title: Southampton

text: Southampton is also served by the rail network, which is used both by freight services to and from the docks and passenger services as part of the national rail system. The main station in the city is Southampton Central. Rail routes run east towards Portsmouth, Chichester, Worthing and Brighton. North to Winchester, the Midlands and London. Westwards to Bournemouth, Poole, Dorchester, Weymouth, and north-westwards towards Salisbury, Bristol and Cardiff. The route to London was opened in 1840 by what was to become the London and South Western Railway Company. Both this and its successor, Southern Railway, played a significant role in the creation of the modern port following their purchase and development of the town's docks.


title: Southampton

text: Local train services operate in the city and are operated by South Western Railway, with stations at Swaythling, St Denys, Millbrook, Redbridge, Bitterne, Sholing and Woolston. Plans were announced by Hampshire County Council in July 2009 for the introduction of tram-train running from Hythe (on what is now a freight-only line to Fawley) via Totton to Southampton Central Station and on to Fareham via St. Denys, and Swanwick. The proposal follows a failed plan to bring light rail to the Portsmouth and Gosport areas in 2005.


title: Southampton

text: The town was the subject of an attempt by a separate company, the Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway, to open another rail route to the North in the 1880s and some building work, including a surviving embankment, was undertaken in the Hill Lane area.


title: Southampton

text: Southampton Airport is a regional airport located in the town of Eastleigh, just north of the city. It offers flights to UK and near European destinations, and is connected to the city by a frequent rail service from Southampton Airport Parkway railway station, and by bus services.


title: Southampton

text: For longer flights, Gatwick Airport is linked by a regular rail service, and Heathrow Airport is linked by National Express coach services.


title: Southampton

text: Southampton's tradition of luxury cruising began in the 1840s, one of the pioneers being P&O who advertised tours to Egypt. The city was one of Europe's main ports for ocean passenger travel to North America and elsewhere, with British, French and US liners regularly visiting.


title: Southampton

text: Many of the world's largest cruise ships can regularly be seen in Southampton water, including record-breaking vessels from Royal Caribbean and Carnival Corporation & plc. The latter has headquarters in Southampton, with its brands including Princess Cruises, P&O Cruises and Cunard Line.


title: Southampton

text: The city has a particular historical connection to Cunard Line and their fleet of ships. This was particularly evident on 11 November 2008 when the Cunard liner "Queen Elizabeth 2" departed the city for the final time amid a spectacular fireworks display after a full day of celebrations. Cunard ships are regularly christened in the city, for example was named by The Duchess of Cornwall in December 2007, and the Queen named "Queen Elizabeth" in the city during October 2011. The Duchess of Cambridge performed the naming ceremony of "Royal Princess" on 13 June 2013.


title: Southampton

text: At certain times of the year, the "Queen Mary 2", "Queen Elizabeth" and "Queen Victoria" may all visit Southampton at the same time, in an event commonly called 'Arrival of the Three Queens'. The Cunard Line maintains a regular transatlantic service to New York City for most of the year, with its ocean liner RMS Queen Mary 2.


title: Southampton

text: The importance of Southampton to the cruise industry was indicated by P&O Cruises' 175th-anniversary celebrations, which included all seven of the company's liners visiting Southampton in a single day. "Adonia", , "Aurora", "Azura", "Oceana", "Oriana" and "Ventura" all left the city in a procession on 3 July 2012.


title: Southampton

text: The use of the port by cruise ships and bulk cargo ships has led to concerns over air quality. In 2017 Southampton City Council estimated that the port contributed between seven and 23 per cent of air pollution in the city. Cruise ships had to run their engines whilst docked because, unlike other cruise ship ports, Southampton did not provide shore power.


title: Southampton

text: In 2019 an environmental pressure group ranked Southampton as the fifth highest in a list of 50 European ports whose air was polluted by sulphur oxide. The cruise industry trade association Cruise Lines International Association claimed that the report was inaccurate and used highly questionable methodology. Since September 2021, Port of Southampton has shore power installed at the Horizon Cruise Terminal at berth 102 and at the Mayflower Cruise Terminal at berth 106, both situated in the port's Western Docks. Shore power will eventually be available at all five of the port's cruise terminals.


title: Southampton

text: While Southampton is no longer the base for any cross-channel ferries, it is the terminus for three internal ferry services, all of which operate from terminals at Town Quay. Two of these, a car ferry service and a fast catamaran passenger ferry service, provide links to East Cowes and Cowes, respectively, on the Isle of Wight and are operated by Red Funnel. The third ferry is the Hythe Ferry, providing a passenger service to Hythe on the other side of Southampton Water.


title: Southampton

text: Southampton used to be home to a number of ferry services to the continent, with destinations such as San Sebastian, Lisbon, Tangier and Casablanca. A ferry port was built during the 1960s. However, a number of these relocated to Portsmouth and by 1996, there were no longer any car ferries operating from Southampton with the exception of services to the Isle of Wight. The land used for Southampton Ferry Port was sold off and a retail and housing development was built on the site. The Princess Alexandra Dock was converted into a marina. Reception areas for new cars now fill the Eastern Docks where passengers, dry docks and trains used to be.


title: Southampton

text: The main bus operators are First Hampshire & Dorset, Bluestar & Unilink operated by Bluestar under contract to the University of Southampton services and Xelabus. Both Bluestar and First Hants & Dorset are subsidiaries of parent companies Go-Ahead and FirstGroup respectively, whereas Xelabus is an independent.


title: Southampton

text: There are two networks within Southampton which are privately funded, the first being the Unilink bus service, which was commissioned by the University of Southampton to provide transport from the university to the town, and QuayConnect which runs between central station to Red Funnel's port via WestQuay and is run with funding from Red Funnel. There is also a door-to-door minibus service called Southampton Dial a Ride, for residents who cannot access public transport. This is funded by the council and operated by SCA Support Services.


title: Southampton

text: Most bus services terminate in the city centre. First Hampshire & Dorset uses Pound Tree Road and Vincent's Walk as their endpoint (with the exception of the X4/X5 routes which start at Portland Terrace). Bluestar uses Vincent's Walk/Hanover Buildings for their east, city and north-bound routes and Portland Terrace for their west-bound routes. Xelabus uses Vincent's Walk as their main terminus for its Southampton routes.


title: Southampton

text: There was a tram system from 1879 to 1949. More recent proposals to reintroduce them surfaced in 2016 and 2017 and a monorail system was proposed in 1988.


title: Southampton

text: All around Southampton are "Lucy Boxes" - so called as they were made by W. Lucy & Co. and often the only visible remnants of the tramways. They were used to inject power into the lines.


title: Southampton

text: Southampton City Council announced that it would adopt a new ten year 'Cycling Strategy' from 2017, which would include the construction of multiple cycling highways throughout the city and surrounding suburbs. As of March 2020, Southampton Cycle Network routes 1 (Western), 3 and 4 (Eastern), and 5 (Northern) are substantially complete, with work started on route 6 (Bevois Valley).


title: Southampton

text: The city has produced a large number of musicians throughout its history, ranging from hymn writer Isaac Watts, who was born in Southampton in 1674 and whose composition "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" is played by the bells of Southampton Civic Centre, to more recent musical acts such as singer Craig David, who grew up on the Holyrood estate, Coldplay drummer Will Champion and solo popstar Foxes.


title: Southampton

text: Television personalities from Southampton include comedian Benny Hill and naturalist Chris Packham, and in recent years the city has also produced a number of competitive reality television winners such as Matt Cardle ("The X Factor", 2010) and Shelina Permalloo ("MasterChef", 2012), who operates a Mauritian restaurant named Lakaz Maman in Bedford Place. Radio personality Scott Mills was also born in Southampton.


title: Southampton

text: Novelist Jane Austen lived in Southampton for a number of years and the city has also been home to a number of artists, including Edward John Gregory, Hubert von Herkomer and John Everett Millais. The feminist and suffragist Emily Davies was born there in 1830. Sir Leon Simon, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was born in Southampton.


title: Southampton

text: Sports people born in Southampton include rugby union player Mike Brown, Australian tennis player Wally Masur and England Football Player Wayne Bridge.


title: Southampton

text: Being a port city, Southampton has been home to a number of seafarers including Charles Fryatt, who rammed a German U-boat with his merchant ship during World War I; John Jellicoe, who served as Admiral of the Fleet during the same war and later became Governor-General of New Zealand; and the last survivor of the RMS "Titanic", Millvina Dean.


title: Southampton

text: Rishi Sunak, the current UK prime minister and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, was born in Southampton in 1980.


title: Southampton

text: Film director Ken Russell was born in Southampton in 1927 and Laura Carmichael, actress known for Downton Abbey was born and grew up in Southampton.


title: Kalashnikov rifle

text: A Kalashnikov (Калашников) rifle is any one of a series of automatic rifles based on the original design of Mikhail Kalashnikov. They are officially known in Russian as "Avtomát Kaláshnikova" (), but are widely known as Kalashnikovs, AKs, or in Russian slang, a "Kalash". They were originally manufactured in the Soviet Union, primarily by Kalashnikov Concern, formerly Izhmash, but these rifles and their variants are now manufactured in many other countries. The Kalashnikov is one of the most widely used guns in the world, with an estimated 72 million rifles in global circulation.


title: Kalashnikov rifle

text: The original Kalashnikov rifles and their derivatives, as produced in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation.


