Final Fantasy XIV



Final Fantasy XIV is the fourteenth game in the groin-grabbingly popular Final Fantasy series. It is an MMORPG, similar to Final Fantasy XI, and timed exclusively to the PC. There is both a standard and a Collector's Edition, whose buyers were able to start the game 8 days early, get one month of free service, two exclusive items, a themed journal, and some other bells and whistles.

The game is set in a region called Eorzea, on the planet Hydaelyn. Eorzea is a bit more "high-tech" than Vana'diel was, with airships akin to Final Fantasy XII, a wider arrays of guns, and with an actual system of roads. Eorzea itself is a sort of frontier, being implicitly a great deal less developed and 'tamed' than surrounding Aldenard, although the various cities have existed for at least centuries.

Before the start of the game, the Steampunk Garlean Empire had set to use their overwhelming military force to conquer Eorzea, starting by razing the city-state of Ala Mihgo to the ground. The remaining four city-states- Limsa Lominsa, Ul'dah, Gridania and Ishgard- militarized to meet this threat, but before another shot was fired the Garleans mysteriously halted their advance, leaving the city-states with a large armed force and nothing to fight against. They banded together in an uneasy peace, forming the Guildleves System to employ these new mercenaries and investigate the secrets behind the Empire's sudden invasion and retreat.

Square Enix recently apologized for the state of the game, and replaced several key members of the development team. The new development team has greatly overhauled the game, addressing many of its original flaws, although the title isn't quite ready for primetime just yet. Said "primetime" will be coming in the form of version 2.0, which will reportedly bring about sweeping changes to the way the game works, the game and server engines, and the the land of Eorzea itself--comparisons to Cataclysm have been made even by the devs themselves.

A Play Station 3 version, originally scheduled for a March 2011 release and initially put on indefinite hold, entered beta testing in November and has been released alongside the version 2.0 client in August 2013. The initial delay in releases between systems led to the PC release being somewhat jokingly (or not) referred to as a beta for the Play Station 3 release. An Xbox 360 version was also in development, but has been "paused" according to Word of God due to some issues with Xbox Live and Microsoft. A Play Station Vita version may be considered in the future, as well as smart phone applications that could be used to access the player's inventory, for example.

There is now a character sheet for this page in the works.

"Lalafell Female: Does your world want for a wealth of wordplay and wit? An abundance of alliteration, assonance aplenty and a soupcon of sibilance to seal the deal? Well, you were warned."
 * Added Alliterative Appeal: Like all little liars, Lalafell love to litter letters like this:

