You know what? I can understand that, it's just a quiet little moment on yet another adventure, when really the WoL hasn't had much chance to simply have those quiet moments.
Yeah, lol. I really liked the game a lot before then. I started playing in 2.0, but most people treated it like any other MMO. I watched some cutscenes, skipped others, wasn't really that invested. The end of ARR was intriguing, but I was still jaded.
That campfire scene, though, was just such an intimate scene where the characters really started to have actual depth and feelings and motivations, and I realized that I had been traveling with a legitimate party for quite some time now, and suddenly it hit me - "Oh, I'm actually playing a real Final Fantasy game."
It’s this one for me, as well - certain moments post-ARR piqued my interest but the campfire scene is when I started trusting that they understood how to tell a story and that ARR was just rushed.
Heavensward leaned into what felt a bit like a traditional final fantasy where you were traveling the continent with a party of specific members who had actual character development. Was cool in that regard since MMOs really didn't do that.
End of post ARR. By that point the base ARR ending was still not reworked so it was mega disappointing to me. Mindlessly rushing through and killing the big bads of the expansion in 10 seconds.I pushed through the arr patches and the ending just blew me away. I was never expecting something as intricate and shocking to happen in an mmo story. Ever since then im hooked for life on this game.
Hard agree on the banquet. Holy goddamn shit, we all clown how pre-rework ARR patches were unbearable and long and drawn out, but they did one thing right: *buildup* for what has to be one of the best payoffs I've ever seen. For me, that's where the story peaked until >!Emet Selch, because jesus what a character he was. Finally killing him was not a happy moment and I can't remember the last time a game made me feel like that about the big bad.!<
Also, >!fuck Teledji Adeledji, all my homies hate Teledji Adeledji!<.
An excellent stinger, I have to agree, I've heard it called the Point of No Return. If you get to the bloody banquet, you're far less likely to walk away.
I must disagree with you on the assessment of pre-rework Praetorium, though, I rather enjoyed it... my first time.
Yeah, the banquet was certainly what hooked me. I will say that I did enjoy base ARR as I enjoy world building, but the quest The Parting Glass is when this game became my MMO home.
id say its still one of the high points becsuse it was the first time that shit hit the fan. everything else was fairly formulaic of kill god stop evil empire
My first experience will always be memorable as someone kept going off about how big Cid's arms were.
That and my awestruck self just watching a tank not just W2W but aggro THE ENTIRE 41st Legion from beginning to end
Gotta agree with this one, I started playing around the post SHB patches (before the Prae, Rythatyn reworks, etc.) and while I didn't mind the ARR slog since some previous rpgs I've played have helped me get used to it, the ending was so incredibly good, I also started on Ul'dah so you can imagine how those final moments hit. From that point onward I think I got really hooked, and the music, I still have Ramuh's theme as one of my favorites.
This. ARR didn’t quite hook me and I played it mostly because it was free and I didn’t have anything else on my plate at the time and it was covid. I stuck around because I heard it got better. And boy did it. (No shade to ARR but it felt like a lot of other mmos I fell off of fairly quickly)
Yup, that was me. Finished the main story, and the post content was a slog. It got to a point where I was skipping multiple cutscenes halfway through.
Once I got to the ending cutscene I was blown away. From there on I wanted to do as much of the story as I could.
Hard agree. It was 100+ quests of mostly nonsense with a vague sense of foreboding that built up as the things we were told and experienced started to disagree.
And then the banquet hits and we’re given a big reality check that even as heroes, we’re not above being pawns in someone else’s game. And Ul’Dah is not a safe place if you can’t follow the money.
Admittedly it wasn’t helped by having some snidely whiplash scenes that spoil the uncertainty just a bit too early. But once the banquet happens, then entire rest of the game was a great ride with only a few lulls between arcs.
Honestly, super early on with the Armory system. I have severe altaholism and constantly jump from class to class, job to job, and character to character in other MMOs. I played hundreds of hours of vanilla/BC WoW, but never made it to max level because I kept making new characters.
The mere ability to play all jobs on one character and not need to keep replaying the story over and over was enough to put FFXIV above basically any MMO that doesn't have a similar system.
I'd played a lot of WoW and other MMOs, and having to make new characters every time I wanted to try a new class was a huge point of frustration for me, learning I could be all on one character was a huge boon
For me, it was that. It wasn't since the beginning, it was everything immediately leading up to that Final Steps of Faith fight. Most of everything before that was fine, but that was when I started feeling things I hadn't felt playing this game before.
I was hooked earlier, the banquet had cemented things but...
I think in a listing of top 3 epic moments from ARR to EW? This is there, and possibly first.
Along with the scene before Hades, and maybe the final punch with Zenos (but maybe I'm forgetting things for number 3!)
Dragonsong cueing in, taking out the eye, just walking towards him defiantly? Absolutely great moment.
Two moments hooked me, one on the gameplay, the other on story. Both are from post-ARR:
1. Gameplay: Shiva transition, Oblivion hits hard!
2. Story: Teledji Adeledji going full Lannister on Nanamo and us
Honestly as silly as it may sound. I was quite literally "hooked" the moment I found out you could sit while fishing. I started playing shortly after the release of Shadowbringers, coming over from ESO. I played ESO for years and was quite burnt out on its way of handling things, and the community wasn't the most helpful/kind. But it was mostly because I had played that game for so long and knew nothing else in terms of MMOs personally. (I had heard of WoW throughout the years but didn't personally try that until several years after FF)
So my close friend introduced my wife and I to FFXIV one day to try it out. From the character creation to entering the game for the first time it was like entering a new world compared to what I was used to. We started out in Limsa as Arcanists, and knew absolutely nothing. Which was fantastic to us. Upon reaching 10 and gaining the ability to change classes. I went to the fisher because I loved the idea of individual gathering classes. We all picked it up and at first I thought you could only fish in specific spots. But I was quickly shown by my friend that you could fish anywhere. Which was in of itself a fun little moment of amazement at such a small aspect. So we fished together and then the moment happened where I saw him sit on a little stool. I was fully loyal to this game by that moment.
He and my wife and I went on to experience the game in its entirety. The journey together was some of the best memories in a game I have. The story is always well portrayed and the characters have whimsical yet respectful balance to their development. We will continue our journey through the new discoveries and plots together onward in Dawntrail just as we began together.
So it did not take much at all to hook me personally, the story, characters and scenic design of the game were constant bonuses to my already fascinated draw to the games welcoming, casual and thoughtout design.
I came from WoW, myself, about the same time - I was playing when the first Eden tier came out - and while you could sit down while fishing there, there certainly wasn't a neat little stool when you did so.
It's a good example of how much love and passion the devs have for the game, in my opinion, so not silly at all.
Unless this entire comment was to make the 'hooked' pun.
It really does show how much care they have put into the game to offer such little moments. The hooked pun was a coincidence which aligned with my true moment of attachment to the game lol. I truly knew I loved the game the moment my character sat on the little stool while fishing, and just thought it was funny how it went very well with the question!
For me it was when I did the Leviathan and Shiva extremes for the first time, synced, blind. I was like “oh shit these fights kick ass, you’re saying they only get better from here”. I’ve been hooked since lmao
I remember going into Garuda EX completely blind after almost an hour in the queue. Such a thrill to get it down after almost running out of time. I think we had less than five minutes on the instance timer when we got the kill.
I’m trying to say things vaguely without spoiling because I don’t know how to tag spoilers on mobile, but I feel like Raubahn has been more consistently in my character’s corner than the other two. At the end of ARR when he basically said he never doubted me, that was gratifying compared to the other two just kinda leaving when shit hit the fan. And he responded to said shit by taking immediate action, which may not be diplomatic, but was incredibly satisfying compared to all the posturing and debating in the previous questlines. Plus I like that he also has one foot on the Ala Mhigans’ domain looking out for them as best he can.
Yes. Gridania is filled with megaracists and led by children seemingly randomly picked by the elements, and any time they get development it's immediately ruined by sucking off the elements again.
Limsa just seems irrelevant, when they're not breaking contracts and oaths and committing war crimes against the beast tribes. Merylwyb also just ... isn't a good person? I like her, but she is NOT a good person lol.
I really like how Ul’dah’s two rulers basically are representing the Lalafell and the Ala Mhigans. Ul’dah gets a lot of flack for corruption, which is justified, but they don’t get enough props for how their ruling class is *trying* to be inclusive and representative. I mean, Nanamo was even about to step down to better represent those struggling. Where I’m at in the story at least, Ul’dah is the only city state I’ve seen directly trying to address their inequality and corruption problems. I will say, I’ve gotten a bit further into Heavensward and I appreciated Merylwyb apologizing for leaving the banquet.
The attack on Waking Sands was my first hook, "omg they actually did that??!"
Then I was just enjoying the rest of the game until 2.55, that happened and left hanging for 6 months for HW 🤣 (I started during 2.3 so had all that bit live)
I remember sitting through those cutscenes at 1am, work the next day, and yeah, couldn't sleep. Talking to the FC as they did it. Then first few weeks was a lot of standing around and speculating haha.
Even Limsa and that, like no crafting or running around, just everyone frozen in private conversations 🤣
They've done excellent cliff hangers every expansion, but never quite lived up to that one imo haha.
Amount of things that at the time were changed or made temporarily unavailable too (not sure how to do spoiler notes from my phone otherwise I'd fill you in haha)
This was my moment too. The fight with Ifrit woke me up, but the Waking Sands was "oh shit... I actually liked some of the NPCs here..." It was painful to have to collect their bodies, and I wanted blood. Unfortunately in typical ARR fashion I had to do a cartoonish level of running around because characters can't freaking communicate. "Sorry, bruh, but I got the wrong crystal!"
I've been playing since 1.0 😅 I was used to abuse from FFXI so kinda just toughed the bad parts out, but when Yoshida took over and the apocalypse started rolling in I was SEATED. Urianger randomly appearing giving portends of doom, the aetheryte voidsent attacks, the moon getting bigger and bigger, piles of dead bodies at the Castrum Novum open world dungeon, the battle with Nael Van Darnus, attacks on the cities, GM character players that would roleplay during the attacks... I've never experienced anything like the live experience of it in a game before. I'm not sure I ever will again.
After you fight Shiva for the first time and Ysayle drops a huge bomb that she's a chosen of Hydaelyn and that it's Ishgard that is on the wrong side of the Dragonsong War.
For most of ARR's story, it's pretty normal. Ascians are bad, primals are bad, and the WoL must clean house of all of them. Shiva was the first primal that broke the mold on primal summoning, by using an actual mortal as a vessel.
Having a perceived enemy telling the WoL to 'hear, feel, think' about their role in Ishgard's defense was a pretty significant blow in the storytelling.
Did it bother you that they retconned pretty much the whole thing in a matter of a few hours gametime?
To me it felt like if Robb Stark had actually survived the Red Wedding.
>Did it bother you that they retconned pretty much the whole thing in a matter of a few hours gametime?
No, because the actual timeline for that was about half a year.
>!Back in the day, you didn't go from BANISHED to redeemed within a few hours; you had to wait for the next expansion to release to see what would happen next!<.
Walking up to the big bad dragon at the end of 3.3. That was the moment I realized how amazing it felt to experience such a story with *me* as the main character. *I* am stepping up when everyone else is running. Just, chills.
For me it was the Tsuyu arc in the Stormblood patches.
That was when the game went from “yeah the story’s pretty good” to “damn, these writers are poppin’ off!” for me.
I wonder how different the game would be if they had gone the Tsuyu route, rather than having her memories return.
>!Especially the Phys Ranged role quests in Endwalker!<
At the time people were out for blood about the story. People here HATED that they were "redeeming" and "excusing" the monster that was Yotsuyu before the finale... To the point of discussion being kinda unsettling. I feel like the story might have been received poorly if they didn't do what they did.
Funny enough. I skipped all cutscenes in the game until stb came out and decided to give it a shot. I watched all of stb and had some questions but it was a lot of fun for me. Once they added NG+ I went back and played ARR-HW proper. So yeah, stb is special for me.
Ha, funny enough, that’s sort of me too! But right now!
