Why I won't be finishing Final Fantasy 14

… Well to be specific, you can’t really ‘finish’ an MMO since they’re generally a never-ending game but you know what I’m getting at. Let me preface this by stating that I don’t think FF14 is bad or is a game of poor quality; I actually recommend it in terms of an MMORPG when something like World of Warcraft has overstayed its welcome and refuses to get with the times. FF14 gives players the freedom to play any class with a few mere button presses, to gain experience in a variety of ways and be an enjoyable game to return to. However I won’t be returning to FF14, and to that I ‘blame’ the recent expansion Heavensward and the narrative that you’re forced to go through.

In other MMORPGs, you’re typically given a main storyline that is the crux of what story the game has to tell, but you’re more or less allowed to wander off that main path and do what you please and you’d end up accessing later content. FF14’s main storyline is what unlocks future content in ways of dungeons and gameplay mechanics, so you have to stick with it in order to access what the game has to offer. The storyline quests often culminate into major events/boss battles that can be dispatched relatively easily, then the quests return to diversions until another major story event pops up. You’re free to wander off at any time of course to do sidequests or whatever else, but that main story won’t be going anywhere until you finish it, and finishing one chapter unlocks the next big angle that your character has to tackle, with new chapters being added by Square-Enix to both add content and lore. The kicker is that buying Heavensward doesn’t mean you can immediately access its content even if you’re at the original level cap of fifty - You have to finish the story quests up to Heavenswards release to access its content, and these story quest chapters go on for a long time with a lot of needless filler between boss battles in order to pad out game time. Even in World of Warcraft all you need to access expansion content is to be at the needed level and maybe have twenty to thirty minutes of quests to do, not hours of fetch and kill quests. Worst of all, I could not give any less of a damn about the storyline in FF14, especially when quests important to the story are ridiculous chores for the so-called legendary hero that your character is. At one point you have to fetch a group of kids who are playing hide-and-seek so a convoy can leave for another town. Really.
Really. #wherearetheparents

Credit where due, there IS a story in FF14 that takes you around the world and has impact involving a wide cast of characters, not just being a string of quests that takes you zone to zone with limited narrative. There has been mention of future expansions not needing to have story completion in order to access the stuff you’ve paid for, but Heavensward hasn’t been mentioned in terms of being opened up yet. I’m certain there are people who enjoy the story, but I picked up FF14 for the positive sides of its gameplay, not to chase around a scam artist adventurer who is withholding information regarding a big bad boss who could -destroy half of the freakin’ world- and I can’t just break his ankles to make him squeal. I had been looking forward to Heavenswards for the new jobs like a card slinger mage or a mechanical maestro, but with each completed chapter in the story another one takes its place, and I seem to have multiple hours ahead of me still before I can even go to the floating zone and hang out with dragon buddies. FF14 is still a great MMO amidst the sea of poorly created cash-grabs, but if it wants to keep me from reaching content I had put money down for, then I’m turning in my lalafel’s little boots for good.