a dream/nightmare come true

It’s been probably two or more years that I’ve been waiting for Japanese game developer SquareEnix to announce information about their once secret mmorpg codenamed Rapture. Finally, today SE announced their project as another addition to the Final Fantasy family—XIV (14) that is. All that was shown was a quick trailer, but I immediately saw a few interesting things and knew exactly what was going on. After the official teaser site went up, it became clear.

Final Fantasy XIV is either a sequel, prequel, reincarnation, or to previous FFXI (a massively multiplayer online role playing game that I dedicated [and lost] a few good years of my life to). The races seem to be the same: Hume, Elvaan, Mithra, Galka, and TaruTaru (as seen in the screenshot below and artwork even farther down).

The game will be exclusive to PS3 and PC only, while XI was available for Xbox 360 (in addition to PC and PS2). From what I’ve gathered, the reasoning behind this is simple: the PlaystationOnline network is much less restrictive than XBoxLive. Online capabilities with the PC client would be endless, and with PS3 it should be nearly just as close.

I’m not sure if I want to classify this as a blessing or a burden. I’m quick to admit that I wasted so many hours of my life on FFXI, but even quicker to admit that I want to play FFXIV more than anything else. Moreso the latter, probably (unfortunately).

  posted by josh on June 2 at 8:22 pm in: gaming, love  
2 comments

1.  Stella said on June 11th, 2009 at 3:22 pm:

I think I’m in the same boat as you. I threw away a good 2-3 years of my life on FFXI and I loved it more than anything in the world. While I know if I start FFXIV, I’ll probably waste more years of my life but I just can’t help it. I’ve always been a Final Fantasy girl at heart, and all the memories of FFXI (good and bad) will probably draw me to the new MMO even if they’re completely different.


2.  josh said on June 15th, 2009 at 4:44 pm:

you pretty much covered my ffxi-life-story. three years down the drain. plus a few small runs here and there last year. i hate it with a fiery passion, yet will always still love it.
ever since they told us about xiv, not only have i been dying to play it—i’ve been dying to get back on xi, too. ever since leaving xi i just haven’t found an mmo that draws me in. i tried wow and played around with it for a few months, but there was no storyline and i felt like i was actually playing a game, where as i felt like i was actually part of the world in xi.
the more i read all these interviews, the more i’m scared about all the new things they talk about implementing. everytime “casual” is mentioned i cringe and hope it’s nowhere as easy and mindless as wow. but really, i should have nothing to worry about—square enix rarely disappoints (except with xii, imo). everyday i pray they release some new screenshots or videos or something. stop being such a tease! i need more to tie me over!