title: Kalashnikov rifle

text: The rifle's simple design makes it easy to produce, and the Soviet Union readily leased plans of the firearm to friendly countries, where it could be produced locally at a low cost. As a result, the Kalashnikov rifles and their variants have been manufactured in many countries, with and without licenses. Manufacturing countries in alphabetical order include:


title: Kalashnikov rifle

text: The following rifles were either based on the Kalashnikov design, or have a different design but are superficially similar in appearance:


title: Kalashnikov rifle

text: The Kalashnikov weapon design has become increasingly more popular in the American firearms industry. There are specific competitive shooting matches that require the use of its weapon variants like the Red Oktober match held just outside of St. George, Utah. It is a match designed for the use of ComBloc style weapons, but the Kalashnikov design is extremely heavy within the participants' arsenals.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: William Trevor Lawrence (born October 6, 1999) is an American football quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League (NFL). Considered among the highest-touted college football prospects, he won the 2019 National Championship Game as a freshman at Clemson and set the school's record for quarterback wins. He was selected first overall by the Jaguars in the 2021 NFL Draft.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: William Trevor Lawrence was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on October 6, 1999. He later attended Cartersville High School in Cartersville, Georgia, where he played football and basketball. As a junior in 2016, he was "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" player of the year after completing 250 of 406 passes for 3,904 yards and 51 touchdowns. As a sophomore, he passed for 3,655 yards and 43 touchdowns and as a freshman had 3,042 yards and 26 touchdowns.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: From his sophomore year to his senior year, Lawrence led the Purple Hurricanes to 41 straight victories, winning two state championships and four region titles while also receiving numerous national high school player of the year honors. In 2017, Lawrence broke the Georgia state record for passing yards and passing touchdowns, which were previously held by Deshaun Watson of Gainesville, who also played for Clemson.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence was a five-star recruit who was regarded as one of the best high school quarterback prospects of all time. On December 16, 2016, he committed to Clemson University to play college football.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence started his freshman season behind Kelly Bryant on Clemson's depth chart, but was given equal playing time in the season's first games. Head coach Dabo Swinney named Lawrence the new starter after four games, after which Bryant announced his intention to transfer schools. Lawrence led Clemson to an undefeated regular season, a 42–10 victory over Pittsburgh in the ACC Championship Game, and a bid to play in the College Football Playoff. The Tigers were ranked No. 2 in the College Football Playoff rankings, and defeated No. 3 Notre Dame, 30–3, in the 2018 Cotton Bowl Classic. They advanced to the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship game, where they defeated Alabama, 44–16, handing the Crimson Tide their worst loss of the Nick Saban era. Lawrence was named Offensive MVP of the game and became the first true freshman quarterback to start for a national champion since Jamelle Holieway in 1985 for Oklahoma.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence threw for 3,280 passing yards and 30 touchdowns on the season, and was awarded the National Freshman of the Year and Archie Griffin Award by the Touchdown Club of Columbus. He was also awarded ACC Rookie of the Year honors.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Returning for his sophomore year with the Tigers, Lawrence was named preseason ACC Player of the Year and was considered a leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy. Relatively inconsistent play in the early part of the season all but lost Lawrence the Heisman Trophy race, but he led FBS in passer rating over the final half of the regular season and ended seventh in Heisman Trophy voting. Lawrence helped lead Clemson to an undefeated regular season and an ACC Championship Game victory over Virginia, which gave them the No. 3 ranking in the final College Football Playoff rankings. In the 2019 Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State, he had 259 passing yards and two touchdowns to go along with 16 rushes for 107 yards and a touchdown in the 29–23 victory that brought them to the national championship game for the second consecutive year. Lawrence lost the first game of his career in the CFP Championship Game against LSU, as Clemson snapped its 29-game winning streak and lost 42–25. Lawrence posted the worst passer rating of his career as he only completed 18 of 37 passes for 234 yards and zero passing touchdowns in the game.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence returned for his junior season with the Tigers. In his first six games of the season, Lawrence threw for 1,833 passing yards with 17 touchdowns and two interceptions. On October 30, 2020, Lawrence tested positive for COVID-19, which resulted in a 10-day quarantine, per ACC protocols. As a result, he missed two games before returning. Clemson lost one of those two games, to Notre Dame. After Lawrence returned to the team, he helped guide the Tigers back to the ACC Championship Game by finishing in second in the division-less format adopted for the 2020 season. They defeated Notre Dame in the rematch in the conference title game with Lawrence starting at quarterback, and were selected to a spot in the College Football Playoff. In the CFP semi-final, the Sugar Bowl, Lawrence and the Tigers lost to Ohio State.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence finished his final season with the Tigers 231-of-334 for 3,153 passing yards with 24 touchdowns and five interceptions. He was named ACC Player of the Year, and finished in second in voting for the Heisman Trophy behind Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith. After the season, Lawrence would be the men's recipient of the ACC Athlete of the Year award across all conference sports, sharing honors with women's recipient Charlotte North of Boston College lacrosse.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: One of the NFL's highest regarded amateur prospects, Lawrence was nearly unanimously projected to be taken first overall in the 2021 NFL Draft. Lawrence drew comparisons to Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway and Peyton Manning and 2012 first overall pick Andrew Luck, with the slogan "Tank for Trevor" gaining popularity among fans of struggling teams. "ESPN" Mel Kiper Jr. ranked Lawrence as the fourth highest-graded quarterback he evaluated behind Elway, Luck, and Manning.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: After undergoing surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder, Lawrence was officially selected first overall by the Jacksonville Jaguars, who finished with a league-worst 1–15 record the previous season. He signed his four-year rookie contract, worth $36.8 million that included a $24.1 million signing bonus, on July 5, 2021.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Ahead of the final week of preseason, Lawrence was named the Jaguars' starting quarterback for 2021. Making his NFL debut against the Houston Texans, he finished with 332 passing yards, three touchdowns, and three interceptions in a 37–21 defeat. The loss was Lawrence's first in a regular season game. In his second game against the Denver Broncos, he threw a touchdown pass on the opening drive, but completed only eight of 25 passes afterwards and was intercepted twice as the Jaguars lost 23–13. Lawrence had a stronger performance when he faced the Cincinnati Bengals in the Week 4 "Thursday Night Football" matchup, which also pitted him against fellow first overall pick and 2020 National Championship Game opponent Joe Burrow. He completed 17 of 24 passes for 204 yards and scored his first rushing touchdown, also making it his first NFL game without an interception. Despite his efforts, the Jaguars lost 24–21.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence won his first NFL game in Week 6 against the Miami Dolphins, throwing for 319 yards and a touchdown during the 23–20 victory. Having played the game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, he became the first NFL rookie to win in London. The victory was also the Jaguars' first since Week 1 of the 2020 season, ending a 20-game losing streak.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Following a 31–7 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, Lawrence took part in the season's biggest upset when he helped the 15.5-point underdog Jaguars defeat the Buffalo Bills 9–6. However, the victory began a stretch that saw Lawrence throw only two touchdown passes in nine games, including seven games without any touchdowns, while having eight interceptions. The Jaguars also went on an eight-game losing streak, dropping them to the league's worst record for a second consecutive year. Nevertheless, Lawrence concluded the season with his strongest performance in Week 18, completing 23 of 32 passes for 223 yards and two touchdowns to secure a 26–11 upset over the Indianapolis Colts.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence finished second in rookie passing yards behind Mac Jones at 3,641, but also had a league-high 17 interceptions.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: After losing to the Washington Commanders in the season opener, Lawrence won his next two games against the Indianapolis Colts and Los Angeles Chargers, throwing for a combined 497 yards and five touchdowns. The latter also marked Lawrence's first road victory and earned him AFC Offensive Player of the Week. However, the Jaguars went on a five-game losing streak, during which Lawrence completed 57.8% of his passes for 1,068 yards, five touchdowns, and five interceptions. He also had two games without any touchdown passes. The losing streak ended with a Week 9 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders, which saw Lawrence help Jacksonville overcome a 20–10 halftime deficit to win 27–20. In Week 13, Lawrence had 368 passing yards, three passing touchdowns, and a rushing touchdown in the 36–22 victory over the Tennessee Titans.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: Lawrence is a Christian. He is noted for his long blond hair. On April 10, 2021, Lawrence married Marissa Mowry, whom he had been dating since high school. Lawrence's older brother, Chase, is a visual artist for whom Trevor has posed before.


title: Trevor Lawrence

text: In 2021, Lawrence, among other high-profile athletes and celebrities, was a paid spokesperson for FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. In November 2022, FTX filed for bankruptcy, wiping out billions of dollars in customer funds. Lawrence, alongside other spokespeople, is currently being sued for promoting unregistered securities through a class-action lawsuit. In February 2022, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a lawsuit against Bitconnect that the Securities Act of 1933 extends to targeted solicitation using social media.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: St. Elmo's fire — also called Witchfire or Witch's Fire — is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn in an atmospheric electric field. It has also been observed on the leading edges of airplanes, as in the case of British Airways Flight 009. The intensity of the effect, a blue or violet glow around the object, often accompanied by a hissing or buzzing sound, is proportional to the strength of the electric field and therefore noticeable primarily during thunderstorms or volcanic eruptions.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: St. Elmo's fire is named after St. Erasmus of Formia (also known as St. Elmo), the patron saint of sailors. The phenomenon, which can warn of an imminent lightning strike, was regarded by sailors with awe and sometimes considered to be a good omen.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: St. Elmo's fire is a reproducible and demonstrable form of plasma. The electric field around the affected object causes ionization of the air molecules, producing a faint glow easily visible in low-light conditions. Conditions that can generate St. Elmo's fire are present during thunderstorms, when high-voltage differentials are present between clouds and the ground underneath. A local electric field of about 100 kV/m is required to begin a discharge in moist air. The magnitude of the electric field depends greatly on the geometry (shape and size) of the object. Sharp points lower the necessary voltage because electric fields are more concentrated in areas of high curvature, so discharges preferentially occur and are more intense at the ends of pointed objects.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: The nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere cause St. Elmo's fire to fluoresce with blue or violet light; this is similar to the mechanism that causes neon lights to glow, albeit at a different colour due to the different gas involved.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In 1751, Benjamin Franklin hypothesized that a pointed iron rod would light up at the tip during a lightning storm, similar in appearance to St. Elmo's fire.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Recently, experiments conducted at MIT have shown that St. Elmo's fire behaves differently in airborne objects as opposed to grounded structures.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: References to St. Elmo's fire can be found in the works of Julius Caesar ("De Bello Africo", 47) and Pliny the Elder ("Naturalis Historia", book 2, par. 101), Alcaeus frag. 34. Earlier, Xenophanes of Colophon had alluded to the phenomenon.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In 15th-century Ming China, Admiral Zheng He and his associates composed the Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions, the two epitaphs of the treasure voyages, where they made a reference to St. Elmo's fire as a divine omen of Tianfei (天妃), the goddess of sailors and seafarers.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Mention of St. Elmo's fire can be found in Antonio Pigafetta's journal of his voyage with Ferdinand Magellan. St. Elmo's fire, also known as "corposants" or "corpusants" from the Portuguese "corpo santo" ("holy body"), is also described in "The Lusiads", the epic account of Vasco da Gama's voyages of discovery.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Robert Burton wrote of St. Elmo's fire in his "Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621): "Radzivilius, the Lithuanian duke, calls this apparition "Sancti Germani sidus"; and saith moreover that he saw the same after in a storm, as he was sailing, 1582, from Alexandria to Rhodes". This refers to the voyage made by Mikołaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwiłł in 1582–1584.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: On 9 May 1605, while on the second voyage of John Davis commanded by Sir Edward Michelborne to the East Indies, an unknown writer aboard the "Tiger" describes the phenomenon: "In the extremity of our storm appeared to us in the night, upon our maine Top-mast head, a flame about the bigness of a great Candle, which the Portugals call "Corpo Sancto", holding it a most divine token that when it appeareth the worst is past. As, thanked be God, we had better weather after it".


