First posted on January 6th 2026

So… the last update on this website was almost 2 years ago, just a little before the release of Dawntrail. I’ve been working on it on and off, half because I was being distracted by Life and my other website ideas, half because I’ve been going on back and forth between several steps of grief regarding the state of FFXIV. Actually, back before the release of 7.2 in early 2025 I had already begun writing a very long rant and I was very close to publishing it, but then when I came back to it weeks later I realized it was maybe a little too… unhinged. Like I told my friend the other day, it is very difficult to write about this issue without giving the impression that I’ve gone completely insane. But these thoughts still linger in the back of my mind, and I want to be able to turn this page once and for all, so here goes nothing.

Dawntrail… did not meet my expectations, on many different fronts. I’ve gone through shock, puzzlement, anxiety, indignation, grief, revolt, boredom, disappointment, disillusionment, pretty much every negative reaction possible over the course of the past 1-2 years (there were some good moments though, but not as many as I would have liked). The overall direction of the game has been really testing the boundaries of what I can tolerate, and in turn this has had a domino effect on my relationship with FFXIV, the way I play and interact with it, as well as my commitment to this website, of course. As far as I’ve seen, this is a sentiment shared across a pretty sizeable chunk of the community, although the reasons depend a lot on who you ask.

The graphical update

The biggest factor for me in my frustration with the current state of the game is the graphical update. When it was first announced I remember being a little skeptical, but starting from the clumsy release of the first benchmark, the changes that were introduced were more drastic, apparent, and distressing than I had anticipated based on what had been communicated through official channels so far, and the response from Square Enix since then has been even more abysmal.

It’s been almost 2 years, but I still can’t watch cutscenes without feeling uncomfortable, and Gposing has been… a challenge. When you go through your daily routine with the camera pointed at the back of your character, you don’t really notice it, but as soon as I watch a cutscene or turn the camera around to look at Schwarzwaelder’s face, I have this immediate “oh no…” reaction. That was the case at launch, that was the case after months of daily logging, and that is still the case even now, after taking extensive breaks and after the character graphics supposedly went through several rounds of “adjustments in response to player feedback”. The change, which may seem minor to external parties, is so disturbing to me that it seems I simply can’t get used to it. My alts have also been affected to various degrees, but Schwarzwaelder being my main and whose character was built entirely around FFXIV’s story and universe, I’m of course much more attached to her appearance.

Turns out that when the entire appeal of your character is designed around e.g. the eyes, arbitrarily changing the makeup, the eyebrows, the pupil size, the iris color, or the thickness and glow of a limbal ring can completely destabilize the appearance of said character! Who would have thought!

Besides those issues, the “improvements” made to the environment and the lighting have also drastically affected not only the scenery (ironically enough, one side effect of the new automated processes used to generate environments is that the texture tiling has become much more noticeable, and makes the game look older than it did before…) but also the game experience itself. Since the first day of 7.0, many players, some with pre-existing conditions, some without (like me), have reported suffering from eye strain, and that system settings that until 6.X had allowed them to play at a more comfortable level had been removed without notice. For some of them, these changes made the game basically unplayable, on a physical level.

And yet, despite these numerous reports, every release seems to double down on bombastic visual effects that make it harder and harder to look at what’s going on on screen, and the forum thread in question has still been completely ignored by Square Enix to this day.

Speaking of the official forums…

The forums are the only place where players can submit feedback addressed to the developers. Since the release of the first benchmark in April 2024, feedback about the graphical update (which already existed prior to that) exploded, and even more than one year after, both Japanese and Western players have kept all related threads active, requesting adjustments, corrections, or additions, due to an inability to accept the changes that came with it.

I myself, as a result of this update, posted a fair amount of criticism on the forums, both in English and Japanese (despite not speaking or reading that language). Actually, the majority of screenshots I’ve taken during 7.X has been for that purpose.

But after having interacted with the forums for as long as I have, I have to say: the fact that, in this day and age, the only way players have to communicate their feedback to Square Enix is through such an ancient platform is beyond absurd.

Many players don’t seem to understand how to upload pictures or edit/delete posts, and on the English-speaking side, the forums are so unmoderated that it has turned into a perpetual trashfire of threads with Reddit-like clickbait titles and the same 3 doomers finding new things to complain about. As an example, it took the moderators of the English forums an entire week to temporarily ban my account (this was a deliberate experiment btw, I knew I was playing with fire, although I’ll admit I did get too involved in a pointless debate) and in the notice email they sent me they referred to a (much worse, openly transphobic) post that I had nothing to do with… On the Japanese side, the moderation team is conversely much more proactive, which can be good, until posts get deleted so much that some people start crying wrongful censorship, while others start thinking the contents of the messages must have been much worse than what they actually were, creating a perpetual, vicious cycle of bitterness and bickering between players looking at the forums for completely different purposes…

While they were first designed as a bridge between players and developers to rebuild trust after the disastrous launch of 1.0, now the forums seem to be a great way to keep the growing complaints out of public view (meaning: the press, as well as new and potential players), and to redirect fire intended for the developers towards other fellow players. Divide and conquer, as they say.

Likewise, every other online game I play regularly provides surveys, but in 9 years of FFXIV I've only received... maybe 2. The last one was so they could make a cute graphic of everyone's favorite mounts and minions, with only one field at the end offering you to share your thoughts on the game. What a way to show how much you value your players' opinion.

One could argue that it's the players' responsibility to learn to accept change. But when what was communicated to the players from the first announcement of the graphical update in 2022 to an interview just a few months before the release of Dawntrail was that "the absolute premise is to preserve the image of the characters as much as possible", and the result of those efforts are 500+ pages in Japanese and 300+ pages in English asking over and over "I miss my character and/or being able to play the game without physically hurting because of the new high-contrast lighting, please let us enjoy the game as it was before"... It goes beyond individual player responsibility.

And while I’m mostly focusing on the graphics in this article, the complaints of players don’t stop here.

The uneven writing

By almost unanimous vote, the biggest complaint with Dawntrail’s initial release was the Main Story, one of the key elements that have built FFXIV’s success over the years. A lot of players have pointed the finger at one specific character (for reasons that may or may not be entirely in good faith), I personally had a lot more issues with the overall structure of the plot, and how it approached its themes. Unfortunately, while I haven’t played through the 7.2 and 7.3 MSQ, I have read the script online, and from my perspective it doesn’t seem to have corrected its course as much as I’d have liked…

When I first started playing in 2016, I wasn’t very interested in the plot. I came from AION, where I had learned to not pay attention to the story, and unsurprisingly, the beginning of FFXIV felt very much like a generic fantasy MMO. It’s only after the death of Moenbryda, and then the coup attempt at the end of the 2.X series that I started realizing that this game’s story was worth getting invested in. Heavensward was a treat, Stormblood was maybe not the strongest expansion but it worked for me (particularly the solo duties and the mid-expansion patches), Shadowbringers went beyond my expectations, Endwalker, well, you can read about it here.

To me, what really adds depth to the universe of FFXIV is how it explores the political tensions within and between different nations. The “beastmen” tribes (un-allied societies?) all have their reasons to be in conflict with the 3 nations of Eorzea, Ishgard is far from being a united city-state in its ideologies, even Garlemald or the Ascians are shown to be not as one dimensional as they first appeared (...for better or worse). If Stormblood’s plot hadn’t revolved around the liberation of Doma and Ala Mhigo, and how complex it is to convince people to join the cause after decades of systemic oppression and passivity from neighbouring countries, I think no one would have cared for that expansion at all. Even the Save the Queen side story showed great moral ambiguity in that regard, which to this day makes it a favorite among many players.

