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Starting out in Vana'diel: The Fields of Valor
Hello there Adventurers! I hope everything is going well for you in Final Fantasy XI since we last spoke. Where we last left off, we were speaking with the initial NPC trainer and getting through the opening "tutorial."However, as reader Dana noticed, "They want me to go out and grind dagger skill... so... more endless grinding." Well, you're right and wrong, Dana! You're right, they do want you to go out and level up your dagger skill and that can be a bit boring. But the endless grinding has been lessened by the advent of a new system -- one that could easily be missed by long-term players. Today's article will be focusing on that brand new system, the Fields of Valor.What makes this system so good? How does it help you in the lower levels? How do I use it? These answers and more are a short distance below, across the divide manned by the pretty blue "continue reading" link.
Starting out in Vana'diel: Character creation & taking your first steps
As we've said on Massively multiple times, Final Fantasy XI is a hard game. The crafting is complex, the gameplay is somewhere between EverQuest and World of Warcraft, and dying can be painful when you lose experience. Some people may tell you that the game just isn't that fun, but the game can be really rewarding and a great experience when you really get into it. It's just getting into it that's the trouble.But we here at Massively have your back. Well, more specifically, I've got your back. I've played Final Fantasy XI since it came out in the states, and more recently I started a brand new character and began taking notes on the entire experience. It isn't easy to start out in FFXI, but I've got some tricks to share with you that will make it much easier and much more fun. I'll be sharing them with you during our new twice a week series, "Starting out in Vana'diel."So are you ready to try a new gameplay experience? Follow me, let's go for a tour and check out the beginning of the game when you have to make some decisions in character creation and grab some early bonuses through the training NPCs.
Future Final Fantasy XI update to expand Fields of Valor, Moblin Maze Mongers
Square-Enix has informed Final Fantasy XI players that the next big content patch will be delivered in April, and players have much to look forward to. The Fields of Valor and Moblin Maze Mongers systems will be expanding, due to their warm reception at the hands of FFXI players.Fields of Valor is the new questing system placed in the game that allows players to be rewarded with handsome amounts of experience and gil for taking down monsters in certain areas of the world in addition to the standard exp and rewards that the monster already gives, much like a World of Warcraft "kill quest." The difference is in completing these quests the player will receive a new type of currency, tabs, that give access to temporary buffs and home nation teleports at any Field Manual placed in the game.Moblin Maze Mongers is FFXI's "create a dungeon" system, allowing players to form their own dungeons and run through them for experience, money, and special items that can only be obtained from these "do-it-yourself" dungeons.The full details will be announced soon, but we'll keep our ear to the ground for you to bring you all of the juicy details.
Final Fantasy XI begins the Doll Festival event
If you feel dainty and pretty, oh so pretty, then perhaps you should stop by Final Fantasy XI's Doll Festival, going on now until March 3rd in Vana'diel!The Doll Festival is the yearly celebration of the women of Vana'diel, where all wish happiness and health to the young girls and women in the world. Each year the cities are dressed up in a very elegant and formal fashion, while adventurers can look forward to collecting the yearly festival dolls and bonbori lanterns which can be used to decorate your mog house.Collecting these items from your local neighborhood moogles can earn you good fortunes and decoration bonuses for your mog house, so don't turn down the free items when the moogles are just handing them out on street corners! Moogles will be stationed in northern and southern San d'Oria, the mines and markets of Bastok, and Woods and Waters districts of Windurst.
Console MMOs: Can they get up off the ground?
If you don't like chocobos, then you're a little out of luck when it comes to the console MMO market. With Final Fantasy XI and the only choice console users have, the market looks ripe for the addition of a few new games -- or does it?IGN has put together a nice article on the fail whale history of console MMOs, starting with True Fantasy Live Online and progressing all the way to shaky in-development titles like Age of Conan, and the solid upcoming titles like The Agency, DC Universe, and Champions Online.The article also covers the many problems of making a console MMO, from poor TV resolution, to UI issues, to just general production issues in making such a complex game.But who knows what the console MMO market may hold? Perhaps one of these days those chocobos will be chased off by men and women in spandex.Update: It appears that we forgot to mention EverQuest Online Adventures for the PlayStation 2 in our quick rundown of console MMOs. Our apologies! Thanks, Joshua!
