Good Morning Folks. Last night I made my way through the last part of the Alliance Raid for Endwalker and really enjoyed the story. Mastodon was sort of adorable last night as we all said goodnight to our Warriors of Light and put them to bed for a two-day nap. It feels really weird waking up this morning and knowing that I can’t log back into the game until the Dawntrail expansion has launched. I think I am fully back in the swing of all things Final Fantasy XIV and my mind is swimming with all of these goals. I am trying to pace myself so that I don’t burn out, but there are so many objectives that I want to complete. Will this be the expansion when I finally stick around for a while and do things like leveling my crafters? I have no clue… and honestly, I am supremely doubtful.
Yesterday this amazing video came out with 300 Musicians performing a medley of themes from Endwalker and Final Fantasy XIV in general. Firstly I was overwhelmed with emotions while watching this video. I am not sure what it is about music in general being an amazing vehicle for conveying emotions but it certainly is for me. When I hear something I am often transported back to exactly what I was thinking and feeling when I heard that same music at a pivotal time in my life. It was all I could do to keep myself from weeping as I remembered how fundamental the ten-year ride leading up to Endwalker was. As much as I love the joy that can surround a gaming community… I struggle to maintain this shine for long. I want to unabashedly love something without reservation and allow myself to get wrapped up in a thing for years at a time.
The problem is… I also know myself. Even games like World of Warcraft… I never played consistently for the entire run of the years I was extremely active in the game. I remember not even making it to 60 before bouncing and going off to play some Everquest II with a different group of friends. When A Realm Reborn launched… I am not sure I made it to 1.1 before checking out until about a year into the game’s release schedule and then playing catch-up. We were extremely active for the second year of ARR and a good chunk of Heavensward, even consistently raiding. However, for Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker I have been an MSQ-only player who played through the story quests and then bounced to come back late in the release cycle when the excitement for the next expansion reached its fever pitch. Side note… the above image is of my pre-Lalafel version of my FFXIV character.
There are times when I wonder if I simply have forgotten how to love something without reservation. Slightly related… let’s take the concept of Christmas as a holiday event. As a kid… from the moment the “wishbooks” started arriving until the day you were physically going to all the different houses… everything was manic levels of excitement about all of the possibilities that the season had to offer. Everything from the gigantic tree to the twinkling lights to the rituals surrounding it… seems like pure magic. As I got older… it became harder and harder for me to slip into the “Christmas Spirit” usually as an adult taking me until I was actually visiting family or seeing the magic reflected in the eyes of kids… before I really got there. However now that all our Grandparents are gone, and the rituals have been broken… I am not sure I ever really get into the spirit, or at least not the same way I once did.
The same is somewhat true for gaming events. I remember “Blizzcon Fever” used to hit me in the lead-up to that show and I would inevitably resubscribe to the game and fall back in love with Warcraft for a few months. I would look forward to the E3 press conferences and even devote a series of blog posts talking about the finer points of things I was looking forward to from each. While I know we technically no longer have E3 and it could be said that we have not for several years now… we still have big press conferences in June from each of the companies. I don’t think I wrote a single blog post this year about any of it… because I was struggling to muster the excitement that I once had. I find myself uncomfortably jaded, and I am not sure how I back away from that precipice.
I find myself in a mindset where I am very much enjoying Final Fantasy XIV again… and have all of these things that I want to do. I am back tanking for random strangers on the regular which is an impressive feat given that I simply was not doing that at all for most of Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker. I am having a lot of fun, but I am scared I am going to fuck this up. I always figure out some way to deflate my balloon of hopes and dreams. Maybe that is just what becoming an adult does to you, or maybe I am just more pessimistic than the average person. Whatever the case I would really appreciate it if my brain could accept the unabashed enjoyment of something for once without trying to analyze it to death. We will have to see how that goes.
Anyways sorry for a bit of a bummer blog post but it has been the thing that has been bouncing around in my skull. Maybe now that I have committed it to “paper” I can stop thinking about it. I think in this downtime from FFXIV I will probably be working on getting another world completion done in GW2 or grinding out another gift of battle.
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