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Pierre Testu-Brissy was a pioneering French balloonist. On 18 June 1786 he flew for 11 hours and made the first electrical observations as he ascended into thunderclouds. He stated that he drew remarkable discharges from the clouds by means of an iron rod carried in the basket. He also experienced Saint Elmo's fire.<ref name="Ballooning Who's Who"/


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: William Noah, a silversmith convicted in London of stealing 2,000 pounds of lead, while en route to Sydney, New South Wales on the convict transport ship , recorded two such observations in his detailed daily journal. The first was in the Southern Ocean midway between Cape Town and Sydney and the second was in the Tasman Sea, a day out of Port Jackson:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: While the exact nature of these weather phenomena cannot be certain, they appear to be mostly about two observations of St. Elmo's fire with perhaps some ball lightning and even a direct lightning strike to the ship thrown into the mix.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: On 20 February 1817, during a severe electrical storm, James Braid, surgeon at Lord Hopetoun's mines at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, had an extraordinary experience whilst on horseback:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Weeks earlier, reportedly on 17 January 1817, a luminous snowstorm occurred in Vermont and New Hampshire. Saint Elmo's fire appeared as static discharges on roof peaks, fence posts, and the hats and fingers of people. Thunderstorms prevailed over central New England.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Charles Darwin noted the effect while aboard the "Beagle". He wrote of the episode in a letter to J. S. Henslow that one night when the "Beagle" was anchored in the estuary of the Río de la Plata:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In "Two Years Before the Mast", Richard Henry Dana, Jr., describes seeing a corposant in the horse latitudes of the northern Atlantic Ocean. However, he may have been talking about ball lightning; as mentioned earlier, it is often erroneously identified as St. Elmo's fire:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: The observation by RH Dana of this phenomena in Two Years Before the Mast is a straightforward description of an extraordinary experience apparently only known to mariners and airline pilots.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Nikola Tesla created St. Elmo's fire in 1899 while testing a Tesla coil at his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States. St. Elmo's fire was seen around the coil and was said to have lit up the wings of butterflies with blue halos as they flew around.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: A minute before the crash of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin's LZ 129 "Hindenburg" on 6 May 1937, Professor Mark Heald (1892–1971) of Princeton saw St. Elmo's Fire flickering along the airship's back. Standing outside the main gate to the Naval Air Station, he watched, together with his wife and son, as the airship approached the mast and dropped her bow lines. A minute thereafter, by Heald's estimation, he first noticed a dim "blue flame" flickering along the backbone girder about one-quarter the length abaft the bow to the tail. There was time for him to remark to his wife, "Oh, heavens, the thing is afire," for her to reply, "Where?" and for him to answer, "Up along the top ridge" – before there was a big burst of flaming hydrogen from a point he estimated to be about one-third the ship's length from the stern.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: St. Elmo's fire was reported by "The New York Times" reporter William L. Laurence on August 9, 1945, as he was aboard "Bockscar" on the way to Nagasaki.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: One of the earliest references to the phenomenon appears in Alcaeus's Fragment 34a about the Dioscuri, or Castor and Pollux. It is also referenced in Homeric Hymn 33 to the Dioscuri who were from Homeric times associated with it. Whether the Homeric Hymn antedates the Alcaeus fragment is unknown.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: The phenomenon appears to be described first in the "Gesta Herwardi", written around 1100 and concerning an event of the 1070s. However, one of the earliest direct references to St. Elmo's fire made in fiction can be found in Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem "Orlando Furioso" (1516). It is located in the 17th canto (19th in the revised edition of 1532) after a storm has punished the ship of Marfisa, Astolfo, Aquilant, Grifon, and others, for three straight days, and is positively associated with hope:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In Shakespeare's "The Tempest" (c. 1623), Act I, Scene II, St. Elmo's fire acquires a more negative association, appearing as evidence of the tempest inflicted by Ariel according to the command of Prospero:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: The fires are also mentioned as "death fires" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner":


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: Later in the 18th and 19th centuries, literature associated St. Elmo's fire with a bad omen or divine judgment, coinciding with the growing conventions of Romanticism and the Gothic novel. For example, in Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (1794), during a thunderstorm above the ramparts of the castle:


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In the 1864 novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne, the author describes the fire occurring while sailing during a subterranean electrical storm (chapter 35, page 191):


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In Herman Melville's novel "Moby-Dick", Starbuck points out "corpusants" during a thunder storm in the Japanese sea in chapter 119, "The Candles".


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: St. Elmo's fire makes an appearance in "The Adventures of Tintin" comic, "Tintin in Tibet", by Hergé. Tintin recognizes the phenomenon on Captain Haddock's ice-axe.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: The phenomenon appears in the first stanza of Robert Hayden's poem "The Ballad of Nat Turner"; it is also referred to with the term "corposant" in the first section of his long poem "Middle Passage".


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five", Billy Pilgrim sees the phenomenon on soldiers' helmets and on rooftops. Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan" also notes the phenomenon affecting Winston Niles Rumfoord's dog, Kazak, the Hound of Space, in conjunction with solar disturbances of the chrono-synclastic infundibulum.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In Robert Aickman's story "Niemandswasser" (1975), the protagonist, Prince Albrecht von Allendorf, is "known as Elmo to his associates, because of the fire which to them emanated from him". "There was an inspirational force in Elmo of which the sensitive soon became aware, and which had led to his "Spottname" or nickname."


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In "On the Banks of Plum Creek" by Laura Ingalls Wilder, St. Elmo's fire is seen by the girls and Ma during one of the blizzards. It was described as coming down the stove pipe and rolling across the floor following Ma's knitting needles; it did not burn the floor (pages 309–310). The phenomenon as described, however, is more similar to ball lightning.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: In "Voyager," the third major novel in Diana Gabaldon's popular Outlander series, the primary characters experience St. Elmo's fire while lost at sea in a thunderstorm between Hispaniola and coastal Georgia.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: On the children's television series "The Mysterious Cities of Gold" (1982), episode four shows St. Elmo's fire affecting the ship as it sailed past the Strait of Magellan. The real-life footage at the end of the episode has snippets of an interview with Japanese sailor Fukunari Imada, whose comments were translated to: "Although I've never seen St. Elmo's fire, I'd certainly like to. It was often considered a bad omen, as it played havoc with compasses and equipment". The TV series also referred to St. Elmo's fire as being a bad omen during the cartoon. The footage was captured as part of his winning solo yacht race in 1981.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: On the American television series "Rawhide", in a 1959 episode titled "Incident of the Blue Fire", cattle drovers on a stormy night see St. Elmo's fire glowing on the horns of their steers, which the men regard as a deadly omen. St. Elmo's fire is also referenced in a 1965 episode of "Bonanza" in which religious pilgrims staying on the Cartwright property believe an experience with St. Elmo's fire is the work of Satan.


title: St. Elmo's fire

text: On the Netflix original animated series "Trese" (2021), the Santelmo (St. Elmo's Fire) is one of the protagonist's, Alexandra Trese's, allies whom she contacts using her old Nokia phone, dialing the date of the Great Binondo fire, 0003231870.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem (April 27, 1932 – June 15, 2014) was an American disc jockey, actor, and radio personality, who created and hosted several radio countdown programs, notably "American Top 40". He was the first actor to voice Norville "Shaggy" Rogers in the "Scooby-Doo" franchise (1969 to 1997 and 2002 to 2009) and as Dick Grayson/Robin in "Super Friends" (1973–1985).


