The dance floor is packed with people swaying, jigging, and shaking their booties to the beat of the music. I’ve never been good at nightclubs since I don’t like getting up close and personal with a lot of strangers, especially when their sweaty bodies are physically sliding against my own, but happily, there’s a virtual version.
Last week, I went to my first Final Fantasy 14 nightclub, more on that in a future community spotlight and it was also my first time seeing an FF14 DJ perform. Yes, you read that correctly. So, I guess I’ll read. If you’re like me and have no idea how that works, let me explain. While dancing the night away, players can listen to custom-made sets, which frequently include original mixes, via Twitch, YouTube, or a variety of other live-streaming platforms.
I went to Apollo Nightclub and Club Resurrection’s collaborative pirate-themed event for Talk Like a Pirate Day, and the DJ Violet Wanda, who was appropriately dressed in her pirate garb took center stage in the expansive club. Wanda’s setlist included music from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, remixes such as The Devil Came Up to Boston, and original pieces she mixed herself.
For the pirate evening, Wanda kept the party going by making sure the dancefloor was always full. With the quick beats and banging tunes, her perfectly crafted setlist set the mood and made the club feel alive, delivering music you wouldn’t expect from an FF14 Orchestrion. Wanda’s Twitch channel was periodically shared with any visitors who wandered into the club and were new to the whole DJ thing, so they could appreciate her hard work as well as her jaunty jig above the dance floor.
Wanda has performed in a number of virtual worlds, including Star Trek Online in 2015-16 as part of a cabal of internet radio DJs known as Purple Frog Radio, as well as DJing in City of Heroes: Homecoming before joining a group of fellow DJs in Final Fantasy 14.
Wanda says, “I definitely think Final Fantasy’s community is just more robust in general,” adding, “It’s more of a snapshot or subsection of the larger world.” “The club community differs from meatspace in some ways, but it’s still familiar. CoH was fantastic in person, but Homecoming has turned toxic in recent years. I believe it is because of the free-to-play, unlimited account nature of the game that the developers are unable to police things as effectively as a professional organization would. It’s a shame that the game appears to be a little out of date, but it’s still a fantastic game. Before CoH, I’d never Roleplaying Plot Bunnies… People in CoH didn’t really know what I was doing, only that it sounded cool, whereas here, my performance and skill are recognized, whereas in CoH, people didn’t really know what I was doing, only that it sounded cool.”
If my community spotlight articles have taught me anything, it’s that Final Fantasy 14 is the ideal platform for brilliant individuals to demonstrate their abilities, as well as a seemingly limitless canvas for artists of all types to perform on. As a result, FF14’s communities and groups have reached new heights, such as the DJ scene, which is now brimming with talent.
“Honestly, it’s the challenge of working with other DJs and how crazy the scene is RazrWirez, SWAGE, and CakeBaby from Primal are all incredible producers, and we have a couple on Crystal [Data Center] as well. I believe you must stay changing and relevant and that is the type of environment I enjoy where I am forced to grow as an artist.”
Wanda has mentored others to follow in her DJing footsteps, explaining that players who dabble in creating Beatsense playlists often want to learn how to DJ professionally. Wanda, on the other hand, is currently taking a break from teaching in order to focus on some big plans for her own brand, with the hope of bringing something new to the FF14 community.
“Please tip your entertainers if you have it, and if you don’t, follow the page, go to our social media sites and like them, and check out our Soundclouds and Mixclouds. Join our Discord servers money can’t buy you goodwill, and it’s worth as much as any commercial promotion. But, if I can get it off the ground, I have big plans, big acts, and big names. But I’ve enlisted some extremely capable assistance.”
Wanda isn’t just a pro at virtual DJing; she started DJing in the real world in the late 1990s for alternative lifestyle communities. She’s been composing music for over 30 years and has a variety of DJ styles to suit her mood. She sometimes prepares a set in advance, and other times she just goes with the flow.
“I do these one song at a time rather than in a set so that I can use the track later and not have to do as much work in a live performance situation. Three hours is a long time to be constantly remixing music on the fly, so some of my tracks are pre-recorded. Additionally, running FFXIV and OBS on the same computer while running my entire rig can be taxing, so some tracks that require a lot of CPU power are pre-recorded.”
You can watch Wanda on Twitch, follow her on Twitter, or join her Patreon if you want to support her and catch one of her DJ sets.
