As with almost every MMO in 2026 (and all the ones that have died along the way), this genre allows for the creation of deep-rooted communities built on a love for story, lore, and a love for gaming as a whole. FFXIV is exceptional in this regard: something about the customization, guilds, long-term story progression, and the death of the game itself in its original conception has formed between millions of players an absolutely unbreakable bond and sense of community. As a solo player I dabbled with different guilds, and enjoyed in dungeons the genuine kindness that FFXIV players have that is wholly unique. It is, in my mind, absolutely a shame then that this game suffers from being an MMO in every other conceivable way.
Over 300 hours spent across this account and XBOX on a character I named Lithlie Evanescent, a Dragoon Au Ra eventually turned into a Dark Knight, a class I found deeply satisfying to play from a combat standpoint. The tank role is quite intense in comparison to DPS: you're responsible for damage mitigation, drawing enemy aggresion, and maintaining the pace of the dungeon as a whole. I enjoyed this responsibility and general loop of Lvl. 70 DRK, and as long as I remembered to press that dreaded Tank Stance button I was really good at it. And I actually liked my character, and her role in the story! Warrior of Light - that title felt genuinely larger than life ; I felt important, powerful. As negative as I now look back onto A Realm Reborn, I will never deny the sense of character progression and increasing stakes, as well as the increasing difficulty.
Then, the game kept going! Slowly, slowly building up to something even bigger! And it kept building. And it kept building.
And it kept going. And kept, going.
300 hours later, I'm sitting in the new city of Kugane, whose novelty quickly wore off as I had to go back and forth between different rooms to talk to the same few people, as you do across the entire MSQ. I carefully watched/read the characters stiffly talking to each other in their unique but strange dialects about how everything was getting worse soon. I genuinely do my best to absorb every detail, as the community passionately reminds you that everything matters and that the story will only truly start to Get Good when you've taken the time to absorb everything. So I only sort of let everything wash over me, making sure not to miss anything important, when Gyodo shows up. A fish man. A silly fish man. Laugh at the fish man, isn't he silly. And he's a bad guy! Bad fish.
It's quite common for people to quit an MMO very early in the game. Maybe the combat didn't click for them, maybe the vibes were off, or a tutorial worded poorly. My quitting point was Gyodo. Or rather, it really wasn't him at all. Frankly, I don't remember anything about him. In fact, I don't remember anything past the untimely death of that one character in Heavensward. And I barely remember that.
I made the egregious mistake of paying money to escape the confines of Free to Play. I wanted to be more involved in the overarching community (which I didn't take advantage of, really) and, frankly, I wanted to have enough GIL to drop on cool cosmetics for my goth dragon lady. The Warrior of Light deserves to look badass, after all. Or cute. This mistake locks you into paying a monthly subscription for the game, and also doesn't get you all the later DLC. The perks are nice, it is nice to be allowed to do things I couldn't before, but the most I ever really did with it was wish I had money to pay for the subscription when I later become unemployed. Truly a bad time to not have access to an MMO (/s).
So, Gyodo. An NPC I immediately clocked as not worth caring about that the game desperately wants me to think is funny. Some much needed levity in a story that is quite bleak. But bleakness only truly works when you care about the stakes. When you fear the enemy, or you deeply love that which is soon to be lost. I don't know the exact point, really, of when I truly stopped caring for what has got to be the most long-winded and uninteresting story I have ever seen in a video game. It's also pretty dreadfully unfunny. I don't recall ever laughing once, including the bit of the Hildibrand questline that I played.
This "writing style" of having to stretch one arc of story across 1 billion quests is a feature of MMO design. Indeed, how do you keep players playing and feeling like they've earned got what they paid for without given them several hundred hours of meandering quests. You can hope that they latch onto something about the story, and that 200 hours later they don't realize the time that they wasted but still feel obligated to keep playing because, well, they just spent 200 hours doing it, so they're not going to quit now!
I realized with Gyodo that the single thing keeping me playing was the story. The setting was cool - some of the environments are genuinely quite pretty or exciting - and the combat was. Well. The combat Was cool for awhile. Eventually, everything starts to slow down. Item progression, levels, skill acquisition. It was fun when every few hours I'd get something new to add to my super custom hotbar, something that took time and effort to implement into my rotation. Every few dungeons one would do something interestingly mechanically, although those were usually sudden spikes of difficulty in a sea of Press The Attack Button and occasionally a damage mitigation. The maps and levels lose their luster when you realize that they can only keep upping the ante to a point, given the old engine and whatnot. Frankly, once the enjoyment of flight wears off, navigating becomes a chore quicker with every new area.
Indeed, everything about FFXIV after a point just feels like a chore. I would take a break and try again, I'd get an itch to throw myself back in and really relive that base-game excitement. But that nostalgia stopped working once I looked back at it all even a little critically. Again, I wouldn't ever dismiss myself or anyone else for truly enjoying something. I don't feel dumb or whatever for having a good time with something harmless, and neither should anyone else! But man I feel a bit punked now. I feel cheated.
It's been I think a full year since I seriously played. My best friend would nag me a little for enjoying what she saw as sloppy writing and storytelling. She was much nicer about it, but the way she and myself would put it now is this: FFXIV does not respect your time. I've played many games since then, even picked up reading again! (reading LOTR rn). I look back on this time I spent with this game pretty sourly. It's like a period of my life that I've had to rehabilitate from, which is a bit hyperbole but still.
I'm more critical of what I enjoy now, what I invest my time in. I've learned that, even if I spent many hours reading, watching, playing something, that I can always back out when I feel that it's stopped caring. I now notice when a work of art turns into a algorithm. I now watch out for when a story stops caring about nuance for the sake of drama building. I analyze threads when they start anew for whether they will truly add to the fabric of a story. I'm now forever on the lookout for Gyodo.
