We spoke to members of the Final Fantasy 14 community about what the future holds for the MMO.
On January 16, Final Fantasy 14 dropped its last major patch of this expansion cycle. It brought in shiny new weapons, story quests, and an entirely fresh boss battle, all of which are liable to amuse players for a few weeks or so.
However, following this major patch comes the long march towards the game’s next expansion, Dawntrail, which is currently slated for a summer release. Those in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) space call these waiting periods ‘content droughts’, in which players have to make do with existing activites without the promise of anything new immediately on the horizon.
Husky by the Geek, a YouTube musician renowned for his covers of Final Fantasy 14 themes, stated: “It’s normal for MMOs to have this problem; people come back. Even [director and producer] Naoki Yoshida has been saying since [the game’s relaunch in 2014] that it’s OK to take a break and play other games.”
In contrast to Husky by the Geek, Josephyr, a variety streamer who plays Final Fantasy 14 regularly, was keen to stress that these periods can be an issue for MMO communities. “I still adore the game [but] it just feels like there’s nothing to look forward to.
“There’s a real market that’s missing in a lot of [MMORPGs] nowadays, where you have the extremes of people who are there for the story first and foremost […] and the people that are there for the ultimate level content and don’t really care about anything else.” According to Joe, this leaves a “big gap in the middle” which can lead to the neglect of an “important facet of the player base.”
This, in turn, produces discontent with certain parts of the playerbase. Prominent Final Fantasy 14 streamer and Twitch Ambassador ReadySetBen talks about “patch players” — those who flock to the MMORPG when new content drops only to “disappear” once “they got everything they needed.” These sorts of players give the game a much-needed injection of engagement, and six months without them looks to be a hard pill for the Final Fantasy 14 community to swallow. Middle management
But while content droughts are standard fare in the MMORPG world, especially in the run-up to a new expansion, there are specific weaknesses in Final Fantasy 14’s latest updates, which make the looming dry spell look tougher than usual.
