The Silent Protagonist – Living in Eorzea

Hey! Welcome back to The Silent Protagonist. I said last time that I was going to talk about Final Fantasy XIV, and my experiences that I’ve had with it so far.

I’ve tried playing MMOs a few times before… My sister got into World of Warcraft five years ago and got me a subscription so I could play with her. She was rocking the level sixties and seventies after a few months, and I was a Human Warlock teetering on the verge of level twenty before I got bored.

A few years later I started writing for Ready-Up, and there was a big hype about the release of Guild Wars 2. There was a RU team that played on the Aurora Glade world, except that I was broke when everybody was playing it. When I eventually got round to being able to afford it, other shiny new games were out and out of the RU team, only Scott remained – who persuaded me to switch servers and play with him for a bit. My Elementalist got to roughly level thirty and again, I gave up.

So as you can see, I don’t really have the attention span for MMOs.

However, that’s not the case for Final Fantasy XIV.

I started playing because I got close to one of our writers (Not in *that* way! Ewww lady!) and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. So Carly convinced me to fork out and give it a go, I was in the beta and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was very user friendly and by Christmas I had achieved something I never thought was possible. I’ve got a level fifty character, which is the current level cap. Considering that I’ve got the attention span of a… oh look! Squirrel!

Ahem. Where was I?

We are the The Wolf’s Lair. And we howl together.

Normally that would be it in my eyes. The story was completed, and I’m rocking my maxed out levelled Summoner. Except, that’s not it… far from it.

By simply changing my Grimoire to a Staff, I’ve changed my class from a level fifty super bad ass Summoner, to a level one Conjurer, which is a healing class, without a plaster in sight… until you level up a bit, then you start learning your healing spells. There are eight combat classes to master; five of which are physical attackers such as Gladiators and Archers. The remaining three classes are spell slingers, which are my favourite classes.

So you’ve maxed out the combat classes – congratulations! Do you want to start mastering the eight crafting classes or would you rather start ploughing through the three gathering classes? So you’ve got one character; and there are currently nineteen classes at your disposal, all by simply changing the “weapon” in your primary hand. Not to mention in the release of Patch 2.4, they’re bringing out another combat class!

From your humble beginnings as an adventurer gathering stuff for NPCs, to battles against the likes of Ifrit, Leviathan and Ramuh; you’d be hard pressed to play through the game without being a member of a Free Company. A Free Company is essentially a guild; they are your comrades in arms, your friends and your family in Eorzea.  They help you by crafting gear to make you that little bit stronger, foraging for ingredients just so you can complete that robe and they watch your back as you crawl through dungeons. They are incredible.

Except. Your Free Company, won’t be as good as mine. Without them, I would have given up a long time ago. Without Rinoxy, Seth, Hanaken, Paru and Eilidh taking the time to crawl through every dungeon in the game (at least once) I wouldn’t be taking on the big bads in the post game content. Nor would I be standing here without the crafting mastery of Mojo.

We are the The Wolf’s Lair.

And we howl together.

We also have a lovely home, with some beautiful interior décor.

The question is… Do you have what it takes to run with the wolves?

Now. Choose your race. Choose your class. Can you join our pack?

We’re based in Saragantas if you want to find out.