What in the World is a Final Fantasy XIV World Race?

Final Fantasy XIV's newest “Ultimate” boss fight was released on Tuesday. With it, competitors, streamers, viewers, and casters are gathered once again to commentate and celebrate a fan-made event that has resulted in some of the most exciting moments in this game's history, as well as MMO's (Massively Multiplayer Online) as a whole. “The FFXIV World Race” is the result of the great combat design philosophy of the developers, the competitive spirit of the raiding community, and the boundless hype wielded by the player base. This is a primer on everything you need to know about what makes the FFXIV World Race and the Ultimate bosses such a special occasion.

Final Fantasy XIV is one of the only two MMOs in Final Fantasy's sprawling franchise. Despite releasing about a decade ago, this game remains just as new as any other due to a constant update schedule that essentially makes this a perpetually fresh and evolving game. About every two years, Square Enix releases an expansion that rivals the size of a full-blown single-player RPG. Players are still treated to new dungeons, bosses, and side-content for casual and hardcore gamers every few months in between that. It's no understatement to say that the game has flourished into an exemplary production and a formidable opponent in the MMO genre. The last two expansions, Shadowbringers and Endwalker, are two of the most critically acclaimed MMO releases ever, and Endwalker specifically was the single highest-rated game in 2021 on review aggregate website OpenCritic.

One of the most resoundingly successful updates the developers released was the first-ever “Ultimate” raid. Before this, it was difficult for the MMO community to agree on what game offered the best challenge for raiders who wanted to test their mettle. Square Enix's bold, new answer to end that debate was this new difficulty tier. World Races existed before Ultimate content existed, but it has never been the same since.

Now just how hard is Ultimate? How much harder is it than previous difficult content in this game and MMOs in general? There are two factors at work here, the first of which is the type of difficulty these fights present. Just like there are many types of sports that require different aspects of strength, gaming offers a variety of challenges, and no single game tackles them all. High-end fights in Final Fantasy XIV are commonly described as learning a dance within a group or a song within an orchestra. Memorization, coordination, and repetition are the key components to tackling a difficult battle. Once you know the fight, it only then becomes the accuracy of your execution with your combat abilities while mentally navigating the mechanics that you are now prepared for. Unlike rhythm games or fighting games, there's very little reaction-based gameplay.

The second factor that comes into play when examining the difficulty is simply the sheer extent of the challenge. The variables of how long the fight is, how frequently complex battle patterns are executed, how much individual responsibility you carry as a team member, and how punished you are for your mistakes are all dialed up to frighteningly high numbers. If I were to use my own analogy to describe the five difficulty levels of this game, then I'd like you to picture going on a road trip. Here is what that road trip would be like on each difficulty.

1. Normal - Your route is basically all on the interstate. You're in a sports car. You can be late if you get stuck in traffic, and you can always use GPS if you take a wrong turn.
2. Hard - You must take a couple of unplanned detours due to construction. There are cops on the road, so you have to be warier about your driving habits.
3. Extreme - Your GPS screen goes out. You now only have audio cues. You won't make it in time if you take too many wrong turns. You have to maintain an average speed of 55 miles per hour.
4. Savage - Now your GPS doesn't function at all, but at least you can see street signs. But you'll have to learn what streets to take the hard way. The average speed gets bumped up to 70 miles per hour.
5. Ultimate - You still have no GPS, but now the street signs have been switched to strange symbols. The interstate is completely closed. If you take a single wrong turn, there's a high chance the entire trip will be canceled. You are now in an unwieldy SUV but have to average out 80 miles per hour. Your mom calls and tells you to stop by the grocery store on the way there, doubling your commute time.