""The netmaster's probably up in his office polishing the mast just thinking about her.""
 * Also applied liberally to otherwise nameless filler NPCs (Glowing Goodwife, Mocking Miner, Positively Pungent Pirate, etc.)
 * Alien Sky: Hydaelyn has an unusually bright starfield and two moons, although the second is very small and difficult to see at certain times of night and moonphases. A less common instance of a non-in-your-face Alien Sky.
 * Dalamud (the smaller moon) has been growing incrementally larger - and redder of late, as part of a recent storyline. Hopefully it'll return to normal once the Seventh Umbral Era is done.
 * That would be because
 * An Adventurer Is You: It's what every character is recognized as by the NPCs.
 * Interestingly, they don't think much of you for it. In Eorzea, 'Adventurer' seems to be akin in laymen's eyes to 'dirty, violent, feckless, job-stealing vagrant'.
 * Anti Poop Socking: There are a number of features that attempt to make the game more 'casual friendly' and reduce the ability of 'hardcore' players to outpace those playing more casually or with less time to play. These include:
 * Points can be spent, upon initiating a quest, to increase Discipline experience income until the objectives are complete. Burns out if used at every possible opportunity over more than a couple of days and has to be allowed to regenerate. This was replaced in patch 1.21 with an inn, where you get an experience boost from resting in a private room.
 * Allows free and instantaneous teleportation to any Aetherite a player has previously visited, and any Aetherial Node from its associated Aetherite. Again, burns out if used repeatedly, which leaves the option of either paying another player to teleport you in their party or walking, or using one of the alternative methods of transport such as riding a chocobo or an airship. Anima can now be manually recharged by turning in contributions to Hamlet Defense.
 * The most significant and controversial system, which essentially reduced your intake of experience/skill points in each class based on progression speed, up to a weekly cap. Regardless of the original intention of the developers to keep hardcore and casual players on an even keel, this system was very unpopular and taken out entirely in patch 1.18.
 * Back Stab: Attacking monsters from behind gives you various bonuses such as an increased critical hit chance.
 * Badass: Gaius van Baelsar. His first appearance involves him fighting  all at the same time. And he doesn't even get hit once, while his enemies have to protect each other and pretty much do their best to avoid turning the battle into a Curb Stomp Battle.
 * Badass Adorable: The weapons dropped by Good King Moggle Mog XII have names such as "Murderous Mogfists" or "Malevolent Mogwand", and are some of the best in the game. They also make a "kupo" sound whenever drawn, and look like this.
 * Bare-Fisted Monk: Completely averted. The pugilist class fights with their fists, but needs claws or cesti to do so. It's not possible to fight barehanded, you have to equip a weapon or tool in your main hand, as that's how your class is defined. Can still sheathe your weapon freely, however.
 * Barrier Warrior: A popular set-up for tanks in-game is to make use of Thaumaturge's Punishing Barbs and Stygian Spikes with Conjurer's Shock Spikes, which effectively deals equal damage as taken, restores MP for each hit taken, as well as deal lightning damage and stun the enemy respectively.
 * Battle Theme Music: Where to even begin. There are six regular battle themes, one for each major area and one for dungeons. Then, there are at least three different boss battle themes, four different guildleve themes and the behest theme, not to mention the new instanced dungeon theme, shopshae theme, beast tribe strongold theme, a remix of the moogle theme used against the moogle primal and "Primal Judgement", used as theme for the other Primal Battles.
 * Beach Episode: Early August will be seeing the implementation of swimsuits via summer festival event. This news was announced with screenshots of female Hyur and Miqo'te, and a Roegadyn, sporting the new outfits on the beach.
 * Bishounen: Every Elezen and a good number of Hyur. Of course you can play as one, too.
 * Call a Smeerp a Rabbit - In addition various monster examples, not just the Hyur, but the Elezen, Miqo'te, Rogaedyn and Lalafell, are called "human" in the game's earlier publicity. However, since launch, the convention seems to have become 'the spoken' or 'sentients' instead.
 * Catgirl: The Miqo'te race. Think Mithra from Final Fantasy XI, minus the characteristic noses (though they can be added during character creation), with more slender ears and tail variation, and a different culture.
 * Cat Boys will be added in a future patch due to fan outcry for Male Miqo'te and Female Highlanders and Roegadyn. Concept art for all of these and actual models for the male Miqo'te can be found on the offical forum.
 * Cherry Blossoms: Appeared around the cities as part of the 'Little Ladies' Day' celebrations, presumably playing off the upcoming Girl's Day festivities in Japan.
 * Class and Level System: Of the Final Fantasy Tactics "one character can play whatever class they want at any time" variety, with aspects of a Point Build system. This has been changed in a patch to one where each of the classes is a separate level and the global "physical level" is abolished.
 * Comm Links: Linkpearls are used just like in FFXI, you also stay in contact with NPC organisations with whom your character is signed linkpearls ones given you by their representatives.