But Dawntrail, uuuh… shies away from that almost completely. In a way, I can understand that the intention was to avoid a white savior narrative as much as possible, in an effort to approach the depiction of fantasy Americas in the most respectful way (a criticism I’ve seen made towards Stormblood, and something they were definitely careful about if you play through a few of Dawntrail’s role quests). For the record, I’m totally fine with a light-hearted, refreshing adventure where we travel to a version of North/South/Central America where colonialism never happened. I was actually expecting Dawntrail to act as a new A Realm Reborn, and was looking forward to the “summer vacation” that was advertised to us during Fan Fest… which turned out to have never been a thing envisioned by the writers to begin with, as we later learned through a panel.

But then… why did we need a fantasy Christopher Columbus? Why do we have a sudden invasion and subsequent “accidental” colonization, yet the most affected seem to have completely accepted it without any resistance whatsoever? Why is Oblivion an underground organization meant to represent that pushback against the new status quo, and yet the (very obvious) main antagonist is buddies with them? Hell, why is Solution Nine desperately trying to evoke cyberpunk, yet has almost none of the political undertone that comes with the genre??? Even the tensions within Tural are treated as distant memories solved a long time ago by their benevolent ruler, except for one extremist group… who changes their mind surprisingly fast after you talk to them for 5 minutes.

Most of all, I am very disappointed that this expansion spent a considerable amount of time developing Erenville and his struggle to come to terms with the loss of his family, his home, his culture, and yet this was all discarded the second his mother died, turning him into an apathetic side character… (why did I grieve Cahciua for longer than he did???) Especially when he’s The One Person in your party who’s the most affected by everything that’s going on, and the most representative of the devastating consequences of the European invasion of the Americas! There was so much left to say, so many interesting questions to ask, and instead we were left with nothing!! Gah!!!

Something else that took me by surprise is that while reading Japanese reviews, it became more and more clear that fans of FFIX really disliked how the story of Dawntrail and its references to its predecessor were handled. As someone who’s never played another main title of the Final Fantasy series, at first I only took it for a bunch of complaints from nostalgic angry fans. But then I remembered that IX is the favorite title of a bunch of my friends, found some of the concept art surprisingly charming (even if the character design has always been offputting to me), and when I learned that the Steam version lets you brute force most fights if you’re only interested in the story, I finally bit the bullet and played it from start to end. And it was… such a surprising and confusing experience. Because FFIX is great! It delivers flawlessly on all the themes it explores, the emotional beats were all really well executed, and the few moments of existential dread were captivating, especially when contrasted with the slice-of-life kind of comedy. So, with such a great game to take inspiration from, and explicitly referenced throughout Dawntrail… why did the MSQ feel so bland, in comparison? Did the main writer play the original game? Did they understand what it was going for? Are there just narrative (or, *cough*, hierarchical) constraints that they struggled with that we’re just not aware of? I just can’t understand what, how, why that dissonance between the original material and this new story happened.

And so this absence of political commentary and reluctance to lean harder on FFXIV’s predecessors removes a lot of flavor from the writing, but as I mentioned earlier, the narrative structure itself is in my eyes also pretty flawed.

I loved Wuk Lamat in 6.X, I really thought they had nailed her introduction and I was looking forward to see more of her, but the first half of 7.0 felt like… a chore. And that’s not necessarily the fault of the character, but of the events she and the player are forced to go through: that damn tournament trope you find in almost every shonen anime. The moment it was announced that the Rite of Succession consisted of 7 steps, I was immediately “ok, 3 areas, 2 dungeons, 1 trial, and a plot twist”. When you reach that conclusion as early as the 5th quest in the expansion, that’s not good! Even now I still believe all the story beats could have been kept almost intact and yet not feel as predictable if that overarching tournament structure hadn’t been there.

And one of the reasons it felt so predictable is unfortunately due to…

The redundancy of gameplay

Something else that many people around me had been complaining about for a while, some as early as Shadowbringers, was the repetitiveness of content, the dumbing down of jobs and loss of their identity, and the lack of engaging new things to do.

Likewise, starting from Heavensward, all dungeons adopt more or less the same formula of mobs / wall / mobs / boss x3 down a very long hallway, and once you’ve figured that out, the magic of exploring a new dungeon for the first time is gone (and dead and buried by the 3rd time you run it). The Main Story Quest always branches off in two at the beginning so you get to explore 2 new areas, it regroups in a 3rd one, soon followed by the mid-MSQ plot twist. For some reason, we got a new Deep Dungeon in Endwalker, and another one in Dawntrail, instead of giving us something new and fresh, especially when we already had 2 before. And if you’re actively raiding, I’m sure you feel that repetitive cycle of “gearing up -> clear every week until you’ve got everything you need -> then start again from scratch 2 patches later” even more.

I never really paid attention to that criticism, because due to my playstyle, I was more than content with finding new niches within the game to collect mounts, minions, and titles, or to complete series of neverending to-do lists, rather than worrying about how big my dps numbers were or the 2 minute meta of every job rotation. I was never bored, and always ignored the “where’s the content” complaints we got every patch.

Basically, as an achievement hunter, I used to always have something to do in this game. I was nose deep in the grind, no matter how seemingly pointless it was. In fact, half a year before the release of 7.0, I was already planning what to do during the downtime period between the 7.X patches: attempt to solo all Deep Dungeons, farm the Endwalker EX trial mounts I didn’t have yet, finish the Chocobo racing achievements, start the dreaded lvl 70 thief maps farming, etc etc.

That, however, progressively changed after the whiplash of the graphical update and the disappointing story of Dawntrail. And all of a sudden, the increasingly louder rants around me began to make more and more sense.

The aftermath

After 7.0, I was like many other players stuck in a weird position where I was extremely displeased with the state of the game, unable to enjoy it as I used to right up to a week before release, and yet… I found it impossible to stop playing. I had achievements with long term investments to get! I had side quests to clear! I had plans with friends to raid together in the future! I couldn’t simply drop all this instantly!

I was also completely overwhelmed with the many emotions I listed previously, and even now, I can’t say with confidence that I’ve managed to sort through them just yet. If anything, this is proof of how much I loved FFXIV, how much time I’ve spent playing this one game pretty much everyday for almost a decade, and how much trust I naively put in the developers to correct course. And at that point I still wanted to believe.

Because FFXIV is a game whose entire reputation has always been about its rebirth, built on the back of the close relationship between the developers and the community, right? So if we were enough to protest, then surely something would change, right? Surely they would understand that this had been a huge misstep, appease the players’ anger and worry, and properly explain the measures they’d put in place to address our grievances?

Well, no.

The official response from the developers has been slow, vague, and disappointing. Or in some cases entirely absent, since the eye strain issue has yet to be acknowledged at all. Instead, each (ridiculously) minor adjustment made in 7.1 and 7.2 (in response to requests that were themselves labeled as "minor changes" by the producer/director) meant other things broke (and are still broken) for both players who were satisfied with the current state of the game, players who had moved on, and players who were already angered by said changes… Not to mention how it took 15 months and several forum bans for a beard texture to be properly upscaled.

And so, exhausted by the endless cycle of debate and conflicts with other players, disappointed over and over by patch notes and adjustments about the graphical update that were becoming vaguer and vaguer and finally non existant, frustrated by the responses given in interviews by the producer/director that were completely out of touch with the feedback given by players, you start wondering:

Why am I playing this game again?

Why do I care so much about a bunch of pixels on my screen? Why can’t I let this go?

This attachment is something I started meditating on as early as August 2024, and what prompted me to begin writing this a year ago.

For me, it's quite simple: everything you do in this game is for the sake of the character.

The first thing you do in an MMORPG is creating your character. It's your avatar (or your "ship" as they say in Japan), the vessel through which you get to experience the world and story the developers have prepared for their players. In one of my forum posts I called it the "key" you need to unlock the door to enter this world. An MMORPG is first of all an RPG, and an RPG can't be an RPG if you can't roleplay.

