Ending My Final Fantasy XIV Subscription To Start A New Life In Guild Wars 2
Since I had stopped playing Final Fantasy XIV a few years ago I would every once and a while try to rekindle the flame and pay for a month to see if I could get myself back into its addicting cycle of doing dungeons and raids. However each time would end with me playing for maybe 2 days and then getting distracted by something else. This doesn’t become my issue in and of itself with paying for a subscription, what made this a problem is my own perception of my free time. Each day I would look at the icon for Final Fantasy XIV and feel the immense guilt of choosing to play something else when I know that I am paying a monthly premium to play this one. When it was the only game that I played this was perfectly fine however, now that I have other games that I want to play it’s become harder and harder to justify the subscription, and my motivation to play a game shouldn’t be so frail as “I am paying for this”. Final Fantasy XIV was my favorite world to escape to for many years, but as more of my interests piled up I found that perhaps it was time to start over in another world.
I tried to boot up some free-to-play MMORPG’s that I had liked in the past, and some of them I had a decent time with but I never fully felt like any of these games would grasp my full attention for the long term. This is when I remembered that I had actually purchased Guild Wars 2 and its first 2 expansions a few years ago in probably some fit of retail impulse, hell I still don’t know why I buy the games I do. Guild Wars 2 does not have a subscription service, on one hand this was great for me since I consider myself to play these games casually and take my time with things, on the other hand I had to think what if this lack of premium was mirrored into the games quality. I’m happy to say that upon finishing my first few hours with the game I found nothing indicating that this game may be lacking in quality. But even as I tried my hardest to keep these comparisons to Final Fantasy to a minimum while playing, as a seasoned Final Fantasy XIV player I couldn’t help but noticed key differences.
What stuck out to me first is the art styles of both games. I’ve heard people say in argument videos that one is better than the other, I disagree though, I think that while Final Fantasy has put in an amazing work to create its vivid anime fantasy setting with sharp details it lacks the fairy tale whimsy that Guild Wars 2’s hand painted aesthetic offers. And while Guild Wars 2 has this grand fantasy feel to it you can definitely tell that there are some rough edges to character models and larger environments. I’m fortunate enough to be able to play these games each in their highest graphical settings but I am also aware that Guild Wars 2 can look like an abstract painting if the settings are set low enough while Final Fantasy still maintains much of its detail on lower settings. It’s pointless to compare things like this but personally I’m still in awe at the amount of fantastical wonder that comes from the aesthetic of Guild Wars 2 and I think that should count for something because it’s one of the main reason’s I keep returning each day to play this game.
One of the biggest changes that I had noticed between these two games are the hub cities. In Final Fantasy XIV the cities in each starting location felt large because there were players swarming them, when I started on my Final Fantasy server years ago it felt small and quaint because the server was still growing. Regardless, the players with their wide range of emotes and errands to run in the cities made the city feel alive in a very natural and genuine way. When I first made it to the human city of Divinity’s Reach in Guild Wars 2 and only saw a handful of players I was a little worried. But to my surprise the city with its high walled fairy tale towers and twisted cottages felt no less than existing in a theme park or an actual storybook borough. The NPC walked about and interacted with each other to have fully voiced conversations that were funny or awkward and added so much life to an otherwise player devoid city. I keep wanting to use the term fairy tale to describe everything about Guild Wars 2 but that is exactly what it is and I love it. It is a wonder how the developers could make a place so lively on its own, so that even if you only see a few players run along the streets there is still so much to experience by yourself.
Something that I actually enjoyed about Guild Wars 2 more is the way that side quests combine with the world building. When you are questing in Guild Wars 2, you are often given places to go and an activity attached to that area rather than a quest giving NPC, this detaches you from the characters and gives you more context about the area. Note that Final Fantasy did this as well however usually with more personal character stories. In Guild Wars 2 you are thrust out with a vague idea that you need to help others and that’s generally what it feels like but I feel much better introduced to Tyria after only a short time than I did after 50 hours playing Final Fantasy. In Guild Wars 2’s human introduction you are the survivor of a deadly Centaur attack, and as you help the citizens of Queensdale you see the ripples of this conflict from the farmers who have lost family members in the very battle you are the survivor of, to the looting skitts pilfering and profiting from the battlefield. Now that your actions are tied to the area, you start to see and meet these people that have brief and interesting narratives and the games doesn’t try to connect you with these NPC, these short one sentence blurbs often just attempt to add more context to the world building which in my experience connected me to the land of Tyria without weighing down the exploration experience. This differs with my experience in Final Fantasy, where you can often get lost in the main narrative that wants you to save the peoples of Eorzea but often feels as though its too much work to explore or there is bloated content that needs to be experienced to immerse yourself in each area. For example, in Final Fantasy I could walk into a new area and see tons of quest markers on every NPC but then come to learn which ones are important and just live with the fact that while I know all of these villagers have stories to tell there is no way I have the time or energy to read through them and immerse myself in the location whether I wanted to or not, which is a shame because the writing in Final Fantasy is fantastic and I wish that I didn’t feel like I would feel overwhelmed if I tried to do all of it. This gripe feels refreshingly addressed when I play Guild Wars 2 where as soon as I step foot in an area I am a part of its story and whether I talk to the quest NPC to gain context or not, their conflict is visible and a side quest can easily rope you in. For example if a farm has monsters on it you could most likely gather the situation that they are having, and for players that want to know more, they are invited to talk to the nearby named NPC to gain some more story bits about what’s going on in this area.
I still treasure the times I had in Final Fantasy mostly because it was so long and I met so many good people there. But it’s refreshing that I can still enjoy another game when I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to find another MMORPG that I am able to find new things to love about. If even just for myself I hope I find some more things to write about this game because I love pulling apart its interesting approach to storytelling. I do remember that some of the ex-writers got in trouble for a social media fight, one of them stating that it was impossible to write good story around a player character in an MMORPG (or CRPG) which I also want to tackle at some point through their writings so far. Not necessarily about the ethics of firing employees based on what they say on their private social media but about character writing in video games and how to make a customized character interesting. By playing more I also want to see what can be gained by switching to a more premium experience like Final Fantasy XIV or if Guild Wars 2 can offer an experience that feels premium while only charging a one time entry fee. And look, without the subscription fee I won’t even have to write off anything as a work expense on Medium if I write about it.