 * Counter Attack: A staple of the pugilist class.
 * Cut and Paste Environments: Currently, the game has enormous expanses of land that re-use some assets to fill out the space--while all MMOs do this to some extent, much ado had been made about this game's usage, which sometimes recycled entire topographical features. The dev team has listened, and come version 2.0, all zones will be split into 3-4 smaller zones with more variety and landmarks.
 * Cute Little Fangs: A trait of the Keepers of the Moon Miqo'te.
 * Cutscene: Surprising for an MMO, this game has a lot of these. This is nothing new to players of FFXI, however, aside from the presence of voice acting in some high quality cutscenes.
 * Dueling Games: The game was supposedly rushed out to beat a World of Warcraft expansion to market. This, combined with this game's extremely critical reviews resulted in this approach not turning out well for Square Enix.
 * The Empire: The Garlean Empire is a somewhat more realistic version of the trope than the usual, as it only managed to conquer one of the other nations before the remaining three banded together to stop the invasion more or less before it began. They have started to invade again with the latest patch, though, although it is implied that they have more justifiable reasons for doing so this time (preventing the end of the world).
 * Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: The "Raptors" are back.
 * Everything's Better with Penguins: So are Apkallus.
 * Executive Meddling: Common consensus is that somewhere along the line, there's been some. The arguments are over just where, ranging from the theory that FF XIV was rushed out to beat a certain popular MMO's next expansion, to claims the developer replacements were an unnecessary move to give executives a scapegoat (or a publicity stunt).
 * Expy: The playable races are, for the most part, visually very similar to those of FFXI, the same goes for a few monsters and beastmen. Some of the architecture looks similar as well: Gridania looks similar to Windurst in some ways, and Ul'dah is basically Aht Urhgan in the desert.
 * Fantastic Racism: Not as rife as in other fantasy settings that deploy this trope - Eorzea seems to be a very tolerant place indeed, being the racial and cultural melting pot that it is. This is somewhat less so for other places in Hydaelyn, however. The Garlean Empire, for instance, sees all races who have anything to do with the Primals as being in need of purging. This generally just means the Beast Tribes. However, as those gifted with the Echo are in some way connected with the Primals, the Empire seemingly lumps all Walkers of the Path (and thus, the player characters) in with the Beast Tribes on the purge schedule.
 * Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Yda.
 * Five Races: Each analogous in appearance to XI's races, and each with two clans:
 * Hyur, the closest to normal human beings, and a direct analogue to the Hume race. They are split between:
 * Midlanders, standard human-types;
 * Highlanders, viking-types, only the males of which go adventuring (and are not immortal).
 * Elezen, the requisite pointy-eared race. They are split between:
 * Wildwood, wood elves who live in the forest;
 * Duskwight, dark elves who live in caves.
 * Lalafell, a "thief race" of halflings. They are split between:
 * Plainsfolk, those who live on the plains;
 * Dunesfolk, those who live in the desert.
 * Miqo'te, a feline race, of whom only females ever venture into civilised areas. They are split between:
 * Seekers of the Sun, the diurnal people;
 * Keepers of the Moon, the nocturnal ones.
 * Roegadyn, a race of giants, of whom only males are presently seen. They are split between:
 * Hellsguard, volcanic land-faring men;
 * Seawolves, sea-faring men.
 * Foreign Cuss Word: The city-state of Gridania, at least, is apparently in love with British expletives, firing liberal ammounts of words such as shite, arse, bollocks..
 * Free to Play: After giving away free month after free month, Square decided to replace the development team leaders, and do away with the monthly charges until they could 'provide a plan that outlines a level of enjoyment that will satisfy both us and our customers'. In an interview, the new director Naoki Yoshida also said 'we’ll have reached that point once we've developed a system where we listen to the voices of the players and then communicate back what we are going to do, how we are going to do it, and a deadline for when it will be done.' This is evidently now the case given the publication of a recent development roadmap for a massive rebuild including a complete engine and server architecture replacement, and the announcement of resumption of a subscription fees, which started at Jan 6th, 2012.
 * Gameplay and Story Integration: During certain cutscenes, NPCs (and the player character) will openly use Aetheryte teleportation.
 * Pretty much everything related to the seventh umbral era is reflected in game and commented by NPCs, from weather changes to the increase of monsters' size to the changes in Dalamud.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Well, not so much getting it past it, but openly dancing in front of the radar with it. The first NPC you can talk to in Ul'dah is obviously a prostitute and several of the dancers in the same city's local pub make it very clear that dancing is not all they make money with. If your character is female, the (female Lalafell) master of the adventurer's guild will tell you she enjoys measuring some manhoods from time to time.