When I first started playing FFXIV, I didn’t really feel anything for my character. Actually, when I started the 14 day free trial in 2016, I was still very attached to my character from AION, an MMO a few years older than 1.0, that nonetheless offered a much more extensive character creator. Compared to it, FFXIV’s character creator felt more like a compromise than a choice. And since I couldn’t replicate the image I had in mind for my AION character, I decided to start again from scratch when I purchased a full subscription and Heavensward, and this is how Schwarzwaelder came to be.

And yet, it took me until the middle of Heavensward to begin resonating with her. This was due in part to the glamour feature, that was still locked behind lvl 50 and a complicated prism system (meaning that for all of ARR you were forced to wear whatever the game threw at you, and we all know the gear from that era is not the most glamorous). But it was also due to the cutscenes, in which the character was very often passive and expressionless… until you reach the Vault.

What I remember the most from that infamous cutscene is not Haurchefant’s death, because I was not sufficiently emotionally invested in the character for that (I blame the English localization). It was that my character was, for what seemed to be the first time, displaying genuine emotion. And that permanently altered my relationship to Schwarzwaelder.

Suddenly she wasn’t just a self-insert going through the story of the game surrounded by many others (that had been how I had played through MMOs until now), she was a character with her own consciousness, her own relationships with other characters, her own experiences.

Then came 3.3, with the cutscene just before the Nidhogg trial (which remains one of the best and most WoL flattering cutscenes to date) and I realized: I really, really like this character. In Stormblood, the implementation of more frequent dialogue options and the simplification of the glamour system via the Glamour Dresser and Glamour Plates helped consolidate that affection, since it made it much easier to dress up and thus consider who you want your character to be. The roleplay element of this MMORPG was being refined more and more, pulling me deeper and deeper into the story.

After having grown attached to my character, the 4.X series was when I first became invested in other characters. I surprised myself crying through the Tsukuyomi trial, getting to play as Alphinaud for the first time blew my mind, and the thought of losing every Scion one by one, especially Alisaie after her rare moment of vulnerability, filled me with anxiety and excitement for what was to come next.

And unsurprisingly, Shadowbringers is when things really took off, and I think why it’s still regarded as the best expansion yet. Through the main story, not only was your character heralded as The Only One Who Can Save This World From Doom (which must have been very ego flattering for the vast majority of people), it was also the first time that your character was so powerless to their own fate, more fragile and vulnerable than ever before, and where I genuinely found myself fearing for Schwarzwaelder’s life. That was, in my opinion, when the relationship between the player and the character they’re controlling was the strongest ever (and it’s no surprise that the Endwalker solo duty in Garlemald would be so well received, although personally I don’t really vibe with the whole Azem situation that came in much more strongly with that expansion).

Coincidentally, Shadowbringers is also when I became interested in raiding, and when I properly learned about macros, so that I set out to put together an outfit, a title, a mount, and a minion for every job available. This is when I became a proper achievement hunter. I learned how to fish because I needed a title for my Dragoon, I learned how to play Blue Mage because I wanted the Morbol mount for my Alchemist, I spent 10 days fishing continuously and competitively for a title for my Astrologian, became a mentor to get a mount for my White Mage, etc.

Everything was for the sake of my character. And that’s what made me log in everyday, and renew my 6 month subscription for years without hesitation.

I didn’t care about achievement rankings (or at least not as much as others…), I didn’t care about the rarity of the item, I didn’t care about any sort of prestige, everything was, from beginning to end, purely an effort to collect as many customization options as I could, so I was free to roleplay with them whenever and however I wanted, and take many, many screenshots.

Then later I created a social media account, joining my friends who already had one. Soon after I started envying how they had created rich stories around their characters, and wondered how I could imagine one for Schwarzwaelder, who, even if she wore very fashionable outfits, did not really have any backstory at that point. Despite my obvious talent for writing extremely long texts, I don’t think I’m really good at fiction or literal RP or anything of that kind (if you hadn’t suspected it yet from the name alone), and worried I might end up with something so boring or cringe I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing it with others lol

Shortly after finishing Endwalker, I tried to describe to the therapist I was seeing at the time that it had been a very emotional journey that concluded a 10 year story arc, and in typical therapist fashion she immediately assumed that I was projecting myself into Schwarzwaelder, and asked me a simple question: “What will your character do now that the story is over?”. To which I immediately replied “I don’t know, I’ll find out in the next patch.” Beyond that deadpan answer, I found that gap between her assumptions and my pragmatic perspective amusing and interesting, and ironically that was enough to spark my first ideas for Schwarzwaelder’s backstory, while at the same time exploring the what ifs I would have liked Endwalker to develop more.

With a friend, I replayed through most of the story thanks to the New Game + mode, and paid more attention to how I wanted Schwarzwaelder to react to the events she was part of. A few months later, this website was first uploaded, for which I decided to write a description for each job in the Wardobe section, which would follow a rough timeline of the events from A Realm Reborn to the latest expansion.

More and more, I became invested in developing Schwarzwaelder and her story, and funnily enough finally started putting parts of myself into her, as my former therapist had once believed. That too was a form of roleplay.

So… what happens when the appearance of the character you’ve roleplayed as for a number of years changes for reasons that are out of your control, so much so that in your eyes, it becomes almost someone else masquerading as them? (which, ironically, actually happens in one of the Dawntrail role quests…) When you know that underneath it all, it's still your character, but at the same time, on the surface, it's not? Of course you’d freak out and try to get your face back!

But now, the options that previously existed, that you had carefully selected when you created your character, are simply not available anymore. The key you had in your hand for years has been replaced by a faulty copy. Technically, it's functional, you can still unlock the door, but it just doesn't feel the same as the original one, like you need to use more force than usual to turn it.

Even more baffling, one of FFXIV’s direct competitors, Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis, implemented a feature in the character creator that allows players to use the models from the previous version of PSO2 instead of the newly made, more detailed character parts, precisely because they were aware of how attached to their avatars MMO players can get.

But this does not seem to have been of as much importance to Square Enix, or at least to the people with the most decision-making power, because according to one interview, it seems that even internally, employees raised many concerns regarding the graphical update…

And yet, despite all my grievances, I kept logging in, I kept renewing my subscription. So, if I was not playing for the sake of my character anymore, why was I still logging in everyday?

Reality check

As I started toying with the idea of unsubscribing, I found myself constantly coming up with new excuses to stay.

What about the house I had bought? One I had managed to obtain in Shirogane through the old bidding system by competing against other players in a war of constantly clicking on the placard, in preparation for the yet unannounced but highly anticipated Ishgard housing district? It had been my main motivation to actively participate in every Ishgardian Restoration phase, making me feel like I was building the future home I was hoping to quickly relocate to. Not to mention the countless hours I had spent carefully designing it to depict Schwarzwaelder’s identity and development afterwards.

What about the Free Company I was in charge of? Even if its size was microscopic, it was a fun way to stay in touch with friends, and a whole other house to decorate, plus it had taken so long to get all the airships and submarines up to speed, and farm the exclusive items for everyone…

What about my leves? The levequests achievements are some of the most infamous in this game, taking about 9 real-time years to fully complete due to how leves are timegated, and reach their cap every 2 weeks. At that point I “only” had 4 years left, which was already a considerable feat.

What about the seasonal rewards? If I didn’t get them now, and eventually came back, I’d have to pay for whichever I missed.

What about the freshly released content? One common problem with FFXIV is that if you don’t do the newest content in the first month, it becomes increasingly difficult to find people to do it with (I would know, having jumped on the completionism wagon much later than others).

What about my friends? Even if I’m not a social person by nature, I did manage to strike a few friendships in FFXIV, but I doubted these would survive if we had nothing else to talk about.

Was I fine unsubscribing and seeing all that effort, all that investment disappear forever?

It won’t surprise anyone that everything I’ve listed above are common predatory patterns used in modern game design. Currently, almost every online social game follows those same patterns. It’s a trap that, like everyone else who plays these games, I’ve been aware of the entire time, and willingly threw myself in. The main difference is that those games generally follow a free-to-play model, and FFXIV does not.

