For those on their journey through Eorzea, stopping to look at the grapes at the Meryall Agronomics point-of-interest in Labyrinthos was a rite of passage. There, players could find the newest meme in the Final Fantasy franchise, the crystal grapes. Now, that era has ended.
In the notes for Endwalker patch 6.01, at the very bottom of the resolved issues section, it states an issue of “the polygon count of grapes in Labyrinthos were reduced in excess to alleviate system memory usage in the area.” It then states the grapes have been “adjusted to be comparable to those found at the Crystarium.”
The low-poly grapes were lovingly nicknamed the crystal grapes due to the skin of the grapes looking as if it were the shape of a crystal, which is why it didn’t take players long to put the skin in place of the mother crystal.
On the left is a pre-patch image with the crystal grapes, and on the right is what players will encounter after the 6.1 patch.
Developers must have caught on to the situation after players turned the low-poly grapes into a meme, turning them into the mother crystal and the pondering orb. With the introduction of the 6.1 patch, which brings the new raid and a ton of tweaks and fixes, the meme is officially dead, and the player base is not okay.
The reaction from fans was swift, and the change was talked about on social media more than anything else in the patch notes. Even the official Final Fantasy 14 Twitter account got in on the fun.
Although the developers destroyed all of our grape hopes and dreams, the crystal grapes will live on in players’ hearts. In the words of the great Emet-Selch: “Remember us. Remember that we once lived.”
