Massive stadium of FFXIV players re-enact an infamous raid attack

If you ever needed proof that gamers hold a distinct memory of gaming mechanics in their heads years after the fact, look no further than the Primals concert which rounded up events at Fan Festival Tokyo on January 8.

The Primals stop time

The Tokyo Dome has a capacity of 55,000 people, and while it’s unknown exactly how many tickets were sold for Tokyo Fan Festival, the arena looked pretty crowded during the live performance from The Primals. 

During their performance of Rise, the soundtrack song which plays during Alexander: The Soul of the Creator, the crowd honored one of its mechanics by freezing in place for the roughly nine seconds that the time-stop mechanic usually takes to resolve. 

It’s honestly staggering and goosebump-inducing as a player, to witness so many people coming together to pay homage to a mechanic that is much loved and remembered by anyone who has ever taken part in this raid series.

Temporal Stasis

This clearly very memorable mechanic is a part of the third phase of Alexander: The Soul of the Creator. The fight is the 12th and final battle in the raid series of Heavensward, introduced in patch 3.4, so it’s been around for almost eight years now.

During the mechanic, Alexander Prime places markers over players and they need to adjust accordingly. I won’t go into the specifics now, but as these markers are placed on players, time ceases to pass and players cannot move – essentially, freezing time until the attack ends. During this moment frozen in time, the soundtrack stops abruptly and players hear a series of beeps.

While this fight is not often played by the majority of players these days, with higher level raids being more popular due to the items received, it’s always fun to go back and relive the mechanics that inspired the moment at Fan Festival. 

You can still purchase tickets for the live stream of The Primals live show, if you want to relive the entire experience as it happened.