The Mountain Dew x Final Fantasy XIV promotion has taken the gaming world by storm, causing the birth of memes and discussion across the internet. However, one thing seems to be drawing more attention than anything else at the moment — Big Sippin.
Big Sippin is Mountain Dew’s in-game character mascot for the promotion. A level 81 (at the time of writing) Bard, dressed entirely in green and setting out on his adventures across Eorzea. Players have begun to obsessively stalk his FC house (the FC is called House of Sippin, for those interested, and the house is located on Hyperion – Goblet, Ward 21, Plot 9 – if you want to join in the stalking), and Mountain Dew is sharing Big Sippin’s progress over on their Twitter page.
However, one thing has drawn my attention (and the attention of a few other players) – Big Sippin, despite his lack of actually having played the game, appears to be a Legacy Player.
For those who don’t know, to be considered a Legacy Player, the player must have played Final Fantasy XIV for at least 90 days prior to the Eighth Umbral Calamity and the release of A Realm Reborn back in 2013. This has raised some questions, and my love for researching strange events led me down a bit of a weird wormhole looking for answers.
The reason that people are starting to think that Big Sippin might be a Legacy Player is down to two things which can be found on his Lodestone profile:
- They have the Cait Sith Doll minion, which was only ever available as a pre-order bonus for A Realm Reborn
- They have a Legacy Chocobo mount, which is only owned by players who were around pre-A Realm Reborn
Now, I’m going to be honest and say that I’m 99% sure that Big Sippin is not a true Legacy Player. For starters, he only has three DoW/DoM Jobs unlocked (Bard at level 81, Sage at level 70, and Conjurer at level 22), and I’m wholly convinced that Bard has been level skipped in order to be used for Mountain Dew‘s promotional purposes.
The Soul Stone for Bard is green, so it fits the theme. Sage unlocks at level 70, so there’s no progression there and while it does look like Big Sippin has at least played a little as Conjurer, he hasn’t progressed far enough to gain his Soul Stone.
It’s more likely that this is a loaner account from Square Enix that was used for testing purposes or similar before A Realm Reborn was released. Or, if you want me to don my tin foil hat, this could just be a new account with a couple of red herring items added to spark conversation amongst players who look into it. If that’s the case, then I guess it worked because here we are.