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem began hosting the original "American Top 40" on the weekend of July 4, 1970, and remained there until 1988. He would then spend nine years hosting another countdown titled "Casey's Top 40", beginning in January 1989 and ending in February 1998, before returning to revive "American Top 40" in 1998. Along the way, spin-offs of the original countdown were conceived for country music and adult contemporary audiences, and Kasem hosted two countdowns for the latter format beginning in 1992 and continuing until 2009. He also founded the "American Video Awards" in 1983 and continued to co-produce and host it until its final show in 1987.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem also provided many commercial voiceovers, performed many voices for children's television (such as "Sesame Street" and the "Transformers" cartoon series), was "the voice of NBC" and helped with the annual Jerry Lewis telethon.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 27, 1932, to Lebanese Druze immigrants, Helen and Amin Kasem, who were grocers. He was named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a man Kasem said his father respected. Kasem's parents did not allow their children to speak Arabic and insisted they assimilate into American life.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In the 1940s, "Make Believe Ballroom" reportedly inspired Kasem to follow a career in radio. Kasem received his first experience in radio covering sports at Northwestern High School in Detroit. He then attended Wayne State University, where he voiced children on radio programs such as "The Lone Ranger" and "Challenge of the Yukon." In 1952, Kasem was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Korea. There, he worked as a DJ/announcer on the Armed Forces Radio Korea Network.


title: Casey Kasem

text: After the war, Kasem began his professional broadcasting career in Flint, Michigan, then worked at Detroit's WJLB and WJBK—and portrayed children's television host "Krogo the Clown"—but left broadcasting to help tend to the family grocery store in Fenton, Michigan. Kasem unsuccessfully attempted work as a stage actor in New York City for six months, auditioning for a role in the off-Broadway production "Ivan Of", but lost out to Ed Asner. Returning to Detroit, Kasem re-applied at WJBK but was promptly referred to co-owned WJW, which not only had a late-evening slot open but a hosting role for "Cleveland Bandstand" over WJW-TV as well. Cleveland's emerging status as a popular music epicenter appealed to Kasem, having been aware of WERE's Bill Randle dating back to when Randle worked in Detroit. Kasem identified himself as "Casey at the Mike" owing to varied misspellings of his name in both contemporary news accounts and station promos.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem's tenure in Cleveland was a brief but successful one, entering the market "with a vengeance" against Top 40 stations WHK and KYW. Within three months, Kasem reached second place behind WHK in ratings surveys on weeknights and number one on Saturday nights. Kasem's predecessor in the time slot, Pete "Mad Daddy" Myers, partially inspired Kasem's presentation on-air, but Kasem felt compelled to develop a unique on-air persona to distinguish himself. The first three hours of his evening show remained devoted to R&B recordings in a "high-energy rock" style, while the fourth hour was more laidback with his news reader as a co-host. The R&B selections and "wild-tracking" by Kasem also distinguished himself from WJW's daytime pop-oriented fare, which typically featured Perry Como and The McGuire Sisters as core artists.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Nightly features included Kasem labeling songs as "...of the night", with random phrases or names as a descriptor. The payola scandal which enveloped Alan Freed's career emerged after Kasem joined WJW; in response, Kasem began a regular comedy bit called the "Payola Tune of the Night" which WJW management encouraged under the assumption it would dissuade listeners from thinking he was under investigation as well. Ultimately, Kasem's career was not negatively impacted by the payola scandal. One notable stunt involved Kasem and Diana Trask engaging in an 85-second-long kiss for a "world record" distinction on September 14, 1959, with his news reader describing the kiss on-air. While hosting "Cleveland Bandstand", Kasem started to take pep pills to lose weight; one day he forgot them while "en route" to the station, with the resulting pang of conscience after retrieving them from his apartment prompted him to give up the habit entirely.


title: Casey Kasem

text: After WJW switched formats to beautiful music, which Kasem attributed directly to the payola scandal, he left WJW for Buffalo's WBNY but remained in contact with friends in the Cleveland area. At KYA in San Francisco, the general manager suggested he tone down his delivery and talk about the records instead. At KEWB in Oakland, California, Kasem was both the music director and an on-air personality. He said he was inspired by a "Who's Who in Pop Music, 1962" magazine he found in the trash. He created a show that mixed biographical tidbits about the artists he played, and attracted the attention of Bill Gavin, who tried to recruit him as a partner. After Kasem joined KRLA in Los Angeles in 1963, his career began to blossom and he championed the R&B music of East L.A.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem acted in a number of low-budget movies and radio dramas. While hosting "dance hops" on local television, he attracted the attention of Dick Clark, who hired him as co-host of a daily teenage music show called "Shebang", starting in 1964. Kasem's roles on network TV series included "Hawaii Five-O" and "Ironside". In 1967, he appeared on "The Dating Game", and played the role of "Mouth" in the motorcycle gang film "The Glory Stompers". In 1969, he played the role of Knife in the film "Wild Wheels", and had a small role in another biker movie, "The Cycle Savages," starring Bruce Dern and Melody Patterson, and "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant" (also with Dern).


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem's voice was the key to his career. In 1964 during the Beatlemania craze, Kasem had a minor hit single called "Letter from Elaina", a spoken-word recording that told the story of a girl who met George Harrison after a San Francisco Beatles concert. At the end of the 1960s, he began working as a voice actor. In 1969, he started one of his most famous roles, the voice of Shaggy on "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!". He also voiced the drummer Groove from "The Cattanooga Cats" that year.


title: Casey Kasem

text: On July 4, 1970, Kasem, along with Don Bustany, Tom Rounds, and Ron Jacobs, launched the weekly radio program "American Top 40" ("AT40"). At the time, top 40 radio was on the decline as DJs preferred to play album-oriented progressive rock. Loosely based on the TV program "Your Hit Parade", the show counted down from No. 40 to No. 1 based on the "Billboard" Hot 100 weekly chart. Kasem mixed in biographical information and trivia about the artists, as well as flashbacks and "Long-Distance Dedication" segments in which he read letters from listeners wishing to dedicate songs to distant loved ones. Frequently, he mentioned a trivia fact about an unnamed singer before a commercial break, then provided the name of the singer after returning from the break. Kasem ended the program with his signature sign-off, "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars."


title: Casey Kasem

text: The show debuted on seven stations but soon went nationwide. In October 1978, the show expanded from three hours to four. "American Top 40" success spawned several imitators, including a weekly half-hour music video television show, "America's Top 10", hosted by Kasem himself. "When we first went on the air, I thought we would be around for at least 20 years," he later remarked. "I knew the formula worked. I knew people tuned in to find out what the number 1 record was." Because of his great knowledge of music, Kasem became known for his commentaries on music history that he interspersed with trivia about the artists.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In 1971, Kasem provided the character voice of Peter Cottontail in the Rankin/Bass production of "Here Comes Peter Cottontail". In the same year, he appeared in "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant", in what is probably his best-remembered acting role. From 1973 to 1985, Kasem voiced Robin for several "Super Friends" franchise shows. In 1980, he voiced Merry in "The Return of the King". He also voiced Alexander Cabot III on "Josie and the Pussycats" and "Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space", and supplied a number of voices for "Sesame Street".


title: Casey Kasem

text: In the late 1970s, Kasem portrayed an actor who imitated "Columbo" in the "Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries" two-part episode "The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom." He portrayed a golf commentator in an episode of "Charlie's Angels" titled "Winning is for Losers", and appeared on "Police Story", "Quincy, M.E." and "Switch". In 1977, Kasem was hired as the narrator for the ABC sitcom "Soap", but quit after the pilot episode because of the show's controversial content. Rod Roddy took his place on the program. For a period in the late 1970s he was the staff announcer for the NBC television network. In 1984, Kasem made a cameo in "Ghostbusters", reprising his role as the host of "American Top 40".


title: Casey Kasem

text: In 1983 Kasem helped found the "American Video Awards", an annual music video awards show taped for distribution for television, which he also hosted and co-produced. His goal was to make it the "Oscars" of music videos. There were only five award shows. The final show aired in 1987.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In 1988, Kasem left "American Top 40" because of a contract dispute with ABC Radio Network. He signed a five-year, $15 million contract with Westwood One and started "Casey's Top 40", which used a different chart, the Radio & Records Contemporary (CHR)/Pop radio airplay chart (also employed contemporaneously by "Rick Dees Weekly Top 40"). He also hosted two shorter versions of the show, "Casey's Hot 20" and "Casey's Countdown." During the late 1990s, Kasem hosted the Radio Hall of Fame induction ceremony.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem voiced Mark in "Battle of the Planets" and several "Transformers" characters: Bluestreak, Cliffjumper, Teletraan I and Dr. Arkeville. He left "Transformers" during the third season because he believed the show contained offensive caricatures of Arabs and Arab countries. In a 1990 article, he explained:


title: Casey Kasem

text: From 1989 to 1998, Kasem hosted Nick at Nite's New Year's Eve countdown of the top reruns of the year. He also made cameo appearances on "Saved by the Bell" and "ALF" in the early 1990s. In 1997, Kasem quit his role as Shaggy in a dispute over a Burger King commercial, with Billy West and Scott Innes taking over the character in the late 1990s and early 2000s.


title: Casey Kasem

text: The original "American Top 40", hosted by Shadoe Stevens after Kasem's departure, was cancelled in 1995. Kasem regained the rights to the name in 1997, and the show was back on the air in 1998, on the AMFM Network (later acquired by Premiere Radio Networks).


title: Casey Kasem

text: At the end of 2003, Kasem announced he would leave "AT40" once his contract expired and would be replaced by Ryan Seacrest. He agreed to a new contract to continue hosting his weekly adult contemporary countdown shows in the interim, which at the time were both titled "American Top 20". In 2005 Kasem renewed his deal with Premiere Radio Networks to continue hosting his shows, one of which had been reduced to ten songs and was retitled "American Top 10" to reflect the change.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In April 2005, a television special called "American Top 40 Live" aired on the Fox network, hosted by Seacrest, with Kasem appearing on the show. In 2008, Kasem did the voice-over for WGN America's "Out of Sight Retro Night". He was also the host of the short-lived American version of "100%" during the 1998–99 season.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In June 2009, Premiere announced it would no longer produce Kasem's two remaining countdowns, ending their eleven-year relationship. Kasem, by this point at age 77, decided against finding another syndicator or replacement host, citing a desire to explore other avenues such as writing a memoir. He sent a press release announcing he would retire from radio on the July 4 weekend, the 39th anniversary of the first countdown show.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem also performed TV commercial voice-overs throughout his career, appearing in more than 100 commercials.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In 2002, Kasem returned to the role of Shaggy, agreeing to continue on the condition that his character returned to vegetarianism (based on his personal lifestyle). In 2009, he retired from voice acting, with his final performance being the voice of Shaggy in "Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword". He did voice Shaggy again for "The Official BBC Children in Need Medley", but went uncredited by his request. Although officially retired from acting, Kasem provided the voice of Colton Rogers, Shaggy's father, on a recurring basis for the 2010–2013 series "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated", once again uncredited at his request.


title: Casey Kasem

text: As for his distinctive voice quality, "It's a natural quality of huskiness in the midrange of my voice that I call 'garbage,'" he stated to "The New York Times". "It's not a clear-toned announcer's voice. It's more like the voice of the guy next door."


