Story?

[Bl4ckSnow]

From what I\\'ve seen, FFXIV\\'s storytelling is as much about implying lore and worldbuilding as it is about telling a good story and having good characters. It likes to take it\\'s time with things and there\\'s lots of lore tidbits/world building in the side-quests. So if you are here for world exploration/lore digging over an extended period of time, you\\'ll probably like how the game tells the story. If you\\'re here for a story that will tie up all the ends nicely and finish in a satisfying manner, then you\\'ll be waiting for a long time.

Is there a site or YouTube I can go to for these lore bits?

[TinyRedLeaf]

Is there a site or YouTube I can go to for these lore bits?

For FFXIV lore YouTube videos, there's always Ethys Asher's channel.

As for websites, there's the Lore Train on Gamer Escape.

(1)
Regarding the story — building on what Anonymoose said, and speaking as a player of MMORPGs since Ultima Online, not to mention MUDs — FFXIV's lore is, in my opinion, one of the best and most cohesive I've come across in years.

The thing about stories in MMORPGs is that, in the past, much of it involved a fair bit of puzzle-solving on the player's part. It requires some degree of proactivity as, unlike in a single-player RPG, the full story isn't delivered to you. Rather, the player often has to piece together different bits and pieces scattered across multiple quest lines, or even hidden in the flavour text of various items and locales.

Take the origins of the miqo'te for example. Players came to a fairly strong consensus that the miqo'te originated from the southern continent of Meracydia, not because this was directly revealed by the story, but because of fairly sound inferences based on flavour text contained in certain materials gathered from the wild (I still don't agree that the miqo'te came from Meracydia, but that's just me ).

Over time, this process of proactive discovery will help a number of players get emotionally invested in the story, and in the development of several characters. It's simply a function of the time and effort players had put into it.

It's not unlike the process of "learning" the story in the now mostly obsolete adventure-game genre, the likes of Myst and the more recent What Remains of Edith Finch.

(2)
I'd also add that the nature of MMORPGs is such that there's a lot of room left open for players to use their own imagination and creativity to fill in the apparent "gaps" in the story.

Older MMORPGs like Anarchy Online and EverQuest, and to a certain extent Final Fantasy XI as well, often provide only the very basic lore about the world and surroundings, and it wasn't until very recently that the genre started featuring overarching storylines that connected the dots together.

As an older player, I do actually miss some of the creative freedom that the older games allowed. There was much more room for you to develop your own "head canon", to explain your character's background and motivations for being involved in the game world. Players today, I find, tend to take things very literally, and much of the discussion in FFXIV lore forums, whether here or elsewhere, tend to be arguments over what officially revealed or not.

Maybe it's just me. I'm the type of role-player who has no qualms "bending" the official story to suit my needs. For example, according to the lore book, there are less than 20 or 10 dragoon knights left alive in Ishgard, due to the high rate of attrition. This kicked up quite a bit of furore in a certain forum, as the revelation made a mess of the backstories developed by a number of players for their own characters. The issue didn't directly affect my character, but even if it potentially did, I would've just ignored the information.

Similarly, the ongoing story of my character, a summoner main, has departed fairly significantly in important respects from the official summoner storyline. The key points are still rooted in the official lore, but I've "bent" other details to fit into the narrative that organically grew around my character as I went along.

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Ultimately, FFXIV still manages to engage me at some level because of the major themes explored in the story.

A Realm Reborn was broadly themed on the quest for an "Answer". An answer to what really happened in the immediate aftermath of the Calamity. An answer to why people aren't able to let go of old hatreds, despite all they've gone through. The expansion set in motion the idea of a cyclical motion between light and dark, and how bringing about a sustainable Seventh Astral Era isn't going to be as simple as having the "good guys" beat up the "bad guys".

Heavensward introduced us to the 1,000-year Dragonsong War, which is itself another example of a neverending cycle of hatred and war. Because it was more focused on just one key aspect of the broad theme of cyclical change, the storyline itself was more streamlined. So, it's no surprise to me that so many players were swept up by it. Not to mention, the character drama arguably also had much more impact. New friends were gained, even as old ones were lost. Those that survived were all marked in some way. No one came through unscathed. More so in Heavensward than in A Realm Reborn, there's the sense that all actions involve a cost, that all progress involved sacrifice.

(I'd strongly disagree, though, that pacing was better in Heavensward than in Stormblood. I remember being very annoyed at how the story in Heavensward kept punting me back to other parts of Eorzea at inexplicable junctures in my character's journey through Dravania and Ishgard. In my opinion, Stormblood followed a more consistent path, as the main characters journeyed through Gyr Abania, to the different countries of the Far East, and back.)

And we come to Stormblood. Personally, I've enjoyed this expansion the most. Because, to me, the dilemmas and the experiences of many of the characters mirror those I've come across and know in real life. The challenges that the characters faced in Stormblood felt much more real to me than the fantasy dangers they faced in earlier expansions. The issues raised by war, by oppression, by reconstruction, by forgiveness — these were themes that may have been touched upon earlier in the story, but in Stormblood they take centrestage.

So, emotionally, I'm all in. I want to know how it'll all end. Not necessarily for my character any more, but more so for a sense of closure for all the other characters involved in the grand narrative.

Maybe it's just me, but I do get the sense that Stormblood is tying up several loose ends left behind from as far back as version 1.0. The level 60-70 alchemist storyline, for example, would be enormously emotional for version 1.0 players, especially those who started in Ul'dah, because it closed one of the biggest questions left open from those days. In the most recent patch, we've seen closure to the story of the Doman refugees who arrived in Revenant's Toll years patches ago to make a new life for themselves.

I've been taking the hints, and have begun plotting the end of my character's story in FFXIV as well. Things appear to be coming full circle, and that's not far-fetched, given that we're in the third act of a grand story that officially begun A Realm Reborn. The first act typically lays the foundation. The second act deepends the conflict and the drama. The third act is when resolution occurs.

It's time to resolve the revolution.