Back in August 2013, when I first learned about the FFXIV MMO, I was intrigued. I had seen some advertising online, some trailers and I had downloaded the character creator just for fun. Back then it struck me how pretty a game it was. I was having a major WoW lull and was looking for a new game to play. I had played some of the Final Fantasy games and thought Square Enix was a decent publisher, so why not take the plunge?

We are now 3.5 years later and I’m still absolutely captivated by the game that is FFXIV. Of course I’ve had moments where I played less or where I unsubscribed. But they have been rare. So rare even that I actually have my rank 13 veteran reward coming up. A feat I’m quite proud of.

At the time of the above screenshot I was about to ding my Machinist level 54. I’ve made an effort to level a lot of classes on this character and am quite proud that I have a few level 60’s under my belt already. For someone who has been playing casually ever since my raid team broke up during Turn 9 of Bahamut (has it been that long?) I’ve made some progress here and there. Of course if I’d played more I would have much more classes to 60 by now, but I’m nonetheless happy with the few that I have gotten there and the ones that I’m working on levelling up. I also need to say Sandrian isn’t my actual original character. There is another, Sarella, who I started playing on at launch and who resides on a different server. She is the one that has my first level 50 (White Mage) and my first ever relic. Although I’ve not really been playing her actively I make sure I do all events on her to a degree and when I need some time away from the Moogle folk I flee to her on Odin, levelling away on the Warrior or tinkering around with my crafting classes.
It’s really what defines the magic of FFXIV for me. The ability to play every class and to have every profession condensed into the same character. For someone who has been an altoholic for much of her wow career, being able to do everything on one character meant no more heartaches of having to swap due to bad balancing, changing gameplay or guild needs. I’ve always been flexible, but I’ve never loved it since it meant having to give up something I loved. Here it doesn’t matter. The only sore spot is having to gear all of your classes to a degree. Something that proves to be easy for lower ilvl tiers (mostly Lore and Midas gear) but challenging voor the higher ilvl tiers (Scripture and Alexander). But gear is secondary. The real love is being able to play tank, healer, dps… Anything really and still get to do all the content you love doing without feeling locked out somehow. It took me a while to grasp the idea. When I levelled my first class to 50 I only understood that you need to have one class at level 30 and another at 15 to unlock something called a “job”. It’s been a long road since there. Even though I think the game is overdue for a bit of an ability overhaul, combined with a clearer explanations of what jobs are to new players, I still think the system is great and such a relief from something like WoW.

I’ve only recently begun to play seriously again, and in that time I’ve gotten my Astrologian to max level and almost fully geared (I’m lacking 4 more Lore items). Geared up Ninja a bit, together with Dragoon and Bard and pushed my Machinist up almost three levels. And I’m thrilled every step of the way. I really hope I can get all my battle classes to level 60 before Stormblood hits. But with WoW raids, work, social life and hitting the gym that might be a bit of a stretch. I guess we’ll see when June comes around.