The Seedy Underbelly of Final Fantasy XIV 

“The two owners got married in game and they both thought the other person was a girl, but they were both guys.” It’s a tale as old as time!

Thank you for not lumping those of us who run RP venues as a café or bar in with the billions of nightclubs. I will continue to run my very cute bakery happily with that blessing.

About the cosplay contest, it's likely they're using Mare Lamentorum, a plugin that shares people's modded appearance using a private server. Nowadays you're just kind of expected to have it in clubs and be in their server.

You're a braver soul then most for venturing into nightclubs, I've read the ads in chat and my god, it's unsettling just how widespread its gotten

these people aren't even playing FFXIV, it's just Second Life for half these dudes. it's wild

I actually did a shout gig for the popoto artist a while ago when I wanted some quick gil on my new alt. She had me join a vc to prove that I'm not a troll, and gave me a rundown of the shout job; shout in the 3 starting cities in every server for 2 data centers, each shout cycle should be 20 mins apart to prevent "spamming". She also mentioned that she has alts watching to make sure I'm doing my job correctly. There were no thank you's (or I dont remember any words of appreciation afterwards), just a quick gil exchange, and she never contacted me again after that. Best of luck to her, I guess?

So, funny story about Popoto Artist. I joined one of her streams, entered a lottery because "Lmao why not." and ended up winning an artpiece. What I got looked nothing like my character that I submitted a screenshot of. I played a Miqo with a cat-eyes mod for more defined catlike pupils, and more pronounced fangs. Absolute degenerate, I know, much illegal very banned. I got a vanilla miqo'te that looked almost nothing like my actual character. She isn't even a *good* artist. FWIW, I don't have the portrait anymore, so. No backup here. But I'm inclined to believe people based on my personal experience.

As a new player, the novice network chat was an absolutely horrible experience. If you are there and find it useful that's great, but for me it was just like checking a box to have constant spam in your message box.

Popoto artist has people spamming in World of Warcraft too, multidimensional nuisance

I love how i am in the raz arc talking about blunts LMAO

People’s instinct is to save LB for the boss because it’s a more threatening enemy. Sometimes it’s useful if you’re trying to finish the boss before it can cast a certain attack, but if it’s a regular dungeon then your focus is usually on clearing as fast as possible. If you’re trying to clear fast, then using the caster LB on a large trash pull is definitely better than saving it for boss.

Bro that unhinged Raz arc got me rolling. I'm fucking subbed g.

I once sat down on that Limsa bench in Zalera and I did get approached by someone who seemed to want to RP, but we just ended up talking about games and my new player experience (still a sprout). No clue the bench had so much associated drama 😂

Finally somebody called out clubs for spamming their shit everywhere. New players shouldn't have to learn chat settings within their first 5s of being born because people are unabashedly advertising their generic, dime a dozen modded sex congregation.

funfact about ff14 housing. when it comes to partitions if you find a corner made of them and walk backwards into them you can clip into them and go through the player placed walls. player housing has lots of these spots including the clubs. have fun

You're Lominsan Anchovy? You t-bagged me on two seperate occations!

This was probably one of the most entertaining videos i have watched in a loong time.

no fucking way you're Lominsan Anchovy

As someone that is heavily involved in the FF14 venue scene and the RP community, the section on night clubs was so cathartic. I know plenty of good, well intentioned people that work and run some of these clubs, but they so often invite narcissists and creeps and I just try to avoid them altogether. Bathhouse venues have also become a sore spot on the PF as of late for similar reasons as you can imagine, but that might just be a Primal thing.

So I've been on balmung since heavensward, and seeing the nightclub stuff suddenly gain traction was one of the most surreal things for me, being involved in the RP community for all that time.

this video left me conflicted. like. the people engaging in this stuff are strange, no doubt. but here *i* am, watching you guys watching the weirdos engaging in strange stuff. we are all cringe on this day, imo.

I saw you hanging around in Limsa, Anchovy. My yellow bunny lala friend slapped you and you sat on 'em.

Can we just make "razzler" the opposite of "rizzler" in the dictionary? You're completely on the nose with "man's experienced every pepper spray around"

You told me to put the blunt down for a moment but I'm still waiting for you to tell me to pick it back up. I want to smoke man come on

Hey new player here I started around January 2024. My first interactions with the night club scene came through my FC. At that point I was around SB MSQ and I found the first visits really fascinating. It’s like a whole sub culture of the game. We have some DJs in our FC so whenever I had some downtime I started joining for their sets. At this point I would like to add that imo being part of an established community and having certain dark arts definitely helps the experience. People usually chat in private Alliance Partys as to not cludder up the say chat or chat through the DJs twitch chat. From what I can tell night party’s are a great way for people who have no content to do to still spend time in game with friends and I personally never felt that it takes something away from new players like myself it’s more like something else to do when you want a change of pace. There are also a lot of people who play the game only for those things so I’m not sure culling that scene would be in SEs best interest.

