FFXIV: Maiden’s Rhapsody & the Great Disconnect
FFXIV, along with what seems like more than half the Internet, has been struggling with terrible disconnects lately. They claim it’s due to DDOS that’s been happening since the end of October. Whatever it is, it’s been really bad.
I’ve seen people drop out just standing around town. I’ve seen mass disconnects in the middle of raids. I’ve been victim to kicks and drop-outs while doing various things myself. It’s been pretty frustrating.
The worst disconnect I experienced was during a FATE. Lemme tell you about it.
Maiden’s Rhapsody
The Maiden’s Rhapsody is a returning cross-over event between FFXIV and FFXI. I did this event last year on a number of characters, but I still have a few more that didn’t get the cosmetic outfit. So, one of my goals was to take any of my alts who qualified for the event through it this weekend.
I say “qualified” because the event requires you to be at least level 30. It sends you through some challenging zones for that level, and asks you to participate in 4 different FATEs. The first FATE is pretty easy, but the difficulty for a character in the lower 30s start to ramp up after that. Pretty typical for FFXI.
I’m not saying that a fresh level 30 couldn’t beat the FATES on their own, but I had a lot of trouble on my level 34 character trying to solo the third one on Sunday. It was only because a few more people showed up that I managed to squeak through.
Anyhow, I dusted off Zuri on Friday night, who was a level 33 Bard at the time, and started the quest. While it’s not a long quest, there is a lot of travel and waiting for FATEs to pop and such. So it can take you at least 45 mins or so to knock it out, especially if your character hasn’t opened up the zones yet.
Everything went okay. I jumped from FATE to FATE, getting it done. There were plenty of other people doing it.
And then, the Great Disconnect happened.
The final encounter of the questline is something that’s not really a FATE, but acts like one. It’s weird. You run up and interact with a destination on the ground to start the FATE, and other people who have that particular quest can jump in and help.
We learned if you don’t have the quest, you can’t attack the FATE bosses. It’s also not marked on the map as a FATE. As I said, it’s weird.
The battle has two phases. You have to kill the add before you can attack the boss. After you kill the add, the NPC goes into a short dialogue, and the battle pauses for this moment of enlightenment. Normally, once this is done, you beat down the boss and the quest is complete.
Well, that’s not what happened.
I clicked the spot and activated the fight. Other people came to work on the FATE with me. We killed the add. And then… I got disconnected during the part between the two battles, when the NPC was talking.
I rushed to log back in, frantic not to miss the final stage of this quest I’d been working on for the past hour or so. Only, I discovered something worse.
Because I was the one who activated the fight, and I disconnected before the second battle began, the FATE was frozen in the dialogue phase. It just sat there, with the boss untargetable. The boss wasn’t attacking and we couldn’t attack him.
And there was still 15 mins on the FATE timer… We had to wait until it failed and timed out.
More people started to arrive only to find that the FATE was bugged. I wanted to sink into the swamp as people started to get antsy and annoyed. Someone even shouted, “Who broke it?”
I didn’t speak up. I felt so bad. Thank you DDOS.
Anyhow, once the FATE timed out, I let someone else activate it, and the fight proceeded just fine. We beat it. And I discovered something twice as bad.
The quest wasn’t progressing for me.
So I activated the FATE the next time. We beat it again. The quest still didn’t progress for me.
Because the FATE froze and failed for me the first time, I was stuck in quest limbo. I had no choice but to drop the quest and start it ALL OVER AGAIN. From the very beginning. All the way back at FATE #1. AUGH!
I gave up for the night. The next day, there were less people running it, so I recruited Syn and Amoon with my sob story of the Great Disconnect, and they helped me out. I did finish it the second time, leveled to 34, and the armor actually looks pretty great on Zuri.
So, if you’re doing this quest, just be careful of the disconnects on the final fight. 🙁