Final Fantasy XIV is the fourteenth (for those of you who don’t know your Roman Numerals) entry in the little known Final Fantasy indie series. It’s the second MMO in the series, and the first good one.
Final Fantasy XIV was originally released in 2010, and it was basically “Final Fantasy XI but worse” which is an impressive feat, to say the least. Square immediately did damage control by firing most of the team and hiring a new one, headed by Naoki Yoshida, or “Yoshi-P.” In 2013, they released “Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn,” a completely rebuilt game released free for anyone who purchased the original FFXIV.
A Realm Reborn reused some graphical assets, but did a lot of heavy optimization on them to make it possible to run on typical computer hardware. Aside from that, they completely redid the world design, designed entirely new dungeons, and redid all the jobs to be more interesting to play.
And then in 2015, they put out Heavensward, the first (second technically) expansion to the game, adding several new zones, tons of new dungeons, three new jobs, and raising the level cap from 50 to 60. We are currently in the 3.x, or “Heavensward” patch cycle.
Coming up in June 2017 is their next expansion, Stormblood! Stormblood will add even more new zones, centered around the city of Ala Mhigo, which is under the control of the evil Garlean Empire. It will also be raising the level cap to 70 and adding at least two new jobs to the game. As of now, only Red Mage has been officially confirmed as a new job, but datamining suggests Samurai will be added as well.
So let’s talk about FFXIV! It’s a really good MMO! I play on the Excalibur server as Yuki Hamsterlady. If you play anywhere on the Primal datacenter we should party up and do stuff sometime!