written by Justin Prince (@prince_justin)

It’s been a very long time since I’ve played an MMORPG. While most of the planet romped around the fantasy locales of World of Warcraft, I chose to skip to the beat of a different drum and got into Final Fantasy XI back during the PS2 heyday. It was very different back then when it came to consoles and online gaming, admittedly I was never that into it and after a couple months my interest in the world of Vana’diel waned; sending me back to my regular single player adventures.

Fast forward over ten years and here we are in an age of games being constantly connected to the matrix with robust online communities I could have only dreamed off having in the early 2000s. Thanks to the urging of a friend, and a thoughtful Christmas present, I decided to jump into Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn about two years after the original release. Dubbed version 2.0, A Realm Reborn revamped much of the problems the original Final Fantasy XIV faced, while I wasn’t part of that eco-system I did hear about all the problems version 1.0 faced and how the subsequent outrage pushed people back into Final Fantasy XI rather than enticing them to hop into a new world.