Bypassing the lottery
What its like to attend Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest. Two days, thousands of balloted fans, one new tank job and a great deal of queuing.
It’s not easy being a fan of Final Fantasy XIV, especially if you want to go to its Fan Festival.
Unlike many other gaming events around the world, this isn’t one that simply sells out. The game’s Community Team runs a lottery for tickets. Only those with active accounts can enter, and if you win, you gain the ability to purchase a ticket and bring a friend. Miss out on the lottery, and then it’s a mad rush to purchase the remaining unclaimed tickets. Many don’t get a look in.
While the total numbers aren’t revealed, the event easily played host to thousands of fans from across the region, and a smaller contingent of Australians too.
Originally, I wasn’t going to pen an account like this. After all, who cares about what I have to say about any given event? I have another, more typical analysis column planned for later this week.
But given its exclusivity — and perhaps even the slight guilt I feel attending on a media pass, as opposed to leaving it all to Lady Luck — I wanted to provide a more detailed anecdotal account of it. Something that perhaps other media won’t do.
I went in expecting to come away with announcements, or a hot take or two. I’ve come away thinking mostly about the people I met, and those I queued alongside.
I took notes across the weekend, and regularly mentioned to fans that I was a reporter. But I've purposely omitted all names, as I did not formally interview anyone. Hopefully it still gives you an idea of what it's like to attend this event: the good, the bad and the bizarre. Buckle up, this is a long one.
—
I was warned: arrive early.
For someone who loves their sleep, and who came off the back of a whirlwind few days with a mate in Paris, it was a confronting set of messages from the fellow Australian videogame streamers and influencers who were attending the event. Begrudgingly, I set my alarm for 5:45am. Little did I know, it was the right move.
I got to Messe Berlin roughly 10 minutes before the doors opened at 7am. A queue had already formed. They were waiting to get in and simply secure a seat for a talk that started at 10am, three hours later. There was, however, a media entrance, with little to no queue to boot. A UK-based streamer told me it had been put in place after feedback from earlier events, a way to separate out both extreme cosplayers and guests of the event from the public.
I messaged the broader Australian contingent, trying to be helpful. Only to learn that I’d instead put myself on a pedestal. My stomach churned as I realised I was the only one in our chat group with a media pass. The others were condemned to the queue. But thankfully, I later learned it moved quite quickly.
—
So there I was, sitting in the front row for a keynote address almost three hours before it began. No amount of coffee could prepare me for the bright lights and loud music that followed.
Next to me was a fan who had made his way over from the UK for the event. He was a long-time, somewhat hardcore player of the game. We struck up a conversation, discussing what to expect and where we thought the game was going — a popular topic among Final Fantasy XIV fans. If there’s one thing that’s certain: every fan has an opinion on what the developers should do.
He had held an account for over 10 years. This keynote was make or break as to whether he would continue to play the game. He was concerned that gradual changes to roles over the years had homogenised them — a concern shared by certain hardcore parts of the fan base and point that may be addressed in the next expansion.
In an indication of just how busy it was: his friend, also from the UK, went off to get drinks with around 90 minutes still to go until the keynote. He wouldn’t return until it had almost started.
As time rolled by, the main hall of Hub27 at Messe Berlin began to fill. With almost an hour until the event, all the seats had been taken. Remaining fans would be standing through what would be a two-hour presentation from a game producer clad in Nordic-looking armour.
—
Excitement builds as a countdown appears.
As it reaches its completion, the lights slam off, the speakers blare and a trailer plays. It’s an extended cut of the release trailer shown at Anaheim for the latest expansion, Evercold.
Having played Final Fantasy XIV for almost nine years, I’ve become accustomed to these trailers. They lead every expansion. Always high quality, always epic. I’ve spent nights just watching them in sequence. But it’s another experience entirely seeing one surrounded by fans.
The crowd electrifies as the main characters burst into the scene. The screams continue when a character with two shield-gauntlet weapons smashes some drones; fans know this is the new role reveal. The new tank we’ve all heard about.
With the precision of a well-oiled theatre production, Naoki Yoshida appears on stage, garbed in armour, with his translator, Koji Fox, in tow. He poses for the crowd with his gauntlets, to cheers akin to those for a rockstar.
Yet he is not here to perform, but rather to lecture. Slides emerge, videos play, all aimed at drip-feeding new information about the expansion to players.
