Looking for Party – The End

We witnessed the end of the world. We were called to arms and asked to defend the lands until our last.

The final week in game saw pretty much everyone obtain those bloody amazing Relic weapons on a temporary basis: you would find it in your bed! At first I refused to buy into it – I thought it was a bit insulting but once Ten started waving the Monk weapons in my face I caved in, logged on and started collecting the weapons. They are BEAUTIFUL! But they will all vanish once the game starts back up… sad times! I thought I should grab a few poses of myself looking pretty majestic, who knows when I will look this spiffy again?!

Informed that the last day would bring an enormous fight, we grabbed an early night to maker sure we were up at 5am to join in.

Geared up in our best armour and weapons, we headed out to Camp Brittlebark to face the final onslaught…

So how did we do?

We came, we saw… we crashed.

And oh how we crashed. So many times over the space of 3 hours! But this is what happens when you let everyone who ever subscribed back into the game to give it a final send off. Basically as soon as any battle kicked in, we would be booted off of the server for about 10 mins at a time. It was hard to be angry at Square Enix though, this was a noble effort and they wanted everyone who had ever played to be able to take part in the end. Sadly though, the servers were not able to handle the traffic and they had to close access to anyone who had not renewed their subscriptions in the last few months.

We carried on though, logging in at every given opportunity and restarting the fight where we left off. And as the clock struck 8 in the morning, we were presented with the final cut scene:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqL3-n2-3J4[/youtube]

And then we were done. Server was closed, game was off and the Lodestone forums were down.

I am not going to lie – severe lump in my throat watching that again! Poor Louisoix, having to look at all us smelly adventurers on a daily basis (usually in our underwear… that’s another story for another day!) and he died to save us all. What a guy! Felt a little weird watching it; we KNEW this was coming, but I don’t think many people expected Bahamut! But it was the final closure I think we needed, of sorts.

Personally, I think it was a brilliant send off. It concluded the story perfectly (and yes, I had a few tears in my eyes when we waved off our favourite Elezen) and set us up for the next adventure which should hopefully start in March 2013.

Final Fantasy XIV is officially over. Well, for now that is! The producers have closed the game and started the Alpha testing in Japan with the rest of the world soon to follow.

So far we have seen the rebuilt Gridania:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJAOSFCDOMY[/youtube]

And a demo of the character creator with Hyuran and Miqo’te (sadly no news of the new races yet):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR7ZfIyuHp0[/youtube]

Both Ten and myself have signed up for the Alpha but no confirmation yet if either of us have been accepted. If I am successful, I won’t be able to report anything back due to the user agreement. This allows me to focus on other gaming areas, though I have been toying with trying my hand at another MMO… suggestions are more than welcome in the comments! But I am going to start playing OTHER games (gasp) via Steam. Again, suggestions are welcomed!

So am I missing FFXIV? Yes and no: I miss having set things to do in my evening (I do like routine) but as the game was drawing to an obvious close it felt like I was left with little to do. But I miss having it there, even just to talk to my fellow Linkshell friends. God bless IM and Facebook for keeping in touch! As tempting as this opportunity has been to return to Final Fantasy XI, I have yet to start the utter HELL that is the PlayOnline login nonsense. Never have I used such an unfriendly interface! That is something I REALLY do not miss! But who knows, Parubati might just make a return…

I am looking forward to A Realm Reborn, a chance to explore a land that was once familiar and make a home there once again.

Thank you to anyone who has been reading my blog on this game, I really appreciate the lovely feedback I have received and I hope I can keep entertaining you once the adventure begins again. I look forward to sharing the story with you all soon!

Time to start a new game… what will it be?