In a sea of global cynicism and despair, I'm truly happy that our club impressed you enough for you to mention it positively for a few seconds ♥ If you wish to hear classic house and hip hop, dig just a little deeper, Anchovy, we exist, we actually mix it live too.

Someone should do a nightclub confessionals video. I'd have so much dirt to throw, and I'm sure other people would too.

Sick video, was really surprised by the quality... good shit man.

As a Lala player, knowing people try to exclude me from several things or straight up ignore me for just being myself does make me sad, but after seeing how bad most clubs are cuz of this video, I'm no longer upset about that in particular! Thanks, Anchovy ☺️

the "I'm going to Seymour's room" had me ROLLING LMAO

This is such a good video that deserves a lot more views! Really funny and well put together, also thank you for keeping Limsa safe! It always brings a smile to my face every time I TP to Limsa and have my favorite fish standing there, watching over Limsa.

What is most bizzare to me that I heard a lot about ERP and other "adult content" in FF14 way before I started to play the game. So if you are a newcomer who checking for a new "critically acclaimed MMORPG" to play you almost definetely will be stumbling on this stuff. In fact this was one of the reason that I started to play as Lalafell. Now 400+ hours in and I must say that "potato deterrent" works amazing - not a single creep hits on me, only headpats and lalaparades.

There's this fool on Sargs Limsa who's like Raz. He's not much of a yapper, but will cry about "woke" if the opportunity arises.

Personally I absolutely *love* when a DPS LBs the biggest baddest trash mob I can possibly pull in the dungeon. It's awesome. Idgaf about LB on the boss. edit: I honestly love how cynical and honest you are about the game's community, I have to agree with you and _commend_ you.

"Raz has to know every single brand of pepper spray by taste". Pure gold.

I'll be honest i didn't watch any of your video before this , i saw this in my notification and expected an hour essay on the clubs in the game , instead i watch probably one of the best FF XIV video in my 4 years of playing , it was honestly too good for the subject presented , also that cut a la "The Big Short" ( i think that is the english name of the film) was just perfect , bravo sir.

Sargatanas Player here. Im lucky to have had mostly enjoyable experiences in DF, theres the occasional assholes but for the most part people i dungeon with are very down to earth and want to chill. I never forget this nice run i had with other 3 fem Au ra players (im a male Raen myself) in Aurum Vale, we wiped like twice but they were super patient and understanding as i was still figuring out my role as a healer. At the end of the run one of them pretty much pulled me aside and gave me pointers on general dungeon etiquette and strategies to heal better and make the most of my kit; then they all commendated me. That has stuck with me. Fast forward a few months and im already at Post-EW MSQ with almost all my healers up to 90. I believe that little gentle but stern nudges to help me get on the right track are the lifeblood of FF14's multiplayer interaction. I have made sure to give pointers and advice to any newer players who seem lost or ask for them since then, because i feel i have to share on the kindness. We could all do with more of it

I’m obsessed with this video, honest on any side you’ve talked about, loving it

15:07 was this fashion show with mods? maybe thats what we arent seeing?

completely out of topic,but can’t believe this guy is THE famous Lominsian Anchovy,I always stand afk next to him.

the fact that you didn't just buy into reddit hate towards popoto and criticize her for things she actually did earned you a good bit of respect from me

popoto artists is a grey parser in reality which makes your joke even funnier

great video pace and editing!!

In-game FemMiqo'te with accurate lipsync is no doubt the creepiest thing I didn't expect to see this month. Thank you.

THANK YOU for calling the nightclub scene what it is ERP, I have seen so many people try to pretend that is not what it is and act all hurt when they get criticized for blasting it all over chat. Reminds me of when people would read Fifty Shades on the train and on air planes and what not then get angry online when they got side eye from fellow passengers, no one cares what you do with your private time in private but when you bring it out to the public in public you will be judged. Especially if you try to get other people involved.

