In the new Fatal Raid of Final Fantasy XIV, ambitious progression guilds fought for the first boss kills worldwide. However, the fastest community did not incite cheers with their “World First,” but rather a mocking meme fest. Producer Naoki Yoshida will not be pleased…
What makes the Fatal Raids special? Similar to the mythic difficulty level of the raids in World of Warcraft, the Fatal Raids represent the most challenging challenges in Final Fantasy XIV. The bosses require so much training, coordination, and skill that the most ambitious guilds take days to race for the world’s first kills.
A Fatal Raid like this opened its doors this week with “A Second Future (fatal)” from Patch 7.11. Just like Blizzard, Square Enix does not turn it into an official competition. So, the community of Eorzea gets involved, in the form of echoesports.gg and mogtalk.org, which have accompanied the World First Race.
The trailer for the latest content update of Final Fantasy XIV:
One pixel to enslave them, to find them all
Who won? After two and a half days of progress, the Japanese guild GRIND reached the finish line first (via X). However, the joy over the World First kill did not last long. Although the guild did not stream their runs publicly, screenshots quickly circulated showing a red pixel that was not supposed to be there.
A few hours later, an official from FrostyMog confirmed that at least one player from GRIND is said to have used a tool to gain an advantage in the fight (via X). Unlike in WoW, third-party add-ons are not allowed in FFXIV.
Nevertheless, there are such modifications to, for example, display the exact hitbox of a character and thus avoid area spells with pixel precision. Due to the disqualification of GRIND, the second-placed guild Kindred from the NA region can now call themselves the winners. The Japanese players from Lucrezia managed to get the kill just a few minutes after Kindred.
How does the community react? With mockery and memes. Reddit is currently full of such posts:
Example 2:
Example 3:
Rasz_13 draws the comparison to WoW (via Reddit): “WoW Raiders: I cannot exist without add-ons; they are literally my blood, my flesh, my spirit. / FFXIV Raiders: I once saw someone using an add-on. He was skinned alive in the marketplace after being mocked for hours.”
Has this happened before? It is indeed not the first time that a World First kill winner from Final Fantasy XIV had to be disqualified due to the use of unauthorized tools. Something similar happened in the Ultimate Raid “The Omega Protocol” in January 2023.
Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida explained afterward that he was personally extremely disappointed with the cheaters. He certainly does not like the recent scandal at all. However, the developers do not want to implement an official anti-cheat program at this time. Instead, they are currently working on a mobile version of the MMORPG: Final Fantasy XIV is coming to mobile – Now the head of the MMORPG is saying exactly what players want to hear