Simply put, the Ultimate fights are the real deal. There is minimal artificial difficulty which was a problem with many MMO fights that were notorious for taking a long time to clear. The term artificial difficulty is used in cases like scheduling problems because a raid would require dozens of players, or you need to unlock better gear even to have the possibility of having the stats to clear a part of the fight. But these fights are streamlined to eight players, which is much more time-manageable. In addition, there is no better or worse gear for the fight. At the time of release, players can obtain the optimal equipment, and any stronger gear released afterward will always be synced down to preserve the battle for the future. There is also no gameplay-significant item locked behind this boss as a reward. Instead, it is purely cosmetic, reinforcing this fight's goal to be purely for the thrill of the challenge.

What if I told you that the difficulty alone isn't what makes these fights so memorable? Somewhere along the way, someone at Square Enix thought, “What if the Ultimate fights were remixes of the most celebrated bosses from previous updates? Then someone else agreed and added, “...at the same time?”

The first Ultimate release was, to the uninitiated player base, absolutely bonkers. One of the biggest reasons responsible for this was the nostalgia overload. Players were giddy with excitement to see bosses that were already unforgettable fights combined in spectacular fashion. Mechanics that used to challenge players at the previous difficulty tiers were now interwoven. Using my earlier analogy, this basically means you have one boss requiring you to take a right turn but another boss putting a debuff on your car so you can only turn your steering wheel to the left.

On top of that, composer Masayoshi Soken goes the extra mile and reworks the original individual boss themes or makes an entirely new arrangement. Some Ultimate fights even have multiple bosses combine bodies to create a form unseen before. These moments catch the players entirely off guard and instill a fervor rarely seen in this game. “Who's going to appear next?” “They surely wouldn't include that boss, too, would they?” “They'd have to be absolutely mad!” Nowhere are these thoughts more apparent than during the World Race, where not a single soul knows what waits around the corner of each phase of the boss fight.

There is a massive difference between being among the first teams to attempt to defeat a fight in a game like this and logging in a year later with a plethora of guides and veteran players willing to assist as you knowledgeably pace yourself through the learning process. That's not to discount that anyone who can clear an Ultimate fight has earned themselves a surefire accomplishment. You can't get carried through these types of fights, and you must execute your abilities extremely well and memorize just as much as the world racers. Yet, there's no understating that the World Race turns into an entirely different game when the fight is a completely unknown entity. It becomes, of all things, a puzzle game.

World Races take so long primarily because many mechanics are presented in ways where you can't simply guess what you're supposed to do. The designers intend for your party to die repeatedly as you experiment with all types of setups to solve the equation. Only the slightest hints are provided for the correct method. While it's easy to wipe over and over as you test ideas on the first couple of mechanics, it gets much more time-consuming and mentally straining to experiment this way once you are a decent way into the fight. There are no checkpoints, so dying seven minutes into the fight means you have to respawn, clear that seven-minute portion perfectly again, to try “plan G,” and have it blow up in your face. This is mainly because many of your runs will involve human error that keeps you from reaching your current best run. It's a constant juggle of miraculously clearing a phase and then having to turn that miracle into memory instantaneously. Keep in mind that this is a race. If one team wastes time theorizing in a way that gets them further from the real answer, then they potentially lose their chance at victory. This has already escalated to a game of psychology where players literally start to question what the developers are thinking behind every facet of the fight. This includes examining things as mundane as ability names and dialogue text.

This MMO-turned-esport-turned-community-puzzle-solving game has resulted in some of the most satisfying moments in Final Fantasy XIV's already exciting history. In the second Ultimate fight, “The Weapon's Refrain,” teams hit a brick wall when not a single one was progressing past a particular phase. After exhausting all the standard answers of “stacking up here” or “splitting up there,” the community started getting desperate for answers. It wasn't until someone realized that a buff that gets put on the boss, which you usually try to avoid, may be a requirement. That theory was as wild as many others being thrown around, mainly because letting the boss obtain this buff meant purposefully doing mechanics incorrectly. Why would a fight so famed for requiring pitch-perfect execution encourage sloppy play? Well, it turns out that theory was correct. After hours of learning how to do the opening stages of the fight perfectly, they had to relearn how to do the battle imperfectly, making the boss even harder. It felt like a cheeky subversion to show that some unorthodox approaches can and will be necessary.