FFXIV attracts particularly...special types of people for some reason. I've gotten rather sick of the broader community both in and out of the game.

i havent seen any comments about it, but i was wondering what setting is the separate tell Windows

why have final fantasy running in the background for a week straight? seems like a major waste of electricity

Very interesting my friend

friend of mine sent me this. used to be a worker for that streamer at 4:47's club(I was getting paid like 450k gil a week for just having the game open in an alt tab on saturdays and vaguely correcting some minor behaviors, so sue me) Aemilia Satella, owner of Eluded Ecstasy. Things seemed to be fine, with us being a primarily FC owned venue... then all of the mods for the FC discord left after they realized she was a horrible person. and then we all went with her. Those of us who left truly are thriving as a normal, sane FC now. and just to get it off my chest, Aem is very much not a good person. For over a year, she was gaslighting me on why some certain people left the FC... particularly people who were influential to my growth in the game and as a person.

It now make sense why Yoshi p is now giving the ability to kick someone out from your house. No more harassing, just ban them from your house in DawnTrail.

The worst thing about all of the nightclub and ERP shit is that everyone generally just thinks it's normal? It's insane that you log on to ffxiv and just see brothel advertisements in the party finder but if you call it out everyone just calls you a prude or a puritan. I don't get it.

During the bench thing, why did you afk for a week and not log off anyway?

I've seen you in Limsa almost everyday. Your doing good work fam. Keep it up. Great video it made my day.

Popoto Artist put out a video titled "Random Redpill Wierdo Doesnt like my Stream" and it's about you

Just found your channel randomly and holy s*** I love your video. You definitely need more Subscribers for this masterpiece.

something that needs to be asked is how does popoto artist afford to pay her shouters when she never actually plays the game? seriously, do the math! lets say she has 2 (might have more) shouters for her 6-8 hour stream, she streams 3 times per week iirc, so 2 shouters x (lets go with the minimum) 6 hours x 3 streams x 300k gil = 10.8 mil/week x 4 weeks = 43.2 mil/month x 12 months = 518.4 mil/year she hands off to rando sprouts. somethings not right here. either she has people making money for her or she's buying gil. Edit- She has admitted to skipping the story to hit level cap, then not playing at all except to show her character in game while drawing

Whenever I see people be super toxic/entitled in ffxiv i'm reminded of the tweet from @qtrcirclejab "the reason FFXIV twitter is so toxic is that the game let a bunch of antisocial, terminally unfunny ppl make Extremely Beautiful Characters through which they cultivated a false sense of Mean Girls energy, and they're now living the revenge fantasies they've had since high school"

I don't care what anyone says, but after dealing with it for the better part of 2 years I'll just say that the NA modding/clubbing/rp scene spawns some of the absolute worst people in the world. Very few redeemable characters, especially club owners. They do some pretty scummy shit. And limsa is where all the people who did not graduate high school mentally congregate. If you're a new player seeing this, do yourself a favor and keep your distance. Nothing good will come from dabbling here.

There is exactly one scenario in which saving the lb for a boss makes more sense and that is if you somehow only have melee dps in the party

I gotta admit, seeing you go into the websites you've shown feels like looking at what FFXIV's version of Deep Web looks like lol

I always wait for the ninja to do the prepull with hide before pulling a boss, and it's really irritating for both the ninja and the tank when the other dps just pulls the boss.

Is probably the most random ff14 vid I ever see. Good vid

Loved the video! Everything is pretty much spot on. Keep being awesome Lominsan Anchovy!

don't come at my giant ass mod, it's very special to me.

Watching this makes me feel like Materia is some sort of sanctuary, like Valinor shielded from the evils and corruption of Middle-Earth. Like a child-proof cap on medicine versus a meth pipe lying around on a kitchen table. Like a soft fluffy blanket of comfort versus a BDSM dungeon. Like the old Internet versus what happened after AOL and Canter&Siegel.

it took me a long time to figure out that the limit break was shared among everyone. noone explained it to me and if the game told me i must have missed it but it took me watching videos on youtube for someone to say it in a video. i felt bad but then some comments people made, started to make sense.

As a Light DC bench/erp/nightclub FC survivor, as i was invited to one of those as a sprout who didn’t know any better, I appreciate this video. It sums up pretty much all my thoughts as to why I avoid anyone who takes rp/the game in general waaay too seriously :’)

Incredible video :D

This seems like a pretty accurate reproduction of real life night clubs (afking while dancing mindlessly and not talking to people, terrible music, there's a catgirl)

Sigh... the Dungeon one.... Yesterday, had a tank who did well. I was RDM. Close after the second boss fight, they did a huge pull and we had a LB ready, so I popped it to quickly get rid of the mobs (healer was also struggling a bit, but the tank still had their invul so normally they should've survived, but I popped it just for the sake of quickly getting rid of the mobs). At the last boss, tank asks "Hey where did our LB go to?" I'm saying I popped it two pulls ago at that huge pull... and the tank proceeded to try and convince me to NEVER EVER AGAIN pop a caster LB on trash pull and to "always save it for the boss".... ????????????? My brother in Hydaelyn, I main NIN, do you really think a phys LB 1 makes the difference on a boss?