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem was a dedicated vegan, supported animal rights and environmental causes, and was a critic of factory farming. He initially quit voicing Shaggy in the mid to late 1990s when asked to voice Shaggy in a Burger King commercial, but returned in 2002 after negotiating to have Shaggy become a vegetarian once again.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem was active in politics, supporting Lebanese-American and Arab-American causes, an interest triggered by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He wrote a brochure published by the Arab American Institute entitled "Arab-Americans: Making a Difference". He called for a fairer depiction of heroes and villains on behalf of all cultures in Disney's 1994 sequel to "Aladdin" called "The Return of Jafar". In 1996, he was honored as "Man of the Year" by the American Druze Society. Kasem campaigned against the Gulf War, advocating non-military means of pressuring Saddam Hussein into withdrawing from Kuwait, was an advocate of Palestinian independence and arranged conflict-resolution workshops for Arab Americans and Jewish Americans.


title: Casey Kasem

text: A political liberal, Kasem narrated a campaign ad for George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, hosted fundraisers for Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988, supported Ralph Nader for U.S. president in 2000, and supported progressive Democrat Dennis Kucinich in his 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. Kasem supported a number of other progressive causes, including affordable housing and the rights of the homeless.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem was married to Linda Myers from 1972 to 1979. They had three children: Mike, Julie, and Kerri Kasem.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Kasem was married to actress Jean Thompson from 1980 until his death. They had one child, Liberty Jean Kasem.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In 1989, Kasem purchased a home built in 1954 and located at 138 North Mapleton Drive in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, previously owned by developer Abraham M. Lurie, as a birthday present for his wife, Jean. In 2013, Kasem and his wife put the home on the market for US$43 million. After the dueling lawsuits between Kasem family members were settled, the property was re-listed in 2021 for US$37.9 million.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In October 2013, Kerri Kasem announced her father had Parkinson's disease, diagnosed in 2007. However, a few months later, she said he had Lewy body dementia, which is hard to differentiate from Parkinson's. His condition left him unable to speak during his final months.


title: Casey Kasem

text: As Kasem's health worsened in 2013, his wife Jean prevented any contact with him, particularly by his children from his first marriage. On October 1, the children protested in front of the Kasem home. Some of Kasem's friends and colleagues, and his brother Mouner, joined the protest. The older Kasem children sought conservatorship over their father's care. The court denied their petition in November.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Jean removed Kasem from his Santa Monica, California nursing home on May 7, 2014. On May 12, Kerri Kasem was granted temporary conservatorship over her father, despite her stepmother's objection. The court ordered an investigation into Casey Kasem's whereabouts after his wife's attorney told the court that Casey was "no longer in the United States". He was found soon afterward in Washington state.


title: Casey Kasem

text: On June 6, 2014, Kasem was reported to be in critical but stable condition in hospital in Washington state, receiving antibiotics for bedsores and treatment for high blood pressure. It was revealed he had been bedridden for some time. A judge ordered separate visitation times for Kasem's wife and his children from his first marriage. Judge Daniel S. Murphy ruled that Kasem had to be hydrated, fed and medicated as a court-appointed lawyer reported on his health status. Jean Kasem claimed he had been given no food, water or medication the previous weekend. Kerri Kasem's lawyer stated that she had him removed from artificial food and water on the orders of a doctor and in accordance with a directive her father signed in 2007 saying he would not want to be kept alive if it "would result in a mere biological existence, devoid of cognitive function, with no reasonable hope for normal functioning." Murphy reversed his order the following Monday after it became known that Kasem's body was no longer responding to the artificial nutrition, allowing the family to place Kasem on "end-of-life" measures over the objections of Jean Kasem.


title: Casey Kasem

text: On June 15, 2014, Kasem died at St. Anthony's Hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington at the age of 82. The immediate cause of death was reported as sepsis caused by an ulcerated bedsore. His body was handed over to his widow. Reportedly, Kasem wanted to be buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.


title: Casey Kasem

text: By July 19, a judge had granted Kerri Kasem a temporary restraining order to prevent Jean Kasem from cremating the body in order to allow an autopsy to be performed. However, when Kerri Kasem went to give a copy of the order to the funeral home, she was informed that the body had been moved at the direction of Jean Kasem. Kasem's wife had the body moved to a funeral home in Montreal on July 14, 2014. On August 14, it was reported in the Norwegian newspaper "Verdens Gang" that Kasem was going to be buried in Oslo.


title: Casey Kasem

text: Jean Kasem had him interred at Oslo Western Civil Cemetery on December 16, 2014, more than six months after his death.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In November 2015, three of Kasem's children and his brother sued his widow for wrongful death. The lawsuit charges Jean Kasem with elder abuse and inflicting emotional distress on the children by restricting access before his death. A 2018 police investigation initiated by a private investigator working for Jean found that he had received appropriate medical care while in Washington, and that there was no evidence pointing to homicide. The suits were settled in 2019.


title: Casey Kasem

text: In 1981, Kasem was granted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame radio division in 1985, and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1992. Five years later, he received the Radio Hall of Fame's first Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003, Kasem was given the Radio Icon award at the Radio Music Awards.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Final Fantasy XIV is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Square Enix. Directed and produced by Naoki Yoshida, it was released worldwide for Windows and PlayStation 3 in August 2013, as a replacement for the failed 2010 version of the game, with support for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and macOS releasing later. "Final Fantasy XIV" takes place in the fictional land of Eorzea, five years after the events of the original 2010 release. At the conclusion of the original game, the primal dragon Bahamut escapes from its lunar prison to initiate the Seventh Umbral Calamity, an apocalyptic event which destroys much of Eorzea. Through the gods' blessing, the player character escapes the devastation by time traveling five years into the future. As Eorzea recovers and rebuilds, the player must deal with the impending threat of invasion by the Garlean Empire from the north.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The original "Final Fantasy XIV", released in September 2010, was a commercial and critical failure. In response, then-Square Enix President Yoichi Wada announced that a new team, led by Yoshida, would take over and attempt to fix the issues with it. This team was responsible for generating content for the original version as well as developing a brand new game which would address all of the previous release's criticisms. This new game, initially dubbed "Version 2.0", features a new game engine, improved server infrastructure, and revamped gameplay, interface, and story. The original version shut down in November 2012 and was followed by an alpha test for Version 2.0.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The game released to largely positive reception; critics praised the game for its solid mechanics and progression, and they commended Yoshida for turning the project around. After a poor 2013 fiscal year, Square Enix executives attributed the company's 2014 return to profitability in part to the game's strong sales and subscriber base, reaching a total of over 24 million registered players by October 2021, also becoming the most profitable "Final Fantasy" game to date. The game has had a number of post-release updates produced for it, including four major expansion packs: "Heavensward" (2015), "Stormblood" (2017), "Shadowbringers" (2019), and "Endwalker" (2021).