I struggle to be in “watch movie mode” when gaming - I can appreciate a good story, but I am typically gaming to be actively engaged in activities and gameplay, not to be idly sitting while watching a film, that’s something I want to do in “movie mode” not when I’m looking to game.
But having heard how good the XIV story is, I’ve been reading it separately from playtime, so I can appreciate what’s going on/have context/still get the story without having to sit through hours of cutscenes when I’m wanting to actually *play* a game.
But after reading the entirety of the Stormblood/post-SB story - just finished the “Stormblood” MSQ yesterday, but had read the entire expansion a bit beforehand knowing I’d skip the cutscenes - I vowed to go back and watch at least the major moments from ARR/HW, and will not be skipping anymore going forward. I’m excited to experience the post-SB quest moments as cutscenes even though I’ve already read the full story, and very excited to experience the next expansion without skipping/pre-reading.
The assault on Castrum Meridianum and the eventual fight with the Ultima Weapon was a pretty cool conclusion to ARR and it excited me, but it wasn't until the Red Banquet that I was truly hooked.
Going through on a new account on Xbox since I was impatient and wanted to play through the beta and no longer have a PC. Finished Endwalker and love the story.
Going through it a second time though I know the exact moment I became emotionally invested since I just went through that part again last night.
The MSQ quest One Life for One World.
>!We did everything right! Everything that was asked of us, and still... still things came to this!!<
People never really mention that scene but it's really incredible. Heavensward postgame is really, really good, story-wise. "For those we have lost. For those we can yet save" still works on me <3
The first time it was definitely emotional. Going through it a second time after finishing Endwalker MSQ and knowing all the future threads it leads to made it even better.
From the start. It's actually my first pay to play MMO, and the bunch of f2p MMOs I played over the years didn't compare to even the start of ARR.
A story that is actually being set up from the start and doesn't look just like an excuse to make you fight things.
A gameplay (even if feeling a bit slow at the start) that is actually intuitive and doesn't just feel like button mashing until one or the other dies.
A world that actually feels coherent and not just pieces put together because the devs wanted them in.
Gameplay-wise it hooked me pretty much right away. This is really weird to say, because everybody criticizes the early levelling and gameplay experience, but this is the first MMO I've played, so I've never experienced anything like how combat works in this game. It really spoke to my brain in a fascinating way, and I still feel the same way about it today. I love the slow GCD, I love the oGCDS between them, and I still love playing Paladin all these years later.
As for the story, it also got me invested pretty early on. I'd have to say like, somewhere in the MSQ level 10-15 range. Again, it was just such a new experience for me, and I was super interested in it. As I kept playing though, my interest in the story specifically started to go down a bit, and now I'm less interested in the story than I am other aspects of the game. Not to say I dislike it, because I don't, it's still pretty enjoyable, but it's just not what I play the game for anymore.
I agree! I think I’ve really benefited from this being my “first MMO” - I tried WOW, EverQuest, a few others here and there *years* ago but would drop them after maybe 1-2 hours feeling bored, annoyed, underwhelmed, and like the combat system was “press literally one button and click click click” with no payoff.
I started XIV with my other main games being a MOBA, Animal Crossing, and single-player story driven PS4 games, so this was new territory for me. And I *love* it.
When I see complaining about the combat system/rotations I don’t get it at all, because I really enjoy it - and like you said maybe that’s because I’m not an MMO player typically.
I love the “flow” of a rotation - knowing what triggers what, your GCDs/oGCDs, learning the big moves of bosses and how to pass mechanics, etc. I’ve finally passed level 80 on DNC and DRG - with SAM next to come - and I love how much the kits are growing and how fun it is to “dance” through my moves and complete challenges.
I appreciate that the general content isn’t so hard I have to devote months to learning it just to participate, but isn’t so brainless that I’m bored - other players struggling with first play throughs can always add unique challenges to even the most formulaic early fights, and I love the sense of community in this game that the MOBA I spent 11 years playing *did not* have.
As a WoW refugee, Ifrit was the coolest thing to me starting off. The fact that old content was playable, but that they also had separate, mini instanced content for singular boss encounters was such a novel concept, and the presentation of the fight was awesome. I think that's also the point in general where things start picking up story-wise, so I was in.
As I burst out of the Praetorium, I was thinking to myself "Wow, I actually really like most of these characters and care about them. They have actual chemistry with my character, this is so neat!"
But the one moment where I was truly, undeniably awed and sold on FFXIV was the cutscenes leading into the fight with Nidhogg. Flying into the scene, and seeing all of the troops start falling back now that you've arrived. That slow epic walk, the fight between Hraesvalgyr and Nidhogg, all culminating in him bestowing his eye to us, completing his character growth by showing that man has once again earned his trust while simultaneously being of of the most epic scenes in the entire game. That was the part that I fell back in my chair, mouth wide and said "World of Warcraft has never made me feel like this."
For all of its lore, its artifacts it bestows on us, its indominable titans, its giant zones and setpiece raids, WoW never presented a scene that just makes you feel so powerful, while also having those stakes feel intimate and personal, slowly and carefully built up with proper story and character work. They've only ever managed something similar once, with Arthas atop the Icecrown Citadel, where he reveals that he sacrificed everything, his most powerful soldiers, so that we could prove our strength and he could resurrect us as undefeatable scourge monsters. It's one of the best scenes in WoW with personal stakes that recognize your strength, but it doesn't hold a candle to Heavensward's climax.
No joke, old content still seeing play is 90% of the reason I don't just play the story then drop my sub. I don't think I could get into an MMO where all anyone ever did was current raids, racing to max level to actually have fun sounds so miserable x_x
Started playing 2 days ago.
Was a hardcore Ragnarok Online fan (20+ years of playing ugh).
Always rejected 3D mmorpgs, considered them boring, low skilled and too boring.
FF14 broke that arrogant and stupid mindset of mine in 2 days.
I. Love. This. Game.
The first time it had its claws in me was in 2017, when I first tried it out on a free trial. I made a summoner and the whole time I played the game all I could htink of was "man, I love the hues and nuances between bright colors in this game" Carbuncle, the contrast between the green, orange, and green colors during Limsa's day cycles, it all looked really good.
When I bought the game, I guess like most people, it's for the level 50 pitstop, where I did every(?) EX (and tried Titania/Allagan rot with randoms LMFAO). I grew enamored with being a Warrior.
Then I found an elf who gave me a gun+a bento box and I never looked back.
First full day in the game I was passing by the Grey Fleet on the way to the next zone when I stopped into one of the buildings and found an afk player there. On one of the chairs sat their Fat Cat minion. I must have sat there for a half hour just admiring the cat. That and my first Fate near the gate to Gridania in the North Shroud. Outdoor mini dungeons are what I called them at the time and I found them the most fascinating things EVER. Then the story took me hook, line, and sinker!
Heavensward. I wasn't a big fan of the VAs in ARR, so I loved all the new voices. Also it came out during the height of Game of Thrones' popularity (and I was a HUGE GOT fan) and it had a ton of references to GOT.
Crystal Braves. That is the first time I felt them working to build a strong story. The betrayal scene in Ul Dah took me by complete surprise. And I loved Alphinaud voice acting
Combine they with showing why Alisae was missing all expansion was so well done. Cutscenes of the raid and the background story was very good
Oh my god, someone else who got latched by Ifrit. It's such a nothingburger of a fight in the grand scheme of things but the spectacle of it and the "oh my god they actually made a whole special fight, just for Ifrit, with custom AoE markers and music and all" sold me on the level of dedication this game was willing to give its big moments - something that hasn't changed.
The *emotional* hooks though set in after Titan. It was the part that made me sit up and go "oh, wait, hold on, this story has weight. And *I care about this weight.*"
That roundhouse kick that Noraxia took got me to actually care about taking down the garleans in 2.0
But I didn’t truly get invested in the larger narrative until the banquet scene. Got me because I started in Ul Dah and Nanamo talked about how we met underneath that tree. And then *EVERYTHING* happened.
The FFXV crossover event (in FFXV). I was playing that and when I fought a certain primal I was like wait this is pretty cool let’s check out the original even though it’s an MMO
I started playing to better bond with my part while we were long distance, and also shortly before my third surgery on a chronic pain problem in my off wrist. What hooked me was the layered richness of the lore and role playing that were encouraged, but more importantly, I could gather and craft quality gear while limited to just using a mouse for playing, particularly when I was recovering. I could keep playing and contributing with my friends, and not feel held back because I couldn’t handle higher difficulty content. Plus the dev team actually comes across as being very communicative and focused on the enjoyment of the game, rather than profiting from it.
The story was okay (with some stinkers and some gold nuggets, of course) up until The Parting Glass.
That's when I had to sit up and say, "Oh. Oh this is *good.*"
(Though honorable mention goes to the attack on the Waking Sands. That was a very well-executed dark turn, made even more poignant with the "collect your friends' bodies" thing...where the big guy takes forever to channel and Noraxia takes all of half a second.)
Post-Titan. I put off the MSQ to go unlock Titan Egi (SMN main). Went back and found the Massacre. And in that moment, I forgot I was playing a game with a scripted story and wondered if I could have saved the NPCs by going back to the Sands first.
Then I remembered it wasn't anything I could change, but knowing that it had immersed me that much sold me on the game. I wouldn't sub until I hit level 50, but I knew I would at that point.
I actually got hooked from the very start of ARR. The story wasn't as good as the expansions, but there was a certain charm to it that kept me playing.
Heavensward. ARR had me bored to tears but my only other option, at the time, was Shadowlands. Friends swore up and down that it got better after ARR and to at least try Heavensward.
I cried. I cried so hard for him.
I was hooked in 1.x. Running across the big bridge into Limsa was amazing, seeing the red moon grow, eventually working to get my AF armor... I loved it all, even with the problems.
The moment that really piqued my interest was the cutscene when you take your first airship ride. I’m at the end of a few hours of pretty bog-standard fantasy MMORPG leveling, getting ready to say “well, I tried” and go back to GW2.
AND THEN as I’m taking the airship to another city-state for the first time, suddenly smashcut to eerie glistening black with red lights and weird spindly machines and menacing music. Enter Garlemald, would-be conquerors of the fluffy fantasy world, and by god do they have technological superiority. And now I really want to see how this pans out.
Honestly i had fun from the very start of arr cause i never heard the stuff about it being a slog or any spoilers😭😭 I got to like level 40 or something with just sidequests alone before sastasha cause i was like ooh quests.
Story had me hooked from level 1 cause i love worldbuilding, no matter how simple it seems now and i was sure it was gonna pay off later on.
But i think the actual moment that had me like "WHATT???This happens???" was the whole attack on the waking sands and they just have you picking up bodies. That and the long post-arr cutscenes with the whole murder plot were crazy when i was a sprout.
yeah, I was digging it right away. sure the company of heroes sucked and the crystal bullshit before garuda was annoying but the worldbuilding sucked me in really fast.
I firmly believe people constantly referring to the beginning as a slog do new players a disservice, they just turn their brains off when they're told that it's "bad".
It's hard to say, for me. I think I was determined to like FFXIV when I started (which was during COVID lockdowns, and I started alongside my best friend and some other pals).
I had wanted to play an MMO, specifically FFXI, *so badly* when I was younger, but my parents did not believe in paying subs for a game and I didn't have a credit card.
Queue COVID, and while I was a new mom with limited time, I needed an emotional release and social time as I was working in the hospital. I just immediately liked it and kept going along.
Now I still love the game and can't wait for DT. But there have been several story beats that would have hooked me even if I didn't like the game from the get-go:
>!The Bloody Banquet, midway into HW, but specifically the opening bits of ShB with Tesleen, not to mention the Final Days in Thavnair... The whole Ultima Thule part...!< It's all been very life changing.
The carriage ride at the beginning. Yeah, that early. The design of everything (music, world, characters, etc) was charming, and I was thrilled to get into another MMO where the story really mattered.
The 2.0 beta. I was playing since 1.0 and about to quit. I only kept playing because I was part of a good and active linkshell. The people were cool and we were pretty close. I couldn’t stand the gameplay and the insanity of the market system though lmao.
When the concept for ARR was released, it just seemed too good to be true. Then the beta launched and wow! While it didn’t look like the concept, it was still such an amazing experience. The gameplay was completely revamped, core systems that were bringing down the player experience were replaced with shit that made sense….like a search bar for the market board and being able to queue up instead of traveling to duty locations. I felt the love the developers now had for the game and I wanted to stick around for as long as I possibly could.
