Podquisition 602: The Purple One

To answer Laura's question about FFXIV. Level 15-ish is when the training wheels come off and the story proper begins. Then it really gets great in the first expansion. Level 15 is the first instanced dungeon content, then shortly afterwards the tutorial stories converge and the actual main plot of A Real Reborn starts, shortly followed by the first instanced boss battle. Then, at level 50 (the end of the base game) a LOT of side content unlocks, and around 2.4 halfway between the base game and the first expansion, they kind of get out of "relaunch the game quantity over quality panic" and you see a HUGE uptick in the quality of the writing and quest design in general, with a lot less filler. After that, it's pretty much all good. It's a slow burn to be sure, but I think if you just plug away at the trial, playing a couple hours a week for the next year or so, you'll really enjoy it. I generally find the base game and each expansion to take roughly 40 hours each, roughly the size of a mid sized jrpg. I tend to beat each expansion in two-ish months. You can certainly dump hundreds of hours into each, but if you just do the story (which will give you enough exp to hit max level without grinding) you can beat each expansion in a pretty reasonable time. The game's director is pretty openly anti fomo, so it's built to be a game you can take your time with, and don't feel pressured to play constantly. Which has kept me as a casual player for nearly ten years now. So uh...tldr...training wheels come off after around 5 hours, the game opens up with side content like raids at about 40 hours, the really good stuff people love the game for starts in the first expansion, at around 50-60 hours.

The ICC will be investigating that singing.