Because, to state the obvious, Square Enix is an enormous company, whose catalog extends far beyond FFXIV, the Final Fantasy series, or even games. And like every company, what primarily motivates its actions is the potential for profit.

What’s also worth mentioning is that MMOs are some of the costliest games to make, with a continuous fast-paced production schedule. This means they’ve always been seen as a risk, not only because a brand new MMO might not always take off (remember Throne and Liberty? Remember Lost Ark? that’s right, me neither), but also because once you’ve launched and established a sizeable active and loyal playerbase, if anything new you add to the game sparks controversy, it is extremely difficult to correct course on time, since you’re probably already busy working on the content you plan to release in 2 years’ time.

So, with this in mind, it makes sense that you’d want to ensure player retention and keep players engaged to a bare minimum through tactics such as timegating, exclusivity, or long term playing investment. Because that would guarantee you a steady stream of revenue every month, without raising your production costs too high.

And so it becomes abundantly clear that Square Enix is not concerned with a vocal group of players desperately trying to get them to act, because those players are also long-time payers, and the retention tactics that hooked them in are still working, and their money is still going into the shareholders’ pockets.

To begin with, the most likely reason the graphical update was even signed off is that it would help reduce development costs and save resources (since the majority of player models are now morphs of the same 3D mesh), while allowing more possibilities for future animations (supposedly many bones have been added to the facial rig) and making the game look more refreshed and in line with its newest competitors… in theory, at least.

It would therefore be counterproductive to spend more on fixing something that was supposed to save you money, especially when at the end of the day, regardless of what is done or not done, thanks to those retention tactics, those disgruntled players will continue to pay just as much as before, even if it’s only so they can continue complaining on the forums (because yes, you can only post on the forums with an active subscription, meaning you have to pay to give feedback).

Once you come to that conclusion, the whole mythology around FFXIV’s development and its developers starts to crumble.

For instance, the legendary rebirth of 2.0 happened more than 10 years ago, yet is somehow flaunted much more aggressively now more than ever, with the game’s mascots most recognizable staff making numerous appearances on TV and live concerts to promote the game to a mainstream audience even more brazenly.

I’ve seen Japanese players writing about the idolization of the producer/director and main composer, or how they felt like they had suddenly woken up from a cult. For context, it seems that Japanese die-hard fans of the development team are viewed as very hostile (which already exacerbates this spreading sentiment that something seems off), to the point of having supposedly driven some disgruntled players away from Twitter after 7.0, so that they have gathered on note.com instead. And now that I’ve spent some time on the Japanese forums, I can’t say I disagree with those views.

But I have to say that even on the side of the Western community, it is really strange that people have pictures of themselves with the producer/director as their forum signature, or that the Fan Festival is seen as a Huge Event where you pay a not so little amount of money so you can see a keynote in person, then shake the hand of one of the 3 or 4 people from the team you’ve seen the face of before. Or that someone named a literal asteroid after the producer/director. When I first started playing, even if I’ve always kept my distance with the more visible sides of the community, I never really questioned these things, but at the same time… why do I always feel embarrassed when I want to talk about this game to my friends or acquaintances who don’t play it?

Every interview, every Live Letter, every announcement on the Lodestone turns out to be not honest communication with the players (something that, again, is what FFXIV’s entire reputation is based on), but a PR move to convince them to stay subbed or re-sub, regardless of if the promises made are delivered or not. The (very delayed) announcement regarding the issues with the graphical update was so vague that it was enough to persuade many players to stick around patch after patch, only to find out every time that none of their feedback had been taken into account (and it seems some believe it might still happen…). We’re more than half into 7.X, but the housing item limit upgrade that was announced as early as March 2023 has yet to be released. The dual dye system was supposed to be fully implemented by 7.3, but that’s still not the case after 7.4 (and I suspect that removing the restrictions on which job can wear which gear was a stunt to distract players from that fact… or that they have yet to receive new glamour plates to accommodate for the 3 new jobs they’re getting this expansion).

In a 2014 GDC presentation on the failures of 1.0 and the success of 2.0, Naoki Yoshida compared running an MMO to running a country. I have to admit that it was a clever analogy, because the role he fulfills now is exactly that of a politician: Yoshida the Gamer, who understands the demands of the players so well that he doesn’t need to rely on surveys, he simply plays the game instead and knows exactly what to do. Yoshida the Savior, who single handedly turned the disaster of 1.0 around, and now spreads his teachings on TV because that’s part of his job now, apparently. Yoshida the Benefactor, who picks 3 requests made by players on an official livestream and sees them implemented as early as the next incoming patch, while most of the feedback posted on the forums (some that would be just as quick and cheap to implement) goes ignored. Yoshi-P the Idol, who tours around the world to promote the game and take pictures with fans, and is ostensibly used as a selling point for other games he’s involved with, such as Final Fantasy XVI and Fantasian Neo:Dimension, when he himself claimed FFXIV as being "his life’s work". Yoshida the Magnanimous, who ensures that FFXIV is a game you can take a break from anytime without fear of missing out, something I will often see other players repeat like a mantra, as if all the retention tactics I mentioned earlier didn’t exist. Yoshida the Protector, who acts as a selfless living shield for the development team, gracefully defending them against the most heinous remarks one could imagine.

Because, paradoxically, the producer/director being the most visible and public face of the development team also means that every negative feedback, complaint, discontent or disappointment is also redirected towards him, turning him into the perfect scapegoat, and making it very difficult to know how exactly the team is managed internally.

It is therefore very difficult to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong with Dawntrail. Was it pressure from investors and the executive board that forced the producer/director’s hand to go forward with the graphical update, despite an apparent internal debate? Was it the new art director, coming from FFXVI and possibly unfamiliar with FFXIV or how the technical constraints of MMOs influence stylistic decisions, who pushed for a graphical update that was more “realistic” than it needed to be, at the detriment of the preservation of the unique features of the original art style? Was Virtuos, an outsourcing company who was allegedly responsible for the original graphics, involved in the graphical update to the same level as they used to be? Were the people behind the original character design consulted? Did they simply underestimate how costly the transition would be, which is why they grow more and more silent and hope players will eventually give up on their expectations? Was it because the producer/director was too scattered across many projects and PR operations that Dawntrail’s scenario, allegedly penned by a less experienced writer, lacked direction? (although I’ve also seen the opposite theory, that in terms of scheduling it’s possible that Shadowbringers was successful because he was busy with the early stages of FFXVI’s production at that time…)

One thing that is certain is that many risks were taken at the same time, and by the looks of it, they’re not paying off.

(as the title says, this only covers the number of active players on Steam, and not on Windows/PS5/Xbox, but it should give a good idea of what the general trend looks like)

One selling point for the graphical update is that it would solidify “new player retention”, who were supposedly put off by the aging graphics (I can think of so, soooo many other reasons why… and that doesn’t explain the popularity of Old School Runescape, or why they’re now trying to get us to subscribe to FFXI too, despite the game having never received any new graphics in 23 years), but that clearly didn’t happen, since the amount of active players seems to be less than it was during Endwalker.

(For the record, I want to quickly acknowledge that the spurt of growth that happened during Shadowbringers and Endwalker was somewhat abnormal, and influenced by two factors: the 2020s pandemic and subsequent lockdown, and the poor reception of WoW’s Shadowlands expansion, which saw many WoW players, including a notorious streamer, relocate to FFXIV in protest. The latter resulted in the high peak you see in mid-2021, which then boosted the sales of Endwalker at the end of the year. So taking into account that we’re 5 years post lockdown, that the “WoW refugee” wave has mostly receded, and that the vast majority of the playerbase is allegedly now in their 30s, it’s not shocking that the number of active players would dwindle… but I doubt it was expected to fall off that drastically, especially if you compare the gap between 7.0 and 7.1 with previous peaks.)