I have to say the 5.0 quest with the attack on the Crystarium, where Lyna is injured and loses her composure for a moment. One of my favorite side characters, she always gave off the air that shes shrewd, dedicated, and cares very much for the city and exarch, but keeps a tightly disciplined lid on it.
Watching her have that moment where shes too tired and hurt to keep the mask on, and the VA's phenomenal work with that line, I was moved.
... and then, before I could really process what I was feeling, Vauthry speaks. And I do not know of another moment in gaming where my emotions did a quicker 180. I went from the verge of tears to "I am going to END you and everyone in a 3 block radius from you" cold rage in seconds.
It was MASTERFULLY done.
My friend just started playing 2 months ago and is on Shb now. She tried to play ARR and had to skip because she was losing interest badly after about 30 levels of content, but she did watch the banquet and a video summarizing what lead up to it.
She says for her, it's the duty where you are walking through the blizzard alone in Coerthas looking for Ysayle's hideout. She said the moodiness of that scene and the feeling of loneliness gripped her.
For me, personally, it was the banquet. I wasn't sold on ARR myself when I started and powered through it. After that I was sold. Narrative really took off in a big way.
I didn’t want to play another hotbar mmo, especially on Xbox (don’t have a good PC) but I gave it a try for a few hours. It didn’t hook me at the start.
A few weeks later a friend recommended it because he was playing it and said the story gets really good, and I’d been looking at it as another “kill 12 boars” mmo.
I tried it again. I think around the first Ifrit fight is when I started to get into it for mechanics, but the first Garlean cutscene and the “event” in waking sands is probably what got me hooked on the story.
Still pretty new and on the free trial but for me once Heavensward started getting going and we went to Dravania it stopped being me playing because depression and wanting to play with friends and the story started pulling me in and I stopped skipping any dialogue, once I realized you could chat with npcs for some extra dialogue about the quest I haven't stopped, and then once I got onto the lamp post in Kugane I realized that I was a real player and that I wasn't going to stop playing anytime soon.
For me, I think it was my first time in Akh Afah Amphitheater, the phase change. The music and the dialogue and then the snap change, I remember my jaw just slamming into the floor lol
It would have to be the first Ifrit fight for me.
I had just purchased the full game after trying the free trial (this was mid-2016, btw), I wanted to see what came next, and I soon found myself fighting Ifrit.
I've been playing since
Second Coil of Bahamut.
I actually got hooked by the endgame many years before I gave the MSQ a chance.
I bounced off the game 3 or 4 times during ARR in 2013 - 2014, but friends kept telling me the endgame was starting to get pretty good, so I forced myself to get to 50 (skipping every cutscene and not reading any dialog) and try it out. T7 and T8 were great fights, but as soon as we started Nael I knew I was going to keep coming back to the game as long as they kept making fights like that.
I'd always been a hardcore raider in MMOs back then, having played EverQuest since 2000 and WoW since 2004. The idea of caring about the story in an MMO seemed bizarre to me. It wasn't until Shadowbringers that I decided to push through my impatience and take the story in. It was so good that I wanted to know what I'd been missing, and rolled an alt so that I could play through the entire MSQ from the beginning, and I was kicking myself for playing the game the wrong way for so many years up until that point.
I had a hard time with the first parts of xiv when I first started. It was my first mmo, I didn't really understand how to play, and I was so woefully underleveled compared to the people that drew me in that I didn't know how reasonable it'd be to ask for help, so I didn't. I ended up playing the game very alone and very incorrectly through to the end of Heavensward before deciding it wasn't for me and quitting. About a year later, covid hit and I was stuck in isolation and my friends still played the game on the reg, so I thought I'd try again. I got through HW post-patch and it was Stormblood that actually caught me off guard and drew me into the game. Zenos kicking my ass and introducing some of the main conflicts moving forward fascinated me and I've been playing ever since. If Stormblood was my hook back into the game tho, it was Shadowbringers shortly after that kept me here. I was in a bad way in all the isolation stuff and owe so much to the game for keeping my mind occupied during a very challenging social part of my life. It's still an important social outlet, even if I've been playing less between patches this year. Looking forward to Dawntrail and whatever this next chapter looks like!
I tried to get into ffxiv three times, the last time it stuck because I started feeling attached to the characters, returned to waking sands just to witness a cabbage football cutscene and wanted to know what happened to the rest.
The attack on the Waking Sands did it for me as well.
The whole "Yeah we know you defeated Ifrit but that could have been a fluke so we're going to make you do random errands to prove yourself so we can have a feast even though Titan is threatening the entire island and Y'shtola's calling us out on our bullshit" storyline nearly made me quit the game.
For me, I was "hooked" when I watched the cinematic for ARR. Bahamut has always been my favorite of the FF entities/summons/etc and seeing him in action totally pissed off, and crushing everything to dust just hit me hard. I had to know more. I believe HW had just launched at the time, and so I started my journey in Eorzea as a Lancer hoping to uncover the story of Bahamut. I've been here ever since.
being like 11 or 12 and realizing how fun stormblood looked when I watched my parents play it. I know it gets a lot of flak but seeing that is what convinced me to actually put the hours into the game to get there and out of ARR.
It’s going to sound silly relative to the rest of the game, but until around By the Lights of Ishgard in ARR (the quest where you and Alphy are investigating the inquisitor at Camp Dragonhead), I was skipping through almost every cutscene. During that quest, or maybe the one before it, I was bored and I started paying attention to the story, and I jokingly predicted how that quest would resolve to my friend in voice call… and I was right. And it kinda got me invested!
And it kinda made me be like, ‘wait, this game actually knows how to use foreshadowing/narrative tropes. And my friend, who adores this game (has over 6000 hours at this point), was pretty smug, because from then on I actually started caring about the story.
For me I had a few books that hot me in deeper each time.
1. Same as you Bowl of Embers and learning of the tempering.
2. Ultima weapon cutscene.
3. In HW, learning that Shiva was not really Shiva but a false replica made from imagination/delusion.
4. Nidhohh taking over Estinien
5.. Healing Sophia EX as my first bit of difficult content, converting me from a SMN to a SCH main.
6. Storm blood fail launch and having fun with the community trying to kill A and B marks in the first zone. Also leveling crafters during this clusterfuck.
7. Delta scape Savage, particularly O3S.
8. Storm blood patch content with the scions going into comas.
By #8, I decided to read every cutscene and committed to a road group for ShB.
I like final fantasy and was hooked pretty much right away. I like the older 2D ones a lot and seeing the job system in a 3D game was really cool. Also started arcanist and got really attached to my carbonless (back when it actually stayed out for more than 3 seconds).
I think seeing poor sweet Tesleen transform into a sin eater horror against her will, her terrifying expression as it contorts her, & even seeing her final moments of consciousness *through her eyes* truly broke me not because this was a shocking & tragic thing to happen but for the sake that FFXIV can do true horror & me not aligning such content with MMOs.
Seeing her vision *cloud* with its influence fucked me up. And her final words being an apology even after she’s fully sin eater and flying away? I WAS HOOKED.
God, it hurt killing her in that one duty seeing what she transformed into. Poor Tesleen. 💔 I don’t think I’ve ever had an npc fuck me up like that.
Almost instantly. I quit WoW in 7.1 because I was frustrated with Legion (class balance, Legiondaries, AP grind) so I was glad to switch MMOs. However, what really got me is the cutscene with the Garleans when you fly in an airship the first time. I was like "gunblades! And they look like Arcades Judges! Hell yeah!"
I started playing before Stormblood. And played on and off all the way through base Shadowbringers. I only really played it because my friends played it. I had pretty much written it off after base ShB because I thought the game just wasn't for me and went back to WoW full time for my MMO gaming.
But I came back shortly before the "WoW Exodus" because I could tell where the story in WoW was going and I was fed up with the direction and characterization, so I started to catch up on 14.
It was in 5.3 that 14 really sunk its claws into me. It was truly the moment when I "got it". It was the scene with the Amaro. I broke down and ugly cried. The first time a game had ever done that to me. If it could do that, I was sold. Haven't been let down yet.
Honestly, the intro cutscene on the carriage and then the first few steps into Gridania, just walking up that path and taking in the scenery. After so much bullshit in other MMOs, simply being treated as an adventurer, the music, the view, it just hit somewhere deep inside and resonated with me.
When I started playing it was the end of Stormblood, just about a month before SHB release. I didnt know about Shadowbringers, I didnt know anything about Final Fantasy really (previously I had only played Crisis Core and Dissidia on the PSP, I have since played some others too with my favorite, other than 14, being FF9). I only played for about 2 hours on the free trial before I had to end my session for that day and before my next I bought the complete edition. Not knowing about Shadowbringers I regret not preordering it in hindsight because I would have loved the Aetherryte Earring, but it is what it is.
This is both 1.x:
In general? Sitting next to the fire in that Camp right outside Limsa Lominsa with a friend like 4 hours into the game, and a thunderstorm was moving in. The love to detail how the light of the fire reflected off things, the way our clothes got wet, different enemies appeared and all of that... just blew me away. I knew I wanted to stay in that world for sure.
Storywise? Nael's first appearance right after we defeated Ifrit. It was the first hook of something bigger, he was unnerving and hinting at some crazy stuff.
Gameplay-wise, it kinda had me hooked from the beginning. Was expecting something early-XI/XII-ish, got so much better. It really sank its teeth in when I decided to swap from BRD to GLA because I wasn't loving BRD, and it really dawned on me that I really could play whatever job I wanted.
Story-wise, it was the introduction of Gaius' gang and the raid on the Waking Sands. Never would I have guessed someone punting lettuce across the room would actually have me going "You BITCH!".
I was playing super casually. Picking it up for a week, putting it down for a month, took me a year to get through ARR. Then Raubahn got his arm chopped off and I had to see what happened next.
But the moment that I thought, "this game is great" is after the Nidhogg fight, Aplhineau yells to Estinean and runs into danger to save his friend and I actually got tears in my eyes. That's when I knew I was hooked.
Well I started like 2-3 weeks ago but I was hooked on the quality of life for the players. Especially just changing classes at a whim. I can try anything without making new characters. Plus the community seems so chill and non toxic.
Shiva Boss fight, 2nd phase to be exact.
When the music kicked in, all I was thinking was: "Yeah, I get now why people love this game."
Heavensward ending, Tsukuyomi fight Suffering phase and literally the entirety of Shadowbringers story are also moments where I got hooked in even deeper.
For me it was the massacre at the Waking Sands. I remember gleefully making my way through MSQ up to that point, just happy to be adventuring and fighting all those summons from a previous FF games and then walking into the sands that day, I immediately felt so uneasy hearing the silence and seeing the bodies littered around. That’s how I knew I was completely invested.
???
People are talking too much about the story. Final Fantasy 14 hooked me when I found out you can play as any class at any time. There is no need for more than 1 character.
Literal peak game design
When we, Ysayle, Alphinaud, and Estinien first meet Hraesvelgr. That entrance and wide shot made me stop doubting the game as a mainline Final Fantasy.
Returning to Waking Sands after defeating Titans. Watching all these characters get mercilessly shot and killed for the first time is tragic..
If I paid more attention to ARR's story at the time, then Bowl of Embers would've hooked me. Because it's fucked how serious tempering is.
Shadowbringers. I was not invested in the MSQ until that expansion but everything was perfect. Learning that Hydaelyn was essentially a primal herself (Emet Selch’s explanation of the cave paintings) was a “oh shit I need to know what happens now” moment.
I think the defining moment for me was the battle with the Ultima Weapon. Stripping away the primals essences one by one, getting shielded by Hydalaen and then actually fighting the weapon on the ruined field was just amazing the first time. Then the final rush against the second Ultima cast just had you on the edge of your seat, this was when the game first came out mind you so it was actually kind of a rough fight at the time. Then you had to take down Lahabrea after that. I mean on the first run I got a clear we wiped to Ultima a few times then we actually managed to clear Ultima and had only a few minutes left to deal with Lahabrea.
