Today, I want to talk to you about an event that you can no longer participate in within Final Fantasy XIV. It’s an event that ran for more than 25 months before it finally ended, but it did end. It’s called “version 1.0” by the fans, and it launched when the original game servers went online on September 30th, 2010.
You would possibly argue that was not, spiritually, a limited-time event. Yes, producer and director Naoki Yoshida made his overall intentions clear, but by that argument you could just as easily argue that every game is technically running a limited-time event if the servers could theoretically be shut down, which is also technically true, but the point here is that you are right insofar as that event was not flagged as a special event that ended on a determined date.
But here’s the thing: Over the course of that version 1.0 I developed and roleplayed a character who has subsequently followed me through the entirety of the game’s lifespan. And it wasn’t just a matter of rewards that can no longer be acquired. There were places to see, experiences to be had, and moments that have had a direct impact on me as a person. And they’re gone now.
This is not a column about nostalgia, either. As a general rule I tend to be kind of critical of my own nostalgia; it strikes me that the sensible thing to do about anything with outsized happy memories is to critically re-evaluate it on a regular basis so that you know you’re not letting yourself get seduced by poor recollection. I’ve had loads of amazing encounters in that game well after the limited-time event of version 1.0 ending.
Similarly, I’ve had loads of important experiences in World of Warcraft from the launch of the game to the present. I still have some items you cannot get any longer and now serve only as keepsakes. But I don’t really have items, do I? I have lines of code that correspond to an item. Either way, the point isn’t whether or not you can go out and find a particular grey drop; the point is what it meant to you when it arrived and whether it still means something now.
I remember boarding the boat for the new expansion in Final Fantasy XI on the day it launched and feeling ever so excited to be heading to unlock Blue Mage and Corsair. It was a unique experience, and you can’t have it now, even though all the pieces are still in place.
Yes, you could go log in to FFXI right now, get on board the ship to Al Zahbi, and do what is required to unlock those two jobs if you want to. But the experience was a limited-time moment. You can have your own experiences, your own moments, but none of them is ever going to be that moment. Linear time means that you can never again have the feeling of going to these zones as new places as you could back in the day.
For that matter, it’s not even just linear time. If I could somehow travel back in time to launch day and log in and wait on the docks, I still couldn’t have the same experience because I already had it once. I know what I’m looking for and don’t have to search for it at all. You cannot un-cross a river; you can only go back to the other shore.
This may all seem like splitting hairs. Sure, you cannot technically have the same experience, but does that actually matter? Well… you know the answer is going to be yes, but it’s yes for reasons that might be a little opaque.
Something I found out too late in City of Heroes was that… you know, that game was a limited-time event. No one who played it or wrote about it was expecting the game to shut down, certainly not when it did. None of us were thinking of it as being limited-time.
Oh, sure, in our heads we knew it was. Nothing lasts forever. But the thing about MMOs being available for only a limited time is that even as we know everything is temporary to a certain extent, we don’t really spend most of our time thinking about that fact. It’s just a part of your life… right up until it isn’t.
I didn’t know that the last time I talked with my father was the last time I’d hear his voice until he was dead, and then it was too late to think about in any way. Everything seems permanent until it doesn’t. Sometimes you get big, obvious warnings; sometimes you wake up on what promises to be a normal Tuesday and you find out that your life is changing forever.
Usually for the worse. Very few good things happen on a Tuesday.
Here’s the thing: There are people who really, vocally, want nothing time-limited in their MMOs. And that is an understandable sentiment because a lot of times there is no reason for designers to arbitrarily add more limitations. The reason you have only so long to participate in an event is often nothing more detailed than “this keeps people engaged for exactly long enough for us to prepare the next event.” That’s kind of not great! There are games that manage this better, and there are games that manage this worse. It’s a fact of life.
But there’s also a sentiment I see some time that we shouldn’t have anything be time-limited in any game, ever. And… that’s just not possible.
I will be the first person to tell you that there are tons of amazing games out there, but even single-player games have limited-time events. When Final Fantasy XVI first released, it was an interesting time to be playing and experiencing it alongside other people. And yes, you can still play it now, but it is going to be a different experience! The fan community already exists and has kind of changed over time!
Wanting everything to be there and waiting for you the instant you decide to hop into any MMO is honestly, kind of self-centered. It’s stating that you want the game to behave as a single-player game, forever stored in amber until you choose to take it out. I can load up Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth right now and it will still be just like it was when I last played it; the world will not have moved on in any way.
But the whole point of MMORPGs is that they will have moved on. If I don’t log in for a month, things happen. People might have stopped playing. New people might have started. Others might have come back. Systems and content have changed. And that’s not a bug or a drawback; that’s a feature. That’s part of the charm, to dive back into the game and see the ways in which it has changed or stayed the same from a player’s perspective.
You can be mad that it changed, or you can be happy to see what it is now. The latter might sometimes be harder. But it’s the actual situation you are going to need to deal with every time, so I would advise getting used to the idea that it is, in fact, not permanent.
Sometimes you know exactly what’s going on with the MMO genre, and sometimes all you have are Vague Patch Notes informing you that something, somewhere, has probably been changed. Senior Reporter Eliot Lefebvre enjoys analyzing these sorts of notes and also vague elements of the genre as a whole. The potency of this analysis may be adjusted under certain circumstances.
