MMORPG Archives - Shards of Imagination

Farewell Final Fantasy XIV (For now)

January 28, 2021 by Rakuno

A while ago I mentioned I was going to end my subscription to Final Fantasy XIV. Not because I am tired of the game or anything like that. It is just that because the economy here is so terrible right now that I have to be more stingy on what I spend my money on. Specially if it is something in dollars, which is the case with this game.

I should have done that a long time ago but I thought I could finish the Shadowbringers patches to see how that storyline ended. The problem was that I couldn’t do the content from those patches right away because it required a higher iLevel than what I had.

Still I thought I could grind enough crafting levels and dungeons to get the new gear that would give me the required iLevel.

Unfortunately I never got the patience for that grind. Yes, I know that getting crafting and gathering levels are stupidly easy right now. So much that it is barely a grind anymore. But it is still a grind, even if a minor one.

And I have no idea when I will get the patience for it, even more so when I am pretty much hooked into Minecraft. So it doesn’t make sense for me to keep paying subscription for a game I am not playing.

I eventually want to get back into Final Fantasy XIV and see how the story continues though. Shadowbringer’s story was one of the best in the entire Final Fantasy franchise which makes me want to see what comes next. It will just have to wait until I am in the right mindset for it (and hopefully the economy is better too).

MMOs that are gone

November 24, 2019 by Rakuno

Paeroka over at Nerdy Bookahs recently posted about some MMOs that have died since World of Warcraft launched and her thoughts on them. Nogamara at Battle Stance and Everwake at Everwake’s Internet Adventures also made their own take about the subject. You can find their posts here and here.

It is an interesting enough topic so I figure I might as well join in with a post of mine. Also I don’t really have any screenshots for… well, almost all of the games I am about to list. So I am afraid this post will only have the feature image go accompany it. Sorry~

[FFXIV] Getting back to the routine

July 24, 2019 by Rakuno

Time for a smaller and lighter post, just for the sake of variety and for what little sanity I have left. XD

So I’ve been slowly recovering from Post-Expansion Syndrome. You know, that feeling of aimlessly once you finish a pretty emotional journey through an expansion’s story.

To achieve that I have been trying to clear off some items from my bucket list.

[FFXIV] Tips for new Final Fantasy XIV players

July 22, 2019 by Rakuno

Lately I’ve seem some people on my Twitter timeline who had just decided to give Final Fantasy XIV a go. I was even asked by a couple of them for advice for newbies. So I figured I might as well write a post with it.

Some of this might be stuff that is pretty obvious to veteran MMO players or just general common sense but I figure I might as well include it here just in case. Also, this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of tips. I am sure I probably forgot something or another so if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments and I will try to answer to the best of my abilities.

This also goes if you are a veteran Final Fantasy XIV player and feel I missed something feel free to also post in the comments letting me know! I will add it in the list and give proper credit. 🙂

With that out of the way let’s get to it!

[FFXIV] Shadowbringers finished!

July 19, 2019 by Rakuno

Last Sunday I finally finished Shadowbringers. What a journey it was! I said this in my “Shadowbringers First Impressions” post and I will say it again, this is the best expansion that Final Fantasy XIV had so far. I am even kinda afraid that they won’t be able to top this one with the next expansions but if they get close that will be good enough for me. 🙂

Anyway, now that I finished the whole expansion here are some more thoughts about it. Consider it as a kind of addendum to my previous post about the expansion.

Again, I will try to not spoil anything for those who didn’t start playing through it yet. I will also try to not ramble too much. XD

[FFXIV] Ding! Machinist level 70 and 80!

July 18, 2019 by Rakuno

This post is horribly late. I actually got Machinist to level 70 a few weeks before Shadowbringers released. As I mentioned earlier though I wasn’t in the best of mental states so I didn’t write anything back then. Then I sort of forgot about it, started playing Shadowbringers, finished it and got my Machinist to 80… Oops!

Since Shadowbringers switched to a role-based questline for levels 71 to 80 and Job Quests now consists of only one quest at level 80 I will include that one in my usual recap of the Job Quest story here too.

WARNING: Spoilers about the Machinist questline from level 60 to 70 and the level 80 quest ahead!

[FFXIV] Shadowbringers First Impressions

July 4, 2019 by Rakuno

Shadowbringers, the latest expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, officially launched this Tuesday. Although for those of us that pre-ordered it actually started on last Friday.

This might have been the smoothest expansion launch I’ve seem in any game. The only issue I had was on Friday where the launcher would throw an error when I tried to update the game. I tried everything I could think of and solutions I found online but none worked. Then the next day it just worked flawlessly somehow and there have been no issues since then. *knocks on wood*

Since then I have been playing the game any time I could and have been slowly making progress in the main storyline. I am currently at level 74 and just finished the second dungeon of the expansion.

In this post I will try my best to give my thoughts on the story so far, without spoilers, and some of the mechanical changes and additions to the game.

[FFXIV] Retiring the monk’s gloves

May 3, 2019 by Rakuno

I am not sure if this will be of interest to anyone but I figured out I might as well write about it anyway. Maybe it will lead to some interesting discussion. If not then it will serve as explanation of why Rakuno as a monk won’t be showing up in screenshots so much in the future.

The choice to make Pugilist/Monk as a main was one that I made pretty much before I even started playing Final Fantasy XIV. It is just that I tend to be attracted in games to whatever class feels fun and different and monks tend to be pretty rare in MMORPGs or at least they used to be.

[FFXIV] Heaven-on-High and Monster Hunter collab

September 19, 2018 by Rakuno

This weekend I finally cleared a couple of items off my bucket list for Final Fantasy XIV. The first one was to finish the patch 4.3 story. Maybe some day I will do a recap of it but for now all I say is that the story was pretty good. It was nice to get closure to a couple of character’s stories.

The other thing I did was finally do the Rathalos trial, part of the Monster Hunter collab. It took me this long because when I came back from my break my item level (iLevel for short) wasn’t high enough to do it right away. So I decided to focus on the story instead… Only to find it had a trial that required an even higher iLevel. So I decided to grind dungeons to upgrade my gear and do the story trial first.

Another item I got off my bucket list, but it was a while ago, was to do Heaven-on-High. I was really curious about this place but kept procrastinating to do it because… I dunno, I guess I had a lot of other things in my mind.

[FFXIV] The Rising – 2018

September 11, 2018 by Rakuno

The Rising event has been going on in Final Fantasy XIV, celebrating the 5th anniversary of its relaunch. It is hard to believe that it has been 5 years already since A Realm Reborn was launched. To me it still feels like it all happened a couple years ago or so.

This also marks the second year I participate on this event. The first one, last year, surprised me by having a cameo from Yoshi-P himself. That made me really curious on what they would do for the event this year.

SPOILER WARNING: spoilers ahead for the Rising 2018 event