As I’ve already mentioned, promises and announcements made during live panels and official streams have yet to deliver (good that they finally released the Strategy Board, just in time for the final raid tier of the expansion…), and to me this indicates that internally, the staff is struggling to meet deadlines, which, again, is a problem when your production schedule technically never ends. And obviously, putting someone with less experience than the main writer for Shadowbringers and Endwalker on the new Main Story Quest was bound to lead to some controversy and divided opinions, but if the other foundations of the success of FFXIV hadn’t become so wobbly, I doubt it would have had as much of an impact on the number of active subscriptions as it did…

Because, to be honest, while I did not like 7.X as much as previous expansions and patches, if the whole graphical update debacle hadn’t affected my enjoyment of the game as much as it did, and permanently impacted my trust in the developers, I would have very likely continued playing the game as usual, regardless of the other complaints made since the release of Dawntrail. Before 7.0 I still loved FFXIV, despite its many flaws, and I was not imagining at all that I would one day stop playing entirely, unless the servers were discontinued.

I'm not a fan of the current MSQ, but that's fine, it can improve in the future. I find the Arcadion's visual design and narrative theming completely tasteless, but that's fine, maybe the next iteration of raids will be more to my preferences. I’m really not into all the sci-fi stuff they’ve done this expansion (not like I was into Allagan or Garlean tech either, but at least it still felt fantasy-ish), but that doesn’t mean the next expansion or the one after will deliver something more aligned with my tastes. More engaging content can be made if the current one isn't up to everybody's expectations. Jobs evolve with every patch, so they might improve in the future. I can live with the current iterations, tolerate them until I get pleasantly surprised again like I was with Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers. That is, as long as I have a character through which (and for the sake of which) I can engage with the game.

But the graphical update, unfortunately, is a much more permanent and long term change, that will very likely not move an inch for probably another decade (although after the backlash there’s been a very vague mention of a potential new iteration of the character creator in the distant future, but I think it’s clear by now that any word uttered by the producer/director should be taken with a bucket of salt until stuff is actually released).

And while it seems utterly reckless to me to be willing to throw under the bus long-playing (and paying!) customers for the sake of risks that brought in the end not that much benefit, that is the reality I have to deal with now.

So… now what?

Off the beaten path

By this point, some people reading this may have already grown impatient as a thought kept circling through their mind: why not use mods?

I’m not a fan of mods. I like to play within the framework a game provides, and I was perfectly satisfied with the outfits and character I had since I had begun playing (I used a Fantasia once in 9 years, to change Schwarzwaelder’s height. that’s it.). Mods are also officially against the game’s Terms of Service, and while it has been made very clear that it’s something Square Enix has mostly turned a blind eye to, I didn’t want to compromise my account if one day they decided to review their stance.

Frankly speaking, I’ve also been put off by what I’ve seen of the modding community of FFXIV.

To begin with, I think it’s strange that so many people are using a custom launcher, into which they are entering their account information, trusting that the development of such a tool would never fall into the wrong hands, or that the day when measures are put in place on either side to deprive them of their account never arrives. While it may make the creation, distribution, and use of third party tools much more user friendly, personally I would much rather use standalone software, but then my options become very limited. Another downside of relying on such tools is that you need to wait for the developer to update them after every patch before you can use them again, and I don’t like being stuck with that extra dependence on someone when all I want is to play the game as usual and see my character looking like herself (pre-Dawntrail).

Then there is what actually gets distributed. The mods that would interest me would be ones that take what already exists and improve it, aspiring to align with the game’s art direction and fitting within the constraints of its universe. Something like new face options, or diverse body types, or that adapts gear or removes restrictions on it so it can be worn by everyone (for example, I remember seeing a mod going around that allowed Vieras to wear all hats, long, long before this started being implemented officially, but I would also like to e.g. be able to wear both Nier gear options regardless of gender). I’m also all for mods that focus on accessibility, to suit the needs of players who can’t enjoy the game as it was intended (like how there’s a mod that slightly alters the visuals of some raid mechanics for people with dyscalculia). But what I mostly see being put out by the community is, uuuuh… a very diverse mess of dodgy outfits and skimpy poses of questionable taste (it’s giving IMVU, or Dress To Impress if you’re not from that generation), models directly ripped from other games that are frankenstein’d into this one, and tools that for the most part betray how lazy players have grown (if not outright cheating). This is a gross generalisation, but you get the idea. It’s just not what I’m looking for.

Actually, after 7.0, some mods were released that tried to replicate previous models. But this being the work of amateurs done in their own time, not all faces were worked on, the results were not always perfect, and they only applied to a small part of my complaints.

However, after being regularly disappointed by each Live Letter, each patch notes, and each patch release, it became clear to me that I had no reason left to show as much respect to the development team as I did by diligently following the rules (especially when less and less people seem to follow them without any consequence), since they evidently were willing to compromise the loyalty of the players who cared about their characters, if it meant cutting costs. And so my stance on the matter changed a little.

Technically, as someone who’s previously worked in the game industry, I do have some of the skills necessary for modding things to my preferences. So after 7.2, which saw the Auri limbal ring shader being slightly adjusted (which was met with positive reactions like mine, but also negative ones because of course it wasn’t done properly…), I did spend some time tinkering with things on a free trial account, just to see how difficult it would be.

The easiest fix was to replace the eye texture. It took five minutes to restore the pupil size, and the difference was like night and day. It’s how I instantly know if the mod is switched on or not.

The curve of the eyebrows was slightly off post-update (giving Schwarzwaleder a constant, slightly worried look, which was fitting, in a way…), so I tinkered with the UVs of the model while comparing with old screenshots and another mod, this way I wouldn’t have to touch the texture itself. Worked like a charm.

I found out that the reason the lips looked so swollen was because the data of the model used to include a vertex color mask, which added a dark gradient over the lips to give the impression of volume. If you’re not familiar with 3D graphics, this sort of illusion is often used in makeup too (just search for “gradient lips tutorial”). That detail was removed on the face I was using, and not added to the base texture (even though it was added on other face textures, for some reason…), which implies that the developers thought that the new lighting system would be good enough to replicate the same shadow. Except it didn’t. Everytime Schwarzwaelder opens her mouth, particularly in portraits (where the lighting system is less complex than in the actual environment), it looks like her lower lip has been stung by a bee. Thankfully, I was able to re-use the material and opacity texture assigned for the eyebrows, and reproduce the same gradient by duplicating the inner part of the lips’ mesh and slightly overlapping it on top of the existing one.

I learned that people had figured out that the Ozma mount uses a modified version of the previous eye shader. Ozma’s shader survived the update, and gave someone the idea to reproduce as much as possible the eye highlights of 6.X for their Lalafell. By following the instructions they had joined to their mod, I was able to tweak things to my own preferences, so that I ended up with 3 meshes stacked over the irises, like 3 pairs of contact lenses: one to adjust the vibrancy of the color to make it pop more against the sclera, one to add the glassy reflections of the old shader, and one to add the “handwritten” eye highlights which had been replaced by computed ones (often resulting in cutscenes where there are no highlights in the characters’ eyes at all, as if they were empty inside…). It’s not a perfect 1 to 1 copy, and unfortunately the way the Ozma shader works makes the eyes look dull and dark in portraits (I think the highlight texture is processed as “additive”, instead of as an alpha mask), but for the purpose of everything else it’s close enough.

I also took a look at the limbal ring shader, and learned that it has actual built-in settings to adjust the thickness and brightness of the ring (which are the things people have been complaining about since the first benchmark because it wasn’t glowing enough or at all under certain conditions, and then after 7.2 it finally glows, but too much for the taste of other players, because under certain lightings the thickness is way out of control). So I also played around with those values, and more or less managed to restore Schwarzwaelder’s eyes to their former glory (under most conditions… more on that later).