Pandemonium Warden finally tastes defeat
Seven long months ago, players of Final Fantasy XI came across a threat worse than the notorious Absolute Virtue. It was he who resided at the end of the Zeni Notorious Monster system, he who waited for adventurers who could climb the ranks and defeat 12 other notorious monsters. It was the Pandemonium Warden.And the Warden gave FFXI a boost of publicity when the linkshell Beyond the Limitation couldn't take him down after 18 hours of straight battle. This caused the outcry of over-punishing boss battles, and the FFXI team actually dropped their monsters down a notch from all of the heat. A new rule was placed in with the Warden however -- he would despawn after 2 hours if not defeated within that time frame. Sure, he was easier, but the time limit still made him extremely hard.But now, seven months after his introduction, the linkshell Shard of Apathy of the Remora server has put the Warden down for the count. They successfully tanked through all 10 of his forms, plus his pets, with reportedly 5 minutes left before he was to be despawned. Congratulations Apathy! So when are you running him again?
Anti-Aliased: When you can't hack it legitimately, cheat instead pt. 2
It's all the company's fault Yes, it's all their fault that they didn't notice that they misplaced that one period in thousands upon thousands of lines of code. It's their fault that they don't run Salvage 40,000 times a week and check every rock and pebble in Vana'diel. People who make this rationale probably never looked at the innards of a program -- especially an MMO. You have lines of programming being done by multiple authors and you have logs that extend miles long. Even with specialized programs, it takes time to sift through all of that information. Case in point: Square-Enix fixed this glitch in November and banned people in late January. The delay wasn't because they were playing ping-pong in the basement and drinking beer. It was the double-edged decision of first finding who stood to gain on all of their servers, and then deciding an appropriate punishment. That takes time. You know, this probably would have been caught sooner if more people would have stood up and reported it, instead of, you know, trying to conceal it. Then, when they get caught concealing it, they blame the company for not knowing about it. That's just poor form. The game owes me The game owes you what? It owes you for all the time you spent playing it, enjoying the challenges with your friends and engaging in an ever-changing world? Certainly I'm horribly opinionated, but I like to play games for fun. Whenever a game ceases to be fun to me, I stop playing and stop paying. I play because I enjoy it, and I hope other people are out there doing the same. FFXI may be an exercise in sadistic game design, but every player has the chance to walk away from Vana'diel. I did because I didn't have the time and I ended up enjoying the lore of World of Warcraft. If you are at the point that you hate the game so much that you believe it owes you something for your time spent playing it, then perhaps it's time to take a step back from it. There are plenty of other options in the game world. But Square-Enix isn't without fault The voices of the banned are right about one thing though -- Square-Enix has been inconsistent. Some people are getting banned for being in one of these cheating Salvage runs, and others are getting slaps on the wrists. There doesn't seem to be any clear consistency to how they slapped down the punishments. The first part of a reliable punishment is to make sure it's handed out consistently and with appropriate measure. Without that, people second guess if the punishment is truly necessary. It's like if a professor gave you a D on a test just because he didn't like your hand writing. Your answers never mattered, and that's what makes you angry -- it didn't feel justifyable. What it all comes down to Even with Square-Enix messing up like that, it doesn't change the facts. Players knew about the exploit, players attempted to hide the exploit, Square-Enix found the exploit, and players got what they should have known was coming. All of these people had the chance to stand up, call a GM, and say what was going on. If they had and this problem would have been caught earlier, bans probably wouldn't have been mentioned. These people would still have had their accounts. Certainly they would have less gear on those accounts, but it's really hard to use virtual weaponry when you can't log in. Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who can still log into Final Fantasy XI when he wants to. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane friends. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com, or follow him on Twitter.