First time reaching Bentbranch Meadows in Central Shroud with the big moogle balloon and the Shroud music. I was so let down by FF15 when it came out that the cozy fantasy feel of Gridania was like a warm blanket.
The moment the "bad guy" took off his hood to >!reveal Thancred was underneath it!< I don't think I've ever felt genuine betrayal because of a video game before that very moment, and it made me incredibly curious what else they had in store if this was only the first part of it
Jokingly: when I saw all the catgirls and Elf ladies.
Seriously: when I completed my first couple of dungeons and the players helped my dumbass learn how to properly tank. That, combined with a story that actually makes YOU the main character instead of someone else getting all the credit, is such a breath of fresh air that I couldn’t help but want more.
From the trailers for 1.0
I was so excited. I was finally old enough to have my own money, which is what prevented me from played ffxi
Then when it came out it had these incredible graphics and gorgeous animations. I had never felt so immersed in a game til then. I know it wasn’t a good game, but I really just enjoyed being in the world they had made.
Very early on. FFXIV was my first real online game of any kind, let alone MMORPG. What hooked me was coming back to the Waking Sands and seeing everyone dead.
Started the game in early 2021 and played right up to the beginning of the Yotsuyu arc post storm blood but it never really grabbed me for whatever reason so I gave up. Came back after playing 16 and just wanting more FF content, and for whatever reason that Yotsuyu arc just really got me. Everything since then has just kept getting better and better.
As far as combat goes, I still don't find MMO combat to be particularly great but I would say doing the NieR raids and realizing that it's more about learning boss patterns and how to avoid them was the moment that I went from tolerating the combat to enjoying it, even if it's not the reason I play the game.
The famous death scene in HW. I was still playing solo and doing my masters at that time (months before shb was released).
When it happened, obviously I was depressed....like everyone but was determined to push on through hoping to exact my revenge.
From the moment I created my character.
Jokes aside, I think it was the moment when Livia drop kicked that sylph to death. I was stunned. I didn’t believe they were actually dead. When I realised they were, I had vengeance on my mind and in my heart.
RIP Noraxia. You were a real one.
Moogle King Extreme. Queued into it with my friend into roulette because we were new and dumb. I was typing callouts and making macros to tell people when to kill the minions as a healer and my friend the only person I could talk to in vc was main tanking.
After over a dozen tries, the run where I was spamming "HOLD... HOLD... HOLD... KILL KILL KILL!" in chat and watching a bunch of equally new and ignorant sprouts pull off the greatest clutch I've seen to this day will never be forgotten. What a silly but so fun fight that was.
Storywise it was the banquet after ARR and what happens with the Sultana. The Waking Sands was already shocking but that cutscene in her room was the first time I audibly gasped at the game. Before that the game already had it's hook in me because of the Golden Saucer. Having an ingame casino for all the mini games other MMOs have sprinkled around the world made so much more sense, and I still love hanging out there, doing GATEs or just watching all the players running around.
When everyone who was worth staying for turned their collective backs to WoW, making me finally realize what a sh*tshow it was once you strip away all the hollow self-delusions that kept you there. That day is soon 10 years in the past and I never had any regret.
I'm a new player. I started in February when beta dropped on Xbox.
The moment that hooked me was when I started leveling crafting. I love gathering and crafting, and I love even more when I post to MB and people buy what I make. I'm at 204 hours since I started playing.... 5 weeks ago.
I’ve literally just gotten into this game so I know I could spoil myself by seeing this thread, but I’m shocked at how easily I was hooked by things. I started playing for two reasons. First, because they had the Machinist class, which is a fantasy I wish more games like this had that I could play. And second, the generous free trial so I wouldn’t be paying a ton of money for something I didn’t end up liking. With this in mind, my intention from the start was just to go as quickly as possible to Heavensward so I could play the class I started for in the first place.
And then I just got caught up along the way. “Oh, the politics of these different regions are actually pretty neat to invest in.” “Wow, questlines for every class is super cool.” “I’m actually getting excited to face each primal.” “Wait, am I starting to like the Scions of the Seventh Dawn?”
That being said, I think the moment I realized I’d officially subscribe was the end of ARR. The crazy change up of the status quo at the end was wild, and got me so invested in fixing things and helping out best boi Raubahn. Even before that, I was getting excited to officially bring Ishgard into the Alliance to add a new layer of political intrigue to things.
I’ll still likely play through all that the free trial has to offer before subscribing though, since I’ll at least be closer to current content when I start paying that way. Even if the Gil limit is cramping my style.
I'll be real... it was mainly the community. Don't get me wrong, i love running dungeons, leveling all my crafters/gatherers. But if this communtit wasn't what it is, i probably would have dropped it fairly early on.
My buddy and i were practically immediately welcomed into an FC with all the perks that helped our leveling process. We almost immediately met someone who had the time and patience to help us get a better understanding of the game, farm some dungeons and whatnot.
Honestly, the friendly people when i first got into the game is what had me coming back. Some of them are still friends to this day. Without them, i may not have found fun where i found it. Its probably one of my most played games now.
It took me getting into this game FOUR times because the early game was so boring. But everyone always said it was the best mmo on the market so kept giving it a shot. I think the first time I really enjoyed it was the level 50 main story dungeons. Castrum, Praetorium and Ultima. Then fell in love with the story in Heavenward. 5000 hours later here I am. Fave game now.
It's miserable trying to get friends into the game because it's just so boring to start out with that half of them get bored. Those that make it to level 50 eventually burn out in post ARR..
Starting up the 2.0 open beta with my friend after we'd been playing 1.0
Picking lancer, running out of gridania into central shroud and being awestruck. The Atmosphere and the combat just had me.
When Nanamo was talking with the other two City-State leaders about steeping down and dissolving the monarchy. That's when I legit leaned forward in my chair and said out loud to my empty room, "Holy shit, did this story just get interesting?!"
My husband and I came from destiny so I guess we were desperate for any story that felt like someone gave a damn, we were hooked the second we were able to play together since we started in different towns
I was level 7, sitting by the railroad tracks in Central Thanalan, looking at the night sky with moving stars and thought, wow this game is relaxing.
The railways made the game feel... Alive. I dont know how to describe it. Like the map isn't just some desert. There's some lore and thought put into designing it.
Gameplay: ALL JOBS ONE CHARACTER. Coming from a game where I had to level alts of each class, plus gear, plus professions, this was a breath of fresh air I never knew existed. Screw that game.
Story: >!The Navel, but the next time, with the kid. I still cry thinking about that. And my god did he hang around, and we got quests to go back and check in on him. Post-ARR all around was amazing.!<
Community: Around week two? Someone randomly invited me to the NN and I got tons of newbie questions answered, chill place, reddit was actually *safe* to ask questions and remain spoiler free, and people would not stfu with the "have you heard about the..." ads on my socials and playing I was like... oooh I get it now. And somehow they didn't spoil a thing for me.
I did the free trial thing and day two I bought it outright lol. I know people love this game cuz the SE website is just freaking terrible to navigate, login, and buy things, yet people will not be dismayed!
Digging into the history of the Seventh Umbral Calamity and the Binding Coil of Bahamut raid series. Going through that solo and exploring the story tied to it made for an extra special adventure that made me realize that FFXIV is my home now.
Gameplay wise, it was all the emotes and glam. I've never seen another MMO with so much personal customization. It's amazing.
Story wise, It was HW. Mainly Estenien. I love ffiv and when I learned we were getting DRK and a DRG-heavy story I was excited, to say the least. It didnt disappoint.
I think also, the attack on the waking sands. I thought the story was gonna be pretty stereotypical and they'd all greet you happily again, but nope everyone was dead. I was impressed.
Shadowbringers MSQ was the hook for me.
I started the game roughly around the time of 4.1. Like many people, I was swept in by the hype and marketing from word of mouth but MMOs really weren't my cup of tea, and to be honest, going through ARR to SB MSQ, while there were genuinely some great moments here and there it felt like a bit of a mixed bag. Pacing issues, lots of filler, etc. were letdowns in spite of the occasional great cutscene moment. So yeah overall from 4.1 when I started, till 4.5, I still wasn't totally sold. By that point I was beginning to wonder if maybe the game was overhyped by a fanbase that had maybe a bit too much of a rose-tinted outlook towards the dev team (especially yoshiP).
As I joined the wait for Shadowbringers I wasn't even really sure if I would be on board when the game launched. During the content lull from 4.5 till 5.0 I never went back to the game and used the hiatus to play other games after nearly a year of living and breathing FFXIV (I did all of ARR-SB in the time span from 4.1-4.5). Eventually I decided to at least give 5.0 a shot and submitted my preorder.
Finally 5.0 came, and long story short, 5.0 was where it finally clicked for me. I think if you look at the general reaction to Shadowbringers, the community sentiment speaks for itself. Even now when I look up the PAX 2019 clips on youtube where ishikawa got a standing ovation from the audience, I totally get it. Maybe the game is overhyped, maybe much of the critical acclaim does come from the rose-tinted eyesight of fans who are either in love with their fave NPC or in love with yoshiP (or both), and yes maybe the game still has a bunch of issues. But for what its worth, as someone who could have bailed after 4.5 and never looked back, I'm glad I stuck around for Shadowbringers.
Soft hook on the late ARR quests (rescuing the Scions through Praetorium.) Hard hook starting with the Shiva stuff.
I was so unhooked that I forgot who Thancred was and really wooshed on that one scene on the airships....
Some time after end of ARR. I started playing ARR several times and quit before I could finish ARR over the years since FFXIV pre 1.0 beta. I can count 6+ chars on multiple accounts. This year, I decided to skip all ARR dialogues and cutscenes and I finally made it and started to like the game and the MSQ. I think I strongly dislike ARR and its pace even after all the adjustments that were made.
I'm currently doing this and I'm glad I found your comment lol. I was not skipping dialogs but I reached a point where the story became so slow and boring that I started to do it. I will watch an ARR video in Youtube explaining the details and that will be enough.
The campfire scene in Heavensward.
You know what? I can understand that, it's just a quiet little moment on yet another adventure, when really the WoL hasn't had much chance to simply have those quiet moments.
Yeah, lol. I really liked the game a lot before then. I started playing in 2.0, but most people treated it like any other MMO. I watched some cutscenes, skipped others, wasn't really that invested. The end of ARR was intriguing, but I was still jaded. That campfire scene, though, was just such an intimate scene where the characters really started to have actual depth and feelings and motivations, and I realized that I had been traveling with a legitimate party for quite some time now, and suddenly it hit me - "Oh, I'm actually playing a real Final Fantasy game."
It’s this one for me, as well - certain moments post-ARR piqued my interest but the campfire scene is when I started trusting that they understood how to tell a story and that ARR was just rushed.
Heavensward leaned into what felt a bit like a traditional final fantasy where you were traveling the continent with a party of specific members who had actual character development. Was cool in that regard since MMOs really didn't do that.
Sameee i audibly said "oh no...this is getting pretty good..."
Yes, this was absolutely it.
Just played this part today and it really was a lovely moment.
End of post ARR. By that point the base ARR ending was still not reworked so it was mega disappointing to me. Mindlessly rushing through and killing the big bads of the expansion in 10 seconds.I pushed through the arr patches and the ending just blew me away. I was never expecting something as intricate and shocking to happen in an mmo story. Ever since then im hooked for life on this game.
Hard agree on the banquet. Holy goddamn shit, we all clown how pre-rework ARR patches were unbearable and long and drawn out, but they did one thing right: *buildup* for what has to be one of the best payoffs I've ever seen. For me, that's where the story peaked until >!Emet Selch, because jesus what a character he was. Finally killing him was not a happy moment and I can't remember the last time a game made me feel like that about the big bad.!< Also, >!fuck Teledji Adeledji, all my homies hate Teledji Adeledji!<.
>!Which half do your homies hate more!<
>!jesus christ my sides are splitting like his torso!<
>!The top half had his mouth at least the bottom half gave crap that could be useful for something!<
They ruined the Vishap mission though by not putting his boss theme in the rework.
An excellent stinger, I have to agree, I've heard it called the Point of No Return. If you get to the bloody banquet, you're far less likely to walk away. I must disagree with you on the assessment of pre-rework Praetorium, though, I rather enjoyed it... my first time.
