Will we ever see published novels?

[Ryukus]

Hey everyone! This is the first time I have used the Lodestone, I apologize if this topic has been discussed in the past which I am sure it has, I am still getting my bearings!

As the title says, I would love to see a novel collection begin. I would throw money at this! Eorzea has so much lore to it. When I look at bookstores and see the massive collection of books WoW has to offer, I cant help but think: Man, why can't FFXIV do this? With the second expansion coming up there is a ton of existing content that can be covered. What are the community's thoughts about this?

[Riardon]

They can hardly produce and ship the current merchandise and you want more?
I won't even talk about the shipping costs which are as high as the item you want to buy.
For example the shipping cost in the EU for the Encyclopaedia is roughly 39 euros almost the cost of the book itself.

[Chiramu]

I love the novels that Blizzard released for expansion releases of WoW(the Illidan novel made me go and buy the Legion digital deluxe XD). Would love to be able to get some for FFXIV too. Would definitely expand the lore and make the world feel more real imo.

[Ryukus]

I just picked up Illidan today! Can't wait to start reading it. I feel the same way, we would be able to learn alot more about the characters and major events in the lore!

[Ryukus]

Well, obviously I would not want more if they can't manage what they have right now.. I had no idea there was such a struggle? You will have to forgive my ignorance on this topic. That is depressing to hear, thank you for the swift response.

[Riardon]

Well, obviously I would not want more if they can't manage what they have right now.. I had no idea there was such a struggle? You will have to forgive my ignorance on this topic. That is depressing to hear, thank you for the swift response.

I want more merchandise too but the current store has too many issues. And imagine that the company that handles the current store is better than the previous.
But right now orders are being canceled because the goods are always out of stock and it takes weeks to restock.
The shipping costs are out of this planet too. I don't know why a book must cost that high to deliver.
I can get goods from China or US (I live in EU) with way lower shipping costs.
Also there some weird things on their shipping process.
The Stormblood Collectors edition gets both free untracked shipping and paid tracked one but the book (Encyclopaedia) gets only paid tracked which is almost the price of the book itself.
That's crazy. And those costs are unjustified high. Also too often items are out of stock.
I just wish they could take the store more seriously and let us buy things without issues and without crazy shipping costs. Shipping a book in EU with a cost of 39 euros is crazy.

[Serilda]

I would really love this. They don't need to write it in-house; usually companies hire an author for it and we have already seen some nice lore-heavy snippets with the short stories published on the website now and again. I would definitely buy an actual novel. One that summarised the canon from 1.0 for those of us with no PC access at the time would be especially wonderful as he game expands and the legacy stuff becomes ever more mysterious to newcomers.

[Duelle]

Well, there's ups and downs to having novels.

One positive is that you can expand the lore in directions not easily done in-game. Another is that you can sort of further establish your setting by using books as a means of divulging further into the more mundane aspects of the world (think of the post moogle quests, but written as entire books). Lastly, you're able to introduce characters and build them up, or further develop established characters in novels.

One of the big negatives are that lore in novels can lead to being forced to buy everything in order to understand what's going on. Blizzard has been pulling this as of late by having novels act as the foundation for expansions (Stormrage, Wolfsheart, War Crimes, Illidan), which means if you didn't buy the books, you're not getting the whole picture.

SE is also very particular with it comes to who gets involved with their products; I'm convinced that if SE were to release novels for FFXIV, they'd probably would do it in-house to keep the lore in-line with what they want to see (which means we won't get characters with an army of raptors).

FFXIV if anything will have worse "fan fiction" then WoW, if you go by the filler episodes from the popular anime series. Maybe that is why they are not getting people to write stories for FFXIV.

Whoa, I hadn't considered this.

As for Med'an, he may not be canon but someone actually paid money for the creation of that atrocity. That entire comic was just a really bad idea.

[Newmanxeno]

I would like this.

[Gumbercules]

depends on how it is done. If it goes the blizzard route then no. I personally enjoy having my game lore ingame. You have no idea how irritating it is to have people in wow bitch you out when you are like "wait how did this happen!" then they tell you to go read the novel you newb! XD The side stories they released alongside HW those are ok since they are just side content and easily accessed but full blown novel, only way i can be ok with this is if is an adaptation of the current game into a novel or maybe some old era stories could be ok, just not "tie ins".