Up to now, Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward has had four patches: Patch 3.1-As Goes Light, So Goes Darkness. Patch 3.2-The Gears of Change. Patch 3.3-Revenge of the Horde. Patch 3.4 Soul Surrender. All the patches brought ffxiv fans big surprises. As the No.1 ffxiv gil seller (searching “ffxiv gil” relevant keywords in google, Mmogah.com is always the first one), we have gone through that hot situation. No other words, just read the following review written by a professional ffxiv gamer, and then you can further understand why the game is so popular.
Firstly the graphics. Oh gods the graphics are amazing. The animations and particle effects feel so good and awesome to look at. Everything is flashy and responsive, the abilities are recognizable and stylish without being too over the top. The creatures look awesome and aren't just re-skinned variants of the same monster with the same animations over and over again (or so it seems). Just sitting next to a river and looking at the environment for a good half hour was great, just looking at the scenery, the coolness of the waterfall and listening to that amazing soundtrack.
Speaking of soundtrack, this is the first MMO where I have not muted the music and played something else in the background to keep me from getting bored out of my mind. The music in FFXIV is the best in any MMO, I haven't seen so much attention to detail in a world as big as this. What made me happy was that every mount (well at least the ones I have) all have music themes, and they're great to listen to, and how the music fades when you aren't moving is a nice touch. All the themes for the FATEs and dungeons are great, personally listened to and listen to at work are some of the raid themes as they're just amazing. I can't force myself to watch a Youtube video while playing or other music because I will miss out on listening to the soundtrack, as it keeps me engaged with the game and keep enjoying it. Whereas other MMOs bore me so much that I need other stimuli to keep myself from just stopping to play the game.
The mechanics of the game I wish were in other MMOs. I don't think I could go back to another MMO if it didn't have all classes on the one character, long and sometimes complex rotational abilities and heaps of combinations from other classes keep the gameplay from being dumbed-down to appeal to casual/newer players, which is what WoW has been doing the past couple of expansions. The level syncing for FATEs and dungeons are great for when you have higher level friends playing with a lower level character as they aren't considerably overpowered and make leveling or playing boring. Character creation has some good customisation all round (apart from pretty much only anime hair. Where's bald?), with all the races and sub-faction/races/colors/things having only very slight advantages make the core community more diverse on picking the character race that they like the look of, rather than for specific stats and abilities (cough WoW's Humans cough).
This is also the first MMO where I have read the quest descriptions, all the cutscenes and dialogue to stick with the story to see how it plays out, and that I feel like my character is the main character of the game rather than just mindlessly doing fetch quests for exp as another generic adventurer. The story is interesting and engaging enough to keep me from grinding levels to do end-game content with my friends to witness what happens next. I was so excited to get my Chocobo, and I was really happy I was able to name it, I couldn't think of a good name but I think Javelin is a good name for my Lancer Au Ra's Chocobo. What made it even better was that I could take it with me to battle other creatures, no matter what class I was. Mounts are well balanced with only just being slightly faster than sprint, but still being a better choice over sprint. Not at any point leveling did I think using a mount would make this experience any better as all the content were distant enough to not warrant the need for a mount as there was always something to do in between destinations.
The community is pretty good too, always happy to help the new players, being able to identify new players from veterans, even being called a "noob fuck" in a dungeon will be an experience I'll never forget. Thank you random conjurer for calling me a "noob fuck" for not knowing what I'm doing, I am well aware I am new to the game as it says so in the icon that I have, as well as you (ironic ain't it?).
So I have come to the conclusion that, even that I have only just hit level 40 on one class, that this game is the best MMO I have ever played. The soundtrack, graphics, gameplay and story are all spot on and keep me playing the game other any current release game. SE have done an amazing job from turning it from its original release to this amazing MMO we have now. They could have just abandoned the game and moved on and called it a failure, but they turned it around and improved it in every aspect. I can't believe it took me this long to play FFXIV, sad that I didn't play it from when Realm Reborn was released, but glad that I had the chance to enjoy it for what it is now.
Above all, SE is striving to improve Final Fantasy XIV and makes it more perfect, therefore ffxiv is more and more worthwhile for folks to play. As a result, lots of gamers returned to ffxiv from other mmos, and more new gamers like the game on their first try. FFXIV Patch 3.5 and 4.0 expansion will be online in the following year, what else will you expect? Tell the SE, and maybe your ideas will be added into the next updates.
