouTube, and I think Naoki Yoshida, the game runner, has a really good head on his shoulders for MMO development. I don't know whether he was ever on FFXI, but having played Ultima Online and WoW, he was able to bring knowledge of what others were doing in the space to his work on FFXIV at S-E after the game's initial failure, for its relaunch.

I could see myself playing a lot of XIV, and I am planning to stick with it, probably as a subscriber after my now 45-day free period ends. I hear Yasumi Matsuno has been doing some work on the game, and I am very excited to get through the story to those parts.

I have created a Marauder, named Warmaster Lupercal, in tribute to Horus Lupercal, fallen son of the Master of Mankind. My semi-RP justification for this is that Horus once spent untold decades in the warp accruing power before returning and laying siege to his father's realm. I posit that Eorzea was one of the places he visited, and did many good deeds and fetch quests before gaining the power he desired from that place and then moved on. My adventures in XIV are surely reflective of Horus' trials.

I have reached level 30 so far, at which point I am given to understand that I can change classes to Warrior, though I don't know whether I should or should not, yet. Perhaps its even necessary; I haven't done much research to this point, because I haven't really had to. I'm just enjoying playing the game and having it explain itself, for the most part, and not having to rely on extra-game research. I'm sure there would come a time where that would be necessary later on down the line, if I wanted to get hardcore, but for now I'm content to explore Eorzea at my own pace, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it soon.