In the last month (as of you reading this, anyway), I have played some 120 hours of Final Fantasy XIV. I started playing it around the start of the year by mixing it into my regular game rotation and it has slowly taken over all of my gaming time. Aside from days when I’ve gotten home from work too late to start playing a game or days when I’ve had other stuff to do (like watching episodes of TV shows in preparation for listening to my favorite media analysis podcasts, Media Club Plus and A More Civilized Age, or doing chores), I’ve spent most of my free time playing FFXIV with my friends who got into it a few months before I did or desperately trying to grind through stuff so I can at least sort of catch up to them. Or, in a few cases, grinding through the Main Scenario Quests so I can have the next group activity ready for when my friends are online. I’ve had very little time for puttering around, which is unfortunate since that is part of what I enjoyed about the game the most in the early days, but there is much to dig through in the content mines and most of the puttering activities I want to do are difficult to do when your inventory is almost always constantly full of junk that you’re holding onto because you will one day want to have it for other crafting you’re probably going to do. It’s all interconnected after all. The crafting systems, I mean. Unless you’ve got a paid account and can buy stuff on the market from other players, you need to go make all your own stuff. Which is a lot! There’s so many things you need.

So, rather than attempt to do some puttering with my incredibly limited inventory space, I am spending most of my time grinding through the content mines or leveling up additional characters so I can actually do the main scenario stuff with a level-appropriate character since my White Mage job (my “main” job, in my eyes) is now twelve levels over the current MSQ. The thing that makes this troublesome is that I can’t actually learn any new abilities. All the higher-level abilities are unlocked via quests and I haven’t been able to unlock any abilities above level fifty for at least two weeks now. Three, by the time you’re reading this. I’m sorely over-leveled and doing all those job quests is going to be rough since I’ll have to learn a lot of abilities in a very short time, once I finally unlock them. I am a bit nervous about that, but I also know that I really need to rework my White Mage’s hotbars because they’re a mess and I’ve learned much better (and far more logical) habits as I leveled my Bard job. My entire White Mage layout relies entirely on muscle memory, which means I’m ill-prepared for when I need an ability I haven’t used much (as I’ve seen a couple times now, much to my chagrin). With my Bard, at least, there’s a sense to everything so I know where to look for it, rather than a general “this is where things wound up, so my thumb remembers where it needs to be on my mouse’s extra buttons” sort of lack of sense.

Anyway, since I’ve had to just shotgun as many quests as I can, I’ve been running through them all as a Bard, enjoying the massive boost to DPS I get playing and actual DPS character rather than a healer, NOT enjoying almost dying sometimes since I get one little self-heal that I can use once every two minutes, and honestly getting really tired of guzzling down as much plot as I can every night. I need a break. I need to take some time to just chill and unwind. All of which will be so much easier to do when I can get abilities above level fifty and don’t need to worry about ANOTHER job hitting that ceiling before I’ve managed to open it up another ten levels. Unfortunately, it’s only ten more levels and then there will be another ceiling, so my White Mage job is basically shit out of luck. I won’t be able to fully unlock all of those abilities for quite a while. I will probably wind up buying the game before I even get that far, if I’m being honest. I’ve still got plenty I can do without spending money, but I’m also spending so many hours on this game that I don’t really feel the need to not spend money. I generally try to price my heavy entertainment options at about a dollar an hour and, with 120 hours already in the game, I’m pretty clear to buy the full thing AND pay a couple month’s worth of subscription costs. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ll get the subscription cost’s worth of fun out of the game every month for at least a few more months yet. It’s not like I’ve got any other major game releases on my radar and, should I ever slow down a bit, I think that I’m playing it enough each month to still justify the expense. I’d pay the subscription cost for a game I enjoyed playing for thirty hours a month and I’ve got a lot of time I can spend on other things and still hit that at the rate I’m playing FFXIV.

All of which is to say I’m still having a great time. The story is getting better, the gameplay is staying the same relatively smooth experience, and I’m feeling myself really start to settle in here. Hell, that’s half the reason I want to pay for the game. I want to get invested in the social aspects. I want to get into crafting and the various other systems of the game. I want to be able to form groups and send messages (someone tried to talk to me at one point recently and walked away when they realized I couldn’t send direct messages back, so I’d like to be able to actually TALK to people in a polite and quiet manner, rather than shouting it for all the world to hear) and actually have more money in my pocket than I’m currently allowed. So I can save up for a house or whatever it is you do with money in this game (and stop spending my money on junk just so I don’t overfill my pockets). I’ll probably wait a little bit longer, until I see how the next month or two shakes out. It is entirely possible that I’ll wish I hadn’t spent the money by then, given the potential precarity of the world at large and my own situation, but that seems unlikely. I’ll probably want the joy and escapism of the game more than I’ll want fifteen or whatever dollars a month, even if I will feel a little bad spending that on a luxury rather than giving it to someone who need financial support. But that’s my issue to sort out (and one I really need to work through sooner rather than later) and I won’t be doing that here. For now, just know I’m really looking forward to playing FFXIV again and that it is a rare spark of light and joy in my otherwise dark, lonely, and honestly kinda miserable life.