The new role is given a name: Bastion. Applause and cheers thunder around the room as a video showing off its move set plays. Several slides later, another new piece of information sets the crowd ablaze: Final Fantasy XIV will be collaborating with Final Fantasy VII. The remake’s director, Naoki Hamaguchi, gets on stage and explains the collaboration.
Again, another rockstar reception from the crowd. A celebrity that anyone outside of this world wouldn’t know.
It all continues fairly seamlessly, up until one trailer fails to play. Yoshida’s showman demeanour gives way as he shoots a stern look at the audio-visual stand in the middle of the arena. Something has not gone to plan.
Nearing midday, the presentation comes to an end. And now, after almost five hours in the same spot, the opening ceremony begins. Formalities quickly aside, we are released into the chaos of finding food.
My new friend that had sat next to me for the past five hours was still undecided.
—
It wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy XIV event without queues.
Those who play the game are well accustomed to queuing; almost every in-game activity requires it to some extent. Little did they know that lunch would be a similar experience.
Almost a dozen food trucks with different cuisines lined the food court area. Each had a windy line that spanned the courtyard, and all looked insurmountable.
Yet strangely, and perhaps not by design, this was in part a bonding experience. After all, everyone at the event plays the game, so it was easy to strike up a conversation with fans and compare notes on what they’d seen.
While the response to the trailer was universally positive, there was one sticking point in those lunchtime chats: the new non-linear design of the Evercold expansion.
Final Fantasy XIV is a very straightforward, linear story game, and this was about to change, with Yoshi P insisting that more would be revealed at a later date. But the tease, with no firm information attached, had some concerned.
My mind drifted back to my stomach. Korean, I thought. That had the smallest queue.
—
Bibimbap secured, I was just in time to catch the tail end of the developer panel.
Final Fantasy XIV’s chief composer (and resident larrikin) Masayoshi Soken was on stage along with lead sound designer Go Kinuya, discussing the intricacies of footsteps within the game. There are over 70 variations, I learned, that play depending on your character’s gear, weight and the floor they are walking on.
This is often the thing with game design: aspects that players take for granted are actually often months, if not years, of work. While not particularly sexy, they are essential for creating an immersive experience. Sessions like these work well to describe the myriad mundane parts of making a game.
True to his brand, Soken ended the presentation by “accidentally” playing sound effects that will feature for the new ranged attacker job, due to be disclosed at Tokyo’s Fan Fest in late October. Someone pretending to be security escorted him off stage, a moment of levity breaking up the dense developer discussion.
It folded directly into the Community Team panel, where they detailed their jobs and responsibilities. After seeing the sheer volume of it, across a team of eight, I wondered how much sleep they all get. This was one of the drier, more scripted chats, evidenced by one of the team accidentally skipping ahead on the script, then repeating themselves as they caught up.
But it yielded one interesting tidbit on the structure by which player feedback is sent to the development team. Being a primarily Japanese operation, all feedback (mainly from the Final Fantasy forums, but also sourced from elsewhere) is collected by the Community Team and then sent to the Japanese Community Team to be presented to the developers.
For a very global game, it’s interesting to note that there’s an extra buffer between player feedback and the dev team for regions outside of Japan. This isn’t entirely surprising, given some of the required translation work. But it is an insight into how Final Fantasy XIV thinks about its global operations. It is centralised out of Japan, and everything else reports in to it.
The room was only a third full during these panels. There were plenty of other activities around the event, including an expo hall full of minigames and exhibits.
During this time fans could also enter a raffle to get a slot to buy merchandise or meet one of the development team. The latter was completely random. I met fans who won as many as six meet-and-greets, and others who got none.
As someone who didn’t need to enter a raffle to attend the event in the first place, I made an active call to avoid all of this, to give others attending a better chance of getting a meet or buying some merch.
As for merch, my suitcase is already at capacity anyway.
—
The food truck queues started to quell as dinner rolled around. I had chicken ramen on the brain after another person mentioned it in one of our chats.
Striking up a conversation with more fans in the queue, we got to talking about which Scions of the Seventh Dawn (the main characters) they felt could be killed off to add more drama to the plot.
I continue to be amazed at just how widely opinions vary on the game. I argued it was Urianger’s time to go (my inbox is ready for hate mail). Another fan put Alphinaud up for the chop, only for me to retort that we’d just seen him in the Evercold trailer, so that seemed unlikely.