Another example of a fan-favorite moment came in the fourth Ultimate fight, “The Dragonsong's Reprise.” In this fight, we revisited the pivotal death scene of a character I won't name. Players were surprised to see that what used to be a cutscene outside of battle was now repurposed into the fight. This was already amazing to see in itself, but it didn't take long to get the players thinking, “What if we could save him?” Once again, the theories spilled out into the community. People were going as far as suggesting to do an emote during his death; this is only plausible because there are rare occasions of emotes having a gameplay effect in older dungeons. It didn't take long for people to find that the real answer was to use a rare tank ability that people always complained about having such little usage in the game. It also had profound lore implications because most people assumed that you could use healing spells to revive the character, but lore hounds remembered that in the original scene, the character in question was hit with a spell that nullified revival magic. This attention to detail in combat design and lore references makes the World Race such a treat for live viewers.

Surrounding the swirling appeal of the World Race, however, are a few dilemmas that don't have a clear-cut answer. These problems become exacerbated by the growing viewership of this event. While the first Ultimate World Race was an overwhelming surprise, ever since then, players have been trying to anticipate its popularity and create a viewer-friendly event that can capitalize on its appeal. World Races have always been a very low-budget, handcrafted affair compared to modern esports events. But that is simply another obstacle to conquer. Content creators are pulling out more stops than ever before to make this new fight one to remember, including snagging a sponsored prize for the first time. More casters are signed on to deliver better commentary, which creates more reason for teams to sign up and compete. The only caveat is that the prize is only awarded to teams that livestream their progress.

The answer seems pretty straightforward until you learn that every single “world first” of an Ultimate raid has been by a team that did not livestream their efforts. This is because live streams are public knowledge for other groups to piggyback off of. It's a very understandable stance. After all, if you discover the answer to a fight mechanic, you gain a significant advantage as long as no one else knows the answer. These teams upload their “clear” after beating it, but during the actual race, they never show more than a couple of screenshots of their progress. At the same time, there is growing controversy regarding third-party add-ons. Players on PC can install software that assists with the fight by creating audio cues for certain moves to avoid those critical moments where you forget to read the boss's cast bar and don't realize an attack is happening.

The addons and the off-stream clears do a lot to end the world race anticlimactically. The choice teams face this year is whether they should cater to the audience or not. It's a similar problem in the speedrunning community. You'll see many instances of irritated viewers because a speedrunner uses an array of glitches to obtain the record. This can displease certain viewers expecting a more flashy and traditional method of clearing. Sometimes people want to see a particular style of talent rather than an any-means-necessary approach to the actual goal. Should a team appeal to the masses and help create a more engaging event, or should they stick to their strategy, fanfare be damned, because they want the victory more? Should teams avoid using tools that assist their progress to look more legitimate for the viewers? Do these things pose a barrier of entry that makes it harder for the content creators trying to propel this event to a higher viewership? These are all questions being explored this year!

The fifth “Ultimate,” currently underway, is called “The Omega Protocol” and features the final bosses of one of the raid series from 2017's Stormblood. Of course, there will most likely be more than meets the eye with this fight. Who knows what other bosses will make a surprise appearance? There could be another massive riddle that the entire community tries to solve collectively. To see all this and more, check out the amazing content creators' efforts at these places below.

• https://mogtalk.org/ - to sign up or view data about the race and teams.
• https://www.twitch.tv/mogtalk - to watch the official event stream
• https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/ - the megathread for the World Race
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQtvBIdv4Y - Official Patch 6.3 trailer English Trailer

Jason Rhoades spends his days excitedly working at a busy manga store. He spends his nights deep-diving as much anime, games, music, or artwork as he can. When ready to express rather than absorb, he blogs here, and he updates his anime progress here. He is also on Twitter as @lotusviridis.