Well, blue mage has been out in Final Fantasy 14 for about a week now! Woot! I admit that I haven’t had much FF14 blue mage experience, but I’ve been enjoying the little bit of experience I’ve had in the beginning zones learning spells. ^_^ I was a little concerned at first about how fun it would be hunting enemies for skills since it was stated at the job’s reveal that the learning rate wouldn’t be a hundred percent, but it really hasn’t been too bad! -Though I hear people have been getting frustrated about low learning rates at higher end dungeons. I was also concerned about how the gameplay would be since I didn’t know how the development team would create an interesting battle mechanic/system within the class if there is no assurance on what set of skills a blue mage will have at any time. -which I’m seeing a little bit of complaint about. -but I still think it’s really neat what they’ve done and I appreciate them keeping the flavor of what BLU felt like in the older games.

For me, so far the class still carries the kind of fun I had when I was small, playing older FF games with the sense of "treasure hunting" and exploration. The job kinda brings the old maps to life for me again and gets me excited to level and check out different mobs at different corners of the 2.0 world. A long time ago, I really wanted more of a reason to go explore the maps, but aside from bits of story and lore sightseeing, it really didn’t feel like there was enough draw for me. I tried fishing since you kinda gotta go find new pools of water to find new fish, but I don’t think the fishing aspect is for me.

It sucks to hear players not being happy with the job, but maybe BLU should just be seen as something like crafting and fishing; something that’s just not for everyone. I know some people are a little bitter because the job might not live up to the standards of what made the job the job they love from their past, but I think it’s still a neat, I guess, "homage", to the beloved job because it still carries some of the BLU flavored fun and is better than not getting the job at all, considering what Yoshi-P said back before Heavensward about not seeing how blue mage would fit in FF14 and that it being in-game being unlikely.