Hello and welcome to the third edition of the Eorzea Examiner, our new column about Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Last month we talked about FFXIV's interpretation of gathering classes and discussed ways to improve upon the design for Disciples of the Land. Logically the next step here would be to follow the materials from gatherer to crafter and discuss Disciples of the Hand next. Unfortunately, fellow crafters, that column will have to wait a few weeks as we have something a bit more timely to discuss.

Early Monday morning we saw the end of Eorzea's most recent world event, Lightning Strikes, starring the heroine of SE's Final Fantasy XIII and the upcoming title, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. It's been over three weeks since players first encountered the pink-haired adventurer roaming Eorzea. We've fought at her side and received our rewards, but now she's left our land for further adventurers (or till the North American release of her game in February). Looking back on the event as a whole, how did it stack up to the other FFXIV world events or to those in other MMOs?

Hello and welcome to the second edition of the Eorzea Examiner, our new column about Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. In the inaugural episode of my column, I mostly focused on bringing everyone up to speed with what's happened since I wrote my review, with a few teasers for future column topics. Now that everyone's got an idea about where I'm coming from and what experience I have with FFXIV's different system, it's time to pick some topics and start digging in. Anyone who read last week's column is probably groaning a bit at that terrible Miner pun, but I feel no regret.

Terrible jokes aside, that does bring us to this week's topic: gathering. Gathering jobs are far from new to MMOs, but FFXIV takes the uncommon route of taking these non-combat professions and turning them into full-fledged classes with character progression, abilities, quests and equipment. We talked about this in one of my previews during the beta, but that was just scratching the surface of what's available to Disciples of the Land (DoL). Now that I've raised a gathering class to the level cap, how is it holding up?

It's been over three months since Square Enix officially launched Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. In that time players have combed the countryside in search of FATEs to grind, dungeons and raids to clear and classes and jobs to level to 50. Even after finishing my review for the game back in September, I've found myself spending much of my spare time in Eorzea. Normally with other MMOs and that kind of time, I'd be at level cap with some sort of tank class, looking at endgame dungeons, discussing boss mechanics and possibly raiding. My FFXIV character? Well, he is at level cap with two different classes... just not with any that can kill things.