Other small adjustments included blurring textures to remove the grain that made under certain lighting conditions the skin look like sandpaper and the lips dehydrated, and tweaking values to make the lipstick glossier, and its color less pronounced over the default lip texture. Looking at older screenshots, it doesn’t seem like the color was more muted back then, but with the new skin shader and how it behaves with the lighting, it just looks slapped on and not as subtle as it used to be, so this was mainly for my own preference.

All in all I was pretty satisfied with what I had managed to put together, despite not having any experience with modding before. But it also led to a few observations:

First of all, I managed to get decent results without touching the base mesh. I did compare the two meshes, but since this was supposed to be a quick experiment, I didn’t want to spend time overlapping every single vertex one by one to make sure the two faces were as identical as could be. (although I think there is a possibility I could have done that, if it wasn’t for the next few points below)

Then, it became abundantly clear that these changes were very quick to do. I just spent longer on them than I would have wanted because I’m a perfectionist, and for other reasons I’ll detail in the next point. But finding things like the shader settings to adjust the limbal ring was baffling. It’s something I’ve been fighting for on the forums for days and days, spending countless hours taking and editing screenshots, describing the issue, formatting the text, translating in Japanese, etc etc. But if you have access to the variables, it takes 10 seconds to solve most of the post-7.2 complaints regarding limbal rings. It’s just changing 1 or 2 numbers (since the variables control the outer and inner edge of the ring). Not in the shader code itself! In the parameters that have been set by whoever made the shader. If you’re not familiar with game development, this is the equivalent of dragging the height slider in the character creator. The slider already exists, it’s just that it’s being hidden from the player.

Another thing is that, as someone who has experience working from behind the engine instead of from the other end, modding SUCKS. The tools that have been developped by the community are very impressive, but the whole process of importing mods, exporting mods, exposing hidden variables, figuring out which material does what with which texture, with the bare minimum of documentation at hand, is extremely slow and frustrating. Every information found by the community is the result of trial and error and careful observation at what they do have access to (and unfortunately, a large majority of the modding community is more preoccupied with how to get their custom outfits/sculpts/hair working than with tinkering with this kind of thing). A lot of data is compiled, meaning that e.g. you can’t open a shader and look at its actual code and understand what it does without first decompiling it. Which means that, if I wanted to adjust the Ozma shader so the custom eye highlights would work properly in portraits, I would first need to decompile it, then find in the code where to add/change the line that processes the eye highlight texture, then recompile it, then make sure the game reads it. Same with the limbal ring shader, so it would keep the same thickness and the same glow intensity under all lighting conditions (because for some reason, as it is implemented right now it’s particularly susceptible to the Green channel of the lighting system, at least from what I found out when I tried every setting in the portrait feature…). And as far as I’m aware, people haven’t managed to do that yet. This is also why I had to implement my adjustments of the lips the way I did, and why it took the longest, because I couldn’t simply add the same vertex color data back on the model and tell the shader to use it the way I wanted (actually, before that I was using a copy of the eyelash material, because that felt like the most straightforward way to do it, but you can only use so many materials per head model and I needed the slots for the eye highlights materials, so this is the solution I came up with).

Basically, it’s a whole lot of work that, if I had directly access to the work files and the engine (and knowledge of how the whole project is organized internally), wouldn’t be required at all.

And because of that I also very quickly reached the limits of my knowledge in this area. While I have a good grasp of 3D modeling, rigging, animating, and know a little about shaders and programming, I don’t have at all the skills required to reverse engineer and modify a finished product the way I want. To use an analogy, I know how to use raw materials to bake a cake, but once I cut through a baked cake I don’t know how to change the ingredients that were used to make the batter (the only difference is that with code, this would theoretically be possible).

Also there’s a reason I don’t work in game development anymore: I don’t want to. I’ve had enough. So there’s a certain irony of spending hours thinking about how to fix this game when it’s not my job, and I wanted to move on from that… Plus I was also growing more and more uncertain that it was going to be worth the effort.

To make it short: It was definitely an interesting experiment. While I wouldn’t say I was expecting the outcome to be “Wow! My character is back! I can forget about what I don’t like about the graphical update and just play the game like nothing happened!” it did improve a lot of the grievances I had. But unfortunately, it also reignited a lot of my frustrations. I don’t work at Square Enix, I’m by no means an elite in the industry (if anything I’d say my level is on par with that of a hobbyist), and yet I could take care of these issues on my own in a relatively short amount of time. And it would be even quicker if I was on the team! So why has almost nothing been done? Were the people responsible for the graphical update even reading any of the feedback left on the forums? Or just receiving vague summaries of it from the community team?

Something else that bothered me is that even if the mod made it easier to look at my character, the environment was still a problem, particularly in older areas. The shadows are so strong post-update that they can be almost black, and some lights are way brighter or way darker than they should be, which kind of ruins the atmosphere of important cutscenes. Again, this is all things that in theory should be easy to tweak on the developers’ side. I don’t know how their lighting system works, but I’m assuming it’s as simple as tweaking the value of the light in question. But because mods are currently more centered around the appearance of the character and UI elements, it’s not possible to tweak those values myself. And so despite my best efforts, one of the most glaring problems of the graphical update remains, and it seems unlikely that anything will be done about it on either side.

(Again, I would like to acknowledge that while all of these adjustments are small and quick to make, addressing them all as a whole, or tweaking the value of every light in the game would represent a considerable effort. But I’m still puzzled as to why this was not included in the production schedule to begin with… like it seems obvious to me that if you significantly change the lighting system, all existing lights need to be tweaked accordingly and all cutscenes need to be checked carefully! But then again even in Dawntrail the lighting in some cutscenes has huge problems, so who knows what they’re doing anymore…)

And while it does seem a little risky and foolish to write in detail about non-ToS compliant activities on a website that makes it very easy to find my Lodestone profile, I would like to reiterate that this was done on a free trial account (like I said, I don’t like the idea of putting my main account’s credentials through a custom launcher), and that I’m only sharing my findings for the purpose of information and getting my point across. I wouldn’t be thinking about mods at all if it wasn’t for this graphical update. (that being said… losing my account because of this would be a bummer for sure, but I don’t know if I really care much at this point. and there’s much bigger fish out there for Square Enix to fry, so…)

Another option that is more within the range of the Terms of Service would be to follow what most Japanese Gpose enjoyers seem to be doing: spending hours editing screenshots, retouching the makeup and hair to my liking… even if it’s something I’ve personally never felt the need to do before. Actually, long before the release of the first benchmark, I had already been planning a post-graphical update side project to research how Japanese players edit their pictures, so I could learn more about photography and editing in general. But I was never planning on “correcting” facial traits in any way… It’s also sort of ironic to watch people on social media praise the graphical update and then add their own eye highlights to their 7.X screenshots after the producer/director called the old ones 手書きで嘘 ("handwritten lies") to justify the new ones being spec. And again, it doesn’t solve the issues I have with the environment, the lighting, or the occasional eye strain.

And so with both choices, I unfortunately reached the same conclusion: is it really worth it to compromise on an amateur half-fix when I’m so bitter about the current state of the game…? Do I really want to keep paying for this?

So after years and years of subscribing without interruption 6 months at a time, I took opportunity of the fact that I was changing bank accounts, and cancelled my extra retainer and switched to the cheapest monthly subscription. At the time, I was still determined to finish a levequest achievement (sunk cost fallacy, you get the idea), but pretty much put all my other in-game plans on hold. No more MSQ, didn’t even touch the new relics, I tried a bit of solo Palace of the Dead, I did a bunch of allied society quests because I was interested in the lore, but that was about it. Distancing myself from social media (in part because everyone around me was jumping ship and I had enough of doing that) also helped with realizing how much of an influence it has on player engagement, conscious or not.