Great vid. Subbed.

Now lets see how they incorporated the PIC into nightclub scene

This an exceptional video.

I love your UI what mods are you using?

What? An Lomisan Anchovy can speak all along!?!?!?! Great video BTW has blast watching it -Angel Lightspeed

I can’t with the nightclubs ads. However, I did have ONE fun moment.

Yeah, I changed to Lala when I realized that people will leave you alone with the club stuff if you are a Lala. Works for me

i cant believe popotoartist was mentioned, i legit thought they were just a famfrit phenomenon

I had a few premate parties I was put together as Tank, and it usually isn't a great experience, three times it ended in some drama because the DPS stopped playing, then the healer stopped healing me.

I became a mentor cause I was pretty much doing my best to help people whenever I could in and out of dungeons. Figured the crown would make me seem less like a weirdo giving out advice like candy.

One of the best FFXIV videos 👏

I never thought id be recommended a video on youtube by the giant fish I always see in limsa

What a video, good job man!

Don’t even get me started on FF14 Twitter and how much of a test of one’s patience that is.

Only reason i use lb on boss is because i always forget about it until near the end of the dungeon

This is like looking into the void. I just want to farm tomestones for God's sake!

19:42 here - I like my fat ass mods :(

the only time i don't take aggro when i'm the tank is when someone pulls boss aggro while someone else is in Cutscene, otherwise i always take aggro right away. and even then i take the aggro back instantly when the other person is out of Cutscene. when i play tank i actually like it when a dps pulls extra mobs that i missed when it makes sense... makes everything go faster.

god damn this is a good video

I got a drawing from Popoto Artist. It was nice. I sat in line for two hours without previously knowing how long it would take. Made friends in that line and there was a band playing right beside us, so I had fun at least. The drawing did look at my character, too. But yeah, the constant shout chat announcements are annoying. No reason to go back and get another drawing, honestly.

will you please come to NA venues!

Freecure is a myth propagated by the conjurer's guild to sell more phoenix down.

I keep hearing insane stories like this, but I've never seen any of this happen on Coeurl. Is Coeurl just an aggressively normal server or something? Or is its underbelly more well hidden? (Or alternatively are the servers in this video the outliers?)

This is my favorite XIV related video on the internet

8:20 I ended up going toa nightclub that was 100% aquatic themed. (Friend wanted me to come along to make sure there was no trouble, whatever. Body guard work basically. They had a drink called "Moby's Dick" And my character grew a liking to it. She spent the entire night ordering that drink, while finding new and creative ways to avoid saying it's name, EVER. Probably the goofiest bit of fun I've ever had in a venue. I typically don't even go to them. XD

Used to be a co-lead for an FC that owned a pretty popular nightclub. That's a whole story in it of itself but, the rabbit hole for nightclubs goes far, far deeper than you can even believe. Something I wanted to clarify though regarding profit incentives though. Most clubs seemingly operate at a loss unless they're doing things where you put gil into a raffle or donations from clubgoers. Regardless though, it's the DJs that make the profit, an actual real money financial profit. What happens is, the DJ gets viewers from the nightclub which then leads to that DJ getting either ad revenue or twitch subs (I've seen so many DJ simps out there, the amount of subs people can gift is wild) then once they've performed for an hour or two, they host the next DJ they have lined up, which accumulates viewers over time until the end of the night. Repeat that process two times a week and hustle your way into the big clubs and you've got a solid cash flow for two hours of performing. That said, some twitch DJs try to make it their life goal to make Djing a sustainable career - it goes about as well as you can imagine. Regardless, the fact that there are real financial incentives for DJs forces them to treat those clubs as their actual jobs and club workers as their actual employees (who all get paid in gil) which really sucks the fun out of everything.

I always see you when i go to Limsa, happy to know you have a child now

I'm only 20 minutes in, but hearing "stop shoving your ERP in everyone's faces" is a breath of air so fresh it feels like escaping a cave I've been trapped in for a month. I am very tired of the perpetually horny playerbase and it's just nice to hear someone else say it.

Honestly to me, Saving the LB for the boss on most runs (Except ones where a Tank or Healer LB are MANDITORY, like how Alexander used to be), are just trying to get the "Big flashy finish" on the target, concitering now a day DPS LBs might to 2-3% of their HP? Much better used on a large pack of mobs in the pull paths to help clear them out and prevent potential downtime due to a missed Tank buff or other issues with the healer or such.