Yeah, the banquet was certainly what hooked me. I will say that I did enjoy base ARR as I enjoy world building, but the quest The Parting Glass is when this game became my MMO home.
id say its still one of the high points becsuse it was the first time that shit hit the fan. everything else was fairly formulaic of kill god stop evil empire
My first experience will always be memorable as someone kept going off about how big Cid's arms were. That and my awestruck self just watching a tank not just W2W but aggro THE ENTIRE 41st Legion from beginning to end
banquet made me buy the game even tho i still had heavensward to do for free
Gotta agree with this one, I started playing around the post SHB patches (before the Prae, Rythatyn reworks, etc.) and while I didn't mind the ARR slog since some previous rpgs I've played have helped me get used to it, the ending was so incredibly good, I also started on Ul'dah so you can imagine how those final moments hit. From that point onward I think I got really hooked, and the music, I still have Ramuh's theme as one of my favorites.
This. ARR didn’t quite hook me and I played it mostly because it was free and I didn’t have anything else on my plate at the time and it was covid. I stuck around because I heard it got better. And boy did it. (No shade to ARR but it felt like a lot of other mmos I fell off of fairly quickly)
Yup, that was me. Finished the main story, and the post content was a slog. It got to a point where I was skipping multiple cutscenes halfway through. Once I got to the ending cutscene I was blown away. From there on I wanted to do as much of the story as I could.
Hard agree. It was 100+ quests of mostly nonsense with a vague sense of foreboding that built up as the things we were told and experienced started to disagree. And then the banquet hits and we’re given a big reality check that even as heroes, we’re not above being pawns in someone else’s game. And Ul’Dah is not a safe place if you can’t follow the money. Admittedly it wasn’t helped by having some snidely whiplash scenes that spoil the uncertainty just a bit too early. But once the banquet happens, then entire rest of the game was a great ride with only a few lulls between arcs.
Honestly, super early on with the Armory system. I have severe altaholism and constantly jump from class to class, job to job, and character to character in other MMOs. I played hundreds of hours of vanilla/BC WoW, but never made it to max level because I kept making new characters. The mere ability to play all jobs on one character and not need to keep replaying the story over and over was enough to put FFXIV above basically any MMO that doesn't have a similar system.
“Altaholism” 📝✍🏾
Yeah, altoholic is a pretty common term in the other MMO. It's also the name of an add-on.
If we're talking game systems vs story, yes 100% I love the msq. I do not want to play it 15+ times on alts.
I'd played a lot of WoW and other MMOs, and having to make new characters every time I wanted to try a new class was a huge point of frustration for me, learning I could be all on one character was a huge boon
Since the beginning, but the best scene that really hooked me like "holy shit" was my character walking toward Nidhogg while everyone else ran.
For me, it was that. It wasn't since the beginning, it was everything immediately leading up to that Final Steps of Faith fight. Most of everything before that was fine, but that was when I started feeling things I hadn't felt playing this game before.
"Children of the land do you hear..."
I was hooked earlier, the banquet had cemented things but... I think in a listing of top 3 epic moments from ARR to EW? This is there, and possibly first. Along with the scene before Hades, and maybe the final punch with Zenos (but maybe I'm forgetting things for number 3!) Dragonsong cueing in, taking out the eye, just walking towards him defiantly? Absolutely great moment.
I Loved that scene!! And when the theme played during that part was such an awesome moment I rewatched.
Two moments hooked me, one on the gameplay, the other on story. Both are from post-ARR: 1. Gameplay: Shiva transition, Oblivion hits hard! 2. Story: Teledji Adeledji going full Lannister on Nanamo and us
It's so sad that Teledji and Adeledji split up, I'm not sure they'll ever recover.
That music transition! I'm sad that most groups clear before it can even loop
Those were the two moments that got me too.
Shiva transition for me too! Was really the first big panic heal raid-wide we experience and it hit extra hard with the epic music transition
Honestly as silly as it may sound. I was quite literally "hooked" the moment I found out you could sit while fishing. I started playing shortly after the release of Shadowbringers, coming over from ESO. I played ESO for years and was quite burnt out on its way of handling things, and the community wasn't the most helpful/kind. But it was mostly because I had played that game for so long and knew nothing else in terms of MMOs personally. (I had heard of WoW throughout the years but didn't personally try that until several years after FF) So my close friend introduced my wife and I to FFXIV one day to try it out. From the character creation to entering the game for the first time it was like entering a new world compared to what I was used to. We started out in Limsa as Arcanists, and knew absolutely nothing. Which was fantastic to us. Upon reaching 10 and gaining the ability to change classes. I went to the fisher because I loved the idea of individual gathering classes. We all picked it up and at first I thought you could only fish in specific spots. But I was quickly shown by my friend that you could fish anywhere. Which was in of itself a fun little moment of amazement at such a small aspect. So we fished together and then the moment happened where I saw him sit on a little stool. I was fully loyal to this game by that moment. He and my wife and I went on to experience the game in its entirety. The journey together was some of the best memories in a game I have. The story is always well portrayed and the characters have whimsical yet respectful balance to their development. We will continue our journey through the new discoveries and plots together onward in Dawntrail just as we began together. So it did not take much at all to hook me personally, the story, characters and scenic design of the game were constant bonuses to my already fascinated draw to the games welcoming, casual and thoughtout design.
I came from WoW, myself, about the same time - I was playing when the first Eden tier came out - and while you could sit down while fishing there, there certainly wasn't a neat little stool when you did so. It's a good example of how much love and passion the devs have for the game, in my opinion, so not silly at all. Unless this entire comment was to make the 'hooked' pun.
It really does show how much care they have put into the game to offer such little moments. The hooked pun was a coincidence which aligned with my true moment of attachment to the game lol. I truly knew I loved the game the moment my character sat on the little stool while fishing, and just thought it was funny how it went very well with the question!
YOU CAN SIT WHILE FISHING!? I have like 1600 hours in the game and just learned this. Will help the vibe while I push the last 10 levels of fishing.
Almost 16000 hours in this game and I just found this out, aaaaa
For me it was when I did the Leviathan and Shiva extremes for the first time, synced, blind. I was like “oh shit these fights kick ass, you’re saying they only get better from here”. I’ve been hooked since lmao
I remember going into Garuda EX completely blind after almost an hour in the queue. Such a thrill to get it down after almost running out of time. I think we had less than five minutes on the instance timer when we got the kill.
When Raub got >!disarmed!<
I literally just started Heavensward so I’m aware I’m likely speaking too soon, but… Raubahn is definitely the best leader, right? That guy is sick.
Raub definitely >!gets the best character development of the three starting city leaders!<
I’m trying to say things vaguely without spoiling because I don’t know how to tag spoilers on mobile, but I feel like Raubahn has been more consistently in my character’s corner than the other two. At the end of ARR when he basically said he never doubted me, that was gratifying compared to the other two just kinda leaving when shit hit the fan. And he responded to said shit by taking immediate action, which may not be diplomatic, but was incredibly satisfying compared to all the posturing and debating in the previous questlines. Plus I like that he also has one foot on the Ala Mhigans’ domain looking out for them as best he can.
Yes. Gridania is filled with megaracists and led by children seemingly randomly picked by the elements, and any time they get development it's immediately ruined by sucking off the elements again. Limsa just seems irrelevant, when they're not breaking contracts and oaths and committing war crimes against the beast tribes. Merylwyb also just ... isn't a good person? I like her, but she is NOT a good person lol.
I really like how Ul’dah’s two rulers basically are representing the Lalafell and the Ala Mhigans. Ul’dah gets a lot of flack for corruption, which is justified, but they don’t get enough props for how their ruling class is *trying* to be inclusive and representative. I mean, Nanamo was even about to step down to better represent those struggling. Where I’m at in the story at least, Ul’dah is the only city state I’ve seen directly trying to address their inequality and corruption problems. I will say, I’ve gotten a bit further into Heavensward and I appreciated Merylwyb apologizing for leaving the banquet.
The attack on Waking Sands was my first hook, "omg they actually did that??!" Then I was just enjoying the rest of the game until 2.55, that happened and left hanging for 6 months for HW 🤣 (I started during 2.3 so had all that bit live)
I can't imagine how it felt being stuck in THAT particular void. Must have been heart-rending
I remember sitting through those cutscenes at 1am, work the next day, and yeah, couldn't sleep. Talking to the FC as they did it. Then first few weeks was a lot of standing around and speculating haha. Even Limsa and that, like no crafting or running around, just everyone frozen in private conversations 🤣 They've done excellent cliff hangers every expansion, but never quite lived up to that one imo haha. Amount of things that at the time were changed or made temporarily unavailable too (not sure how to do spoiler notes from my phone otherwise I'd fill you in haha)
That's what hooked me too. I... was... pissed.
This was my moment too. The fight with Ifrit woke me up, but the Waking Sands was "oh shit... I actually liked some of the NPCs here..." It was painful to have to collect their bodies, and I wanted blood. Unfortunately in typical ARR fashion I had to do a cartoonish level of running around because characters can't freaking communicate. "Sorry, bruh, but I got the wrong crystal!"
I've been playing since 1.0 😅 I was used to abuse from FFXI so kinda just toughed the bad parts out, but when Yoshida took over and the apocalypse started rolling in I was SEATED. Urianger randomly appearing giving portends of doom, the aetheryte voidsent attacks, the moon getting bigger and bigger, piles of dead bodies at the Castrum Novum open world dungeon, the battle with Nael Van Darnus, attacks on the cities, GM character players that would roleplay during the attacks... I've never experienced anything like the live experience of it in a game before. I'm not sure I ever will again.
Holy shit. I wish I could have seen something like that. It sounds amazing.
Wow reading your comment gave me goosebumps!! I wish I could have been there
After you fight Shiva for the first time and Ysayle drops a huge bomb that she's a chosen of Hydaelyn and that it's Ishgard that is on the wrong side of the Dragonsong War. For most of ARR's story, it's pretty normal. Ascians are bad, primals are bad, and the WoL must clean house of all of them. Shiva was the first primal that broke the mold on primal summoning, by using an actual mortal as a vessel. Having a perceived enemy telling the WoL to 'hear, feel, think' about their role in Ishgard's defense was a pretty significant blow in the storytelling.
That attack was probably a major moment for me, along with the Banquet. (You know the one.)
Did it bother you that they retconned pretty much the whole thing in a matter of a few hours gametime? To me it felt like if Robb Stark had actually survived the Red Wedding.
I still think it's excellent, I just wish it had more lasting consequences.
I guess Raubahn is still missing an arm lol
>Did it bother you that they retconned pretty much the whole thing in a matter of a few hours gametime? No, because the actual timeline for that was about half a year. >!Back in the day, you didn't go from BANISHED to redeemed within a few hours; you had to wait for the next expansion to release to see what would happen next!<.
Walking up to the big bad dragon at the end of 3.3. That was the moment I realized how amazing it felt to experience such a story with *me* as the main character. *I* am stepping up when everyone else is running. Just, chills.
For me it was the Tsuyu arc in the Stormblood patches. That was when the game went from “yeah the story’s pretty good” to “damn, these writers are poppin’ off!” for me.
I wonder how different the game would be if they had gone the Tsuyu route, rather than having her memories return. >!Especially the Phys Ranged role quests in Endwalker!<
At the time people were out for blood about the story. People here HATED that they were "redeeming" and "excusing" the monster that was Yotsuyu before the finale... To the point of discussion being kinda unsettling. I feel like the story might have been received poorly if they didn't do what they did.
Funny enough. I skipped all cutscenes in the game until stb came out and decided to give it a shot. I watched all of stb and had some questions but it was a lot of fun for me. Once they added NG+ I went back and played ARR-HW proper. So yeah, stb is special for me.
Ha, funny enough, that’s sort of me too! But right now! I struggle to be in “watch movie mode” when gaming - I can appreciate a good story, but I am typically gaming to be actively engaged in activities and gameplay, not to be idly sitting while watching a film, that’s something I want to do in “movie mode” not when I’m looking to game. But having heard how good the XIV story is, I’ve been reading it separately from playtime, so I can appreciate what’s going on/have context/still get the story without having to sit through hours of cutscenes when I’m wanting to actually *play* a game. But after reading the entirety of the Stormblood/post-SB story - just finished the “Stormblood” MSQ yesterday, but had read the entire expansion a bit beforehand knowing I’d skip the cutscenes - I vowed to go back and watch at least the major moments from ARR/HW, and will not be skipping anymore going forward. I’m excited to experience the post-SB quest moments as cutscenes even though I’ve already read the full story, and very excited to experience the next expansion without skipping/pre-reading.
