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'Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood' — Square Enix May Let You Catch Up, But There's A Catch

By purchasing both Jump and Boost Potions, gamers are able to catch up to the most up-to-date place within the story.

By Dustin MurphyPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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If you've ever played a #FinalFantasy game, you'll know they are ridiculous in size. Riddled with stories, the worlds are crafted with intricate details, and their design is unique. Translate that grandeur to an #MMO as gigantic as Final Fantasy XIV and you'd be right in thinking that enjoying the full experience is a huge sacrifice of a player's time.

But what if the developer #SquareEnix were to offer you a way to bypass that time expenditure for those who want to jump straight into the newest content?

FFXIV director Naoki Yoshida has published a lengthy post that offers up a way for players to do just that. By purchasing both Jump and Boost Potions, gamers are able to catch up to the most up-to-date place within the story. But this time jump comes at a price.

Is $43 (Or 5,000 Japanese Yen) Worth It To Skip The Stories?

Courtesy of Thamriyell on YouTube

Those impatient players among us can pay about $43 (5,000 yen) to jump ahead to level 50, which will put them right at the Heavensward expansion. They'll be able to revisit events of the game as cutscenes shown at the inn. If you buy both potions, you won’t have to grind through dozens of hours of gameplay across multiple patches, which could be a deterrent for those who are desperate to play the #Stormblood expansion that was announced earlier this year at the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Las Vegas.

Let's take a closer look at Yoshida's post:

Including the free trial version, we are seeing several thousand new players play FINAL FANTASY XIV every day. While FINAL FANTASY XIV might be one of those games wherein new players can catch up to the top-end of the players relatively easy, not everyone has a lot of free time to spend on the game. A lot of people enjoy gaming as much as they can with their limited free time while managing their busy lives.While people will be able to catch up even easier after the release of Stormblood with the adjustments we will make to the amount of experience points obtained, it would still require a lot of time just to reach the starting point of Stormblood.If an MMORPG is not able to recruit new players, all that is left is for the game to stabilize and eventually go on a decline. At that moment, the type of operation of the game would shift to one that works hard to slow down the pace of decline. To prevent the game from reaching that point, we would like to prepare as much as we can for the potential new players that may be interested in the game.

So while this option is great, it does mean that fans will miss out on a large chunk of story. However, the developers do give fans the opportunity to go back and enjoy the stories in order to have an understanding of the events prior to the current state of the game.

While jumping ahead would be beneficial to those pressed for time, one must remember that much like its successful competitor World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy is rife with lore, with new events around every corner that expand upon the already existing world. And a story that is always expanding with each bit of new content is worth diving into.

Even as someone who played quite a lot before the launch of A Realm Reborn, there was still so much to learn and I never got the chance to complete all the content. If you want to jump ahead, it's highly recommended to do your research and have a real crack at the game before skipping ahead.

While Yoshida insists the option to catch up may not happen until after the launch of the expansion next year, this gives you time to head on over to the official Final Fantasy XIV website to see all that you can learn about the current game.

Final Fantasy XIV's next expansion Stormblood is set for release in summer 2017.

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About the Creator

Dustin Murphy

A video games journalist and Content Creator. He has been featured on sites such as AppTrigger and MoviePilot. He's the president and editor-in-chief of the independent news publisher Blast Away the Game Review.

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