The Final Fantasy XIV community can definitely take things a little too seriously sometimes, especially when someone seemingly criticizes their favorite game. That was demonstrated when popular streamer Ryan “Northernlion” Letourneau almost found himself in the crosshairs of the FFXIV community after making an innocuous joke about the games difficulty.
In a clip from a stream on Nov. 27 that later went viral several days later, Northernlion responded to a chat message while playing Souls-like Lies of P that said “You need to play FF14 to learn how to dodge this.” In his response, Northernlion joked “Final Fantasy 14 players love to be like ‘oh it’s the hardest game of all time’ and then you watch someone do a raid and the boss goes like “heh heh heh heh” and then a big line appears on the ground and 30 seconds later the line gets engulfed in fire. And then they’re like ‘see the thing is you can’t stand on the line when the fire comes out or you’ll die’”
There were plenty of sour grapes in the replies, calling the joke “strawman,” criticizing the joke as “analysis,” and otherwise missing the point. But while some expected the entire comments to be incredibly negative, including Letourneau, most people conceded this was exactly what FFXIV’s difficulty is like, and that some players still struggle. “And players still can’t dodge it.” replied @Misshapenchair.
The FFXIV community can have a difficult time with jokes, and is always quick to defend their game and position, no matter how bizarre that point of view is. You just need to look at the fallout from the Lalafell Lifter to know about that.
But as Northerlion points out, his wife, Kate “Lovelymomo” Letourneau, is a “FFXIV degen” and he “waited in the merch line at FFXIV fanfest 2014 for eight hours just to get kicked out by the fire department” so perhaps NL has a good grasp of just what the FFXIV community is all about.
Let's hope the more joke-sensitive elements of the community don’t get hold of his more controversial FFXIV-related joke, where Northernlion suggested that FFXIV Static Leaders are so big-brained they could have ended the US Civil War in under eight months.