Anti-Aliased: When you can't hack it legitimately, cheat instead
It's no secret that I keep my eye on the Final Fantasy XI community. With two friends running an upstanding linkshell on the Bahamut server, I like to know what goes on in the game.The current word on the street is the "big banhammer freakout." The vocal players are talking about what linkshells were hit by losing players caught up in the cheating scandal. But what's interesting are the words being thrown around -- things like "unprecedented" and "uncalled for."A quick jaunt across the street to the loving and cuddly galaxy of New Eden shows that something suspiciously similar happened to corporation starbases in EVE Online, also ending with tears, banned accounts, and the exact same arguments being thrown around the community. "I didn't know it was an exploit," "It's not my fault," "They made me do it," and my personal favorite, "You should have fixed it."So this week's Anti-Aliased isn't dedicated to some developer mishap or some bad piece of game design, it's dedicated to how daft some people are when it comes to cheating.
Valentione's Day comes to FFXI this Friday
No, that's not a fat-fingered typo you see in the headline. For Final Fantasy XI players, Valentione's Day is almost here, and the moogles of Vana'diel are out in force to encourage folks to join the love-fest. They have prepared a compilation of romantic little tales from FFXI's citizens to get everyone in the mood ahead of this Friday the 6th, when the Valentione's celebrations will begin in-game. Once things have kicked off, festival moogles will be found at these locations, advertising the event and getting people involved:- Southern San d'Oria (J-9)- Northern San d'Oria (D-8)- Bastok Mines (I-9)- Bastok Markets (G-8)- Windurst Waters (F-5)- Windurst Woods (K-10)You'll have until the 16th of February to feel the love, before things go back to normal -- well, as normal as things can ever be at the hands of the moogles.
Did Square-Enix do the right thing?
The Square-Enix bahnammer recently came down onto the Final Fantasy XI community, permanently banning 550 non-RMT accounts that were involved in performing an exploit that has occurred over a two year time period -- an exploit that some say SE was aware of, but never took steps to correct.The exploit in question was only available to linkshells involved several endgame activities. The basic premise was finish the activity and then before the item drops from a treasure chest or monster the alliance of parties would break into their separate groups. For you Warcraft players, a raid would cease to be a raid and break down to the parties involved. Then each of the 3 parties in the alliance would get a copy of whatever items would drop. So, instead of 1 set of loot, you would grab 3 sets of loot -- including some items that could be sold for millions on the auction house.
The suit of Square-Enix spam
When reporting this story, the sentence, "Never give your e-mail to anyone you don't trust," seems to come to mind. A Japanese man was bombarded with account re-registration e-mails from Final Fantasy XI's PlayOnline launcher, eventually bringing him to the point where he called Square-Enix and asked them to stop sending him the e-mails. The odd part about all of this is that he never played, or even touched Final Fantasy XI.It seems that one of the gil/item sellers in Japan got hold of his e-mail address, and was using it to create all of their accounts that they use to spam FFXI. Of course the accounts were banned shortly after their creation, but the gilseller continued using the e-mail, creating a tidal wave of spam for this man's e-mail client.After calling Square-Enix and being told that they could not stop the messages from being sent to his inbox, the man took Square-Enix to court in early 2007. His case was originally denied, but he appealed and won. Now Japan's High Court has blocked Square-Enix's appeal, and the man has been awarded a whopping 56,000 yen. Yes, that's right, two years of legal wranglings for only 556 US dollars and a clean e-mail inbox.
Why you should be playing Final Fantasy XI: The corsair class
"Why you should be playing ..." is a free form column from Massively.com intended to inform you about our favorite parts of our favorite games. We want you to know why we play what we do! They keep telling me that gambling has no place on the battlefield. Battlefields are the places of warriors, mages, paladins, thieves, and rangers. You need to have a sword in your hand or a spell at the ready, because things can go from calm to chaotic in seconds. There's no time to play games when life and death is on the line, especially when a death can cause lost experience points.Whoever said gambling has no place on the battlefield probably never met Final Fantasy XI's dice rolling, card throwing pirate class -- the corsair. The class where your buffs are based on a little skill, a little intuition, and all the luck the party can lend.
The Daily Grind: How often do you party?
