Final Fantasy XIV – Round 3.3! – Josh Judges | Gaming / Tech / Pop Culture / Garbage

Guess what’s back?! It’s an incredibly convoluted post about how much I adore Final Fantasy XIV! It’s coming dangerously close to my 3rd year playing this game practically non-stop. Sure, I’ve had a few breaks now and then, but I’ve been around for practically every patch since the 2.0 transition – as much as I would have liked to have been a part of the ‘hellish’ 1.0 days, I couldn’t bring myself to drop a subscription to a game Square were obviously OK (zundu) releasing in an Alpha. A shame, sure.

I wanted FFXIV 1.0 to be like a fresh start of FFXI – a game I wished I could have been a part of during it’s heyday, but I made do with the re-working of Final Fantasy XIV under Naoki Yoshida’s leadership. His constant developer updates helped win the trust of the disjointed 1.0 playerbase ensuring 2.0 would be the game XIV should have been from the start – a complete experience rather than a non-player friendly, overambitious universe where the pots have greater detail than most major buildings.

So now that we’re into patch 3.3, it’s time to throw around loads of screenshots again! Dragons, floating islands, posing characters on a lazy day and otherwise doing everything OTHER than the major raid encounters;

There’s a lot going on this patch! The great ‘Dragonsong War’ that brought us into gothic-styled state of Ishgard comes to a pretty explosive climax. Venturing through Sohr Khai to win one dragon’s promise to help us shutdown his hatred-driven brother, everyone instantly dumping hundred of millions of gil into the new player housing districts and scurrying into the Gold Saucer to lap up that 50% currency boost we all desperately needed to make the place worthwhile.

If you thought this was the patch to rid us of the need to run the terribly dull Void Ark raid then think again! The new ‘Part 2’ in The Weeping City of Mhach makes it a little more barably knowing you’re potentially getting another iLvl 230 piece of gear on top of the 240 upgrade and a Grade V materia of your choosing – but it’s still a snoozefest. Pretty good time to catch up on TV shows on a second screen, though. Assuming you’re not a tank.

There’s also the line of people watching Nidhogg give Hraesvelgr a good stomping over on the other side of that bridge. That, or they’re wondering whether to jump after vote abandoning The Final Steps of Faith after a single wipe on launch day. Yes, people do that.

There’s the Great Wyrm now in all his firey glory! Looks like everyone but me died. I’m not sure why, but it allowed for a decent shot of me getting ready to die to his Ahk Morn attack. Binding Coil of Bahamut Turn 13 eat your heart out.

Then we have me and a friend who started back with me during the 2.0 beta still chilling out in their house before me and Cam annexed the whole thing (see photo 3). There’s the triple Maw phase of the Ozma battle there too. And while Ozma might not play the same as those FFIX fans remember, he was still a cause for immediate carnage during that first week.

There’s a door for a lower floor of the Aquapolis too – a luck-based dungeon crawl occasionally spawned from a high-level treasure map!

I don’t care if ReShade got in the way of that first shot, I still love it. Completely accidental placement of other players! Then we have the final boss of Weeping City who seems to be a version of Medusa who enjoys chugging bottles of shampoo to make her locks of hair form into very sharp objects!

And a dead moogle. I guess after beating them down in Sohr Khai we decided to punch some more in the Good King Moggle Mog fight. We really started to hate moogles pretty quickly in this game.

Patch 3.3 came with the much needed 2-week only boost to points earned in the Gold Saucer – Final Fantasy VII player’s idea of a fantasy Vegas or something. And with that came the only time I’ve deemed it necessary to subject a newly hatched Chocobo to the perils of ferrying me around a racetrack for the purpose of eventually winning me a spinning turtle to ride through the skies. For that, you need to train!