MMOs thrive on millions of players who try them out, get addicted, and populate their massive worlds. The most popular this year is Final Fantasy 14, and you can’t even buy it right now. Final Fantasy 14 destroyed expectations, surpassing World of Warcraft as the world’s greatest fantasy MMO. It became so popular over the summer, before the release of its major Endwalker expansion, that not even its own developers saw it coming.

The global semiconductor shortage has its grip on everything from graphics cards to cars, but it’s also the reason why Final Fantasy 14’s servers can’t contain all of the gamers trying to log in and play. Square Enix and Game Director Naoki Yoshida released post after post apologies for the long wait times, detailing what it can do about them and, frustratingly, what it can’t do. About them.

What’s happening with Final Fantasy 14 right now is excruciatingly 2021. MMOs have always been the type of game that has pushed contemporary technology to its limits, and this year the technology can’t keep up with the demand. The coronavirus has stopped the whole world and Eorzea too. The developer said the resurgence of the virus in Japan has made it impossible for him to travel overseas to physically activate more servers. As a result, every player trying to log in for the game’s momentous expansion has been faced with queues lasting several hours and an assortment of errors.

If 2021 has anything definitively definitive to say about the MMO, it’s that the genre is healthier than ever.

Despite the issues, Square Enix’s apparent honesty is the root cause of what longtime Final Fantasy 14 fans, and what many see as “refugees,” use to defend the game against its direct competitor, World of Warcraft. Blizzard’s MMO has moved in this direction for a while, continually disappointing many of its players with misguided features and confusing story developments. World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, Shadowlands, failed to address the widespread anger caused by Battle for Azeroth. Combined with Activision Blizzard’s widespread accusations of sexual harassment and discrimination, a large number of gamers have fled the game this year.

In many ways, you could have predicted the rise of Final Fantasy 14 and the downfall of World of Warcraft by following the trajectories of both games over the past several years. I’m not sure anyone could have guessed that New World would get so much attention and hold it back over the past four months. Our own Fraser Brown called the game confusing, cranky, and weak for solo play in his review. Those reviews haven’t stopped him from maintaining over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, let alone continuing to watch others play it on Twitch. Amazon’s first MMO, among a slew of server issues, bugs, and exploits, cemented its place as one of the biggest debuts of 2021 not just for MMOs but games in general.

And you can’t forget about Destiny 2. The MMO shooter took the year to prepare for The Witch Queen expansion in early 2022, tackling things like cross-play, seasonal storytelling, and cosmetic systems. Destiny 2 has done a lot of work cleaning up its existing content to better serve what its hungry players want, although that hasn’t alleviated those who have been embittered by the controversial decision to eject entire planets from the game with it. the Beyond Light expansion from last year.

Elsewhere, there are games going on like Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Crowfall, and, if we’re generous with the definitions, Genshin Impact. MMOs and games that bend the format are always running, updated and wondering why this is the best time to give them a chance. MMOs have reached a level of maturity where you can almost certainly find a place in one that matches your thematic tastes and mechanical desires. At this point, it’s rare for MMOs to go completely away, and it’s much more common for them to nestle in dedicated subtitles, Discord servers, and forums. If 2021 has anything definitively definitive to say about the MMO, it’s that the genre is healthier than ever.

Final Fantasy 14 is the place to be

The rapid success of Final Fantasy 14, particularly in the wake of the deterioration of World of Warcraft, is a vivid example of how player reception and retention defines MMOs more than other live-service games out there. mainly focus on solo experiences. These are lively games that require a stable pool of players to fuel their group events. If Final Fantasy 14 hadn’t spent eight years building a complex history and a supportive community of gamers, this year would have been very different.

Endwalker, the hefty expansion set that aims to wrap up the story that began in 2013’s A Realm Reborn, brings together much of the game’s history in one cataclysmic event. Eorzea and his many warriors of light fought many enemies, but none of them threatened the entire universe in one fell swoop.

For seasoned Final Fantasy 14 players, Endwalker is a chance to remember the far-reaching storyline and huge set of characters in the game. Much of the story makes you revisit old enemies, old friends and old places. Like the 2019 Shadowbringers expansion, Endwalker unveils some of the game’s biggest mysteries. It’s a farewell to an era of Final Fantasy 14, and a warm recognition from the players who have kept the game alive after its rough first iteration. It is a celebration of a world that many have called home for years now.

It’s also a destination – and perhaps a future home – for so many players looking to finally understand, or at least be a part of, it. It is difficult to recommend to play during its first hours. They’re slow, uneventful, and pretty dry without the context of subsequent expansions. But once you’ve gotten past that and found either a part of the story you love or an activity that you enjoy, you’re gone for good.

I wasn’t convinced by the game until I hit Heavensward, which mixes up a lot of the political stakes you’d get from something like Game of Thrones with the reach of a JRPG. Last year, I got really interested in breaking rocks as a miner in the crafting and collecting area of ​​the game’s pseudo-open world. And of course, I’m in Final Fantasy 14 fashion, which really means dressing my bunny girl in Nier: Automata’s 2B.

Everyone has their own reason for wanting to try the game and why it keeps coming back. That’s what makes MMOs so appealing, and that’s why 2021, especially with the immense popularity of Twitch streaming, has been a strong year for MMOs. It’s so easy to bring everyone together in one place, and MMOs have been doing it for years.

The runaway success of Final Fantasy 14 and New World is the biggest sign that the MMO genre is enduring and adapting as so many games borrow parts from it. The rise of live service games, and especially habitable worlds like Fortnite, owes a lot to MMOs. It’s 2021 and most people understand what raids and dungeons are. This was not the case during the heyday of World of Warcraft, which had 12 million players in 2010.

With so much that has happened in the past few years, it’s understandable that people want a game to respect their time, give them a lot of influence over what they want to do, and be able to share it all with their friends and family. family. . This game wasn’t World of Warcraft this year, with a tendency to upset its most dedicated gamers and Activision Blizzard, making it difficult to convince anyone to play it as news of its toxic work culture keeps growing. ‘flow. In its place, Final Fantasy 14 and New World stepped in, and they showed us the kind of game people want right now.

As a long-time gamer, I know that MMOs and their players are always changing and moving. A lull in content could stagnate a community, and a new version could pull everyone in its direction. But when you devote that much time to something, you’re always ready to go back, whether it’s through the hooks of nostalgia or the glow of new things to do. Games like Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker and New World have cemented their place in MMO canon. While they may both be snapshots of a particular era, they’re no less important, if only to understand why MMOs are such a large and important genre.