rise-of-the-zilaart
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Final Fantasy XI introducing challenge versions of old bosses
Remember Rise of the Zilaart in Final Fantasy XI? For most American players that's kind of difficult to do; the expansion came baked in with the launch client and more or less formed part of the base game from a player standpoint. It's probably part of the reason the expansion's two main antagonists, Kam'lanaut and Eald'narche, have been quietly forgotten, even while the game's other villains have received updated forms (like the Shadow Lord and Promathia) or still command player respect (Odin and Alexander). But it's time for the brothers to step back into the spotlight with the introduction of new high-level battlefields, pitting players against bosses in recreations of their original arenas. Rewards are given both for surviving and for downing the boss, including materials to upgrade artifact armor to level 119. So if you've been spoiling for a rematch with all of your character's new skills and items, you're about to get your chance.
The Mog Log: Another course
For this week's Mog Log, I'm going to start off by making an analogy about what Final Fantasy XI needs for the future. Picture, if you will, a restaurant in which you can order any food imaginable. Sometimes the food takes a little while to get prepared, but it's always cooked just to your taste. It's expensive, and all of the chairs are broken, but it's your favorite place to eat because the virtue of getting whatever you want outweighs all the detriments. Now, let's say you go into that restaurant, sit on one of the broken chairs, and get on the phone to call Square-Enix and tell it to make another expansion for freaking Final Fantasy XI already. Seriously, Wings of the Goddess is practically fossilized at this point. We're on the game's eighth year of operation in North America -- midway through the ninth in Japan -- and boxed editions of WotG require a team of university archaeologists and possibly carbon dating to identify. I never claimed it was a great analogy.
