I’ve not played FFXIV in quite some time, in fact not since before the last expansion concluded. There are still parts of the late Endwalker MSQ I haven’t touched which is also why I’ve abstained from getting Dawntrail this summer. I kept waiting for my feelings to change on this but they have not – looking ahead, all I want to play is more Palworld, Once Human and other titles from the backlog. I imagine this will keep me rather busy the coming months and as long as SE aren’t fundamentally changing their endgame formula that’s that. I’m just rather done with collecting tokens and tomes for more gear.
Naturally, this brings me to the conundrum of my player house. I’ve written about the torturous process of obtaining housing in FFXIV and how it took me 8 years to acquire a small abode. So far, it never bothered me that I was still paying for the FFXIV sub, which is 13 bucks per month, because supporting the game made sense. However as I spend more and more time away from it, I feel less inclined to do so and Bilbo’s words are ringing ever louder in my ears: “I feel I need a holiday, a very long holiday, as I have told you before. Probably a permanent holiday: I don’t expect I shall return. In fact, I don’t mean to.”
Maybe it’s just time to wave the game goodbye and deal with the inevitable regret of losing my ingame real estate. It seems rather silly and trivial as I write this but many of us understand the time investment and attachment that goes with player housing. And yet, everything in the end must go.
I will be cancelling my long standing FFXIV subscription this weekend. In a way this feels like a farewell to classic MMORPGs as FFXIV was the last subscription title I was still paying for. I will have to dwell on this momentous fact some more, methinks…part of me feels compelled to light a candle or something!
For the time being, an old buddy of mine who’s sharing ownership of the house is still playing the expansion and will keep the plot active. This is good. No email notification about its impending demolition will arrive for some time. Sooner or later however, that day will arrive.
Yeah, I understand. This day will inevitably come in the lives of MMORPG players.
I remember when I left WoW, it was rather painful. This is nothing like it but yea, still feels like the end of an era just a little.
This happened to me a year (or 2?) so ago. i didn’t even finish Endwalker’s MSQ — got right to the end and…. just didn’t feel like doing the final dungeon and duty. Didn’t feel like logging in just to level my jobs via the roulettes, just… was done.
Despite that, I still paid the sub for another year-ish, becuz I always had the idea that I would pick it back up “soon.” But finally it was time, and I let it go. Dawntrail didn’t entice me back either, so… yeah.
Hah…seems like we took very similar turns with the game then! I really liked it for a long time, 10 years is quite a long stretch to keep playing something anyway. 🙂