If you were to start now is Final Fantasy 14 viable without even looking at end-game raiding content during it's current patch cycle?

In other words, if you started a new account today and started leveling from 1 on CNJ (for example) if you did not take part in any Savage or EX content from the 3.X patch cycle at all until 4.0 arrives, would FFXIV be a viable game?

...and now, the long version of my answer.


If you play through from the very start, there is a lot of MSQ to be run. Assuming you stay clear of story spoilers, you have a long, sprawling path through class and job quests, story quests and trials all the way to the end of the 3.2 story. If this were a traditional Solo RPG, the amount of content we're talking about would be well beyond the scope of a single game.

I'll list it out for the heck of it.
  • Main Story Quests
  • Level primary class & secondary and main Job to 60
  • Level alternate classes and jobs as desired
  • Level all crafts to be an omni crafter
  • Level Desynthasis skills
  • Level gatherers in parallel with your crafters
  • Side quests
  • Relic quests
  • Levequests - daily
  • Beast Tribe quests - daily
  • GC Supply/Provisioning missions - daily
  • GC Levequests - daily
  • Hildebrand quests for comic relief
  • Moogle Mail quests
  • Seasonal events/quests
  • Guildhests - Duty Finder, Duty Roulette
  • Dungeons - Duty Finder, Duty Roulette
  • Trials - Duty Finder, Duty Roulette
  • Solo PvP
  • Group PvP
  • Retainer metagame
  • Tripler Triad - Gold Saucer
  • Chocobo racing - Gold Saucer
  • Lord of Verminion - Gold Saucer
  • GATEs - Gold Saucer
  • Mini games - Gold Saucer
  • Cactopt lotterys - Gold Saucer
  • Hunts
  • FATE
  • Treasure hunts
  • Exploratory missions
  • Housing
  • Training Companion Chocobo
  • Gardening
  • Casual end-game (Alex Normal, Normal Primal Trials, raids from ARR, EX primals from ARR
  • Glamour - the REAL end game.

Assuming you have 2-3 hours a day to play,and can play 5 out of 7 nights a week, you'll have about 750 hours of playing time in the course of a year. If you specifically level only your primary combat job and any related cross classes for skills and ignore all but the MSQ, you will of course easily complete HW, adn be ready for Endgame in a matter of weeks. But that's still weeks of solid gameplay for the cost of the FFXIV ARR&HW bundle.

On the other hand what if you are a player who dips into things here and there, but doesn't just focus like a laser and take the quickest bath from A to B? If you were to try your hand at everything in the above list and found even a third of it interesting enough to do consistently, I can't begin to estimate the number of hours needed to 'complete' the game in that manner. In essense though, it's open ended.

All of this without touching the current end-game in any way at all. If a player found the majority of the game engaging enough to actuall play it all, I don't honestly think that even 2 years of moderate game time would allow players to reach the limits of the game. And I didn't even mention things like the sightseeing log, or Fishing logs.

The original question was id the game viable without touching current end-game. I have to unequivically say yes, yes it is. Very much so.

However, I think the answer also depends very much on your current bias and/or point of view. For example, I don't expect that a current end-game raider will agree that the game is viable without the end-game content because that is what they play. However, it's undeniable that as the game ages, there is an increasingly large spread of players from just starting to end-game. It's like there is a great content divide out there, with players on either side of the divide content to do their thing.

Thinking about that though, how does a game that has been established for 3+ years attarct new subscribers? You see, for me, when I get a new RPG, I am not looking for a quick path to the hardest content, I'm looking for the story, and the journey. So personally, I love the idea of so much to do and explore, and I am sure that there are players that share this point of view out there. But I was thinking about that as well, and realized that many (perhaps most?) people, when they look at an MMORPG are measurng the game by how long it takes them to get to what many players consider the real game - end-game.

In a sense it's like there are two games to play now. There is one FFXIV where you have a narrow band of content available because the game itself is huge, but at any time the amount of true end-game content is relitively small. The other FFXIV is the game where you have a massive list of things to do at your own pace.

What I am not sure about is how you market the same game to people on either side of the content divide. There was talk with HW about allowing players to just jump in at lvl 50. In the end though, we allowed the new jobs to start at 30 and accelerated the leveling speed if you start from scratch. But, as the game grows older more content is added and it becomes deeper and broader in scope. Is it time to start leaning on that vastness in the game? Is that a viable way of selling the game? In contrast, could you sell a game like FFXIV based on end-game?