-Mutsukki-
Member
So, I've been playing a lot of FFXIV over the past months and loving it a lot! So naturally I got curious about 1.x and how it played, but most importantly, how it came to an end. To my surprise, seeing as I wasn't following the game at all before it got rebooted, there was a whole event around the servers ending that tied to the story. But it wasn't just any event, it was the literal end of that world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEg8kXmifo
This videos give me all sorts of chills. The mood, the same sky and ominous music being present everywhere you go, even inside cities. FFXIV 1.x may have done a lot of wrong, but it reached it's peak at the very end of it's life. People got invited to join the server as it was closing down, but virtually nobody knew what was going to happen. Would the moon fall? Would we be able to stop it? Would the Empire be defeated?
Now, a lot of people know that "End of an Era" video, but I was surprised to find out that it actually played in-game to everyone logged in. I'm not sure how I would even react to that if I was a player at that time. The whole video is basically a perfect way to end it. There's a part on the video where the main character, who is supposed to represent the players, makes an expression that's just hard to put into words:
It's like, utter hopelessness, which translates a lot to the people who were actually playing the game. Their game was ending to make a path for something else, something they knew nothing about. There's only one instance in the whole video where there's a light glimmer of hope, just so it can be shattered away.
All of this just so players could see their game go out. They literally experienced the end of the world in a video game. Not a story about the end of the world (which a lot of games have), but the actual thing itself. And that's something truly amazing, something that I feel that will be forever unique to video games as a medium. I know that Eorzea wasn't truly destroyed in the end, but there was a huge gap of almost a year where nobody knew what was going to happen.
Were there ever other games that did something like this? I'd love to have other examples of this! And I'd love to read from actual 1.x players too, if they feel like what I wrote is relatable to how they felt when it all happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEg8kXmifo
This videos give me all sorts of chills. The mood, the same sky and ominous music being present everywhere you go, even inside cities. FFXIV 1.x may have done a lot of wrong, but it reached it's peak at the very end of it's life. People got invited to join the server as it was closing down, but virtually nobody knew what was going to happen. Would the moon fall? Would we be able to stop it? Would the Empire be defeated?
Now, a lot of people know that "End of an Era" video, but I was surprised to find out that it actually played in-game to everyone logged in. I'm not sure how I would even react to that if I was a player at that time. The whole video is basically a perfect way to end it. There's a part on the video where the main character, who is supposed to represent the players, makes an expression that's just hard to put into words:
It's like, utter hopelessness, which translates a lot to the people who were actually playing the game. Their game was ending to make a path for something else, something they knew nothing about. There's only one instance in the whole video where there's a light glimmer of hope, just so it can be shattered away.
All of this just so players could see their game go out. They literally experienced the end of the world in a video game. Not a story about the end of the world (which a lot of games have), but the actual thing itself. And that's something truly amazing, something that I feel that will be forever unique to video games as a medium. I know that Eorzea wasn't truly destroyed in the end, but there was a huge gap of almost a year where nobody knew what was going to happen.
Were there ever other games that did something like this? I'd love to have other examples of this! And I'd love to read from actual 1.x players too, if they feel like what I wrote is relatable to how they felt when it all happened.
