The massive successes of Square Enix’s MMOFinal Fantasy 14have led to a wide variety of playstyles. Some players chase Ultimate raids, some put on performances and others, some playersbuild museums inFinal Fantasy 14, among a plethora of other possibilities. A playstyle that’s common enough for a player to inhabit, though, is roleplaying.
Roleplayers are common in online games, often acting as a dedicated community that keeps interest in the game long after it may have otherwise ebbed. The roleplaying culture inFinal Fantasy 14is as active, engaging, and imaginative as any other, and has brought massive success to events likeMogstock–Eorzea’s answer to the classic Woodstock festival. Game Rant recently spoke with the organizers of Mogstock, who delved into the nature ofFinal Fantasy 14’s roleplay community, both from the perspective of those who participate and those who observe it from the outside. Organizers Clayde Lockheart, Demytrya Eno’traeh, Tromad Moonrose, and Mihna Cohrvenn highlighted the major part roleplayers have in their event as well as the broader roleplaying culture ofFinal Fantasy 14.
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In particular, as someone not personally involved in roleplaying and from Primal datacenter–which is not a big RP center–Cohrvenn described traveling to the heart ofFinal Fantasy 14roleplay on Crystal datacenter as a culture shock. She started visiting Crystal more to play with Final Fantasia, the band she and Lockheart formed, and it was a foreign experience.
“Most of the organizers are from worlds on the RP datacenter and I play on a datacenter that doesn’t RP–it was actually a huge culture shock the first time I traveled to Crystal!–so that may also be part of it. But I’ve been visiting Crystal a lot more over the past year doing bard shows with Clayde, and it’s been a really fun experience … It’s been pretty fascinating to see just how different the culture on different datacenters is. On Crystal, people are openly RPing in public areas all the time. You never see that on Primal. And just so there are no misunderstandings, I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all! It’s just a totally different experience from my datacenter.
For many who think of Crystal as home, however, that environment is normal, everyday gameplay. Crystal has a social calendar packed with roleplaying events, with multiple social gatherings happening daily, ranging from sparring clubs and speakeasy-style hangouts to nightclubs and more. There’s a cottage industry of Twitch disk jockeys who play at events, which includes Moonrose as DJ Luna K. There are others who pursue deep, interconnectednarratives inFinal Fantasy 14, finding fellow writers to create worlds inside worlds with.
This last category includes Eno’traeh. Eno’traeh and her writing partner Lledwyn Eno’traeh run a roleplayingFree Company inFinal Fantasy 14(the game’s equivalent to guilds) called Eternal Star. She also manages venues for roleplaying called Elysian Springs Spa and The Covenstead. Her musical group, the Fens, focuses heavily on presenting Vieran culture through song and story, which crosses over into the goals of The Covenstead.
“For the community Lled and I run, personally, exploring Vieran culture and what it means for a group of people affected by a diaspora to have to come and merge into ‘western’ society that is dominated by the Grand Companies. There’s always adventure and artifact or relic hunting, too. There are tons of communities out there running all sorts of stories, and I think we really tried to see that represented in Mogstock. We have adventuring companies, Project Ishgard that does RP stories based on Ishgardian politics and intrigue, restaurant owners, performance clubs, fight clubs–really you name it. I think the more intricate stories tend to spawn when people come together and begin the process of shared or collaborative writing.”
That collaborative writing, she and Moonrose say, keep the game thriving during content droughts betweenpatches and expansions inFinal Fantasy 14. This is through continuing to tell their own stories, related to and independent of the larger narrative beats of the game, as well as events like Mogstock which bring in large crowds who log in to participate when they might otherwise be playing other games. It’s a vitality, they argue, that is part and parcel with Square Enix’s positive attitude toward roleplaying, which the developers have encouraged through answering esoteric questions about lore, creating vast glamour and housing systems, and even adding a Roleplaying status marker to indicate a player is in-character.
“I think they see us as somewhat like adorable pests,” said Eno’traeh. “We ask for a lot, but what we ask for tends to only enhance and, I secretly suspect, inspire them.”
That said, Moonrose pointed out that there are still times when the roleplaying community needs a shot of vitality of its own, and they worry now might be one of those times. While there are many roleplaying venues, Moonrose said that many of them fall into one of a narrow few categories and credits Eno’traeh for being one of the few finding success outside those.
“From a RPer standpoint, there isn’t a lot of actual content. Most of what you see are clubs and there are a handful that actually have some kind of story for the evening going, but none that I have seen that have a continuous story. Demy’s FC and a few specialized RP groups keep the scene going, it feels like.”
Still, Eno’traeh is bullish about roleplaying at the moment, citing the excitement forFinal Fantasy 14’s Voidand the upcoming expansion running through the community at the moment.
“I’d say Endwalker was super well received, too, so a lot of the roleplay you will see out in the open world has elements of that as players begin to weave their knowledge of the world and how it shifted into their stories. It was a bit harder with Shadowbringers due to it happening on the first. People were very excited to be able to begin delving into Sharlayan RP, as a counterpoint to Ishgardian RP.”
Roleplaying will be on full display July 14-16 at Mogstock, which will take place throughout the subdivision of Lavender Beds Ward 22 on Mateus, on the Crystal datacenter. More information isavailable on the Mogstock 2023 Carrd.
Final Fantasy 14is available now for PC, PS4, and PS5.
