Alright folks, it’s confession time. I have never really played a MMORPG. There, I said it. Sure, I played Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast back in the day, and even dabbled in Everquest because all my friends were playing it. But I would always put them down because I had a mental wall put up about paying monthly for a game. I just couldn’t do it. I tried Final Fantasy XI at a friend’s house, but it never went anywhere.

So here we sit, you and I, wondering why I am even writing this as you look at the title near the top of the page. I can bore you with how much of a Final Fantasy(FF) fan I am-blah, blah, blah, all the games, tons of collector’s editions, OSTs, Play arts figures, etc, etc, but that isn’t why you are here. You want to know about the Stormblood expansion, and hopefully why FFXIV won me over to tear down my mental wall and pay monthly for game.

Quick FFXIV: A Realm Reborn(ARR) and Heavensward(HW) expansion background- Skip to Stormblood impressions if you want the details-

I have been told over and over to play FFXIV:ARR. From the sheer amount of things to do, to the legend himself, Nobuo Uematsu, helping with the soundtrack. But having that mental wall about paying for MMOs, I couldn’t do it. So after playing FFXV to completion, I saw that the PS4 was having a sale on FFXIV. Twenty bucks got you the game, and the HW expansion, along with your first month, which is $15.00 a month. Around December I finally gave in, and bought it. I generally put a lot of time into playing games, but I never prepared for this. In a little over two months, I had a maxed out level 60 Dragoon(aptly named Relwyn Highwind), and had completed both ARR and HW main story lines. Where did my life go? It was all I could think about. My friends could only sit back and give me the- I told you so look- as I pressed on. Grinding for gear, learning my rotations, meeting new friends, it was great. My wife and kids however, did not think it was very cool. But what do they know, they weren’t out ending a lifelong war between dragon and man, or saving Eorzea from the Garleans. And just like that, other games were releasing that I wanted to play, so I took some much needed rest from my duties to save the world, to go save other worlds.

So if you ask me if this was worth it, I will say absolutely.  If you are in that same mindset that I was in, go ahead and play this game, and you can thank me later.

 

——- Stormblood Early Access Impressions ——-

Collector’s edition? Oh yeah. Early access just made it even sweeter. As with any new mmo expansion, I was already prepared for an influx of players returning that I wasn’t used to playing this game so late. And by kupo, it was true. Waiting to get into the game was halted by thousands of players in queue. I prepared for the worst. But after about five minutes, I got in! Yay! I had a few quests to finish up post HW to get into Stormblood. No big deal, knocked them out, and away we go. Except it wasn’t that simple. Which leads to this-

Day 1- A whole lot of nothing!

The new areas would not load, or let many people in! Frustration sets in as I had never gone through this not playing MMOs and all. The old areas were still playable, if you didn’t get booted from the server every five minutes to wait in queue again. But, I did understand it. And eventually I gave up, and hoped for a better tomorrow.

Day 2- It seems SquareEnix picked up the pace, as I was now able to get in. And boy does it look pretty. Note that I am playing on the PS4 pro, and after seeing it on PC made me want to boot up mine to see it look so much prettier. Almost. FFXIV has been available on the PS3 along with HW, but Stormblood finally said goodbye, as the PS3 just couldn’t run it. So hopefully you upgraded in some way if you were playing on the PS3. To be able to access Stormblood, you had to finish A Realm Reborn and Heavensward, along with the post HW main story quests. You need to have gear at level 230 at least to be able to finish up, which means a decent amount of grinding if you hadn’t done so. It later came to my attention that SquareEnix had patched the game, giving you 230 gear from these quests, and downgrading even the level 260 shire gear by letting you purchase them with Allagan Tomestone of Poetics instead is Scripture Tomestones which took a while to grind for. A nice way of helping people out who were grinding just to get into Stormblood.

As I start seeing the story being told about Lyse and her fight to reclaim her homeland of Ala Mhigo, I see familiar faces pop up along with a few new ones. Then things take a turn for the worst as one of the quests you undertake with the mighty Raubahn is broken, leaving most to wait for a fix. Which leads me to-

Day 3- The quest is now fixed, and I am on my way to new lands and new instances on the duty finder. Except I am seeing wait times of thirty plus minutes to get in. Why you ask? Great question, allow me to explain. As with any mmorpg, or really rpg for that matter, you have different classes. The tank class, which pulls in the enemies, keeping them focused on dishing out damage to our nice friend. Don’t worry, they can take it. Healer class, well, come on, you know this one. And the Damage Per Second class, or dps, who unloads tons of flashy moves to have a great impact on dealing with our emenies the tank has pulled in. With Stormblood, SquareEnix decided that the two new classes they would add into the game should both be dps class. The Red Mage and Samurai. My Dragoon class is also dps. See where this is going?

The other classes had a miniscule wait compared to everyone who already was dps, or wanted to check out the new classes. I waited over 40 minutes to get into one dungeon, while seeing people getting booted from the server while waiting. What a pain….

But you didn’t come to read about how a new mmo expansion had tons of problems, so let me get to this.

 

Day 4- FFXIV in general has tons of FF fan service, which is great for people like me who have played them all on several occasions. Stormblood seems to be showing off some FFV love, with a ship graveyard dungeon, to some of that beautiful soundtrack. Not to mention if you have the collector’s edition, you get Faris’ favorite ship pulling sea dragon, Syldra, as a mount! It also makes me a bit sad that people had no idea who this was, or even Calcabrina from an earlier boss fight post HW. Go back and play some of these earlier FF games my friends, most have aged well.

Having now entered into a new land across the sea, I am floored. Upon entering Kugane, a new town in Stormblood, I see some amazing Kyoto inspired architecture. And boy are these new areas huge.

With the ability to swim now, you can play around in the water, and see new land formations and islands to visit. You will eventually have the ability to dive underwater, and explore whole new areas, with new races that remind me a lot of Breath of Fire.

 

With the level cap being raised from 60 to 70, there is a lot of time for side quests, your daily roulettes and more. Red Mage and Samurai start at level 50, and both quests to obtain those classes can be found in Ul’dah. Better get to grinding to get them to 60 so you can enjoy them in Stormblood though! Classes have also lost abilities, and some have been combined or altered for better or for worse. I can say that most of what the Dragoon had altered was for the better. Blood of the dragon is super easy to keep activated now, along with Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw being activated together, instead of figuring out which one to pick during rotations. I have no complaints. Now for those new Dragoon abilities I spy at later levels! Time to get back to playing, and I hope to see you giving it a try! I will be more than happy to lend a hand to any newcomers or returners alike!

I am so glad that you have chosen to read my journey into the MMO realm, and see what Stormblood brings to the table. We here at Dash Cancel truly enjoy these experiences, and also we want to shed some light on what we enjoy playing, or how this industry as a whole has impacted our lives. Stat tuned, and hopefully you will see more coming!

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