In other news: my girlfriend and her friends as well as some guildies of mine all bought the Complete Edition today. Followed by the obvious shouts of: “why would you try that weeb game?” from the people hardcore into WoW.
Should we really go into the substance about why WoW fans calling FFXIV a “weeb game” doesn’t make much sense, considering WoW’s entire power escalation, the cute furry races dominating WoWcensus, and the catchphrase dialog…?
i wanted either hyper masculine au ra dude-bunnies or soft dude-bunnies
they gave me an aesthetic exactly in the middle with customization probably allowing wiggle one way or the other, i win FF14 it’s me i’m the victor
congratulations to people that want female hrothgar i hope they turn out good and not super dimorphism’d
I actually want soft dude-bunnies all the way. Not even ashamed to admit it…
For myself, I still feel like the races of FFXIV are a bit too "Model"ish. I also find it weird there’s a difference between “Beastmen” and my tailed and horned scaly boi with glowing eyes. To say nothing of the Rabbit-folk and Cat people. Cat People that turned up recently for me in bikinis.
I saw that and just thought “Square knows what its people want.”
In my experience, people complaining about something being too anime is either casual racism or a fear that anime will make you gay. Sometimes people genuinely just don’t like the aesthetic, but I don’t usually see them fall on that specific comment. It’s incredibly dumb. Like a Japanese game made by a Japanese company has anime flavoring? You don’t say!
Besides, it’s still a FF game through and through. They’ve had a very defined art style for decades now. You may as well also be complaining about the look of FFIX, X, FF7R, or any of the others. It’s just weird sabre rattling because another game is getting more popular than your game. It’s a dumb thing to get weird about and pretty much in line with WoW’s condoning of confrontation for no reason.
I don’t know why, but I like the “model-ish” aesthetics. I was never a big fan of the “masculine powerhouse” trope, hence why I never really understood why people like stuff such as the Conan universe. It’s also one of the things I find lacking in WoW. This character here would be much slimmer and far less muscular if I had the chance.
Funnily enough, I remember the same saber rattling from people who were crazy into Ultima Online and SWG back in the day about the fact that WoW was “too cartoonish!” Hence the phrase “toon.”
Since WC3 the thing I always liked about Blizzard was that they let me play the monster. Orcs, goblins, trolls, zombies; who else lets you be bad guys?
Yeah, EQ fans had a lot of comments about WoW being too cartoony iirc.
Like, it’s fine if you think FFXIV are too pretty, especially if you want more flaws in your character or prefer more beastly stuff. Even Yoshi wanted Hrothgar instead of Viera for that specific reason. But, that’s a very different criticism than “Ugh not that ANIME game!”
FF has references to Gundam and Sailor Moon. It’s not exactly a surprise or even a negative.
Someone stop me from buying that $400 Light model watch
Guys! Guys! I got new refrigerator armor! AND IT’S ORNATE!
https://i.imgur.com/ApHILDq.jpg
It’s so goofy and dumb and I absolutely LOVE IT!
Oh god a FFXIV Stratocaster all my dreams
e: oh god $3500. That’s a little over twice what I paid for my “main” guitar ;-;
Yeah I made a tall elf dude last night, he’s gorgeous. The amount of emotes right out the box are so great. This character looks so damn cool.
Lorewise I believe there are snippets that in the past, Miqo’te were also considered Beastmen. Its one of those subtle racism things that culturally faded over time. Hyur (Humans), Lalafell, and Elezen pretty much considered everyone else to be a Beastman race until that race was proven to peacefully co-exist and even cohabit cities and settlements.
Of which there is far too much in WoW. Races in WoW come in one of three varieties: So muscular they shouldn’t be able to move, Short, and Misc. That last one encompasses the body types you just don’t see often such as Blood Elf, thin and fat.
Technically? Square does.
The only difference is that Square doesn’t paint entire races as being monsters, but rather demonstrates how every race has it’s own monsters within it. As far as bad guys go, the lore behind certain classes lets you know you’re basically not operating within the law. The Dark Knight quests are quite a doozy, and during the course of Black Mage quests you actually get someone who follows you around to arrest you the moment you do anything remotely suspicious.
I for one welcome the soft bunny boys. Not everything has to be hyper masculine.
This coming from someone who is, unsurprisingly, not a fan of male humans in WoW’s style!
I’m a big fan of anime so I welcome this game’s aesthetic. In fact, I’d actually prefer if it was more anime (Think something like Genshin Impact) but I digress, it’s far closer to what I like in comparison to WoW.
If you need any help with anything, hit me up on Discord! I’m on the Crystal data center. We should add each other if you’re on it as well!
It took me awhile to get used to the aesthetic of FF14.
I still think WoW’s races are inherently just better in terms of creativity and design, but I’ve also accepted that a lot of the races are so ugly it hurts. But it’s also just WoW’s style, so it is what it is.
I am super thankful for Hrothgar being a thing since I like my big scary monster races, and this fills the itch that I don’t get anymore. I enjoyed being a miqo’te though.
Little bunny men is amusing but I am definitely not the target audience with them. I am hoping they’re shorter than the female Viera though, that’d bring me great joy.
The thing that bugs me about FF14’s racial lore that some races get EXTENSIVE lore regarding their naming structure, culture, religion, and even interactions with the jobs/class in the game. IE: Mi’qote and Au Ra and then others are just absolute bare bones-see Viera.
And even among those groups since all races have two subspecies/clans within, you can tell which one had far more attention paid to it in regards to depth in the lore and the other was more like…well darn…we need something, anything to squeeze here >_>
Still not quite soft enough.
i win because i can always keep my stargazing nerd viera using the female model while making my Devil May Cry viera use the male model
https://i.imgur.com/aMbFepF.png
he likes looking at the sky, travelling, and playing yu-gi-oh with his deck of cards
Cool lore fact: there isn’t! This isn’t a spoiler since it’s addressed in the Encyclopædia and is fairly easy to piece together in-game after awhile, so I’ll just dive in.
The designation of “Beast Tribe” was invented by a mining concern in Ul’dah as a way to otherize the Amalj’aa, thereby making it easier for them to steal their (mineral rich) land. See, they’re not taking it from people, they’re LIBERATING it from the savage, primitive beastmen. The other city-states and Garlemald eagerly accepted this new designation and quickly started applying it to some of their neighbors.
It’s literally a commentary on the perniciousness of colonialism, the arbitrariness of who is and is not seen as The Other, and the way prejudice is often fanned by those in power in order to stay in power.
And that’s why FFXIV is cool, because it explicitly presents colonialism/imperialism/nationalism as horrifically grotesque nonsense that’s based on nothing more than greed and lies.