I Love Sprouts

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community, ffxiv, ffxiv community, final fantasy, final fantasy xiv, MMO, mmorpg, new arrival, new player, new players, sprout, welcome to eorzea, xiv, xiv community

Once again I’m going to talk about Final Fantasy XIV. And once again I’m going to stand on the shoulders of giants here — specifically, Eliot Lefebvre’s newest Wisdom of Nym column where he offers some advice to new players and veterans alike. That said, this topic was also on my mind pretty recently, both in terms of Discord chatting, Twitter scrolling, and the overall conversation topic of the FFXIV community:

Sprouts.

When Home Games Become Fortresses

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community, ffxiv, final fantasy xiv, gatekeeping, MMO, mmo communities, mmo community, mmo games, mmorpg, mmorpgs, mmos, white knight, white knighting, xiv

I’m going to have to thank MOP’s editor in chief and my awesome boss Bree for this prompted post. We were talking in the work chat about how sad and dangerous it was when people wrap their entire identity around a single MMO or single game, and that got me thinking a lot about the topic.

If you’ve been even near gaming discourse on any platform or website, you pretty much know the type. They’re often referred to as “white knights” and usually charge headlong into keyboard battle to defend the honor of their favorite game and, by extension, their home. And while I can certainly appreciate the desire to battle back against misinformation or misconception, or even the need to argue online (in good faith, ideally), there’s also a point where it becomes clear that a home game — a place meant to escape to in comfort — turns into a fortress that must be protected against all comers.

Finding Fun Despite the Doldrums

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actiblizz, activision-blizzard, blizzard, community, ffxiv, final fantasy, final fantasy xiv, mmo community, mmorpg community, square enix, warcraft, world of warcraft, WoW

Honestly, I was kind of hoping to avoid any topic related to the hellscape that is Activision-Blizzard’s treatment of its employees. Mostly because far smarter and better people have written about the matter than I have and I don’t have anything of worth to really say on the subject without just standing on the shoulders of those giants. However, a recent event today spurred this post. Specifically, a tweet from someone I follow which read that, despite their best efforts, they couldn’t really get invested into Final Fantasy XIV and decided to return to WoW.

This is in spite of some best efforts and some found delight by this person, I should point out. I’ll not go into detail but this player really did try to dig in. Of course, this attempt was spurred on by the aforementioned issues, and I suspect that this particular WoW player wrestled mightily with their long-standing love of the game and the unveiled misery many of its developers have had to suffer through — something that I’ve written about before on this blog. And despite my feelings about Blizzard and its games, I get it.

Latent Friendship is Magic

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community, ffxiv, ffxiv community, final fantasy, final fantasy 14, final fantasy xiv, friendship, MMO, mmo community, mmorpg, roleplay, roleplayer, roleplaying, xiv

Recently I’ve gotten back into Final Fantasy XIV a lot more than I had previously. This wasn’t kicked off by recent awful events, by the way, and it wasn’t necessarily spurred on by the larger Endwalker expansion reveals (though that did have a small part to play in things). Mostly, my return was fueled by friends. Friends that I sometimes play with and people that I’m not necessarily friends with.

Allow me to explain

FFXIV 5.1 and Self-Exclusion

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community, ff14, ff14 5.1, ffxiv, ffxiv 5.1, final fantasy 14, final fantasy xiv, MMO, mmorpg, patch, patch 5.1, raid, raiding, raids, update

So Final Fantasy XIV has put out its sizzle reel for Patch 5.1, and almost immediately I felt pretty much excluded. Most of it was about content tiers I don’t care about, styled after a game I am worn out about, with only a couple of nods to parts of the patch I’m interested in.

To be fair, this feeling is mostly self-inflicted, but it brought up a whole lot of sour thoughts all the same and I felt the need to talk about them. About how this patch seems to be about folks who need to be at the bleeding edge of content tiers at the repulsion of all else who don’t feel that way.

This means something to lots of others, but not to me.

Welcome to Joy

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chill games, community, fun, gamer, games, gaming, MMO, mmorpg, silliness, silly, silly games, video games, video gaming

As much as I like how “legitimate” video gaming things like esports are becoming, I’m often left reminding myself that legitimacy should always take a backseat to being fun. For every game that tries to be art or weave a genuinely complex story, I’d much rather there be about three times as many games that just have a good, goofy time.

It’s a lesson the Devil May Cry series seems to be taking to heart.

That sense of overwhelming fun has catapulted some games into high points on my mental list of favorites, and it’s something that I felt is worthy of elaborating on. Both as a self-reminder and perhaps a reminder to anyone reading this who might be taking this stuff a little too close to the vest.

On Jacksonville

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community, competition, esport, esports, gaming, jacksonville, video games, video gaming

As I write this, it’s a little after 4am locally here. Blame the humidity or my own rumbling head for the poor timing on this post, then, but I had to get a few things off of my chest regarding the events at Jacksonville, Florida.

I love esports. I’m not one of the diehard sorts who roots for a specific org and there are some game genres that hold my interest more than others, but the overall field of esports from a spectator’s point of view is one of my favorite new things that has come out of the modern age of gaming. So to see something so horrible as a shooting come out of this new pastime has struck me more deeply than I thought it would.

The Acceptance of Not Understanding

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battle royale, community, fortnite, fortnite battle royale, fortnite br, gaming, gaming community, multiplayer, multiplayer gaming, pubg, video games, videogames

So there’s this rap song made by this kid who is very, very clearly a fan of Fortnite Battle Royale. It crossed my Twitter feed a week or so ago and it took me just about as long to process, as this young boy was trying to turn his ability to play a shooter well into several bars’ worth of lyrics about their own superiority.

At first blush, it sounds a lot like 2018’s answer to the Numa Numa Dance. But after some introspection, I’ve concluded that the problem isn’t him, but me. Its reinforced something of a lesson about how some games or genres are beyond my comprehension and that’s okay.

Who knew this little dude would pack so many mental exercises into two-and-a-half minutes?

The Power of Love (and Anger)

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battle for azeroth, bfa, community, games, gaming, gaming community, haters, MMO, mmorpg, rage, warcraft, world of warcraft, WoW

I’ve written before about how you should just ignore the haters and like the games you like, and by and large I still absolutely stand by that statement. That said, being someone who’s new to World of Warcraft, I’m continually reminded that I probably am not wanted and that I should stick to people I have vetted outside of the game itself.

How did I reach this conclusion? By the needless upset of those who were enraged by the whole War of Thorns thing in WoW.

Burning a world tree and bridges at the same time. Well done, Sylvanas.

World of Warcraft: the Wrong Game for the Right Reasons

Tags

battle for azeroth, community, friends, gaming, MMO, mmorpg, warcraft, world of warcraft, WoW

I don’t like World of Warcraft very much.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…

Believe me, I’ve tried, but at the same time I’ve always bounced off of it. I have no idea what the characters are doing or what the story is about, and I don’t have any nostalgic feelings tied to the game and so can’t bring myself to care.

Yet here I sit, subscribed to the game and with Battle for Azeroth pre-ordered. All that’s missing is a hat that reads “I’m a big fat hypocrite.” So what gives? It’s because of friends.