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: "Final Fantasy XIV" is an MMORPG and features a persistent world in which players can interact with each other and the environment. Players create and customize their characters for use in the game, including name, race, gender, facial features, and starting class. Unlike in the original release, players may only choose to be a Disciple of War or Magic as a starting class—Disciples of the Hand and Land are initially unavailable. Players must also select a game server for characters to exist on. While servers are not explicitly delineated by language, data centers have been placed in the supported regions (i.e., North America, Europe, Japan) to improve the communication latency between the server and the client computer and players are advised to choose a server in their region. Regardless of server or language, the game features a large library of automatically translated game terms and general phrases which allow players who speak different languages to communicate.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The user interface and game controls are unified across the PC and home console versions. Players have the option of using any combination of a keyboard, mouse, and game controller to play; the former two are achieved on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 via wireless or USB keyboard and mouse. By default, the system is navigated through drag and drop windows on PC. Navigation on the PlayStation version of "Final Fantasy XIV" is accomplished with a XrossMediaBar-like interface due to PlayStation users' familiarity with the set-up. This bar is used to access all menus, maps, logs, and configuration options. The head-up display for both versions includes a message log, party status menu, mini-map, and action bar. The player may customize the location of all of these elements.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The action bar and battle command input method differs slightly between the PC and home console versions. The PC version supports both point and click and keyboard selection of commands or macros from the action bar. Macro commands are customizable sequences of actions that allow players to execute desired abilities at a specific time. The home console versions instead map the action bar and macros to the "Cross Hotbar"—sets of four icons arranged in a cross shape. These are the grouped and accessed through a combination of the shoulder buttons and the directional pad or the face buttons. Using each shoulder button to cycle through the cross sets, players have quick access to commands. This interface is also available to PC players who use controllers.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Players are able to improve their characters by gaining experience points (EXP)—when a set number of experience points are accumulated, the player's character will "level up" and gain improved statistics which further enhance performance in battle. Four primary sources of experience points in "Final Fantasy XIV" include completing quests, exploring instanced dungeons, participating in Full Active Time Events (FATE), and slaying monsters which exist in the game world. Quests, including the "main scenario" questline, are generally short, specific tasks given to the player by non-player characters which reward items and EXP. Completing main scenario quests progresses the overarching plot of the game. Guildleves are a type of repeatable quest which may be undertaken using leve allowances. These allowances are limited but regenerate over time. Instanced dungeons are confined locations with specific objectives that must be achieved within a time limit. These dungeons often require multiple players to form a party before entry is granted. Some dungeons are for lower-leveled players to gain EXP quickly while others are for experienced players to collect rare items, equipment, and currency. The Duty Roulette puts players into a random instanced dungeon among the ones they have unlocked, and upon completion they are given an extra EXP bonus that scales with their level. This bonus is available once per day for each of the Duty Roulette categories. FATE is a new gameplay mechanic wherein a large number of players may participate in the same event, regardless of party status. These location-specific events include battles with notorious monsters, defending a location from invading forces, culling hostile local wildlife, and assaulting enemy fortresses, among other types. Finally, slaying monsters for EXP is aided by the Hunting Log, which tasks players with defeating specific enemies in exchange for EXP bonuses. Upon reaching the maximum level, character progression shifts to improving "item level" by acquiring new and better equipment. This equipment can be gained through a variety of sources including endgame dungeons, crafting, raids, primal battles, and elite mark hunts.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: In addition to these player versus environment (PvE) challenges, three forms of player versus player (PvP) combat exist in "Final Fantasy XIV". The first type, the Wolves' Den, is an arena featuring structured four-versus-four battles; a player may register with up to three teammates to challenge another four-person team. The second type, Frontlines, is a large battleground in which players form teams of up to 24 characters. Teams are delineated by players' allegiance to one of three Grand Companies and the team which reaches the target number of points first wins the match. Multiple modes are available, each with differing locations and rulesets. Within the fiction, Frontlines is presented as an organized set of military exercises between the three nations with the ulterior goal of jockeying for dominance of regions rich in magical artifacts. The third type, Rival Wings, is a battle arena mode where players manipulate minion waves and pilot mechs to destroy enemy objectives.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Players fight enemies using a combination of physical attacks, weapon skills, and magical attacks; these battles form the basis of party play in "Final Fantasy XIV". Most battle content in the game requires parties of a specific size, including four players for dungeons and eight players for boss battles. The "Duty Finder" is an automated matching feature that sorts players into parties for selected content across different servers. The "Party Finder" is a bulletin board where players may recruit players across servers for any kind of content including dungeons, raid battles, FATE parties, and more. Members of a party fill traditional MMORPG roles like tank, healer, and damage dealer. Tanks draw the enemy's attention away from other party members who generally have weaker defense, healers use restorative abilities and support the party with damage and enhancing abilities, and damage dealers focus on attacking the enemy. Teamwork and strategy are required to defeat the strongest enemies. "Limit Breaks" are special abilities that can only be performed if members of the party excel at their roles.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Free Companies are player-run guilds, organized bands of adventurers under the auspices of one of the three Grand Companies of Eorzea. Free Company members may gain access to a shared company chest, a private chat channel, and Company Actions which are 24-hour buffs to certain aspects of gameplay, such as increased EXP gain or reduced gear damage. Free Company members may also pool their resources to purchase a house in one of the residential districts. In addition to decorating the house, players may use the grounds to grow unique items through the gardening system, train their chocobo companion, embark on airship expeditions, and purchase a private room for personal use. Linkshells are another form of in-game networking; whereas players may only belong in one Free Company, they may join multiple linkshells which act as private chat channels for interested sub-groups.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Under the Armoury System, a character's equipped weapon determines the character class and players may change their class at will by changing weapons. Classes are divided into four disciplines: Disciples of War, masters of physical combat; Disciples of Magic, practitioners of the magical arts; Disciples of the Hand, crafters and handymen who synthesize and repair items; and Disciples of the Land, gatherers who collect resources from the environment. The Job System builds upon the Armoury System for Disciples of War and Magic. It allows access to powerful skills, magic, weapons, and armor exclusive to the job corresponding to that class. These jobs, many based on classic "Final Fantasy" character jobs, are more suited to party-based combat.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The virtual economy of "Final Fantasy XIV" is largely player-driven. The exchange of items is facilitated by retainers—non-playable characters who assist in selling items on the Market Board, gather items through ventures, and provide additional item storage. A small transaction fee for all sales serves as a gold sink to regulate the inflation of prices in the economy. Players of any class may contribute to the supply of the economy: Disciples of the Land acquire raw materials from gathering points throughout the game world; Disciples of the Hand craft the materials into useful items and equipment; and Disciples of War and Magic are able to procure rare materials through completion of dungeons and Treasure Maps. Players are also able to contribute by extracting "materia" from well-used equipment, which can then be used to improve the statistics of other equipment.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The mechanics of crafting and gathering have changed between the original release and "A Realm Reborn". Most of these changes are geared toward reducing the randomness and guesswork involved in these processes. For Disciples of the Hand, all recipes of the appropriate level are unlocked by default in the Crafting Log. Crafting abilities have been rebalanced to allow successful high-quality synthesis without requiring multiple mastered Disciplines of the Hand. For Disciples of the Land, players are allowed to select which item they would like to attempt to collect at a gathering point, whereas before, the results of gathering attempts were randomized. The Gathering Log also displays the names and locations of items that can be gathered in the world.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: "Final Fantasy XIV" is set on Hydaelyn, a fictional world of diverse environments across three main continents, focused on the region of Eorzea. Four major city-states are featured: Gridania, in the heavily-forested Black Shroud; Ul'dah, a trade-centric sultanate in arid Thanalan; Limsa Lominsa, a thalassocracy found on the island of Vylbrand; and Ishgard, an isolationist theocracy in snowy, mountainous Coerthas. Eastward, a land bridge connects Eorzea to the other continents, conquered by the Garlean Empire. Other cultures include the various endemic tribes, such as Sylphs and Kobolds; scholarly Sharlayan, which practices strict nonintervention; and Ala Mhigo, the easternmost city-state of Eorzea, conquered twenty years prior by the Garlean Empire. In the face of the Garlean invasion, Ishgard withdrew from the Eorzean Alliance, leaving it nearly defunct. Resisting Garlean assaults has left the once-vibrant central territory of Mor Dhona a desolate wasteland.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Eorzea history is divided into "Astral" eras of prosperity and "Umbral" eras of decline caused by great Calamities. The First Umbral Era marked the end of the age of gods. The Twelve, guardian deities of Eorzea, retreated from direct mortal contact. As an Umbral era fades, society recovers and a new Astral era begins. The Third Astral Era represented the height of magic and technology, under the hegemonic Allagan Empire, which could build space stations, among other wonders. Each Umbral and Astral Era pair corresponds to one of the six basic elements—wind, lightning, fire, earth, ice, and water. The Sixth Umbral Era was believed to be the last, and thus the Seventh Astral Era would last forever, but five years ago, the Garlean Empire triggered the Seventh Umbral Calamity.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Garlean scientists, via Project Meteor, found a way to call down the lesser moon Dalamud as a weapon. Under Legatus Nael van Darnus, they planned to annihilate all of Eorzea by crashing the moon, destroying the Tribes and their primal deities and ruling the remnants. In response, the Alliance members reforged their bonds and revived their Grand Company militaries. Adventurers defeated van Darnus but could not stop Dalamud's continued descent. At the Battle of Carteneau Flats in Mor Dhona, between the Grand Companies and the Garlean legions, Dalamud revealed itself to be an ancient Allagan-made prison for the primal dragon Bahamut; his escape triggers the Seventh Umbral Calamity. Louisoix Leveilleur called upon the Twelve to imprison Bahamut, but failed; before he sacrificed himself to defeat Bahamut, he sent the adventurers "beyond the reach of time" for when they were needed again. Since then, the Garlean Empire has been embroiled in a succession crisis due to the failing health of its founder, Solus zos Galvus.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The player character is an Eorzean adventurer during the Seventh Umbral Era who joins one of the three Grand Companies: Gridania's Order of the Twin Adder under Elder Seedseer Kan-E-Senna; Ul'dah's Immortal Flames, under Flame General Raubahn Aldynn; and the Maelstrom of Limsa Lominsa under Admiral Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn. Their allies include Minfilia and her Scions of the Seventh Dawn, the unified remnants of two supporting organizations from the Sixth Astral Era, Louisoix's Circle of Knowing and Minfilia's Path of the Twelve. Members include Thancred, Yda, Papalymo, Urianger, and Y'shtola. Y'shtola often represents "Final Fantasy XIV" in crossovers like "" and "Dissidia Final Fantasy NT". Louisoix's twin grandchildren, Alphinaud and Alisaie, follow his example to aid Eorzea. Finally, Cid Garlond heads Garlond Ironworks, a technology company providing airships, weapons, and infrastructure to the Alliance.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Garlean antagonists include Legatus Gaius van Baelsar of the XIVth Legion and his lieutenants, Livia sas Junius, Rhitahtyn sas Arvina, and Nero tol Scaeva. The Tribes also threaten the uneasy peace by summoning primals, aetherial deities who deplete the land of its life-sustaining energy. Both are manipulated by the Ascians, inscrutable immortals hellbent on awakening their dark god Zodiark, whose revival imperils all of Hydaelyn.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The game opens with a vision of the player character in battle with a masked man in black robes. The adventurer awakens from the vision on their journey to their starting city, Gridania, Ul'dah, or Limsa Lominsa. Returning players from legacy FFXIV appear in a column of light. Through odd jobs and tenacity, the adventurer joins their city's Adventurer's Guild, and is favorably compared to the Warriors of Light from the Sixth Astra Era, whom Louisoix saved, but whom no one can remember any details about. Masked men, like in the vision, make targeted attacks, and the adventurer gains aid from representatives of the Scions. Finally, they meet the secret society's leader, Minfilia. She reveals the visions are a power called the Echo, which marks them as a chosen representative of Hydaelyn, the Mothercrystal.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Freshly inducted, the adventurer and Thancred investigate abductions and crystal thefts in Thanalan, revealed to come from the Amalj'aa Tribe. They capture the adventurer to sacrifice to their primal, Ifrit, but the Echo blocks Ifrit's "tempering." Instead, the adventurer defeats Ifrit, and is hailed a hero, courted by all three Grand Companies. During memorial services for the dead at Carteneau, the player meets Alphinaud and Alisaie, who part ways over disagreement about the purpose of such displays. The adventurer is assigned to the Black Shroud to forge ties with the Sylphs, a peaceful tribe whose radical faction has summoned the primal Ramuh against the Garleans. While rescuing the Sylph elder, the adventurer encounters another masked man, Lahabrea, revealed to be a leader of the mysterious Ascians.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The adventurer investigates, but Lahabrea twice eludes them. Minfilia sends them to thwart the freshly-summoned Kobold primal, Titan, so they recruit the retired primal-fighting Company of Heroes. After a series of miscellaneous tasks, the Company's leader reveals the way, and the adventurer defeats Titan, learning that Lahabrea is working alongside Legatus Gaius van Baelsar of the XIVth Imperial Legion. The adventurer returns to the Scions' headquarters to find slaughter: Minfilia and others were captured, and everyone else was slain, by the Garleans. After funeral rites for the fallen, Alphinaud returns to recruit the adventurer, aiming to defeat the freshly-summoned Ixal Tribe primal, Garuda. To confront Garuda in her own domain, they must awaken the memories of the amnesiac genius engineer, Cid Garlond.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Cid, Alphinaud, and the adventurer travel to Coerthas, territory of reclusive Ishgard, seeking Cid's lost airship, the "Enterprise". After befriending Isghardian commander Haurchefant Greystone and foiling a heretic plot, they recover the "Enterprise" in the Stone Vigil, a fortress overrun by dragons. Cid, aided by the adventurer's Echo, regains his memories as a Garlean engineer, Eorzean defector, and genius inventor. The adventurer eventually acquires a rare crystal to cut through Garuda's vortex, and the two fight until Garuda torments Kobold and Amalj'aa prisoners of war into resummoning Ifrit and Titan. However, Gaius and Lahabrea intercede with the Ultima Weapon, an Allagan machine, which consumes all three primals to increase it's power. At Lahabrea's urging, Gaius plans to use the Ultima Weapon to conquer Eorzea, but the Ascian secretly intends to start another calamity with it.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: After recovering additional members, the Scions rescue Minfilia and the others from the Garleans, learning that Lahabrea has possessed Thancred. Barging into a meeting of the Alliance leadership, Alphinaud and Minfilia persuade them to choose resistance instead of surrender. The Scions join the Alliance in executing a massive counteroffensive, Operation Archon. Ultimately, the adventurer assaults Gaius' stronghold, the Praetorium, where Gaius pilots the Ultima Weapon and battles them. Shielded by Hydaelyn's Blessing of Light, the adventurer destroys the Ultima Weapon, leaving Gaius behind in the explosion. Lahabrea defeats the adventurer himself, revealing the calamities are part of a process to resurrect the Ascians' God, Zodiark. Hydaelyn revives them and they purge Lahabrea from Thancred's body, fulfilling the vision from the prologue. Victorious, Alliance leaders declare the Seventh Astral Era. The adventurer is declared the new Warrior of Light; for Legacy characters their victory restores everyone's memories of the Warrior. In a post-credits scene, a recovering Lahabrea and other Ascians prepare for the return of Bahamut.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Facing increasing scrutiny and pressure to align with one of the three allied city-states, the Scions relocate their headquarters to Revenant's Toll, a hub for adventurers in the neutral territory of Mor Dhona. No sooner are they settled when word arrives that a renegade moogle faction has summoned their primal Good King Moggle Mog XII, enabled by the Ascians. After besting the giant moogle, the Warrior of Light encounters the Ascian Emissary, Elidibus, who tests the player's might before disappearing. Shortly thereafter, refugees arrive from Doma, a nation subjugated by the Garlean Empire, and seek asylum in Ul'dah, where their request is refused. Alphinaud recommends they work as tradesmen in the construction of Revenant's Toll. In gratitude, the Doman leader, Yugiri, accompanies the party to reconnoiter the Sahagin spawning grounds where their primal Leviathan is summoned. The adventurer slays the revived Leviathan using two boats' worth of corrupted crystals, courtesy of Lominsan warship "The Whorleater".


