The date is December 7th, 2021. It’s a few weeks before Christmas but you’ve already gotten an early present: acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV’s (henceforth referred to as “FFXIV”) newest expansion, Endwalker. After a two week delay it’s finally in your hands, playable and complete, and you watch the splash screen with its soft vocals and simple display and understand that this is it, this is the end of a story arc that has been in the works for 10+ years, a culmination of fan hype and the hard work of a development team that has gained the respect of the entire gaming community. It isn’t necessarily just that expectations are high — they are — but it’s also that wherever FFXIV takes us we’ll gladly go.
Whether you’re brand new to the game, a some-odd-years veteran, or a legacy player of 1.0, you know that this expansion is shaping up to be a monumental statement for the game and franchise itself. Never before in FFXIV’s history have this many eyes been on the game, and seeing this outpouring of love reach a crescendo on the eve of an expansion release is both exhilarating and a bit worrisome.
Endwalker’s release isn’t just going to be a conclusion to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark storyline longtime players are familiar with — it’s going to be the one of the biggest gaming events of the year.
Hype has a habit of derailing projects and the expectations placed upon them. When games are cited as being the “next big thing”, they never quite live up to that anticipation. Sometimes they hit just right, but most of the time the forecasting that lifted them to that lofty position doesn’t hold up. The games are flawed. These flaws can be minor or massive, and either way they taint reception to the point that it seems as if every game with a high production pedigree (see: Cyberpunk 2077) or a heavily advertised release (see: Death Stranding) can’t possibly exist without the burden of premeditated affection (or resentment, for that matter).
Some of the more popular games of the recent years have been indie darlings, with little mainstream exposure outside of those who already knew of the studios producing them, and sometimes even then it was a leap of faith to believe they’d be worth the money. Hades, lauded in many circles as the best game of 2020, didn’t garner the attention that would eventually vault the The Last of Us Part II to being the biggest release of the year (much to the, er…disappointment of its fans) but it also wasn’t exposed to nearly as many expectations. It gained traction through word of mouth by those pretty deep in the gaming community, because although Supergiant has a pretty solid track record with Transistor and Bastion, it’s no publicly recognized powerhouse like Naughty Dog.
FFXIV’s current place in the cultural gaming landscape is an odd amalgamation of those two ideas, in that while it is being produced by a massive studio with multiple AAA titles currently in production, it has always been a bit of a niche and beloved entry sequestered away from more prominent studio headliners (looking at you Marvel’s Avengers). But FFXIV has become a fan favorite in the long-running series, garnering even the attention of Final Fantasy creator himself Hinonobu Sakaguchi. Aside from the Covid-19 stay-at-home lifestyle generating interest in gaming in general, a supposed drought in WoW’s (World of Warcraft) content offerings, and the increasing number of popular content creators playing, there’s one other factor that has contributed significantly to FFXIV’s recent popularity:
It’s an amazing fucking game.
I could wax poetic about it for days, and I have in previous articles, but FFXIV is exactly where expectations and player trust have struck a perfect balance. The hype for this game hasn’t been inflated by the developers as “the next big thing in gaming”. The hype is holistic. Endwalker is being sold as an end to the current story arc and the start of something new, an expansion with all of the typical post-release patches rolled into it. The difference between Endwalker’s release and most other big name releases is that fans aren’t hyping it up with undue expectations and the developers aren’t trying to sell us on something it’s not: we all know what this is. All we want is more of it.
The current influx of interest has done more than fortify my loyalty and give me that sweet, sweet vindication as a fan: it’s made Endwalker into a bonafide cultural phenomenon.
There’s a huge meme in the fandom that the marketing team doesn’t even need to try anymore because we, the players, will spread the good word of Hydaelyn for them for free. Many of us will gladly inform you that you should be playing critically acclaimed MMORPG FFXIV, which is free with unlimited playtime up until level 60 and includes the first expansion Heavensward. Just do it! C’mon, I promise, you’ll love it!
And while the move of making its starting kit free was, arguably, the best thing the game has ever done in terms of getting newcomers to sub, it was also the best *chef’s kiss* way for players to casually introduce friends to the game. But selling FFXIV to gamers at this point is like selling sand at a beach. Most people in the gaming industry know that FFXIV is a powerhouse. Even those who don’t plan on getting into MMORPG’s understand the sheer weight of its success story. From a disaster of a release to it being the most profitable game in the series history, FFXIV’s journey to the heights of streaming popularity has been long and well deserved. To see this achieved on the precipice of Endwalker’s release is deliciously satisfying.
Many fans already understand that WoW streamer Asmongold’s move over to FFXIV precipitated a lot of the landslide-esque shift of content creators switching to FFXIV. But myriad players are moving to play even outside of the WoW or MMORPG community. The massively popular VTuber collective Hololive are getting in on the action. Doja Cat has a character. I’m literally just waiting for Henry Cavill to nerd out about it during his Witcher season 2 tour. New streamers are bumping up its watched hours on Twitch by the day. This feels like a fire building to a crescendo, and there’s a fear that it might just as quickly burn out.
And, honestly — of course it will! People will lose interest in the momentum and realize that maybe it’s not the game for them, bandwagoners will quickly drop off post-expansion, and this current growth of popularity will eventually stagnate. But regardless of all of the external hype and new interest, this expansion is what longtime fans have been waiting for: the narrative payoff of the Ascian, Hydaelyn, and Zodiark plotlines that have been carefully woven to the forefront this past decade. Sure, FFXIV will run for a long time coming. The development team has made it very clear that Endwalker is not the end of the game but merely the end of its first act. We have plenty more of FFXIV’s world to explore.
The most recent delay has highlighted the importance of this expansion and how deeply its developers care about the “final act in the story of this star.” Endwalker has got final season vibes, my dudes. And we’re totally treating it like one.
Except this time — finally — everyone else is playing too.
