Blaugusting Final Fantasy XIV

Blaugust has once again arrived in the gaming corner of the blogosphere, thanks to the great efforts of Belghast.

Like last year, I’m participating, and I thought that maybe I’d try my hand at a brand new game and blog my reactions and experiences - inspired partly by the highly entertaining diary Bhagpuss kept of his Star Wars: The Old Republic escapades. But not quite on the scale of UltrViolet at Endgame Viable who is planning to play no less than 31 games from his Steam backlog - one per day during Blaugust - and video the sessions to boot. Madness, but brilliant!

I’ve chosen Final Fantasy XIV Online (hereafter FFXIV), the hot-mmo-du-jour, as the victim, an icon that’s sat on my desktop untouched since buying it cheaply late 2018. I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game of any stripe, despite owning many PlayStations - I think I even have a copy of the PS1 version of FFVII squirrelled away somewhere. So I’ll be coming into the game completely fresh, blind to the lore, and with no real idea how to play it.

There’s been plenty of chatter about the game recently, with the Shadowbringers expansion being very well received, and FFXIV apparently challenging WoW (a very cogent analysis from Kaylriene) for the MMO popularity crown. I love that I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in the Shadowbringers trailer, other than it all looks epic and everyone is very handsome.

Of course (late) August also bring the release of Warcraft Classic, something I’m surprisingly excited about (along with at least one of my regular Warcraft crew) and will certainly blog about. Maybe it’s not that surprising - having started in Burning Crusade, I’m thrilled to be given the chance to see the original game, janky models and all.

As my fellow guildie says, it will be novel to have to really earn things again in Warcraft, instead of having loot drop like rain. Even the idea of name reservations is exciting - we live in strange times! First things first though: FFXIV here we come.

#Blaugust01

Comments:

Woo! Looking forward to your thoughts! Again, if you hit any snags, feel free to ask and I’d be happy to help!

I went into FFXIV much the same—not having played any FF games, nor really knowing any of the lore… and it worked out fine. The story is well-written, to where you won’t notice if you don’t 100% know something, but there also seem to be easter eggs of sorts for those that have played other games in the franchise.

That’s good news - a story should be able to stand alone, even with that massive 13(?) game history. From what little I know it sounds like each FF game stands alone but has the continuity of the FF universe. I like the idea of easter eggs for veterans too.