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Alphinaud inquires about the cause of riots among Ala Mhigan refugees in Ul'dah and uncovers the agents of Teledji Adeledji, an influential member of Ul'dah's ruling Syndicate. Raubahn speculates that Adeledji is jockeying for control of artifacts discovered at the Carteneau ruins, including remnants of the Allagan superweapon known as Omega. In the Black Shroud, the Sylphs summon Ramuh who judges the Warrior of Light as a worthy savior of the realm, departing amicably. Meanwhile, Alphinaud incorporates the Crystal Braves as neutral police force for Eorzea. Their first task is to investigate the "Ivy", a Garlean spy who has infiltrated the Immortal Flames' leadership. Haurchefant and Ser Aymeric of the Temple Knights of Ishgard reaches out to the Scions and Braves in an unprecedented move to ask for their aid in monitoring the Keeper of the Lake—the wreckage of a Garlean airship intertwined with the corpse of Midgardsormr, the dragon king who repelled the Garlean advance fifteen years previous. In exchange, Haurchefant agrees to safeguard supply shipments to Revenant's Toll, which had been harried by the followers of Lady Iceheart, an Ishgardian turncoat.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The Garlean civil war ends with Varis zos Galvus assuming the throne as emperor, lending new urgency to the search for Ivy. The Braves discover that Ivy is Raubahn's trusted advisor Eline Roaille, who is captured at the gates of a Garlean Castrum. A new Scion, Moenbryda, arrives from Sharlayan and provides critical advice for locating Iceheart. Using her body as a vessel, Iceheart summons Shiva into herself and challenges the Warrior of Light. Though the adventurer's band defeats Shiva, Iceheart escapes, bidding the meddler to consult with Midgardsormr. Based on the player's encounters with Lahabrea and Shiva, Moenbryda hypothesizes that a blade of pure aether can permanently destroy an Ascian while its essence is trapped within white auracite. Lucia of the Temple Knights requests that the Warrior of Light investigate suspicious activity at the Keeper of the Lake where the adventurer discovers that Midgardsormr lives on, slowly regenerating from his apparent death. He divulges that Nidhogg, one of his seven children, has rallied the Dravanian horde to renew their attack on Ishgard. Sensing the hero's connection to Hydaelyn, Midgardsormr invokes an ancient pact with the Mothercrystal and seals away her blessing as a test of the player's worth. The Ascian Nabriales takes advantage of the opportunity to infiltrate the Scions' headquarters in pursuit of Louisoix's staff. Moenbryda sacrifices herself to create the blade of aether necessary to completely destroy the Ascian.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: As the Scions mourn their fallen comrade, Aymeric parleys for aid in Ishgard's defense against Nidhogg's forces. Minfilia and Alphinaud reluctantly pledge the Scions' support while the rest of the Alliance decline due to both domestic troubles and remembering Ishgard's reticence during the three Garlean invasions. The adventurer and the Scions repel Nidhogg's forces at the Steps of Faith, Ishgard's main bridge. A victory celebration is held at Ul'dah with the hopes of pressuring Ishgard into the Alliance. At the banquet, Ul'dah's sultana Nanamo Ul Namo privately discloses to the Warrior of Light that she plans to dissolve the monarchy to erode the power of the Syndicate, the source of much of Ul'dah's corruption. However, Nanamo succumbs to poisoned wine and collapses; Adeledji immediately accuses the adventurer of being responsible and has them arrested. When he denounces Raubahn for his negligence, the enraged Raubahn kills him. Lolorito, another scheming Syndicate member, takes this as proof of Raubahn's guilt and has him arrested. The Crystal Braves are revealed to be in the pay of Lolorito and pursue the Scions, most of whom stay behind to cover their escape. Only a humbled Alphinaud and the Warrior of Light manage to escape with the help of Raubahn's son Pipin Tarupin. Cid takes them to Coerthas where from their Syndicate pursuers.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The original release of "Final Fantasy XIV" began development under the codename "Rapture" between late 2004 and early 2005, and was officially announced in 2009. This version was directed by Nobuaki Komoto and produced by Hiromichi Tanaka, who was also serving as the producer of "Final Fantasy XI", and employed the Crystal Tools engine, which had previously been used for "Final Fantasy XIII". Following a bug-laden, abbreviated beta test period, the game released in September 2010 to near-universal negative reception. After two extensions to the initial free trial period, then-Square Enix President Yoichi Wada issued a formal apology to players and fans in December 2010, and announced a dramatic overhaul in the development team, most prominently the removal of Tanaka from the project and the demotion of Komoto from Director to Lead Designer. Monthly fees for the game were suspended until further notice and the previously planned PlayStation 3 version was canceled. After the change in development team, Naoki Yoshida, who had worked as planning chief of "Dragon Quest X", was brought in to supervise the project as both producer and director.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: In attempting to improve "Final Fantasy XIV", Yoshida quickly discovered a number of key tasks. First and foremost, he had to restore trust in the player base while bringing the game up to a playable quality. To address this, Yoshida began writing "Letters from the Producer" which would discuss design direction, upcoming changes, player feedback, and increase transparency in the development process. However, outdated and cumbersome programming choices in the source code prevented the more radical modifications necessary to enhance the game. Thus, planning for a brand new game built from scratch started in January 2011 and development began in earnest by April, with work on a new game engine and server structure. Meanwhile, the team's efforts to improve the original release first came to fruition with patch 1.18 in July 2011, which included major changes to the battle system, implementation of auto-attack and instanced dungeons, removal of the controversial "fatigue" system, and the introduction of the Grand Company storyline which would supersede the original main scenario questline. Subsequent patches would further refine the gameplay as well as set the stage for the Seventh Umbral Era events.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: On the anniversary of the game's release, Wada claimed that the initial launch of "Final Fantasy XIV" had "greatly damaged" the "Final Fantasy" brand. Thus, Wada and Yoshida announced the brand new version of "Final Fantasy XIV" in October 2011, code-named "Version 2.0", which had been in development since January, along with a tentative roadmap for future progress for both PC and PlayStation 3. Current players would be provided copies of the new PC client at launch, free of charge, and their character data and progress would be transferred as well. Along with the roadmap, they announced that monthly fees would be instated in order to offset the cost of redevelopment. Billing for the game began in January 2012. To encourage users to continue playing while paying subscription fees, Yoshida revealed the "Legacy Campaign" which rewarded players who paid for at least three months of service with permanently reduced monthly payments, an exclusive in-game chocobo mount, and their names featured in the credits of Version 2.0.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012, Square Enix debuted "Agni's Philosophy", a tech demo for their new Luminous Studio game engine. Though members of the "Final Fantasy XIV" development team worked on Luminous, Yoshida admitted that both Luminous and Crystal Tools were optimized for offline games and could not handle an online environment with hundreds of on-screen character models. Though Version 2.0 uses a "completely different engine", he called the Luminous engine and the 2.0 engine "siblings" due to similarities in their structure. In July 2012, Square Enix revealed that Version 2.0's official title would be "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn". As development for "A Realm Reborn" ramped up, Yoshida made the decision to shut down the servers for the original release on November 11, 2012. This date served as the "grand finale" for the old game, culminating in a cinematic trailer for "A Realm Reborn" called "End of an Era".


