Some new servers recently went live on the European data centre for Final Fantasy 14. Usually, this wouldn’t be hugely newsworthy, but with the reveal of the name of one of these servers – Raiden – a wave of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance memes have emerged as players of the popular MMORPG rushed to create new characters referencing the legendary Platinum Games action title.
Several examples of like minded players flocking to the new server have been captured and posted on the Final Fantasy 14 Reddit page, with characters such as Senator Armstrong, NanoMachinezson,and JetStreamz Samuel meeting up in major player hubs only a few minutes after the server went live.
For those not in the know, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is somewhat of a meme powerhouse in the minds of gamers, and holds lofty status in the wider internet meme-osphere too! First reported by gaming statistics tracker PlayTracker, the action title saw an increase of over 1000% in concurrent players since April of last year thanks in large part to memes of the game that went viral. As such, it has a permanent place in the minds of some of the more online community of Final Fantasy 14 players.
Although it is almost 10 years old, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is seeing numbers it hasn’t seen since launch.
???? concurrent players up 1000%
???? peak in achievement activity across all platformsThe cause? Various meme templates featuring characters from the game went viral. pic.twitter.com/Ey6FmYAXJp
— PlayTracker (@PlayTrackerNet) May 23, 2022
One such player, HayleeLOL on Reddit, shared their experience with the MMO and why they decided to join in on the fun via DMs. “I was originally a World of Warcraft player, and after the news broke of the Blizzard scandal I didn’t feel it was ethical to be subscribed to WoW anymore. FFXIV felt like the most logical option as it was also the time people were on the exodus from WoW to XIV, and I’d tried it before and couldn’t get into it, so I felt I should give it another chance.”
Haylee has now been “sucked in” to the Square Enix MMORPG for close to a year. They also have a history with the Metal Gear series – having played through Metal Gear 1 to 4 as well as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to completion. As such, when the new Raiden server was first announced, they were among the first to bring in the Metal Gear jokes.
“There was a thread announcing that these new servers were to go live and there were plenty of Metal Gear jokes in the comments. That’s when I got the idea for creating the meme character.” This character – Senator Armstrong – turned out to be a popular source of inspiration.
“I did originally go for Senator Armstrong but the name was taken – you’ll see in the screenshot that my character was a Hyur (Human) and not as muscly as the other ones. I basically rushed through the character creation to get him made but was pipped to the post it seems! I used the apostrophe and just hoped for the best, basically, and ended up getting it.”
What are your thoughts on this community meme rush?