And so at the end of every month, I would wait 2 weeks before resubbing again, in order to log back in just before my leves would cap. This effectively meant that I was paying less money to play FFXIV (which from Square Enix’ side means nothing, of course, it was more of a symbolic thing for me), but also that I was able to put more distance between the game and me, and slowly manage to free myself from the grasp of the retention mechanics I talked about earlier. This also marked the end of my days as an achievement hunter, after having reached something like 93% completion just before the release of 7.2 (sigh… what a waste).

Eventually, all that was left to make me stay were 2 things: I had a really good maps party, and with Vault Oneiron having just released I figured that if I wasn’t going to grind everything as I usually did, I might as well stock up on gil just in case. Shortly after we got our 20 clears, we disbanded, and the new Deep Dungeon of 7.35 dropped, and with it a title. And it was just so fitting that I decided to raid one last time to get it, and put an end to my FFXIV adventure on a perfectly bittersweet note.

End of the road

So here we are. An extremely long explanation as to why I have for now decided to stop playing FFXIV. I don’t want to completely reject the idea of coming back, but I just don’t have enough faith to believe that the game is going in a direction that I can accept, or that its developers are as committed to the playerbase as they supposedly were in the past. I think what also helped solidify that decision is that even after reading the story of 7.3 there’s really… not much building the hype for 8.0, and if I can’t see myself playing 8.0, then why would I stick around for 7.4 or 7.5?

Over the course of the past 2 years, I spent a lot of time processing something that for some reading this, or for people who have always seen the detractors of the graphical update under a bad light, might seem obvious: ultimately, this is about someone being upset that their doll was taken away, then given back to them, but not in the state it was before. I think it’s an experience that’s common in childhood, especially if you had a bully or not-so-nice siblings (actually I do remember a kid in preschool flushing my doll down a toilet…), but coming from an adult… I can see why it may seem strange and embarrassing.

This whole situation actually prompted me to work more actively on my Petit Four website after neglecting it for a while, and made me reflect on things like my love for virtual dolls and dress-up games, how some people own physical dolls of their OCs (I saw a particularly nice FFXIV Viera doll on Twitter…), how pixel dolls and Korean gifs from 20+ years ago can still be found on public archives carefully curated by 70 year old women (!!), or how with both physical and virtual dolls there has always been a community that modifies (or mods) them to their taste.

Because ultimately, most of FFXIV’s appeal to me is that it is a dress-up game, with a compelling story and other bits of gameplay attached to it. And when you start looking at it this way, it makes a lot more sense that modders or Japanese screenshot editors do what they do.

While I was looking through old websites of pixel dolls, I’ve often stumbled upon the term “frankendolling”, which is a derogative term used to describe the practice of appropriating someone’s work, or mix and matching different doll parts to create your own. I do think that in the case of independent doll artists who release their work for free, such practice is ethically questionable, especially if you begin claiming the work as exclusively yours, or charge money for it.

But at that time I was in the middle of putting together my own Petit Four doll out of gifs of a mostly defunct Korean social media platform, something I’d already done with other dolls from that era. And I realized that what I was doing was, essentially, re-appropriating the work of a corporation to make my own creation for my own personal enjoyment. Which is a definition that would apply not only to “frankendolling”, but “modding” too. And so I started wondering about the ethics of such a practice. Because ultimately, isn’t that what remixing or sampling is all about? Isn’t that the whole point of art forms such as collage or found art?

And so, while FFXIV and its graphics remains the property of Square Enix, just like a Barbie doll design remains copyrighted by Mattel, this does not mean that the consumer does not have the possibility of re-appropriating the product they have bought once it’s in their possession. In other words, while Square Enix can restrict access to my game account if I don’t pay for it or if I violate the Terms of Service, the character of Schwarzwaelder that lives in my head is still my own, and I can recreate her in any other context by using the data stored on my PC as base material, much like people use existing plastic dolls as a base to create their own. As long as it’s for their own private use, there’s nothing to stop people from doing that, is there?

Another thing I’ve been meditating a lot on throughout this whole thing is the importance of preservation and archival of digital media, especially in the current market where entertainment and access to online games can vanish as quickly as they’d appeared (looking at Magia Record and Nier Reincarnation, among many, many others).

One reason is that after the release of the first and second benchmark, players were still able to compare the new graphics to the existing ones. But after 7.0, that wasn’t going to be an option anymore. So out of sheer anxiety of losing almost a decade of memories of Schwarzwaelder’s adventures, as well as losing the ability to convey constructive, well documented feedback post maintenance, I spent the last month of 6.58 recording as many cutscenes as I could, from A Realm Reborn to Endwalker.

I also found out that the previous benchmarks (which all include the original character creator) were still downloadable by searching for the URL through the Internet Archive (although technically, you’re still doing it from Square Enix’ servers, it’s just that the URL is not publicly shared on their website anymore), and remembered that I still have a 6.3X version of the game installed on a laptop (which as a result has become my personal Great Library of Alexandria).

And so, even if I can’t play FFXIV as Schwarzwaelder in her original form in the current version of the game anymore, what I do have is a copy of that data. Data that, apart from the aforementioned benchmarks, is not longer obtainable. And who knows if Square Enix even archives stuff like this, especially considering what happened with 1.0, the rework of some of their older dungeons with unique layouts like The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak, or the rumors around the controversial graphics of the FFX remake and how they had to redo stuff from scratch due to losing the original data…

At the same time, driven by motivations that are completely unrelated to all this, I’ve been very interested in abandonware recently, and I found myself digging through the files of old half-forgotten 90s games, looking for ways to re-export their graphics as animated GIFs. Since my high school days I‘ve also had a habit of spending an obscene amount of time on websites such as The Spriters Resource, and even learned not so long ago that the Cutting Room Floor has a few pages on unused data in FFXIV (both 1.0 and post 2.0).

And while all of these various practices and platforms should be in theory considered as frowned upon, unethical, or straight up illegal, since it infriges on copyright laws and intellectual property rights… In practice, the result is that thanks to the effort of the people who have saved and shared that data, its history is preserved and made available to the general public. The debate around piracy has always existed and is still raging today, but the real historical and cultural benefits of such practices are undeniable.

The importance of piracy for archival purposes is something I became even more conscious of when, while looking for more of these early 2000s pixel dolls, I inadvertently uncovered a little community of nostalgic fans who had managed to preserve and restore a defunct Japanese social dress-up game from that era. Since the game in question was purely online and in browser, there were no software programs or CD copies available, and the only playable version of that game that remained after its closure was a trimmed down version on Nintendo DS, which was only sold in Japan (unless, of course, you resorted to piracy). Finding the game almost preserved in its entirety, and actively played 10 years after it was officially shut down, felt like a little miracle to me.

It would be very hypocritical of me to say that my intentions with the preservation of this data are as selfless as that, but this really shifted my mindset towards modding, especially in FFXIV. The original player models and textures have already been released by the community, leaving a public trace of their existence. There are standalone third party softwares to recreate housing builds, meaning that even if you unsubscribe for more than 45 days and lose your house, you can still preserve a copy of it outside of the live game. I vaguely remember someone making an in-browser raid simulation that reproduced all animations and skills of every job. A while ago there was someone on social media asking for volunteers to record their in-game player activity for archival purposes, to simulate the social aspect of an MMO in an offline version of it. I’ve also heard that people own private servers of older patches, although it seemed a little tricky to set up.

So, theoretically, by combining all this knowledge, it should be possible to create a standalone, stripped down version of the game in which my character can be preserved as she was, with rudimentary gameplay functions to move around, sit and emote. Basically, her own virtual dollhouse.

The only problem is that, even with the background that I have, I don’t have anywhere near enough technical knowledge, dedication, or patience to work on such a gargantuan project, least of all on my own. But it is comforting to know that the possibility exists, and it makes it easier to let go of all my frustration and disappointment, as well as my former commitment to this game.