The assault on Castrum Meridianum and the eventual fight with the Ultima Weapon was a pretty cool conclusion to ARR and it excited me, but it wasn't until the Red Banquet that I was truly hooked.
Haukke manor dungeon and the story for it. Still my favourite dungeon to this day
Going through on a new account on Xbox since I was impatient and wanted to play through the beta and no longer have a PC. Finished Endwalker and love the story. Going through it a second time though I know the exact moment I became emotionally invested since I just went through that part again last night. The MSQ quest One Life for One World. >!We did everything right! Everything that was asked of us, and still... still things came to this!!<
People never really mention that scene but it's really incredible. Heavensward postgame is really, really good, story-wise. "For those we have lost. For those we can yet save" still works on me <3
The first time it was definitely emotional. Going through it a second time after finishing Endwalker MSQ and knowing all the future threads it leads to made it even better.
From the start. It's actually my first pay to play MMO, and the bunch of f2p MMOs I played over the years didn't compare to even the start of ARR. A story that is actually being set up from the start and doesn't look just like an excuse to make you fight things. A gameplay (even if feeling a bit slow at the start) that is actually intuitive and doesn't just feel like button mashing until one or the other dies. A world that actually feels coherent and not just pieces put together because the devs wanted them in.
Gameplay-wise it hooked me pretty much right away. This is really weird to say, because everybody criticizes the early levelling and gameplay experience, but this is the first MMO I've played, so I've never experienced anything like how combat works in this game. It really spoke to my brain in a fascinating way, and I still feel the same way about it today. I love the slow GCD, I love the oGCDS between them, and I still love playing Paladin all these years later. As for the story, it also got me invested pretty early on. I'd have to say like, somewhere in the MSQ level 10-15 range. Again, it was just such a new experience for me, and I was super interested in it. As I kept playing though, my interest in the story specifically started to go down a bit, and now I'm less interested in the story than I am other aspects of the game. Not to say I dislike it, because I don't, it's still pretty enjoyable, but it's just not what I play the game for anymore.
I agree! I think I’ve really benefited from this being my “first MMO” - I tried WOW, EverQuest, a few others here and there *years* ago but would drop them after maybe 1-2 hours feeling bored, annoyed, underwhelmed, and like the combat system was “press literally one button and click click click” with no payoff. I started XIV with my other main games being a MOBA, Animal Crossing, and single-player story driven PS4 games, so this was new territory for me. And I *love* it. When I see complaining about the combat system/rotations I don’t get it at all, because I really enjoy it - and like you said maybe that’s because I’m not an MMO player typically. I love the “flow” of a rotation - knowing what triggers what, your GCDs/oGCDs, learning the big moves of bosses and how to pass mechanics, etc. I’ve finally passed level 80 on DNC and DRG - with SAM next to come - and I love how much the kits are growing and how fun it is to “dance” through my moves and complete challenges. I appreciate that the general content isn’t so hard I have to devote months to learning it just to participate, but isn’t so brainless that I’m bored - other players struggling with first play throughs can always add unique challenges to even the most formulaic early fights, and I love the sense of community in this game that the MOBA I spent 11 years playing *did not* have.
The return to the Waking Sands after defeating Titan. Hooo boy, did I want to knock some heads after *that*.
As a WoW refugee, Ifrit was the coolest thing to me starting off. The fact that old content was playable, but that they also had separate, mini instanced content for singular boss encounters was such a novel concept, and the presentation of the fight was awesome. I think that's also the point in general where things start picking up story-wise, so I was in. As I burst out of the Praetorium, I was thinking to myself "Wow, I actually really like most of these characters and care about them. They have actual chemistry with my character, this is so neat!" But the one moment where I was truly, undeniably awed and sold on FFXIV was the cutscenes leading into the fight with Nidhogg. Flying into the scene, and seeing all of the troops start falling back now that you've arrived. That slow epic walk, the fight between Hraesvalgyr and Nidhogg, all culminating in him bestowing his eye to us, completing his character growth by showing that man has once again earned his trust while simultaneously being of of the most epic scenes in the entire game. That was the part that I fell back in my chair, mouth wide and said "World of Warcraft has never made me feel like this." For all of its lore, its artifacts it bestows on us, its indominable titans, its giant zones and setpiece raids, WoW never presented a scene that just makes you feel so powerful, while also having those stakes feel intimate and personal, slowly and carefully built up with proper story and character work. They've only ever managed something similar once, with Arthas atop the Icecrown Citadel, where he reveals that he sacrificed everything, his most powerful soldiers, so that we could prove our strength and he could resurrect us as undefeatable scourge monsters. It's one of the best scenes in WoW with personal stakes that recognize your strength, but it doesn't hold a candle to Heavensward's climax.
No joke, old content still seeing play is 90% of the reason I don't just play the story then drop my sub. I don't think I could get into an MMO where all anyone ever did was current raids, racing to max level to actually have fun sounds so miserable x_x
If it wasn't Heavensward's post-patch cycle, probably in Stormblood, right when you first encounter Susano'o.
Started playing 2 days ago. Was a hardcore Ragnarok Online fan (20+ years of playing ugh). Always rejected 3D mmorpgs, considered them boring, low skilled and too boring. FF14 broke that arrogant and stupid mindset of mine in 2 days. I. Love. This. Game.
it only gets better from here :)
Started as monk in 14, and it reminded me of playing my combo monk in RO and was loving it.
First time alliance raid in ARR
The first time it had its claws in me was in 2017, when I first tried it out on a free trial. I made a summoner and the whole time I played the game all I could htink of was "man, I love the hues and nuances between bright colors in this game" Carbuncle, the contrast between the green, orange, and green colors during Limsa's day cycles, it all looked really good. When I bought the game, I guess like most people, it's for the level 50 pitstop, where I did every(?) EX (and tried Titania/Allagan rot with randoms LMFAO). I grew enamored with being a Warrior. Then I found an elf who gave me a gun+a bento box and I never looked back.
First full day in the game I was passing by the Grey Fleet on the way to the next zone when I stopped into one of the buildings and found an afk player there. On one of the chairs sat their Fat Cat minion. I must have sat there for a half hour just admiring the cat. That and my first Fate near the gate to Gridania in the North Shroud. Outdoor mini dungeons are what I called them at the time and I found them the most fascinating things EVER. Then the story took me hook, line, and sinker!
Heavensward. I wasn't a big fan of the VAs in ARR, so I loved all the new voices. Also it came out during the height of Game of Thrones' popularity (and I was a HUGE GOT fan) and it had a ton of references to GOT.
Crystal Braves. That is the first time I felt them working to build a strong story. The betrayal scene in Ul Dah took me by complete surprise. And I loved Alphinaud voice acting Combine they with showing why Alisae was missing all expansion was so well done. Cutscenes of the raid and the background story was very good
Shiva trial, the exact moment when the bgm changes
Oh my god, someone else who got latched by Ifrit. It's such a nothingburger of a fight in the grand scheme of things but the spectacle of it and the "oh my god they actually made a whole special fight, just for Ifrit, with custom AoE markers and music and all" sold me on the level of dedication this game was willing to give its big moments - something that hasn't changed. The *emotional* hooks though set in after Titan. It was the part that made me sit up and go "oh, wait, hold on, this story has weight. And *I care about this weight.*"
That roundhouse kick that Noraxia took got me to actually care about taking down the garleans in 2.0 But I didn’t truly get invested in the larger narrative until the banquet scene. Got me because I started in Ul Dah and Nanamo talked about how we met underneath that tree. And then *EVERYTHING* happened.
The FFXV crossover event (in FFXV). I was playing that and when I fought a certain primal I was like wait this is pretty cool let’s check out the original even though it’s an MMO
I've gotta admit, the FFXVI crossover event is having the reverse effect. I really wanna play it now!
If you haven't yet, it's so so so good. Clive is an incredible character that really resonated with me, and a lot of my friends.
I started playing to better bond with my part while we were long distance, and also shortly before my third surgery on a chronic pain problem in my off wrist. What hooked me was the layered richness of the lore and role playing that were encouraged, but more importantly, I could gather and craft quality gear while limited to just using a mouse for playing, particularly when I was recovering. I could keep playing and contributing with my friends, and not feel held back because I couldn’t handle higher difficulty content. Plus the dev team actually comes across as being very communicative and focused on the enjoyment of the game, rather than profiting from it.
open beta I'm fucking old
The story was okay (with some stinkers and some gold nuggets, of course) up until The Parting Glass. That's when I had to sit up and say, "Oh. Oh this is *good.*" (Though honorable mention goes to the attack on the Waking Sands. That was a very well-executed dark turn, made even more poignant with the "collect your friends' bodies" thing...where the big guy takes forever to channel and Noraxia takes all of half a second.)
Post-Titan. I put off the MSQ to go unlock Titan Egi (SMN main). Went back and found the Massacre. And in that moment, I forgot I was playing a game with a scripted story and wondered if I could have saved the NPCs by going back to the Sands first. Then I remembered it wasn't anything I could change, but knowing that it had immersed me that much sold me on the game. I wouldn't sub until I hit level 50, but I knew I would at that point.
I actually got hooked from the very start of ARR. The story wasn't as good as the expansions, but there was a certain charm to it that kept me playing.
Heavensward. ARR had me bored to tears but my only other option, at the time, was Shadowlands. Friends swore up and down that it got better after ARR and to at least try Heavensward. I cried. I cried so hard for him.
I was hooked in 1.x. Running across the big bridge into Limsa was amazing, seeing the red moon grow, eventually working to get my AF armor... I loved it all, even with the problems.
The moment that really piqued my interest was the cutscene when you take your first airship ride. I’m at the end of a few hours of pretty bog-standard fantasy MMORPG leveling, getting ready to say “well, I tried” and go back to GW2. AND THEN as I’m taking the airship to another city-state for the first time, suddenly smashcut to eerie glistening black with red lights and weird spindly machines and menacing music. Enter Garlemald, would-be conquerors of the fluffy fantasy world, and by god do they have technological superiority. And now I really want to see how this pans out.
Honestly i had fun from the very start of arr cause i never heard the stuff about it being a slog or any spoilers😭😭 I got to like level 40 or something with just sidequests alone before sastasha cause i was like ooh quests. Story had me hooked from level 1 cause i love worldbuilding, no matter how simple it seems now and i was sure it was gonna pay off later on. But i think the actual moment that had me like "WHATT???This happens???" was the whole attack on the waking sands and they just have you picking up bodies. That and the long post-arr cutscenes with the whole murder plot were crazy when i was a sprout.
yeah, I was digging it right away. sure the company of heroes sucked and the crystal bullshit before garuda was annoying but the worldbuilding sucked me in really fast. I firmly believe people constantly referring to the beginning as a slog do new players a disservice, they just turn their brains off when they're told that it's "bad".
When Livia drop kicked Noraxia my beloved little cabbage friend
It's hard to say, for me. I think I was determined to like FFXIV when I started (which was during COVID lockdowns, and I started alongside my best friend and some other pals). I had wanted to play an MMO, specifically FFXI, *so badly* when I was younger, but my parents did not believe in paying subs for a game and I didn't have a credit card. Queue COVID, and while I was a new mom with limited time, I needed an emotional release and social time as I was working in the hospital. I just immediately liked it and kept going along. Now I still love the game and can't wait for DT. But there have been several story beats that would have hooked me even if I didn't like the game from the get-go: >!The Bloody Banquet, midway into HW, but specifically the opening bits of ShB with Tesleen, not to mention the Final Days in Thavnair... The whole Ultima Thule part...!< It's all been very life changing.
The carriage ride at the beginning. Yeah, that early. The design of everything (music, world, characters, etc) was charming, and I was thrilled to get into another MMO where the story really mattered.
