Encyclopedia Eorzea THREE

[Cleretic]

What are you supposed to do with a Book that says something that is different / changed in the game or becomes completely meaningless because it is changed afterwards?

As someone who owns both of the first two, and checks them quite constantly, you'd be surprised how little changes! In fact, a quick check through volume 1's content (released during HW's patches), out of the 303 pages of this book, I count six pages that actually have 'meaningless because of changed' info. One on the Ascians, one on the Warriors of Darkness (neither of which is actually saying outright incorrect info, just outdated to the point where they're not reliable sources on the subject), and four on jobs that mention at least one ability that's been removed in the interim. And none of those pages are completely worthless as a result; everything else about the jobs is accurate, the WoDs are mostly telling the truth aside from names, and the Ascian page has info on a few members that's still both accurate and not elaborated on elsewhere. I'm pretty sure there's no content in volume 2 hit by the same thing, at least at a glance.

Something that's really striking about FFXIV's writing compared to similar media that tells ongoing stories over a long period is that it sticks almost entirely to what I've seen called 'additive retcons'; basically, 'there was more to this part than you first thought' (as opposed to subtractive retcons, or 'nuh-uh, that didn't happen'). Maybe it's because they've largely stuck to a generally stable group of writers working on a singular story. But the end result is that there's no part of its storytelling and lore that you can just tear out and go 'not true anymore'; that's definitely not true of other MMOs like this, and frequently not true of storytelling with similar situations like superhero comics.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about volume three!