In summer, the sun doesn’t set in Berlin until closer to 10pm. But a calming nighttime mood fell over the crowd as they filed in for the Final Fantasy XIV piano recital at 6:30pm.
I had some expectations. I knew one earlier Digital Fan Fest recital had gone viral, after Soken himself sang a rather off-key version of an overworld tune from Shadowbringers. “Do you know… La Hee?” he announced to the audience back in 2021, before proceeding to go viral with his rendition.
Soken took to the stage to introduce Japanese pianist Keiko via a translator. Garbed in a majestic, flowing golden gown, she said it was her first time in Berlin, and that it was an honour to play in a part of the world known for its classical music.
Then the first few notes hit the room, and it immediately sunk in that this would be special.
There’s something magical about being in a room with such deep fandom, where everyone knows the words, knows the tunes, and can deeply settle into the beauty of the music that draws so many into this game.
It hit another level when singer Amanda (Amanda Achen) took the stage, also dressed in gold, providing an incredible vocal accompaniment to Keiko’s playing. And of course, for one of the numbers, Soken himself appeared with his signature kazoo-like instrument, the one he went viral with all those years ago. Adding to the spectacle, he had also attached mini-bells to his shoes.
I noticed tissues being passed around the crowd as the duo covered a lot of the game’s recent ambient numbers. Music is a gateway to memory, and it’s perhaps one of the best indicators of how personal Final Fantasy XIV is to just so many people. I shed my own tear or two during the rendition of Living Memory — without spoiling it, that’s a bit of the story that hit hard for me, due to my personal circumstances.
The recital finished sharply before 9pm, and the crowd was dismissed from the arena. The first day was over, but the best was yet to come.
—
The crowd trickled in on the second day of the Fan Fest. With verification and ticketing handled, it was a more casual affair. There were no queues, and the space slowly filled as it edged closer to 10am.
I felt bad for lying as I shuffled towards the check-in counter. I told them my wristband broke in the shower. In reality, I’d cut it off to sleep. I just hate having things on my wrist. They obliged with a new wristband, after a quick ID check.
Come 10am, it was time for an esports tournament.
Opening the morning slot was the Crystalline Conflict championship for Europe and Oceania. It’s an interesting esport. Wrapped up inside the Final Fantasy XIV game, it’s best described as a combination of an all-out brawl and tug of war. It’s not as hard to follow as other esports. It really boils down to strategically working together to knock out the other team, and dragging the crystal to your goal while doing so.
The tension in the room was palpable. For someone who doesn’t usually watch esports, it was hard not to be invested in the games.
Australian team Fish actually took home the cup, winning against rivals Wilted_Rose in a nail-biting best-of-five final. At several points it looked certain that they would lose the match, only for them to claw back in the game’s overtime mode.
They won £18,000 for their trouble, and it was good to hear a familiar accent as they picked up their prize. Jokes were made that Australians excel at Crystalline Conflict because they are used to playing an esport with bad ping and internet lag that puts them at a disadvantage. It may have been funny, but as an Australian player, there’s some merit to it.
—
The rockstars were back.
In a panel named “Naoki’s Room”, both Naoki Yoshida and Naoki Hamaguchi took the stage. Similar to the earlier panels, this felt like a fairly scripted and canned affair. Though the pair said two things that caught my eye.
First, that they met while leaving the office at 3am. That’s Japanese work culture for you in a nutshell.
And that the game that brought Hamaguchi into game development was Final Fantasy VI. He added that any old-school Final Fantasy game — while he didn’t specifically say, I’m guessing anything before Final Fantasy X — would require multiple games to remake properly.
Before I could refresh my internet browser, several other gaming websites had already written this up as a story. Some went as far as to speculate that this could mean another remake is in the works.
It started to dawn on me why the event is as scripted as it is. With fandom this intense, all it takes is one off-beat statement to set the internet alight and create all sorts of headaches for Square Enix.
The session finished with a full Final Fantasy VII remake compilation trailer, combining scenes from all three games, made especially for the event. It was a special moment, for sure. But it wouldn’t surpass what happened next.
—
To say that Europe is into cosplay — where fans dress up as characters from the game — would be an understatement.