And on that note, a certain producer/director addressed the topic of modding a few months into Shadowbringers, and while the irony of his argument being more or less “if it benefits the sales of the game, why not” is not lost on me, I think it’s interesting that the example he gave was the Counter Strike mod for Half Life. Because modding is often reduced to cosmetics or “quality of life” additions, but historically, it has also been about taking the engine and/or assets of an existing game, and making an entirely new game with it, such as Garry’s Mod, Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, not to mention how people are still modding Doom to death more than 30 years after its release, creating maps and narrative experiences that sometimes completely stray away from the original game.

As far as I’m aware, this kind of rearranging/remixing or even access to a semblance of dev tools is still not available in the context of FFXIV. But I think that, even if this only happens after the game’s inevitable end of service, it would be interesting to combine all the knowledge and data that has been extracted by the community, and create tools that would allow you to write your own quests and direct your own cutscenes, so that you can make up your own stories within FFXIV’s universe, with existing characters or your own. And maybe even share them with others, if that’s your thing.

This would be, undoubtedly, the ultimate roleplaying experience.

But unfortunately, while it may theoretically happen in the distant future, for the moment this will have to remain a distant dream (you could even call it… a Final Fantasy………). And so for now I'll just content myself with screenshots I've printed and framed, the 8-9 years of screenshots, video recordings and other data I have stored on my PC (and have to organize at some point…), the Endwalker and Shadowbringers benchmarks, a free trial account if I ever want to play dress-up again, and this website, of course.

One last thing I would like to mention is that if there is one positive thing that came out of all this, it's that thanks to my forum posts I was able to meet online with a Japanese player shortly before Dawntrail released, someone else who had been lamenting the changes to Au ra's facial features, and had been praising my writing (I was so anxious after releasing my first post, reading "素晴らしいフィードバック" kept my spirits high all week, and when they introduced themself by their forum name I immediately recognized them). Two people from completely different sides of the globe, who don’t speak each other’s languages, and yet were aligned in their feelings and their cause, were able to meet “face to face” through their respective avatars to commemorate their former love for FFXIV one last time. It's a kind of experience that is so unique to MMOs, and even if the circumstances for it were less than fortunate, it's something I'll remember for a long time.

In addition to that, months later I learned completely by accident through an Umadori article that apart from the unexpected high amounts of anonymous likes on my forum posts and the few Japanese accounts who followed me on Twitter, I had also earned the nickname シュヴァルツネキ on 5ch and note.com lol. It was nice to read surprisingly favorable opinions of my incredibly lengthy texts (I expected the opposite from 5ch), and to realize that despite the language and cultural barrier, many players were united in their discontent and supporting each other as best as they could (it was a lot harder to gauge on the English-speaking side, because like I said the atmosphere on the forums is just a lot more chaotic and antagonizing, and feedback isn't always very... constructive). Likewise, there have been a few Chinese and Korean players who made accounts on the global servers to be able to join the discussion and express their dissatisfaction with the graphical update, hoping, as I did when I first started occupying the Japanese forums, that they would be able to find like-minded players and better reach the development team. This too, I think, is something you can only experience in the context of an MMO.

It's just a shame that the development team (although I mainly blame the people leading them) seemingly doesn't realize how important this whole movement was, and how much it speaks of the passion dissatisfied players used to have for their game.

I’m also a little jealous of the friend who introduced me to FFXIV, who quit the game right after he had finished Endwalker, ending on the perfect conclusion to his adventure so he could seamlessly switch to another game. I should have done that. Would have saved me and whoever is reading this a lot of time and energy.

And so, with all that out of the way, only one point remains:

What this means for this website

So… I guess a good chunk of this website is going to be on indefinite hiatus from now on.

I realize I never properly did anything with the Journal section. I wanted to write extensive summaries of each expansion and how Schwarzwaelder experiences them, but… If you feel exhausted after reading all of this, then surely you can imagine all the work and energy I have to put in to write this text to begin with. Although, shortly after Dawntrail I did start writing fanfics short stories to cope with all the shortcomings of the Main Story, and came up with ways for Schwarzwaelder to retire… But I don’t know how comfortable I feel sharing them here yet. It could very well be that this section might end up being the main focus of this website in the future, writing my own spin on current and future plot points, but it may just as well remain forever empty because I’m too lazy and embarrassed to share my stuff. Or maybe I can just write it in a series of bullet points and then refine it later. Who knows.

I still can't come up with a good story for Sage, so that page of the Wardrobe section probably won't exist for a while, if ever. I don't plan on adding Viper and Pictomancer for now either, mainly because I lacked the glamour plates for them, but also because I haven't really found a good way to integrate them to Schwarzwaelder's story (my current PCT lore is that Schwarzwaelder accidentally brought to life horrifying chimeras when drawing as a kid due to a surplus of aether, and I've been considering using VPR to tackle my problems with Arcadion, although BLU fits the whole "nothing matters anymore" irony much better, but that's about it). Despite my grievances, I did find some nice outfits in Dawntrail, so I've updated a few pages with new pictures, but these were purposefully shot in a way that hides the face (an interesting challenge... it's unfortunate that it had to happen this way). That might change in the future, though, with *cough* edited screenshots instead. And since I’m not going for achievements anymore, I guess I can just pair them with whichever mount/minion/title I like without having to obtain them first.

(while googling the gear icons I was suggested a bunch of screenshots taken by Chiyo-san, another player who retired due to the graphical update, and I could only sigh...)

The FFXIV side of the Gallery section is probably going to stay as it is for now. On the other hand, I've been having a blast in Shining Nikki (despite an engine upgrade that destroyed Schwarzwaelder's eyes there too, and forced me to change her hat and lighting settings...) and put together a few #tortecore outfits in Infinity Nikki, so those categories might still see some updates.

I started working on the Moodboards category a while ago, but that project low key turned into a behemoth of its own, so I don't know when I'll ever get to finish it. Here is a sneak peek. The idea is to do a collage of a bunch of PNGs themed around a job (renamed according to my preferences), an expansion, or one of the "duels" I was fantasizing about designing one day, with one gemstone or crystal associated with each collage, and each image linking back to its source + maybe a fitting piece of music (for example, the story I wrote on the Dark Knight page is entirely based on this track)... I hope you can appreciate how overly ambitious this is :^)

Speaking of ambitious, I had many plans for the Articles section. I wanted to write an analysis of the visual design of Mt. Gulg, because it's one of my favorite dungeons and the theming works incredibly well with everything it's trying to convey in terms of politics and religion (although I'm so bitter now that I'm wondering if it was accidental... maybe the person in charge left the company), and when The Fell Court of Troia released I saw it as the perfect antithesis of Mt. Gulg, so I wanted to write about that as well... I also have an Island Sanctuary critique I never finished writing (the draft is 14 pages long, and I was still working on introducing the tutorial lol), a rant on Pandaemonium (abandoned it after 6 pages, but mainly I had issues with the music and how the plot would have made much more sense if it had been written the other way around, Athena deserved to be a much more compelling villain with much more screen time), and an incredibly long critique of Dawntrail, its cast, and everything else I mentioned before (I figured after 24 pages that it wasn't worth it, and I still somehow hoped the plot would save itself in 7.X patches...). Judging by the sheer length of this article I clearly still have a lot of Feelings left in me, so maybe I'll finish writing any of these in the future, if I'm bored enough.

Likewise, I had a bunch of guides I was originally very excited to write for the Resources section, but I don't really see the point anymore with how things stand. I'll just strike them through for now and maybe later I'll come back to this idea. I don't think the Portrait Trophy Room page will be updated, I guess it can serve as a reminder of what the lighting and models were like pre-Dawntrail.

Well, that's about it. Like I said, I might come back to FFXIV in the future, but for now I’ll just spend my time on other interests, and only follow the evolution of the game from a distance. Schwarzwaelder may not be part of its story anymore, but I will surely find a place for her elsewhere.

(for now, she’s on Pikmin Bloom. come touch grass with me)

(all this for a character named after a freaking cake smh)