"Adventurer: "How dare that hells-damned 'Cuda give the final Seal Rock position to Merodaulyn when he'd promised it to me! And after the things he made me do last night!""
 * And another one from Limsa Lominsa:

"Emerick: An 'undred pardons milady! I ain't got no treasure but the jewels 'n' scepter me mum gave me - an' I'll 'appily share 'em with ya if ya fancy a go!"
 * And another good'n, from one of the main storylines:

"Y'shtola: "Gods Forfend.""
 * Global Currency Exception: At guild shops, where items must be purchased with "guild marks" instead.
 * Good Guy Bar: The first place you visit after arriving in your city of choice. Also where you can take guildleve quests.
 * Guide Dang It: Every bit as much as its predecessor.
 * Healing Factor: Your health and mana regenerate slowly over time. Significantly faster while your weapon is sheathed, and yet faster when sitting down.
 * Hello, Insert Name Here: Natural, this being an MMORPG.
 * Hide Your Children: Averted. No explicit violence is done upon children, but some of the storyline moments feature child characters very prominently (Gridania's main story especially), young characters find themselves in serious danger more than once, and the game does not shy from exploring the consequences.
 * Holiday Mode: The Starlight Celebration event.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: Wherein your off-hand equipment is stored.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: The City-State of Ishgard has been at war with giant man-eating dragons for 200 years.
 * Internet Counterattack : The response to the fatigue system was not very warm to say the least. There may have been aggravating circumstances, but even the developers have copped to it being a bad idea to begin with.
 * The lack of an Auction House (and by extension the Market Wards) is getting this treatment as well. When the head of the largest community site for your game goes on a rant about the entire economic system, you have a problem.
 * And then there's the patched in "player history" system, which best described as an ad hoc achievement system and is publicly viewable. While the addition itself works fine, it also promptly exposed a number of stories made by Japanese "official players" playing the game as complete fabrications.
 * Journey to the Center of the Mind: The Echo is an ability granted to those few who witnessed a strange, meteor shower-like event in the sky, which occurred at the beginning of the game's main storyline. Those possessed of the Echo have the ability to touch people's souls, and experience their memories as if they had been present at the time. This is, of course, not time travel, but the actions of a person with the gift inside an echo'd memory will permanently alter the memories of the person the Echo is used on.
 * Those capable of detecting the Echo's use (often by having the gift themselves) will occasionally recognise an unfamiliar person in their memories and realise what's going on. Those with this ability who haven't given their permission - such as Raya-o-Senna - of course consider this very, very rude.
 * The game is also a little sneaky about its use. Prior to the Echo being explained when the player character is invited to join the Path of the Twelve, the Echo receives very little suggestion. As its use is preceded only by a soft 'whoosh' noise and a very subtle screen effect, often with no change in location whatsoever, it is only in retrospect that many players will realise certain events early in the story were actually their experiencing NPCs' memories.
 * Level Grinding: An attempt by Square Enix to kill this trope has lead to the "fatigue system", see Broken Base and Anti Poop Socking above.
 * Little People: Lalafell, the spiritual successors of the Tarutaru.
 * Lost in Translation: One that caused some major xenophobic Epileptic Trees, the Japanese fanbase was "pleasantly" surprised to discover that Chocobos were renamed to the Kanji for "Horse-bird/馬鳥" by the development team. This, combined with the announcement of a Chinese release and the hiring of a Chinese localization team to translate it after the game was released, led to the natural assumption by some that the entire development of the game was outsourced to China. This is despite the FFXI development team basically transferring entirely to this game. Then, when the fanbase screamed bloody murder about this, they were renamed "Chocopos". Er, whoops. Thankfully, since the new producer took over, his first priority has been to keep players of all regions informed and listen to their suggestions.
 * The Lost Woods: Gridania is in the middle of one.
 * Lying Creator: Hiromichi Tanaka, reigning champion from his time as producer of Final Fantasy XI, returns to (among other things) cause a large part of the controversy surrounding the Anti Poop Socking system by lying about it being in the game after it was already discovered and hours before it was announced. There's also the case of Guildleves being the main system of gathering Experience Points in the game, but as that comment was made much earlier in development it may have just been an honest change in development priorities.
 * Meat Shield: Gladiators use heavy armor and shields, pugilists have a defensive stance. Incidentally, the more shield-based actions are actually a sub-class named Sentinel. This levels up separately from Gladiator despite the obvious pairing, as shields can also be used by the magic-wielding classes.
 * Mismatched Eyes: Available to Miqo'te and Lalafell during character creation.
 * Mythology Gag: Other than the obvious fact that the game's races are based on Final Fantasy XI's, the Garlean Legatus look dangerously similar to Judges. And they use Gunblades and variants such as a Gunhalberd.
 * Servers are named after towns and kingdoms from previous FF games, such as Figaro, Wutai or Besaid. In previous beta phases, they were named after famous villains and bosses in the series.
 * The battle theme used on the battle against King Moggle Mog XII? The moogle theme. His strongest attack? Crystalline Flare.
 * One of the major changes planned for version 2.0 (see Nothing Is the Same Anymore) is a total revamp of the game map, which will be explained in game by a major catastrophe that will bring the "Seventh Umbral Era". This major catastrophe is heavily hinted to be Meteor.
 * One of the planned mounts available for players is the Magitek Armor.
 * Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Word of God states that this will happen in the storyline to increase the sense of danger and excitement in the world. From a meta perspective, this is also happening to the game, which is and will continue to undergo massive changes to mechanics and gameplay to try and fix the numerous issues it had at launch.
 * Not Screened for Critics: Reviewers were asked not to review the game for about a month after release so that Square Enix could fix some issues they should have fixed in beta.
 * Obvious Beta: Final Fantasy XIV was released lacking so many features, and with so many known serious game design problems, that it was more of an obvious alpha. Unusually, the developers actually apologized for it and canceled subscription fees until it is up to snuff—essentially, putting it right back into beta!
 * Oh Crap: Invoked by Y'shtola, when Leviathan shows up during the boat sequence.