Going into the cosplay parade, I had assumed it would be a rather brief affair. There were plenty of cosplayers at the event, but I’d never quite stopped to count just how many there were. What ensued was a full hour and a bit of incredible costumes and transformations. Some were so intricate, so exact.
Each team of costumed attendees had less than 10 seconds on the stage, and the display moved at a pace. Yet it still took over an hour to get through each and every one. Some worked the crowd as they got their 10 seconds of fame. Others posed shyly, to equal applause.
It wasn’t until the second half of the display that it dawned on me that I should be documenting this. I took photos, but still missed so many incredible outfits.
—
Following a quick dinner and pack-up, the mood was picking up for what would be the climax of the show: a concert from The Primals.
This is Final Fantasy XIV’s in-house rock band, led by — you guessed it — Soken.
The mood in the room was electrifying as the band took the stage. Grooving out to videogame music with thousands of other people, coloured batons — a prop from the game, sold at the merchandise store — waving in the air.
It was impressive to watch the double duty some of Square Enix’s team pulled here. Koji Fox, Yoshi P’s translator from the day before, served as the band’s lead singer. Meanwhile, Natasha “Kiwikopo” from the EU Community Team chimed in with the violin part of one of the themes, then minutes later was back on stage performing as a dancing frog for another number.
It all ended too quickly. No amount of cheering could spur on an encore. Like a bullet train leaving Tokyo station, it all finished to a tight schedule.
Closing remarks were made, gratitude was issued, with everyone on the development team essentially saying they will do all in their power to make Evercold a success.
For their sanity, I just hope that means finishing work before 3am.
—
As I’ll get into with my next column, there are deeper issues at play here.
Final Fantasy XIV’s announcements sit atop structural challenges facing the game. Its main story — where completion is broadly required to access new content — is growing beyond 100 hours of gameplay, and Square Enix’s investors are piling in over the extent to which the MMO’s revenue is used to fund the rest of the business.
With every conversation I had, fans were equally as concerned. They don’t want this game to die. It’s special for so many.
But for now, this is all beside the point.
—
I want to say that was the end of the event. And officially, it was.
But something wondrous happened on the way back to London. In my hotel, on the train to the airport and even on my plane, I encountered numerous Final Fantasy XIV fans who had attended the festival. They were either ceremoniously leaving their wristbands on, or donning merchandise they’d secured. I caught one on the train listening to music from the game. And each encounter spurred on a conversation. A mutual interest. Connection. Some of these serendipitous chats were my highlight of the event.
I met a couple in my hotel who had cosplayed as Gaia and Ryne who kissed on stage during the parade, in a nod to fan fiction about the pair.
Elsewhere, a woman who had braved her first solo trip out of her home country to attend the festival.
My check-in queue at the airport was alight with fan discussions on the future direction of the game, while we waited for British Airways to get their act together and check us all in. I could not help but bump into fans while having a beer outside my gate, where we discussed the meta for various roles in the game.
They were everywhere, branded by merchandise, united by their passion for Final Fantasy XIV. Many wore the gear on the way home as a way to nod to others that they were at the festival. Dressed in little to distinguish me from the crowd, I was the odd one out. Only on my final train to my accommodation in London did I peel off from other Final Fantasy XIV fans.
—
To see such fandom in full force really is a sight to behold. It was an event full of highs, some sleepy lows and meaningful personal stories. It’s a pity that so many get left on the cutting room floor, as we focus on news around the game.
This is my attempt to remedy that. It was a special few days for me, and in that regard I know I’m not alone.
Were you at Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest in Berlin? What’s your account of the event? Or what do you think of events like this? Share it in the comments below.
The author attending Berlin Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival on a media pass curtesy of Square Enix. All travel and accommodation was paid for by the author.
I have no interest in FF or FFXIV but I still read to the end. I really enjoyed this diary-style of article and your photos were really great, I've never been to any sort of con/fan event so it's awesome to get a look on the inside and I'm glad you had such a great time as well!
I had no idea there was so much instability behind the scenes, my 2 MMO's of choice are The Old Republic and Elder Scrolls Online so compared to those I've always seen FFXIV as this undefeatable behemoth.
Hints of Harrison the journalist but mostly a chance to hear Harrison nerding out with many other people about something they all love - this was wonderful. It was great to read your experiences on a more personal level for a change, you should consider doing it again.