How to find the fun in Final Fantasy XIV

destructoid.com:

Lately, I’ve been trying to coerce some friends of mine into playing Final Fantasy XIV. While I love the RPG bits of the game, I sometimes find myself shrinking away from the MMO parts, and I truly want to get a more social experience out of the thing I’m inexplicably paying a monthly fee for. The problem my friends are facing, though, reminds me a bit of a problem I was facing just about a year ago when I started my own FFXIV journey in full force: it’s just… not very fun.

At least not without a bit of work. That FFXIV has a terrible new player experience is not a secret. You know that famous copypasta, about how FFXIV‘s free trial includes “all of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning expansion Heavensward“? Well, there’s a reason Heavensward is described in terms of its quality and A Realm Reborn isn’t.

But the thing that’s so frustrating isn’t simply that this good game starts off on a bad foot—it’s that there is fun to be had early on in FFXIV. It’s just hiding. It took me an obscene amount of time to start enjoying the experience, and if you’re in the same boat, I thought I’d share how I got around to enjoying it.

Here’s the single most damning thing I can say about FFXIV: it is a combat-focused MMORPG where the combat is absolutely uninteresting for at least a few dozen hours. I haven’t played every single starting class, but I’ve played enough of them to know that there’s nearly nothing interesting happening in the average encounter until at least level 35. Even after that, the game isn’t “fun” until level 50. I’ve heard from various more committed friends that it gets really good at level 70, but I’m still milling about in early Stormblood and having a solid time in the 60-65 range, so your mileage may vary.

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