Final Fantasy XIV: Suffering from Success

My golden crown is to heavy!

Something whack is in the waters as far as multiplayer games are concerned, because they are in a verifiable rut nowadays! Call of Duty is underselling worse than it has in 10 years (guess we won't be seeing 'the boring squad' return in Vanguard 2) Battlefield is a total disaster (When you have to beg the developers to put a scoreboard and persistent servers in their online war simulator game, you can just tell that something fundamental has snapped in the universe's fabric) and World of Warcraft is a social pariah that's even more embarrassing to have on one's 'recent played' list than Fortnite. And I don't need to remind you the way that most of the gaming world outside of that specific community thinks about Fortnite playtime. It's funny considering so many companies hop up and down to make their big online games, only for the topic to fall out of favour within a year and the game to be dropped like a flaming bag of chips. I mean just take Gears POP for example. Hmm? You don't remember Gears Pop? Well just as well then, because the thing did so poorly that it's been discontinued. But of course there is but one Grey Prince of the industry still proving that online games have a place in our ecosystem even in the midst of all this chaos.

Final Fantasy XIV, the second MMO of the long running FF franchise, has had a meteoric rise at the same time as WOW had her latest fall, in fact some might say that FF14's boost was directly due to people jumping ship from World of Warcraft. (And a lot of  anecdotal evidence and testimony seems to back that up.) And we mustn't forget how this was a game which, once upon a time, was so troubled that the developers decided to do an Anthem and reboot the whole thing; an event that was represented in the game by a gigantic meteor crashing down into the world and wiping it clean. (Talk about extreme measures!) Contrary to Anthem's ill-fated Phoenix Down tactic, FFXIV managed to come back slowly, steadily, but with a proud and stable spine from which has grown one of the most lauded MMOs of it's age. Even New World, once the lustre of that new release wore off, has shed it's base to FFXIV. For  Massively Multiplayer fans, it seems that all roads lead to Hydaelyn. (Hang on, the world is called that? I'd heard of Eorzea, but Hyda- whatitsface? Not sure I like that name... it doesn't roll off the tongue so nice.)  

Now you know that I'm a huge Role Playing fan, so it would make sense if this game was all my jam as well. Unfortunately I have a deep seated allergy to MMO games spawned from my inherent fear of social interaction and my distinct lack of stable internet. Which it to say, I've actually never played the game. But apparently I'm the absolute minority in this field because everyone else is hopping through expansions, grinding their little catboi toons up, and wrestling tooth and nail for those all-important que slots so that they can spend one more all-important day in that special world. I do sympathise, back when I was involved with an MMO, I was right in that nigh-on addictive stage of "have to do these dallies in this exact order and then run this specific dungeon whilst making time to prepare some PVP time!". It's all encompassing. But what if that very factor, usually a boon for any online game, was it's greatest foe today?

This year saw the drop of FF14's long awaited Endwalker content, an update which had been hyped up and delayed, and has courted much positive feedback now that it's finally here. Once again, this particular Square Enix division is doing the heavy lifting to keep public sentiments high whilst behind the scenes the higher-ups try to screw with gaming economy by selling FF7Remake on PC for £70. (Yeah, I saw that little tidbit in the news cycle which the majority of folk just brushed over. That is totally unreasonable and I will not be buying a single game at such a scandalous mark-up.) I can't say I know a great deal about it's story, and Square are genuinely pathetic at putting together their own marketing material, so their trailers are nigh on incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't already play the game. (Which makes them a tad moot as 'interest raisers', doesn't it?) What I do know, however, is much like the title implies this does represent the game's first culmination of a major narrative arc and thus it's safe to say that everyone with a stake in the story is raving to see where things go next.

But it's that very fervour which has been the issue of late, hasn't it? Because even from far outside the fandom I can't help but see calls for new server worlds and que time improvements as it bleeds out of that community and to the rest of gaming in general. People can't seem to get into this game, as in: they can't actually enter the servers, and that's likely because every square inch of online space is crammed full from the vast influx of attention that the game has been enjoying. It's arguably a good problem to have, but also it's not because people want to play the game who can't and when we're talking about a subscription-based MMO, time lost is money wasted. Now the team, angels that they are, have already swooped in to slap some free weeks on people currently playing, so that they're not losing any bought time during these sordid server stumps, but its bandaids on a fracture at this point. Something has to be done about all of this player congestion.

Drastic measures have to be taken for the good of community and it doesn't matter how- woah, they stopped selling the game and halted commercials? That's- wow, that's pretty drastic even for a situation like this! Imagine selling your non-perishable product so well that you have to actually close up shop from the ravenous hoards trying to smash through your store window and snatch some of that sweet game up. I think in marketing that would be considered a rather flagrant break down in the supply-demand equation, but I guess that's nothing we're not used to in this day and age, huh? For me, I just find it adorable that, in an industry where every development team wants to think they've created the next Minecraft and so overstuff their resources to creating online infrastructure that will never so much as hit half capacity, Square's apparently modest expectations have been utterly drowned out and now they're struggling to keep people happy. It's almost sweet.

Austere those the 'lockdown on new players' may be, it undoubtedly demonstrates a distinct willingness to have the team stretch themselves thin in order to do whatever needs to be done for the good of the game, even if it's limiting their own momentary sales so that the platform can be stabilised. And make no mistake, this all comes back to the good of the game. When the director played through the Endwalker content and decided to delay it just so that it would meet the standard he'd built up for it alongside the community, that came from a place of love. It's so rare to see someone with that level of integrity in the decision making positions at video game companies, and one just writhes at the prospect of more studio heads that gave a damn about their reputation. Imagine what sort of game Cyberpunk 2077 would have been if there was any integrity in management. (Heck, it probably still wouldn't be out; and that might have been for the best.)

Of course this is a dilemma that'll be measurable in days, not weeks, and I'm sure FFXIV is going to be back on sale presently. (Else it becomes a mad-max style commodity as rare and sought after as fuel, leading to an apocalyptic breakdown of RPG society.) I just think it makes for a funny anecdote to share, 'The game too successful for it's own good', slap that on the box! At least this marks a positive (depending on who's side your own) story out of the AAA side of this industry, which has proven to be more and more rare over the years. So for the sake of all of our collective sanities, may FFXIV carry on long into the future and keep the smiles on our faces when everything feels crummy and bad. Yoshi-P's always got our back.