I’m feeling quite under the weather and my whole family is in isolation for a while. It sucks.

Given that I am therefore not working, and in the moments of some lucidity outside of cough syrup, I figured I’d see if I could log into FF14. “Peak hours” were giving me queues near 3,000 or more. Can’t be that bad near lunch time, right?

Well, the queue was 998.

Let’s play a game. You get to guess how long that took to clear through?

Just a tad over an hour. Of which, thankfully, I have wireless headphones that let me do something actually useful during that period. Or semi-useful given my state of mind.

Interesting tangent. In the mid 00’s I used to work in a science organization. One of my tasks was scouring eBay for 386 components because the foundry we had was only able to run on a specific set of hardware. Hard-coded and proprietary elements made scaling or support a challenge…and it was cheaper to get parts on eBay than to rebuild a black-box system. Was.

Early Thoughts

It’s FF14, just more of it? Can I say how pleasant it is not having to relearn my entire class kit when an expansion comes out? It’s like going to a restaurant that has undergone renos and they have a brand new menu. Why should I just not go to another restaurant? This is more like the local pub having a few new beers on tap.

It’s more of the good stuff. Like how XCOM2’s War of the Chosen kept all the good bits and added more. I won’t spoil anything, because clearly if I could only experience the game while so ill I need to isolate, there are many more people who have not even dipped a toe.

There are a few QoL items to highlight. First, city Aetheryte give you a map for easier (and logical) transport. Belts and HQ items being gone are super nice on inventory. The Aether Compass has moved to collections, which was a bit jarring. Daily hunts are way easier to complete. And on the instanced quest duties, you get a profile of the character speaking rather than just their name… that’s oddly useful to remember who-is-who in a game with what feels like 4 dozen side characters.

Next Up…

Well, I have 21 days of “free” playtime, which I guess makes up for 19+ days of quite astounding queues. I’d have to guess that this will extend until the queue times peak to something considered “reasonable”.