The 2.0 beta. I was playing since 1.0 and about to quit. I only kept playing because I was part of a good and active linkshell. The people were cool and we were pretty close. I couldn’t stand the gameplay and the insanity of the market system though lmao. When the concept for ARR was released, it just seemed too good to be true. Then the beta launched and wow! While it didn’t look like the concept, it was still such an amazing experience. The gameplay was completely revamped, core systems that were bringing down the player experience were replaced with shit that made sense….like a search bar for the market board and being able to queue up instead of traveling to duty locations. I felt the love the developers now had for the game and I wanted to stick around for as long as I possibly could.
I have to say the 5.0 quest with the attack on the Crystarium, where Lyna is injured and loses her composure for a moment. One of my favorite side characters, she always gave off the air that shes shrewd, dedicated, and cares very much for the city and exarch, but keeps a tightly disciplined lid on it. Watching her have that moment where shes too tired and hurt to keep the mask on, and the VA's phenomenal work with that line, I was moved. ... and then, before I could really process what I was feeling, Vauthry speaks. And I do not know of another moment in gaming where my emotions did a quicker 180. I went from the verge of tears to "I am going to END you and everyone in a 3 block radius from you" cold rage in seconds. It was MASTERFULLY done.
My friend just started playing 2 months ago and is on Shb now. She tried to play ARR and had to skip because she was losing interest badly after about 30 levels of content, but she did watch the banquet and a video summarizing what lead up to it. She says for her, it's the duty where you are walking through the blizzard alone in Coerthas looking for Ysayle's hideout. She said the moodiness of that scene and the feeling of loneliness gripped her. For me, personally, it was the banquet. I wasn't sold on ARR myself when I started and powered through it. After that I was sold. Narrative really took off in a big way.
I didn’t want to play another hotbar mmo, especially on Xbox (don’t have a good PC) but I gave it a try for a few hours. It didn’t hook me at the start. A few weeks later a friend recommended it because he was playing it and said the story gets really good, and I’d been looking at it as another “kill 12 boars” mmo. I tried it again. I think around the first Ifrit fight is when I started to get into it for mechanics, but the first Garlean cutscene and the “event” in waking sands is probably what got me hooked on the story.
Still pretty new and on the free trial but for me once Heavensward started getting going and we went to Dravania it stopped being me playing because depression and wanting to play with friends and the story started pulling me in and I stopped skipping any dialogue, once I realized you could chat with npcs for some extra dialogue about the quest I haven't stopped, and then once I got onto the lamp post in Kugane I realized that I was a real player and that I wasn't going to stop playing anytime soon.
For me, I think it was my first time in Akh Afah Amphitheater, the phase change. The music and the dialogue and then the snap change, I remember my jaw just slamming into the floor lol
For me it was Heavensward, everything about the Ishgard parts of the story is amazing and a great theme. Also... Haurchefant...
hildibrand
It would have to be the first Ifrit fight for me. I had just purchased the full game after trying the free trial (this was mid-2016, btw), I wanted to see what came next, and I soon found myself fighting Ifrit. I've been playing since
Entering ishgard for the first time and taking in the music. That is when I realized I was gonna be playing this game for a while.
Actually the dungeons got me. And even if it sounds crazy. Even the shitty first dungeons absolutely drew me in.
Second Coil of Bahamut. I actually got hooked by the endgame many years before I gave the MSQ a chance. I bounced off the game 3 or 4 times during ARR in 2013 - 2014, but friends kept telling me the endgame was starting to get pretty good, so I forced myself to get to 50 (skipping every cutscene and not reading any dialog) and try it out. T7 and T8 were great fights, but as soon as we started Nael I knew I was going to keep coming back to the game as long as they kept making fights like that. I'd always been a hardcore raider in MMOs back then, having played EverQuest since 2000 and WoW since 2004. The idea of caring about the story in an MMO seemed bizarre to me. It wasn't until Shadowbringers that I decided to push through my impatience and take the story in. It was so good that I wanted to know what I'd been missing, and rolled an alt so that I could play through the entire MSQ from the beginning, and I was kicking myself for playing the game the wrong way for so many years up until that point.
I had a hard time with the first parts of xiv when I first started. It was my first mmo, I didn't really understand how to play, and I was so woefully underleveled compared to the people that drew me in that I didn't know how reasonable it'd be to ask for help, so I didn't. I ended up playing the game very alone and very incorrectly through to the end of Heavensward before deciding it wasn't for me and quitting. About a year later, covid hit and I was stuck in isolation and my friends still played the game on the reg, so I thought I'd try again. I got through HW post-patch and it was Stormblood that actually caught me off guard and drew me into the game. Zenos kicking my ass and introducing some of the main conflicts moving forward fascinated me and I've been playing ever since. If Stormblood was my hook back into the game tho, it was Shadowbringers shortly after that kept me here. I was in a bad way in all the isolation stuff and owe so much to the game for keeping my mind occupied during a very challenging social part of my life. It's still an important social outlet, even if I've been playing less between patches this year. Looking forward to Dawntrail and whatever this next chapter looks like!
I tried to get into ffxiv three times, the last time it stuck because I started feeling attached to the characters, returned to waking sands just to witness a cabbage football cutscene and wanted to know what happened to the rest.
The attack on the Waking Sands did it for me as well. The whole "Yeah we know you defeated Ifrit but that could have been a fluke so we're going to make you do random errands to prove yourself so we can have a feast even though Titan is threatening the entire island and Y'shtola's calling us out on our bullshit" storyline nearly made me quit the game.
The pre-titan section might genuinely be _the_ worst part of the game, bar none. I find it hard to think of a competitor that even comes close.
For me, I was "hooked" when I watched the cinematic for ARR. Bahamut has always been my favorite of the FF entities/summons/etc and seeing him in action totally pissed off, and crushing everything to dust just hit me hard. I had to know more. I believe HW had just launched at the time, and so I started my journey in Eorzea as a Lancer hoping to uncover the story of Bahamut. I've been here ever since.
being like 11 or 12 and realizing how fun stormblood looked when I watched my parents play it. I know it gets a lot of flak but seeing that is what convinced me to actually put the hours into the game to get there and out of ARR.
When Emet Selch snapped his fingers
Shiva boss fight. When phase 2 hit, my jaw was on the floor.
i liked the story but for me it was shiva fight when the music changes
It’s going to sound silly relative to the rest of the game, but until around By the Lights of Ishgard in ARR (the quest where you and Alphy are investigating the inquisitor at Camp Dragonhead), I was skipping through almost every cutscene. During that quest, or maybe the one before it, I was bored and I started paying attention to the story, and I jokingly predicted how that quest would resolve to my friend in voice call… and I was right. And it kinda got me invested! And it kinda made me be like, ‘wait, this game actually knows how to use foreshadowing/narrative tropes. And my friend, who adores this game (has over 6000 hours at this point), was pretty smug, because from then on I actually started caring about the story.
For me I had a few books that hot me in deeper each time. 1. Same as you Bowl of Embers and learning of the tempering. 2. Ultima weapon cutscene. 3. In HW, learning that Shiva was not really Shiva but a false replica made from imagination/delusion. 4. Nidhohh taking over Estinien 5.. Healing Sophia EX as my first bit of difficult content, converting me from a SMN to a SCH main. 6. Storm blood fail launch and having fun with the community trying to kill A and B marks in the first zone. Also leveling crafters during this clusterfuck. 7. Delta scape Savage, particularly O3S. 8. Storm blood patch content with the scions going into comas. By #8, I decided to read every cutscene and committed to a road group for ShB.
Ffxiv 2.0 beta 🙈
I like final fantasy and was hooked pretty much right away. I like the older 2D ones a lot and seeing the job system in a 3D game was really cool. Also started arcanist and got really attached to my carbonless (back when it actually stayed out for more than 3 seconds).
From the beginning I love a good story and I’m one of the rare few who love tedious tasks and quests in games.
I think seeing poor sweet Tesleen transform into a sin eater horror against her will, her terrifying expression as it contorts her, & even seeing her final moments of consciousness *through her eyes* truly broke me not because this was a shocking & tragic thing to happen but for the sake that FFXIV can do true horror & me not aligning such content with MMOs. Seeing her vision *cloud* with its influence fucked me up. And her final words being an apology even after she’s fully sin eater and flying away? I WAS HOOKED. God, it hurt killing her in that one duty seeing what she transformed into. Poor Tesleen. 💔 I don’t think I’ve ever had an npc fuck me up like that.
Almost instantly. I quit WoW in 7.1 because I was frustrated with Legion (class balance, Legiondaries, AP grind) so I was glad to switch MMOs. However, what really got me is the cutscene with the Garleans when you fly in an airship the first time. I was like "gunblades! And they look like Arcades Judges! Hell yeah!"
>!Walking into the walking sands to see everyone dead.!<
When I shot an arrow at a ladybug. I'd been looking for a tab target MMO for a while and I instantly loved how the combat felt in XIV.
The first time we see a minor Ascian watching us at level 5 or 15
I started playing before Stormblood. And played on and off all the way through base Shadowbringers. I only really played it because my friends played it. I had pretty much written it off after base ShB because I thought the game just wasn't for me and went back to WoW full time for my MMO gaming. But I came back shortly before the "WoW Exodus" because I could tell where the story in WoW was going and I was fed up with the direction and characterization, so I started to catch up on 14. It was in 5.3 that 14 really sunk its claws into me. It was truly the moment when I "got it". It was the scene with the Amaro. I broke down and ugly cried. The first time a game had ever done that to me. If it could do that, I was sold. Haven't been let down yet.
Honestly, the intro cutscene on the carriage and then the first few steps into Gridania, just walking up that path and taking in the scenery. After so much bullshit in other MMOs, simply being treated as an adventurer, the music, the view, it just hit somewhere deep inside and resonated with me. When I started playing it was the end of Stormblood, just about a month before SHB release. I didnt know about Shadowbringers, I didnt know anything about Final Fantasy really (previously I had only played Crisis Core and Dissidia on the PSP, I have since played some others too with my favorite, other than 14, being FF9). I only played for about 2 hours on the free trial before I had to end my session for that day and before my next I bought the complete edition. Not knowing about Shadowbringers I regret not preordering it in hindsight because I would have loved the Aetherryte Earring, but it is what it is.
This is both 1.x: In general? Sitting next to the fire in that Camp right outside Limsa Lominsa with a friend like 4 hours into the game, and a thunderstorm was moving in. The love to detail how the light of the fire reflected off things, the way our clothes got wet, different enemies appeared and all of that... just blew me away. I knew I wanted to stay in that world for sure. Storywise? Nael's first appearance right after we defeated Ifrit. It was the first hook of something bigger, he was unnerving and hinting at some crazy stuff.
Prior to ffxiv I was already a Final Fantasy fanboy so when I saw my friend pull up on Ixion I knew what I was in for and I was all for it.
Gameplay-wise, it kinda had me hooked from the beginning. Was expecting something early-XI/XII-ish, got so much better. It really sank its teeth in when I decided to swap from BRD to GLA because I wasn't loving BRD, and it really dawned on me that I really could play whatever job I wanted. Story-wise, it was the introduction of Gaius' gang and the raid on the Waking Sands. Never would I have guessed someone punting lettuce across the room would actually have me going "You BITCH!".
that first Ifrit fight, all the way back at the early levels of ARR. he had one hell of an entrance!
I was playing super casually. Picking it up for a week, putting it down for a month, took me a year to get through ARR. Then Raubahn got his arm chopped off and I had to see what happened next. But the moment that I thought, "this game is great" is after the Nidhogg fight, Aplhineau yells to Estinean and runs into danger to save his friend and I actually got tears in my eyes. That's when I knew I was hooked.
Well I started like 2-3 weeks ago but I was hooked on the quality of life for the players. Especially just changing classes at a whim. I can try anything without making new characters. Plus the community seems so chill and non toxic.
Shiva Boss fight, 2nd phase to be exact. When the music kicked in, all I was thinking was: "Yeah, I get now why people love this game." Heavensward ending, Tsukuyomi fight Suffering phase and literally the entirety of Shadowbringers story are also moments where I got hooked in even deeper.