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: In a project postmortem Game Developers Conference 2014, Yoshida reflected on the herculean task of maintaining and updating an MMORPG while simultaneously developing a new one over the course of just two years and eight months. He identified three main reasons why the original launch failed: an over-emphasis on graphical quality, a lack of modern MMORPG expertise in the development team, and a mentality that all problems could be fixed in future patches. These evolved from the team's prior experience on "Final Fantasy XI", the previous MMORPG in the "Final Fantasy" series. As the series has been renowned for its state-of-the-art graphics, the original development team gained an unhealthy obsession with maximizing graphical quality at the expense of server performance, which was unsustainable for an online game with tens of thousands of high definition assets. In designing "Final Fantasy XI", the team spent a year playing "EverQuest", the most successful MMORPG of the early 2000s. However, they lacked experience with modern games in the genre; the original "Final Fantasy XIV" team was instructed merely to make something "different from "Final Fantasy XI"". Yoshida admonished that the team should "go play "World of Warcraft" for a year [for inspiration]" instead.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: A prevailing design philosophy for "A Realm Reborn" was to simultaneously appeal to hardcore MMORPG players while reaching out to new players and "Final Fantasy" fans who had never experienced the genre before. As a consequence, Yoshida held optimizing gameplay for controllers as a top priority. To streamline development, he made about 400 fundamental design decisions which eliminated time lost to getting approvals, with a focus on implementing standard features of the genre first. The new workflow pipeline was tested using updates to the original game and applied to development of "A Realm Reborn". The continuing operations of the original release provided a valuable testing ground for new features that would be carried into the relaunch. Another focus was to appeal to busy players without a lot of free time, which led to creating the Duty Finder system. The base game and patch cycle were also designed to make it easy for lapsed players to return to. Throughout this process, Yoshida emphasized that communication with players and restoring their trust was key, even admitting that sales were secondary compared to redeeming the reputation of the series. Live streaming conversations between the development team and fans, such as the Letters from the Producer LIVE events, became a major element of Yoshida's player outreach strategy.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The alpha test for "A Realm Reborn" began shortly after the original release's finale and ended in late December 2012. During this period, Wada admitted that the development of "A Realm Reborn" was a cause of delay for many Square Enix titles at the time. Yoshida published an updated roadmap for the beta test through launch, indicating four phases of beta beginning in mid-February 2013. He claimed that the team is "adamant the game not be released until it is ready" and that launching too early "would be like at the level of destroying the company". In May 2013, Square Enix announced the release date for the game, along with details about pre-order bonuses and the collector's edition, which includes an art book, a bonus disc with a recap of the original release story, a soundtrack sampler, and several cosmetic in-game items. In June 2013, the company revealed a PlayStation 4 version was in development and due for release in 2014. Early access began on August 24, 2013, with players able to play continuously through to the August 27 launch. Players throughout this period noted continued server issues. Due to an "overwhelmingly positive response", the servers could not handle the number of concurrent players, prompting Square Enix to temporarily suspend digital sales of the game. In light of these issues, Yoshida issued an apology to fans for the game's "rocky" launch and reassured them that fixes were in progress and new servers would be created. A week after launch, the game received a ten-hour maintenance and fresh patches, and all players were compensated with a week of free play time.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: A Steam version of the client was released on February 14, 2014. A beta for the PlayStation 4 version of "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn" debuted on the same day as the Japanese release of the console, February 22, 2014. Owners of the PlayStation 3 client were able upgrade to the digital PlayStation 4 client for free. A free trial of the game first became available for PC on July 31, 2014, with PlayStation 3 and 4 versions following in December. It initially limited prospective players to content under level 35 but this was expanded to level 60 in August 2020, allowing free access to all of "A Realm Reborn" and "Heavensward" with no time restrictions. The Chinese version, published and administrated by Shanda Games, premiered on August 29, 2014, featuring content through patch 2.16. It features separate servers from the other language versions of the game and a pay-per-hour micropayment billing system. The Korean version, distributed by Actoz Soft, launched in South Korea on August 14, 2015, with content from patch 2.2. This version carries a flexible subscription model with increments as low as 5 hours, similar to the Chinese release, up to 90 days, much like the traditional monthly payment plan. With the release of later patches, versions and expansion packs, the ""A Realm Reborn"" subtitle has been dropped, with the remade game being referred to simply as "Final Fantasy XIV". Fans now refer to the story arc encompassing up to the last patch as "2.0" or "A Realm Reborn", to differentiate it from the later expansions.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Coinciding with the launch of the first expansion pack, the macOS client was released on June 23, 2015. The port was handled by TransGaming. On July 3, 2015, Square Enix suspended sales of the macOS version because of widespread reports of poor technical performance and offered refunds to those who purchased it. Yoshida observed that the performance issues could be attributed to difficulties in transposing the game from Microsoft's proprietary DirectX graphical rendering libraries to OpenGL as well as a clerical error resulting in publishing the wrong minimum system requirements, both compounded by the hectic work schedule demanded by the release of an expansion pack. After new rounds of testing and optimization, sales of the macOS version resumed on February 23, 2016. In November 2019, Phil Spencer told the press that Xbox is working with Square Enix to bring the game to Xbox One. No official announcement was made however, with director Naoki Yoshida stating in an October 2021 interview that discussions are "positive", but still ongoing, and that the team is waiting for the right time to provide an update. Around the same time, Yoshida also confirmed to GameSpot that talks with Nintendo were ongoing, in order to also bring the game to Nintendo Switch, remarking that the addition of Xbox and Switch as supported platforms for the game would increase its overall footprint despite its already active userbase, and that "So as long as the regulations with the counterpart hardware companies ... we can actually pass that, then the possibility, the chance is quite high [of "Final Fantasy XIV" coming to Xbox and Nintendo systems]".


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: The development team schedules the release of a major update approximately every three months. Each of these free content patches includes a continuation of the main scenario as well as new raids, features, trials, and dungeons. Minor patches that come in between major updates focus on quality of life changes, and are sometimes used to introduce completely new side content. In addition to regular free updates, the game features full expansion packs that add new zones, races, jobs, and premiere a new content cycle. Since the release of these expansions, the original subtitle of "A Realm Reborn" has come to refer to the portion of the game available at launch, rather than the entirety of "Final Fantasy XIV". Patch 5.3 of the "Shadowbringers" expansion also modifies and streamlines the "A Realm Reborn" main scenario questline, and patches 6.1 and 6.2 of the "Endwalker" expansion included further changes to the "A Realm Reborn" and "Heavensward" questlines.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: Masayoshi Soken contributed to the majority of the game's version of traditional Final Fantasy music, as well as themes original to the game. The enormous track list includes remixed versions of songs such as the Final Fantasy theme, originally composed by long time Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, as well as remixes of day and night themes original to Final Fantasy XIV. For the reboot A Realm Reborn, Soken was tasked with composing and compiling numerous original and remixed songs, in addition to his duties as sound director. The remaining tracks were reused pieces from the original game's soundtrack which was principally composed by Nobuo Uematsu, with assistance from Soken, Tsuyoshi Sekito, and Naoshi Mizuta. Yoshida directed Soken to "give us something straightforward that anyone could identify as "Final Fantasy", with an easy-to-understand, expressive orchestral sound". Because of the abbreviated development schedule, Soken focused primarily on creating the soundtrack while his team worked on the various sound effects for the game world. The team was given less than a year on sound production, though according to Soken, it felt like "enough work for two full games in that time". Most of the tracks had specific guidelines or came from the development team's requests, though Soken was allowed to "do what [he liked]" for Titan's battle theme, although the initial lyrics had to be changed for having too much profanity. Soken sang the vocal work for some tracks, such as the battle theme for Leviathan. Soken also arranged pieces from earlier "Final Fantasy" games for use in special in-game events. In "Final Fantasy", its music acts as a carrier of nostalgic emotions, allowing the music to bring its nostalgic emotional carrier into new relationships and environments and create a deeper connection with the game.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Original Soundtrack" is a collection of music from the game including both the launch and tracks from Patch 2.1, "A Realm Awoken". It was released on March 21, 2014, on Blu-ray Disc and features 119 tracks with accompanying gameplay videos. The first print run came with a special "Wind-up Bahamut" in-game pet. Emily McMillan of Video Game Music Online called the soundtrack a "truly fantastic score", and said that it was superior to the music of the original version of the game. She felt that it was an excellent merging of the traditional "Final Fantasy" musical style with a modern orchestral score. Mike Salbato of RPGFan also praised the album, saying that it was his favorite album of 2014 and that he "can't recommend "A Realm Reborn"s soundtrack highly enough". "Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Original Soundtrack" debuted at position #10 on the Japanese Oricon album charts for its release week and remained in the charts for eight weeks.


title: Final Fantasy XIV

text: In addition to album feedback, critics of the game praised the score in their reviews. "Kotaku" Mike Fahey stated that the music was "wonderful, complex and satisfying". He often paused to remove the ambient and interface sound effects so as to hear it better. "GamesRadar"s Adam Harshberger called it "a standout even amongst "Final Fantasy"s storied heritage" and Digital Spys Mark Langshaw called it "a sonic feast ... that pays appropriate homage to the long-running RPG series". The soundtrack won Video Game Music Onlines 2013 Annual Game Music Awards in the Eastern category. In 2017, Guinness World Records awarded "Final Fantasy XIV" for having the most original pieces of music in a video game at nearly 400.