FFXIV: When Your Main Breaks Your Immersion
Posted on August 8, 2026 by Aywren
Immersion is extremely important to me as a story-focused player in FFXIV. And while I generally enjoy the story beats of the game (ignoring some of the lesser engaging stuff in Dawntrail), I do have one small issue with how FFXIV handles the main character of the MSQ… because if you aren’t playing a Warrior of Light (WoL), then things just don’t mesh well.
That’s what’s currently happening to me. Let me explain.
A Spot of Mummery
Back in 2018, I decided to do something crazy, and I rolled my Amon as an alt role play character. I won’t get in too deeply on this topic because I’ve talked about it lots in the past. Basically, he was meant to be an exploration of “What If” the Allagan Technologist boss we fight in the Syrcus Tower raid wasn’t fully defeated. Instead, he must try to find a way to survive in the current day Eorzean civilization.
This turned into Spot of Mummery, an ongoing fanfic and a Tumblr/Bluesky RP account.
Now look. I said I wouldn’t go into it much, and then I did. Apologies!
Anyhow, when Endwalker dropped – WARNING ENDWALKER SPOILERS – and the MSQ tied Amon to the Ascian Fandaniel, I had to scramble to make tweaks so that my vision of Amon could better align with how the game had suddenly changed his official lore. This… was not easy. And it took me a couple of years to do. But I stood by my vision, and folks in the RP community have been so accepting and kind to me despite this!
So where does this leave me today? Well, back in November, I chose to finally give it up and make Amon my Main. This was because I was duplicating work on him as an alt and it was getting to be too tiring to keep up with gearing more than one character. Sure, I didn’t NEED the newest Relic on Amon, but I kinda wanted it.
I absolutely don’t regret this choice. I’ve enjoyed playing Amon as my main and being able to focus on just one character for the most part.
There is… one… little problem with this, however.
MSQ Displacement
Amon isn’t Azem. He’s Fandaniel-coded.
The newest MSQ is leaning very, very heavily into the WoL-Azem lore lately. It doesn’t seem like that’s going to stop with Evercold.
While I love Azem references and heroic WoL moments – please don’t get me wrong – when I see these things happening to Amon in cutscenes, it completely shatters my immersion. I simply can’t get past watching a character who is somewhat the antithesis of Azem walking in the WoL’s shoes. Especially when he whips out the Azem soul stone.
I’m in a bit of a bind, then. I can’t fault FFXIV for leaning heavily into the WoL lore as that’s what everyone has been clamoring for since the whole Wuk Lamat thing in Dawntrail. I completely understand why they’re doubling down and I think the story concepts we’ve gotten in patch 7.5 so far are very cool feeling.
I want to make it clear that I’m not writing this because I think FFXIV should stray from their Azem vision. But I do acknowledge that for players who find story as important as I do, but don’t see their own characters as Azem-WoL, this can cause a bit of dissonance. At least, it does for me.
I had this conversation on Tumblr, and some folks suggested ways to deal with it and gloss over it. That would and has worked for past characters I’ve stuck in my Main character slot. Even Ben, who is absolutely not a WoL, could have somehow swing this more easily.
The issue is that Amon in particular has been defined by the lore of this game to NOT be Azem. His soul is linked to Hermes and Fandaniel. The worldbuilding of the game itself does not leave room for my Amon to walk the path of the WoL, even in jest.
While I’m not an absolute lore purist – I obviously like to skirt rules when it makes a good story – I respect the confines of the world this game exists in enough that I just don’t see a way to make this work.
All that to say – NO. I am not changing my Main again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s not where this is going. Don’t worry!
In fact, I find myself less and less interested in running alts through content again and again now days. I have a feeling that unless something incredible hooks me in Evercold, Dawntrail might be the last expansion where I bring all 6 of my characters up to end game like I have the past number of years.
It’s a Tad Thing
However, the other option I’ve considered is this. Of all of my alts, Tad is the one character whom I’ve envisioned to be my Azem-type. He’s not the current WoL, but the happenings of the current game story, especially the ability to walk across shards of existence, fit him perfectly.
When Tad was my Main, the MSQ felt absolutely right.
As much as I do NOT want to level another character in Evercold, and as much as it feels really, really wrong to take an alt through the expansion MSQ before my Main… Well. That might just have to be my solution.
I do love Tad! So, I’m not disappointed to temporarily main him just for story vibes in the least. It just means I’ll have to do some kind of double duty to keep him geared enough to run the MSQ. That was something I was trying to avoid, but I hope that the Evercold changes to gearing might assist here.
And I’m hoping kinda in the back of my mind that whatever the new ranged DSP job will be might be a fit for him. Machinist is fun, but the job fantasy around it never quite resonated with me when it came to Tad. I did want to try Viper with him, but the job hotbar just seemed way too busy and the rotation didn’t make sense (I know people say just click the lit-up buttons, but it still didn’t make sense).
Anyhow, this has been my statemen of first-world problems of immersion and role play in FFXIV.
Aside from that, I still do need to finish up a few things on Amon that he does not have, but the alt character did. That includes buying a bunch of dances and emotes (waiting on the Anniversary sale) and somehow getting the Skyslipper Mount drop from E4S.
One day, my Skyslipper will come!