Why I play Final Fantasy 14...

Super_Bee_Brian here with an actual heartfelt, serious thread...

I took the time to crack open my laptop instead of painstakingly typing on my smartphone for this thread because I need to get myself in an ergonomic, comfortable state. I did that so that my mind won't be bothered by minor discomforts. Usually, when I make serious threads, it's me asking players to contribute. But this time, it's gonna be about me for now...

It all started with the terrible Final Fantasy 14 Online. Not A Realm Reborn, but 1.0. Because of my lack of a point of reference, I actually thought it was a great game. The only thing that made me realize how terrible it was was the incredibly negative feedback it was getting all over the internet. But I didn't care. I wanted to remain loyal to Square Enix. I reached level 49 gladiator as a Seeker of the Sun female Miqo'te who was forced to be a female because catboys back then were nonexistent. I played it a lot. It was the one MMO that made me take MMOs seriously from that point on.

Next, I discovered Lord of the Rings Online. Good game, but terrible community. Left it.

Then I discovered Elder Scrolls Online. Not a bad game but it had one fatal flaw. It was virtually impossible to play efficiently without the use of magic. Even as a tank, you needed at least SOME magic in that game. Don't get me wrong, the combat was fun and I'd argue that it was better than modern FF14. It was truly classless... For those who embraced magic. I eventually quit it for that one reason.

Then I discovered World of Warcraft and realized how much it mirrored cheap MMOs. The art style was an amalgamation of every cheap F2P MMO in the market. Plus, it had no player housing.

And then... I finally discovered FF14 and fell in love with it...

And then I got tempted to try Guild Wars 2. After discovering an iron ore node after 10 minutes of scouring an entire friggin' map, I got ambushed by 4 centaurs who came out of nowhere after I killed 3 of them first to clear out the area. It made me appreciate FF14's gentler gathering system... I never touched Guild Wars 2 again.

And those are my thoughts.

To be fair, WoW preceded all the MMO's you mentioned. When WoW came out there were no F2P MMO's, so they essentially mirrored WoW. I play FF14 because there are no other MMOs worth playing and WoW has turned into a repetitive pile of crud. I will play Classic when that comes out mind, alongside FF14.

I stated FFXIV with a friend (hi my favorite grumpy salty pillow), I'm a Final Fantasy afficionado and playing a FF MMO was enough to get me interessted.

At first, afraid by the direction FF were taking (yeah I look at you FFXIII, you disapointing piece of ...) then I discovered is "old school" vibe and universe, back to what make FF so nice, the total absence of PvP I looked the trailer and give it a go.

Get hooked by the story even if its cliché as it can be its FF-like (and get really better now), the fatc I can play whatever the hell I want, in whatever I wanted without having to restart a whole new character. No brainless grind (except gud old coerthas fate train, but a patch make it less mandatory soon enough), no stress just playing Final Fantsy with friends, had fun since day 1 of 2.0.

No MMO can bring me as much fun and love than XIV nowaday. Tried a lot of MMO too especially when XIV lack a bit of content (nobody is perfect, they really need to work on this).

No f2p have this easy access to the good part XIV have.

WoW is plain ugly, too old, and open world PvP make me puke.

GW2 was fun for like two maps, then it gets boring because the story is near inexistant at start.

Even my first MMO love story Wakfu don't appeal at all anymore.

No other MMO can make me think "Yeah I'd rather play it" whenever I play anything else. I'm eager to play FFXIV even when nothing is left to do while I can't even brind myself to enjoy mid-core content in other MMO.