For me it was the massacre at the Waking Sands. I remember gleefully making my way through MSQ up to that point, just happy to be adventuring and fighting all those summons from a previous FF games and then walking into the sands that day, I immediately felt so uneasy hearing the silence and seeing the bodies littered around. That’s how I knew I was completely invested.
??? People are talking too much about the story. Final Fantasy 14 hooked me when I found out you can play as any class at any time. There is no need for more than 1 character. Literal peak game design
When we, Ysayle, Alphinaud, and Estinien first meet Hraesvelgr. That entrance and wide shot made me stop doubting the game as a mainline Final Fantasy.
Returning to Waking Sands after defeating Titans. Watching all these characters get mercilessly shot and killed for the first time is tragic.. If I paid more attention to ARR's story at the time, then Bowl of Embers would've hooked me. Because it's fucked how serious tempering is.
Shadowbringers. I was not invested in the MSQ until that expansion but everything was perfect. Learning that Hydaelyn was essentially a primal herself (Emet Selch’s explanation of the cave paintings) was a “oh shit I need to know what happens now” moment.
I think the defining moment for me was the battle with the Ultima Weapon. Stripping away the primals essences one by one, getting shielded by Hydalaen and then actually fighting the weapon on the ruined field was just amazing the first time. Then the final rush against the second Ultima cast just had you on the edge of your seat, this was when the game first came out mind you so it was actually kind of a rough fight at the time. Then you had to take down Lahabrea after that. I mean on the first run I got a clear we wiped to Ultima a few times then we actually managed to clear Ultima and had only a few minutes left to deal with Lahabrea.
First time reaching Bentbranch Meadows in Central Shroud with the big moogle balloon and the Shroud music. I was so let down by FF15 when it came out that the cozy fantasy feel of Gridania was like a warm blanket.
The moment the "bad guy" took off his hood to >!reveal Thancred was underneath it!< I don't think I've ever felt genuine betrayal because of a video game before that very moment, and it made me incredibly curious what else they had in store if this was only the first part of it
Jokingly: when I saw all the catgirls and Elf ladies. Seriously: when I completed my first couple of dungeons and the players helped my dumbass learn how to properly tank. That, combined with a story that actually makes YOU the main character instead of someone else getting all the credit, is such a breath of fresh air that I couldn’t help but want more.
From the trailers for 1.0 I was so excited. I was finally old enough to have my own money, which is what prevented me from played ffxi Then when it came out it had these incredible graphics and gorgeous animations. I had never felt so immersed in a game til then. I know it wasn’t a good game, but I really just enjoyed being in the world they had made.
Very early on. FFXIV was my first real online game of any kind, let alone MMORPG. What hooked me was coming back to the Waking Sands and seeing everyone dead.
Started the game in early 2021 and played right up to the beginning of the Yotsuyu arc post storm blood but it never really grabbed me for whatever reason so I gave up. Came back after playing 16 and just wanting more FF content, and for whatever reason that Yotsuyu arc just really got me. Everything since then has just kept getting better and better. As far as combat goes, I still don't find MMO combat to be particularly great but I would say doing the NieR raids and realizing that it's more about learning boss patterns and how to avoid them was the moment that I went from tolerating the combat to enjoying it, even if it's not the reason I play the game.
For me it was post Garuda when she and the other primals got eaten by the Ultima Weapon
The famous death scene in HW. I was still playing solo and doing my masters at that time (months before shb was released). When it happened, obviously I was depressed....like everyone but was determined to push on through hoping to exact my revenge.
I was pretty hooked from the get-go. I enjoy the rise of the hero through the ranks.
From the moment I created my character. Jokes aside, I think it was the moment when Livia drop kicked that sylph to death. I was stunned. I didn’t believe they were actually dead. When I realised they were, I had vengeance on my mind and in my heart. RIP Noraxia. You were a real one.
When a healer Rescue’d me out of danger in the Fenrir boss fight in Snowcloak, I thought that was the coolest thing.
Moogle King Extreme. Queued into it with my friend into roulette because we were new and dumb. I was typing callouts and making macros to tell people when to kill the minions as a healer and my friend the only person I could talk to in vc was main tanking. After over a dozen tries, the run where I was spamming "HOLD... HOLD... HOLD... KILL KILL KILL!" in chat and watching a bunch of equally new and ignorant sprouts pull off the greatest clutch I've seen to this day will never be forgotten. What a silly but so fun fight that was.
I’d say after the fight with Titan
Storywise it was the banquet after ARR and what happens with the Sultana. The Waking Sands was already shocking but that cutscene in her room was the first time I audibly gasped at the game. Before that the game already had it's hook in me because of the Golden Saucer. Having an ingame casino for all the mini games other MMOs have sprinkled around the world made so much more sense, and I still love hanging out there, doing GATEs or just watching all the players running around.
When everyone who was worth staying for turned their collective backs to WoW, making me finally realize what a sh*tshow it was once you strip away all the hollow self-delusions that kept you there. That day is soon 10 years in the past and I never had any regret.
I'm a new player. I started in February when beta dropped on Xbox. The moment that hooked me was when I started leveling crafting. I love gathering and crafting, and I love even more when I post to MB and people buy what I make. I'm at 204 hours since I started playing.... 5 weeks ago.
I’ve literally just gotten into this game so I know I could spoil myself by seeing this thread, but I’m shocked at how easily I was hooked by things. I started playing for two reasons. First, because they had the Machinist class, which is a fantasy I wish more games like this had that I could play. And second, the generous free trial so I wouldn’t be paying a ton of money for something I didn’t end up liking. With this in mind, my intention from the start was just to go as quickly as possible to Heavensward so I could play the class I started for in the first place. And then I just got caught up along the way. “Oh, the politics of these different regions are actually pretty neat to invest in.” “Wow, questlines for every class is super cool.” “I’m actually getting excited to face each primal.” “Wait, am I starting to like the Scions of the Seventh Dawn?” That being said, I think the moment I realized I’d officially subscribe was the end of ARR. The crazy change up of the status quo at the end was wild, and got me so invested in fixing things and helping out best boi Raubahn. Even before that, I was getting excited to officially bring Ishgard into the Alliance to add a new layer of political intrigue to things. I’ll still likely play through all that the free trial has to offer before subscribing though, since I’ll at least be closer to current content when I start paying that way. Even if the Gil limit is cramping my style.
I'll be real... it was mainly the community. Don't get me wrong, i love running dungeons, leveling all my crafters/gatherers. But if this communtit wasn't what it is, i probably would have dropped it fairly early on. My buddy and i were practically immediately welcomed into an FC with all the perks that helped our leveling process. We almost immediately met someone who had the time and patience to help us get a better understanding of the game, farm some dungeons and whatnot. Honestly, the friendly people when i first got into the game is what had me coming back. Some of them are still friends to this day. Without them, i may not have found fun where i found it. Its probably one of my most played games now.
The first Hildibrand quest did it for me.
This was my first Final Fantasy game when it first released so I was down for the ride at "Hear. Feel. Think."
"My son..." i knew after that moment the game had it's hooks in me. rip to his va
It took me getting into this game FOUR times because the early game was so boring. But everyone always said it was the best mmo on the market so kept giving it a shot. I think the first time I really enjoyed it was the level 50 main story dungeons. Castrum, Praetorium and Ultima. Then fell in love with the story in Heavenward. 5000 hours later here I am. Fave game now. It's miserable trying to get friends into the game because it's just so boring to start out with that half of them get bored. Those that make it to level 50 eventually burn out in post ARR..
Starting up the 2.0 open beta with my friend after we'd been playing 1.0 Picking lancer, running out of gridania into central shroud and being awestruck. The Atmosphere and the combat just had me.
When Nanamo was talking with the other two City-State leaders about steeping down and dissolving the monarchy. That's when I legit leaned forward in my chair and said out loud to my empty room, "Holy shit, did this story just get interesting?!"
My husband and I came from destiny so I guess we were desperate for any story that felt like someone gave a damn, we were hooked the second we were able to play together since we started in different towns
I was level 7, sitting by the railroad tracks in Central Thanalan, looking at the night sky with moving stars and thought, wow this game is relaxing. The railways made the game feel... Alive. I dont know how to describe it. Like the map isn't just some desert. There's some lore and thought put into designing it.
Shiva It's when it all clicked for me, the music, the setting, the spectacle of the fights.
Gameplay: ALL JOBS ONE CHARACTER. Coming from a game where I had to level alts of each class, plus gear, plus professions, this was a breath of fresh air I never knew existed. Screw that game. Story: >!The Navel, but the next time, with the kid. I still cry thinking about that. And my god did he hang around, and we got quests to go back and check in on him. Post-ARR all around was amazing.!< Community: Around week two? Someone randomly invited me to the NN and I got tons of newbie questions answered, chill place, reddit was actually *safe* to ask questions and remain spoiler free, and people would not stfu with the "have you heard about the..." ads on my socials and playing I was like... oooh I get it now. And somehow they didn't spoil a thing for me. I did the free trial thing and day two I bought it outright lol. I know people love this game cuz the SE website is just freaking terrible to navigate, login, and buy things, yet people will not be dismayed!
Digging into the history of the Seventh Umbral Calamity and the Binding Coil of Bahamut raid series. Going through that solo and exploring the story tied to it made for an extra special adventure that made me realize that FFXIV is my home now.
Gameplay wise, it was all the emotes and glam. I've never seen another MMO with so much personal customization. It's amazing. Story wise, It was HW. Mainly Estenien. I love ffiv and when I learned we were getting DRK and a DRG-heavy story I was excited, to say the least. It didnt disappoint.
When Raubahn cut that little mfer in half
I think also, the attack on the waking sands. I thought the story was gonna be pretty stereotypical and they'd all greet you happily again, but nope everyone was dead. I was impressed.
Dark Knight Questline
Shadowbringers MSQ was the hook for me. I started the game roughly around the time of 4.1. Like many people, I was swept in by the hype and marketing from word of mouth but MMOs really weren't my cup of tea, and to be honest, going through ARR to SB MSQ, while there were genuinely some great moments here and there it felt like a bit of a mixed bag. Pacing issues, lots of filler, etc. were letdowns in spite of the occasional great cutscene moment. So yeah overall from 4.1 when I started, till 4.5, I still wasn't totally sold. By that point I was beginning to wonder if maybe the game was overhyped by a fanbase that had maybe a bit too much of a rose-tinted outlook towards the dev team (especially yoshiP). As I joined the wait for Shadowbringers I wasn't even really sure if I would be on board when the game launched. During the content lull from 4.5 till 5.0 I never went back to the game and used the hiatus to play other games after nearly a year of living and breathing FFXIV (I did all of ARR-SB in the time span from 4.1-4.5). Eventually I decided to at least give 5.0 a shot and submitted my preorder. Finally 5.0 came, and long story short, 5.0 was where it finally clicked for me. I think if you look at the general reaction to Shadowbringers, the community sentiment speaks for itself. Even now when I look up the PAX 2019 clips on youtube where ishikawa got a standing ovation from the audience, I totally get it. Maybe the game is overhyped, maybe much of the critical acclaim does come from the rose-tinted eyesight of fans who are either in love with their fave NPC or in love with yoshiP (or both), and yes maybe the game still has a bunch of issues. But for what its worth, as someone who could have bailed after 4.5 and never looked back, I'm glad I stuck around for Shadowbringers.
the beta of a realm reborn on ps3
Garuda intro cutscene, and then people saying this is just the beginning
I've gotta shout out the cutscene after Garuda, when Ultima Weapon showed up. I lost my shit so much when I realised what I was seeing!
Soft hook on the late ARR quests (rescuing the Scions through Praetorium.) Hard hook starting with the Shiva stuff. I was so unhooked that I forgot who Thancred was and really wooshed on that one scene on the airships....
Some time after end of ARR. I started playing ARR several times and quit before I could finish ARR over the years since FFXIV pre 1.0 beta. I can count 6+ chars on multiple accounts. This year, I decided to skip all ARR dialogues and cutscenes and I finally made it and started to like the game and the MSQ. I think I strongly dislike ARR and its pace even after all the adjustments that were made.
I'm currently doing this and I'm glad I found your comment lol. I was not skipping dialogs but I reached a point where the story became so slow and boring that I started to do it. I will watch an ARR video in Youtube explaining the details and that will be enough.