I've been playing MMORPGs provided that I can remember. In the 2004-2005 era, I was in late middle school, and every one of my friends was playing 1 of 2 things, according to the group I asked: Runescape or World of Warcraft. Naturally, being the sucker to look pressure that I was, I dove into both. In Runescape, I spent my nights after basketball practice hustling people within FFXIV Gil the Duel Arena north of Al Kharid, convincing suckers that I should be weak and powerless, as I have zero weapons or armor on my small person before demolishing them my high-level spells. I didn't play World of Warcraft just as much, but my first toon would have been a Night Elf hunter. I'm still a hunter today, but I've been changed into the church of Sylvanas Did Nothing Wrong, AKA the Horde.

And after days gone by, I've spent my years dabbling in other massively multiplayer titles, for instance, Guild Wars, Lineage, or a weird platform fighter kind of game that could best be called Brawlhalla fused with Maplestory, called Mini Fighter. Not to brag (totally to brag), but I went onto end up being the world champion at this game, and there is documented online evidence of that fact (I'm brave). And in every one of those games, perhaps the strange fighting game, starting quests and leveling zones were all extremely similar.

The one game I had never tried, however, was Final Fantasy. Not only had I never tried XIV, and that is today's Final Fantasy online title, but I had never played 11 either, which has been the first online admittance to the franchise. Still, I had played 100 other MMOs, and I've played several Final Fantasy games to completion, so I didn't figure there'd be many surprises. I assumed it'd you need to be a standard Final Fantasy universe that copied the same kind of MMORPG tropes additional hundred games had done, too. I was pleasantly (and often not-so-pleasantly) surprised.