To start with, I’ve noticed that my blog suffers from the typical "developer has a blog" syndrome... I spend more time working on the site than actually writing posts 😅 (and I just found a bug I never noticed before... great).
But today, I want to change that. Long story short, there’s an announcement to make because... in case you haven't heard: XIVData is over! It’s official now. We’ve replaced the landing page with a notice—lazily kept in German only (according to Cloudflare, 90% of the traffic came from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland anyway).
I’d like to go over the reasons briefly. You can probably guess some of them, but it’s worth putting them on the record. I’ll only speak for my personal reasons here; other team members (the ones who stayed until the official end) might have different perspectives. A project like XIVData isn’t easy to implement, especially when you’re forced to build everything from scratch. Where do you get the data? Character data, Free Companies, items, quests, and so on—Square Enix refuses to provide an API that would make querying this data easier.
So, what’s left? Building tools to scrape data in other ways, be it a web scraper for the Lodestone, data extraction from game files, or various other methods (most of which aren't even allowed under the TOS). Sure, there are projects like XIVAPI or SaintCoinach, but some don’t really want you using them, and others aren't always up to date. However, being up to date wasn't the core issue; item data specifically remained a huge mystery to us until the very end because a clear structure never really emerged. Despite all these hurdles, one thing kept us going: we were active Final Fantasy XIV players, we were having fun, and we simply wanted to make the project a success.
Fast forward to today: No one on the remaining team plays FF14 anymore. So, where should the motivation—or the data—come from? We let things slide for a long time, hoping the passion for the game would return. But it didn't.
In August 2025, my subscription expired for the first time since late 2013. Before that, it had always been active. In December, during my vacation, I picked up another 30 days and even extended it in January because I heard there was a new raid tier... in the end, I didn't finish it. Return duration: 60 days. When I logged in, I had the "sprout" icon in front of my name, and I left again after those 60 days—total playtime: 6 hours.
Does that sound like a lot? Not to me. Didn't I have my own guild? Yes, I did! I handed it over to the more active co-lead. With my departure, the last founding member is gone. Oh well, whatever.
For those wondering, "What caused you to lose interest?" A lot of things! Divisions within the guild, a few smear campaigns against me in-game, and the fact that... another game is becoming more fun and consuming all my time. Do I have to say it? Yes, I’m talking about Star Citizen! That space MMO still ridiculed by the pseudo-specialist press—though anyone who knows anything about game development just laughs at their articles.
I haven’t just started playing Star Citizen yesterday (I’ve been a backer since 2013), but the "Year of Playability" delivered exactly what it promised: playability! And above all, content! Whether it's my long-time favorite, the Onyx Facilities, the OLP stations, the Lazarus Complex, the Pyro system, or most recently, Nyx as the third system. Right now, you never run out of things to do.
And let’s not forget all the events of the past few months... currently Alliance Aid, and before that, the finale against the Frontier Fighters. Right now? We're working together to earn an Idris-P and searching for the black P6-LR! Of course, the Idris mission implies several runs of Lazarus and Hathor. Our dear Banu Wikelo has to get rid of his ships somehow!
All of this led to less and less time in FF14, which I had only been launching for the sake of others for the past two years anyway. Is the game bad? Not at all, but it can no longer offer me what I’m looking for.
But let’s go back to the beginning of this post and the title: "An End" (XIVData) and "A Beginning." What kind of beginning? Sure, I could mention the Star Citizen organization we’re building, along with the website and what’s planned for it (one might start to think we’re rebuilding XIVData for Star Citizen...), but I’m actually talking about my own site! Not too long ago, I started displaying the app version in the footer—at the time of this post, that’s version 1.8.8. Currently, I’m working on version 2.0.0, as well as 1.9.0.
Why two versions? Because I don’t want to delay dependency updates for too long, and a few things are still coming before the big jump. Will you notice it? Definitely!
Here is a small comparison, current:
And here is version 2.0.0:
(Yes, test data and filler text are fun)
The biggest differences? There will be a Light Mode alongside the default Dark Mode, and then there’s the OLED mode—though that’s still missing in the current dev stage. But it’ll be back before release. That’s a quick fix... just make it black 🤣. Fundamentally, it’s a complete overhaul of how all content is displayed—and most importantly, it'll be more dynamic. Currently, everything is very static.
Besides countless animations, there will also be the option to choose a color scheme (and I don’t mean light/dark!). I often hear people say they don't like my color choices. By default, I’ll stick to my favorite colors (red, pink, purple), but you’ll be able to choose others. If you like blue, you pick blue and get the colors you enjoy! Cool, right? Whether that will work with OLED mode? We’ll see!
But it wouldn’t be "2.0" if it wasn't a massive leap forward. With 2.0, I finally want to implement all the notifications I’ve planned, resolve long-standing bugs and workarounds, and... yes, I’m finally going to fix SSR (Server-Side Rendering)! I heard you, Google... I’m finally doing it! Also included in the new version is a completely overhauled link shortener, the new file sharing system, and the new admin panel (the latter currently doesn't even exist anymore). I used FilamentPHP for a long time (it was Nova at the start). I moved away from Nova when I started splitting the underlying system into a headless CMS; the license wouldn’t have allowed sharing it (or would it? It’s been too long, but $99 or $199 a year is a lot of money for some). I never really warmed up to FilamentPHP, as good as it is. It also deeply bothered me that I had to maintain a "double life": VueJS and TypeScript in the frontend, Livewire and Blade templating in the admin area.
I want to build the link shortener properly this time; right now, it’s a quick-and-dirty integration with many issues. It works, but it can be better! The file sharing is something fairly new, but it currently relies on virtual folders. That’s going away in favor of physical folders. Can regular visitors use these things? Only very indirectly, but it’s important to me. Other than that, I’m focusing on modernizing the codebase and removing a few third-party packages that clash with standards and design.
I don’t want to set a specific date for when this new version will be released. It’s coming when it’s done! Truly done. Before that, there will probably be a review or two (which I’ve now unintentionally teased) and a continuation of the tutorial I started (I haven’t forgotten about it).