""What the kupo do you think you're doing?!""
 * Omniglot: Those possessed of the Echo, as a consequence of their ability to touch the souls of others.
 * One-Gender Race: Subverted. There are plenty of male Miqo'te, but nearly all of them live in solitude. Even the females rarely end up living in cities. As for female Roegadyn, they exist; one important NPC is a female Roegadyn. Their actual availability to the players is scheduled for 'by the Play Station 3 version'.
 * Both of them apparently have character models already prepared that are just waiting to be used, and the developers have recently stated that they hope to have them implemented at least by the release of the Play Station 3 version.
 * The Highlander Hyur also have only male adventurers, but females are planned to be playable as well.
 * One Size Fits All: Bar a very few items.
 * Only One Name: Averted. Unusually, especially for an MMORPG, player characters have both fore and surnames. This makes Final Fantasy XIV one of the few MMO's wherein players can share a name besides Phantasy Star Online/Universe, although in those games, name-sharing was achieved by identifying characters by database ID rather than an input name.
 * Our Elves Are Better: Somewhat averted. After FFXI's proud race of knights and kings, the wood elves and dark elves seen in FFXIV seem a bit generic.
 * Pick Up Group: One of Square-Enix's goals with FFXIV is to make these more probable and successful, thanks to the new questing system. The developers, however, have acknowledged complaints about the somewhat impenetrable LFP system, and plan to modify it so that it is easier to use.
 * Power Crystal: Big ones called Aetheryte recover your HP and MP and let you start guildleve quests, small ones are elemental and used for crafting.
 * The Power of Love: According to Brother E-Sumi, this is the reason.
 * Power-Up Food: Returning from Final Fantasy XI.
 * Prestige Class: Patch 1.20 will add a "Job System" on top of the already implemented Disciplines. Jobs are more speciated variants of the game's base classes that can equip less skills at once, but have stronger equipment and personal abilities to compensate.
 * Punctuation Shaker: Miqo'te. Nearly every person of this race also has an apostrophe in their name, supposedly something to do with easy address while hunting - except for the players, who aren't allowed them.
 * Rage Quit: Perhaps the most dramatic Rage Quit in the history of video gaming, a shareholder who owned 1% of Square-Enix sold his entire stock portfolio for $26M, stating, "First thing in the morning tomorrow, I intend to instruct those who manage my precious Square Enix stock to arrange to sell all of it. To Square, thank you for the enjoyment of your products up until now, with the exception of this last one. Goodbye." The sale caused a dive in Square-Enix stock, though share prices recovered inside the day.
 * Real Money Trade: The highly controversial lack of an Auction House was supposedly to combat the RMTs that plagued FFXI, but as some on forums put it, it threw the baby out with the bath water. Note that RMTs are still in the game even without the Auction House.
 * Of note, however, the Special Task Force Unit that went to town on the RMTers back in FFXI (albeit a bit late) are back in force. While, indeed, the abusers remain present, the STF seem to have been doing a good job given the almost non-present spam and other signs of RMT activity. .. And the fact that the RMT sites are trying to flog gil at prices only a complete idiot would find so much as tempting.
 * Also, in a testament to someone's stupidity, the RMT crowd were actually attempting to sell gil made during the open beta. You know, after Square-Enix had stated categorically that characters and their possessions would not be carried over to the retail version of the game.
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter: Moogles are back, Spriggans, little black fuzzy things, might qualify as well.
 * Lalafell probably count too, even though they're not technically critters.
 * Forget all of the above, the lambs around La Noscea are the most adorable little buggers you'll ever violently slaughter.
 * Scenery Porn: And how. Note that the Square Enix approved desktop for the game in Japan is over 300,000 yen, which converts to over 3,000 dollars, and you need every bit of that rig to see the game in maximum detail. Your eyes will thank you.
 * Of course, the game is still playable on a GeForce 8600 GS despite the apparent minimum requirement of a 9000 series (not that it looks all too great).
 * Scenery Gorn: Should you survive a run to Mor Dhona, you'll be greeted by.
 * Schizo-Tech: Swords, lances, axes, guns, cannons, airships, robots, walkers...
 * Shout-Out: In Ul'dah at "The Platinum Mirage", a Mammet will tell your fortune. After analyzing you, he can tell you "The answer...is 42."
 * There's the Mining Leve "Get to the Copper".
 * In a city to the West of Limsa, there's a Roegadyn named "Immodest Mouse".
 * In the Twelveswood surrounding Gridania, there is a type of Galago (monkey-creatures) called "Curious Galago".
 * Several sidequest names qualify, from "Call of Booty" to "Gore a Lizard, Hurry".
 * Solid Gold Poop: At the end of the Halloween event, it was revealed that the cookies given by the Imps were actually Chocobo dung. the reporter that discovered they weren't very happy.
 * Status Buff: Every class has some kind of way to increase their power in a fight.
 * Sticks to the Back
 * Stop Helping Me!: A recently added, non-optional tutorial is very much a case of this. The tutorial locks out all functions that haven't been introduced yet, however obvious, important, or innocuous. Further, it interrupts what was originally smooth narrative, and when it was first introduced, the locked targeting mode function defaulting to 'Friendly' meant that the combat section of the tutorial was actually impossible to complete with a gamepad.
 * Stripperiffic: Subligars are already confirmed to return. In addition, some female versions of armor are a bit skimpier, and for some reason the base Elezen male outfit is some kind of inverted shirt--sleeves, but nothing on the torso whatsoever. The developers have also responded to requests for more sexy, or at least better gender defined, gear as requested by fans.
 * Talk Like a Pirate: Everyone in Limsa Lominsa, obviously.
 * Unusual Euphemism


