Starlight Celebration 2024

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

This event just wouldn't feel like modern FFXIV if it allowed for any player interaction whatsoever, I suppose. I gave up on the "this is a video game and I expect to play it" argument a long time ago. The community has spoken, and what they want in their massively multiplayer online game is to play dress-up using one of the worst cosmetic systems in the genre, walk around listening to NPCs talk (largely to each other, since their character is mute most of the time), and to never have to interact with another human being. This event delivers on that front, I suppose, like much of the rest of the game does. How do you argue with all the people claiming it's fine or even good?

In GW2's Wintersday 2024, going on right now, you can do:

* Tixx's Infinirarium, a group dungeon where you have to assist with out-of-control toys
* Toypocalypse, a group tower-defense game where you set up and upgrade structures to defend against incoming waves of toys
* Winter Wonderland, a jumping puzzle with three different paths
* Bell Choir Ensemble, a minigame where you play songs on bells with other players in groups of three
* Snowball Mayhem, a team PvP snowball-fight brawl with multiple different roles
* Secret Lair of the Snowmen, a 10-man "raid" mission against an evil snowman
* Snowfall Sprint, a mount race through the city that serves as the winter event hub
* Donation drive, which lets you buy rolls of wrapping paper for your rewards from all the other events and pass them out to orphans for extra Karma (another currency)

This is all in addition to various other things going on throughout the world. There are tons of rewards to earn, or money to make, if you don't want the rewards but want to sell the currency items. The entire population of the game comes together to enjoy the holiday for weeks. It's awesome. GW2 isn't a perfect game by any means, but they sure do know how to do seasonal events.

Meanwhile, in FFXIV:

"Oh, you wanna hand out hot drinks?" -- spread out over nine lines of dialog

*Camera zooms in on a mug of punch for six hours, nineteen minutes*

"This is a hot drink." -- paraphrased from a series of novellas

*Walk back to aetheryte, teleport to different aetheryte, talk to NPC to teleport back to instanced area*

"Hi, we're those kids again. I see you made it back here. Just to recap, we're doing the only thing we've talked about thus far, handing out hot drinks. Do you remember those?" *Stops talking for several seconds to flail arms about to emote the previous spoken line*

But no, don't believe your lying eyes, it's a good event. The worst part is that the instanced area is really pretty, and it would be awesome if there were reasons to spend time there. But there aren't. A couple vendors you'll look at once, one who inexplicably sells level 1 food, etc. It's just sad. They're not even trying, and they should have the biggest dev team in the industry.

[Krokov]

Even FFXI has more activities for holiday events.