I took me 173 days and approximately 1100 hours of gaming, but I did it. I cleared the initial expansion that brought an end to nearly a decade of Final Fantasy 14’s storytelling. I fought a lot of big bosses, dealt with a lot of poeple who seemed unreasonable at first, and cried my eyes out, all but literally. I cried on and off (mostly on) for about four hours as I wrapped up the expansion. I’m still occasionally getting misty about it as I reflect on how it all wrapped up and I finished it five days ago (as of writing this, nine as of it getting posted). I do not think I’ve ever experience ANY kind of story that has gripped me like this one has. I have never been so moved, either. Even five days later, I am still struggling with the “story hangover” feeling of wrapping up the story that has spanned so many hours of my life and expansions of FF14 and normally that feeling fades after a decent night’s sleep! I’ve never had one that lasted more than twenty-four hours and I’ve already passed one hundred on this one, with no sign of it abating any time soon. Truly, the cathartic experience of this has left me hollowed out and in a new state of mind from which I might never recover/be shifted. Which isn’t a bad thing. I don’t have a problem being changed by a story about hope and perseverence and friendship and heroism. All those are in incredibly short supply these days, in my life in particular (save perseverence), and most media depictions even approaching anything like them is filed down for mass market appeal in the form of modern superhero and action flicks.

Anyway. I am forever changed by this experience and while I’ve spent the last five days trying to figure out what’s next for me, I’ve mostly been content to just exist. I’ve read a book. I played Mario Kart World. I spent time away from my computer. I played a bunch more Final Fantasy 14, though my time was focused more on crafting tasks for the Free Company I’m a part of and leveling up my classes than any kind of questing or story progression. Hell, I even worked most of a pretty awful work week. I’ve begun to shift more and more of my life to things that aren’t Final Fantasy 14 now that the thread of story that I’ve been racing to follow from the very beginning has come to an end. Thankfully, it was tied to several new threads and there’s not only Endwalker’s patch content to play through but an entire additional expansion that starts something new and the currently releasing patch content for that expansion. I have plenty more to do whenever I want to. Right now, though, I and the character I play in the game are content to simply exist. There will be plenty of time for continuing the story later and while I will probably eventually pursue that with the same focus and drive that I played through these first five story segments (A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker), I am content to just putter. It has been a long time since I’ve just puttered as even my puttering-type actitives for the last four months became part of the drive to level up and prepare myself for the various expansions.

It’s funny to think back to my first month of playing and how different my experience of the game was back then. I wasn’t quite so hooked at that point, you see. Sure, I’ve basically done an expansion per month (ARR in January, Heavensward in February, Stormblood in March, Shadorbingers in April and MAy, and then Endwalker in June), but ARR took me 130 hours over 33 days (3.94 hours per day on average) and then I played another 970 hours over the next 142 days (6.93 hours per day on average). I mean, I caught up with my friends who started playing last August! There was no puttering involved in any of the last four months and now I’m ready to get back to my roots of just doing whatever like I used to. I mean, I used to do sidequests! I was pretty thorough about them, even! And all that stopped in Heavensward since I just didn’t have the time. Now… Well, now I have the time. Now I’m content to idle away a few hours doing little projects to make six hundred baguettes because it’ll be good XP and who doesn’t need six hundred loaves of bread? Or make a bunch of whetstones of a certain caliber in an attempt to level up one skill and accidentally warp the entire market for them because I had just so many I could list at specific price rangers. Or spend some time wandering around and people watching because, well, I can. I’m on no timeline, now. And while I absolutely expect that this period of slow activity will change over this weekend (since a contributing factor has been how exhausted I’ve been every single night), I am looking forward to taking the time to just do whatever.

I might also spend some time more actively recruiting my friends now that I can say, without a shred of doubt in my mind, that this game is absolutely worth the 1100 hours I put into it. Yes, that is a HUGE commitment. No, you absolutely should not do what I’ve done and cram all that into less than six months. In fact, I only did that because of the degredation of several of my more local social circles and the sense of community that I got from playing this game, making friends, and being a part of this group of players. I did not have the energy and sense of personal wellness required to get together with any of my local friends (in this case, I’m including all the ones who live in the same state as me) and the slow deterioation of most of those relationships when they were forced to rely on digital connection (due to a lack of attention from the other parties) left me with nothing to do but be alone by myself or play a game that revolved around interacting with other people a lot of the time. It was an easy to decision to make. Now that I’m starting to feel a bit better (and that feeling has lasted a whole week so far), I’m hoping to maybe get out more, to visit people and spend time around people I like in-person (since the only people I’ve seen in-person since late January have been coworkers), but we’ll see. It’s not like the community that welcomed me in is going anywhere and it’s so much easier to feel involved and like my company is enjoyed when everyone seems so happy to see me than to fight schedules and people’s inattention in order to schedule a get-together that may or may not actually happen. If there’s anything that might turn me into an always-online shut-in, it’s that one. Who doesn’t want to feel welcomed and appreciated and loved?