 * Weapon of Choice: The weapon you use defines your current class. Equip a different weapon, and your Discipline changes. Also realistic is that you can effectively equip any weapon or piece of armor in the game at any Discipline Rank. Logically there is nothing stopping you from equipping that Infinity+1 Sword... except that considering you are a novice Gladiator. Thusly your "lack of skill" translates mechanics-wise as any degree of penalties to the weapon's effectiveness, meaning you're not even going to get Infinity-1 Sword-level performance. Incidentally, newer gear is requiring a certain rank and class to equip it, which may not be as realistic but makes balancing a lot easier on the developers.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: If the various dialogues and hints are anything to go by, many of the actions were done in order to prevent the end of the world and not out of malicious intent. Then again, they probably could do that without brainwashing people and conquering entire City-States.
 * White-Haired Pretty Boy: Cid, somewhat unusually for the series, although maybe not considering Cid Raines.
 * Word of God: Like XI, this game is very low on the details, such as what your Name Day and Guardians are for. To get concrete info to the public, the community site has Q&A topics called Ask The Devs. Since the dev team shakeup, however, there's been much more open lines of communication, although since so much is changing there are often few specifics as to when changes will be coming.
 * Zerg Rush: The maximum party size was initially 15. There are also plans for group vs group battles, of which 'Behests' have already been implemented. However, as of patch 1.17, the maximum party size has been reduced to 8 for exactly this reason; it was felt that Zerg Rush tactics took the strategy, and to a lesser extent, the fun, out of such large encounters.