If, one year ago, you had told me that I’d spend a year almost exclusively playing Final Fantasy 14, I’d have laughed it off. I don’t get obsessed with games like that. I tend to bounce off of things after a while and need to change up what I’m doing often so I don’t burn out or just lose interest. Or at least that was true for the first thirty-three and a half years of my life since I think the only game I’ve played for more than 500 hours, prior to FF14, was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and The Legend of Zelda franchise is an important part of my life. And now I’m approaching 2500 hours in this game, struggling to make the time to play anything else, and really not bothered by it since playing only this MMO means that I’m saving a lot of money on my entertainment every month. I’m also, you know, having a good time with it. Unfortunately, that also means I’ve got growing to-play and to-read piles that desperately need some amount of attention (I also need to get back to playing Wanderstop for the second time since I hit a moment in the game that made me want to stop playing and think about it for a while, but more on that once I’ve beaten the game) and I’m struggling to want to do it because it’s just so much easier to spend more time on Final Fantasy 14 than to spin up something else. Easier to stay invested in what has my attention in a chokehold than to need to tear my attention away from it every time I think I should do something else. I mean, after all, if I wanted to do something else, I’d do it. I’ve got so many unfinished or unplayed games still that I could probably play a similar amount of video games this year and not need to touch FF14 even once, all without spending any money. And yet the only thing I want to do is go home, cycle my retainers, do some daily roulettes, work on some crafting stuff, and maybe hang out with some folks while doing that. It’s nice to spend time with people and FF14 still remains my main means of access to others.

The reason this has so completely captured my attention is probably the variability of play available within the game. With only a few exceptions, I’ve been spoiled for options every time I logged into the game. There’s dailies to do, crafting projects to work on, supplies to gather, friends to visit, corners of the world to uncover, side quests to do, and even a whole bevy of alternate characters to get through the main story so I can use them to generate supplies to sell or use in my crafting. On top of that, there’s tons of little iniatives I’d like to get started in the Free Company (player guild) I’m a part of, like crafting workshops for the purpose of leveling (as opposed to making money), monthly repeating group activities, and so much more that is way more time and effort than I can afford to invest right now. Outside of all that, there’s the roleplaying, making new friends, RP-lite wrestling events, and an entire industry of entertainment situated WITHIN the world of the game and separate from the game’s development! People love this game so much that they’ve made enterainment empires within it! Night clubs, gambling halls, the aforementioned wrestling events, theatrical performances, and so on. If there’s something you want to do in this game, there’s probably someone somewhere who has already started it and would be more than happy to welcome you into it.

Which is the other reason I’ve probably stuck this game out so long: on average, people are nice. There’s some absolute bastards of course and way more people who make me wonder if they even know how to play the game, but generally people repsond fairly warmly to you if you don’t go in assuming they’re weirdos. It was such a change from every other MMO I’ve played where ninety-nine percent of the people I met online where people I unfortunately had to put up with and maybe half the remainder were helpful and friendly. In FF14, most people are at least decent and way more than average are friendly and helpful. I mean, my first in-game friend was someone I started talking to because we wound up at the same gathering nodes multiple times a week and we started trading resources since we were after different things and us helping each other out provided the other with way more of what we were after than we could get just working by ourselves. I still talk to her, when she’s online, and it’s just so nice to be able to look around the world I’m in while playing and know that most of the people there are friendly-by-default towards strangers. It feels like such a rare thing to find these days.

That said, the real reason it hooked me and kept me is the story. It took me six months of playing to get to the end of the first full story being told and while the stuff since then hasn’t been as compelling, it really feels like they’re starting to set something interesting up that will unfold over the next patches and the next expansion. Or whatever comes next. The… production lead? The head of the group making the game put out a statement around the new year about big and exciting things coming to the game, some of which will be revealed at the various fan festivals scattered throughout the year, so who knows what might come out of that. It’s coming up on fourteen years since the servers for the original version of the game, 1.0, were shut down, so maybe they’re working on a new version of the game to bring it more solidly into modernity. There’s a lot of jokes about “spaghetti code” to explain away all the game’s quirks and the constant DDOS attacks are getting old, so it’s not entirely beyond imagining that they might relaunch the game again. How else can they expect to keep it relevant? Or maybe they’ll put an end to the “time bubble” bullshit and actually let us have normal time progression since, you know, everyone’s gotta play through all of that stuff to get to the new, modern stuff anyway. Your character has to experience all that time passing and all the events unfolding, so why can’t we actually have normal linear time instead of this “everything’s always happening at the same time” crap? It’s exhuasting to run into every time I want to do some normal roleplaying stuff…

Anyway, the story was really good and while the recent chunks have been a bit bland, there’s still plenty of good signs about what is to come in the years ahead that I’m not worried about staying hooked. I’m a bit worried about needing to be patient for however long it takes the next expansion to release, but it’s not like I’m going to run out of things to do anytime soon. Perish the thought. I’ve got six barely-used alts, three with solid character concepts and three that are just “I need a character to fill out my business plans,” all of which will require significant gametime (or small monetary) investments to get into the position I want them to be in. There will always be plenty for me to do here. It’s almost like I don’t need any other video games anymore. I especially don’t need to buy any, considering how large and ignored my steam library is… Too bad it’s just going to stay that way while I put in another 2500 hours with Final Fantasy 14!