Not offensively bad. Just... soulless. They're two yellow quests, a quick cutscene, and a maybe a glam or emote if we are lucky. Fifteen minutes of content, tops.
And sure, they’ve always been lighthearted. But somewhere along the way, they stopped feeling like events and started feeling like chores with a costume attached. No group duties. No gameplay. No reason to interact with it once you complete it.
What’s wild is that they could be more. This game has tried before with a haunted house during Halloween, or Valentione’s Ceremony, where players had to work together to solve a maze and match memory cards. These were light, playful glimpses of what seasonal content could look like. But they were one-offs: quick, shallow, and with no reason to return. Other MMOs build seasonal events around progression, currencies, or replayable activities. FFXIV shows sparks of that potential, but never follows through. It's frustrating to see something that could be so much more just quietly fade after one run.
I’m not asking for the world. I’m just asking for something worth showing up for.
Other games at least try. WoW brought back a whole dungeon as a raid for its 20th anniversary. Was it perfect? No. But it was ambitious. It was something. FFXIV doesn’t need to copy that, but it wouldn’t kill Square to give us a reason to log in that isn’t just “get your item before it hits the Mog Station.”
And yeah, these events aren’t the core of the game. But they’re still part of its rhythm. They decorate the cities. They show up in the Lodestone, get a blip on social media, and become the backdrop for countless screenshots. They matter. They’re chances to celebrate the world, the community, the stories we’ve been part of for years. Right now, they just feel like a checklist.
FFXIV is better than this. That’s why it’s disappointing.
Continue reading...
And sure, they’ve always been lighthearted. But somewhere along the way, they stopped feeling like events and started feeling like chores with a costume attached. No group duties. No gameplay. No reason to interact with it once you complete it.
What’s wild is that they could be more. This game has tried before with a haunted house during Halloween, or Valentione’s Ceremony, where players had to work together to solve a maze and match memory cards. These were light, playful glimpses of what seasonal content could look like. But they were one-offs: quick, shallow, and with no reason to return. Other MMOs build seasonal events around progression, currencies, or replayable activities. FFXIV shows sparks of that potential, but never follows through. It's frustrating to see something that could be so much more just quietly fade after one run.
I’m not asking for the world. I’m just asking for something worth showing up for.
Other games at least try. WoW brought back a whole dungeon as a raid for its 20th anniversary. Was it perfect? No. But it was ambitious. It was something. FFXIV doesn’t need to copy that, but it wouldn’t kill Square to give us a reason to log in that isn’t just “get your item before it hits the Mog Station.”
And yeah, these events aren’t the core of the game. But they’re still part of its rhythm. They decorate the cities. They show up in the Lodestone, get a blip on social media, and become the backdrop for countless screenshots. They matter. They’re chances to celebrate the world, the community, the stories we’ve been part of for years. Right now, they just feel like a checklist.
FFXIV is better than this. That’s why it’s disappointing.
Continue reading...