There's something really scary out there. Something so mean, so vicious, so terrifying that it will blow your socks from your feet. Things so horrible that people tell stories every day about them, and even devote entire websites to their needs. What are we talking about?Your fellow MMO players.Ok, ok, we're all not that bad, but it does raise a good question -- how often do you brave the structure of a group? Are you the type of person who groups for lots of quests, groups for dungeons only, or tries in vain to avoid the whole grouping process? Even better question, why do you like or not like groups?Of course there are the old games, like EverQuest and Final Fantasy XI, which push people into groups to do their daily activities and leveling, but not all games are like that. So please, share with us your stories, your favorite moments, and even your tribulations of grouping in your favorite MMO.
Have your say in FFXI swag design
Square Enix is looking for your help in designing their next round of accessories for Final Fantasy XI. You don't have to submit art or anything, just fill out a brief survey including your purchase habits and favorite NPC characters. There's also a space to write in comments about what merch you want to see.All surveys must be in by midnight PST on January 28th so head over and fill one out soon. Who knows - there could be a Robel-Akbel plushie or an "I <3 Apururu" t-shirt in your future!
1UP layoffs and the ripples therein
When half of the staff leave/are laid off from a gaming site as notable as 1UP, it affects essentially everyone within the industry -- as does the closure of EGM, one of the very best gaming magazines around. Their excellent coverage of games like Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer Online and World of Warcraft (to name just a few) have always been the sort of things we here at Massively strive for in our own features. Whether it was podcasts like Legendary Thread or the infamous live reading of a certain Age of Conan incident on GFW Radio, the group working at 1UP were always in it to entertain, inform and hopefully make everyone think a little bit about their favorite pasttime.Understandably, the massive layoffs have created a sort of hate brush fire that's been roaring across the internet mostly via message boards fueled by a mix of ex-1UP Twitters and hearsay. While it pains us as fans to see so many talented and hard-working writers let go, there's some truth to the saying, "You can't win 'em all" in this situation. Our own searing anger was doused a little upon reading a lucid post detailing the why behind the whole debacle.
Final Fantasy XI implements the RMT PWNER version 1.337 to battle RMT
The Final Fantasy XI anti-RMT task force has always been very aggressive in their pursuit of gil farmers and gil sellers in the world of Vana'diel, but the latest task force update shows that they're about to get even more technological in their investigations.Enter the RMT PWNER program, version 1.337. (No, we totally did not make that up.) This program can parse the many servers of FFXI for information regarding the buying and selling transactions of a character under suspicion of the task force. The program will then list all characters who have associated with that character's associates, and so on and so on. This way, the task force will be able to easily track all members of a supposed RMT group without doing all of the human legwork of tracking through endless log files.
Final Fantasy XI throws a bovine bonanza for the Year of the Ox
Those moogles are crazy, ya'know? First they almost cause a buffalo stampede for the opening of the Mog House Management Union Buffalo Bonanza Ranch (try saying that three times fast) and only now do they realize that buffalo eat a lot. Sadly, these poor moogles ended up working during all of the holiday festivities just to keep their buffalo happy. That's heartbreaking by anybody's standards.Yet, while the moogles work, herdsmen have come from the ranch on behalf of the MHMU to bring us buffalo based treats and festivities to the streets of the four main cities of Vana'diel. Plus, if you journey outside of your city's walls, you're bound to run into a few loose buffalo being chased by the MHMU ranchers. Trade them some of your unwanted items, and perhaps they might be so kind to pay you back with free buffs, or new year's gifts!To make sure we didn't miss anything with this story, I spoke with Masskupoively, our resident news moogle. He provided great insight into what the MHMU was considering with this festive event.Masskupoively: Kupo! Kuuupo, kupo kupo! Kupoooooooo~!Truly, words spoken by a news master. Final Fantasy XI adventurers, be sure to check out the New Year's Event in Vana'diel, it's only running until January 12th!
Why you should be playing Final Fantasy XI: Level sync
"Why you should be playing ..." is a free form column from Massively.com intended to inform you about our favorite parts of our favorite games. We want you to know why we play what we do!This should be a story that any MMO player is intimately acquainted with. You've just picked up an awesome new MMO and have been flying through the levels. It's gripping you and you really want to share it with your friends. Then you realize the fatal problem that occurs with most MMOs -- you're too high level and you don't want to wait for your friends to catch up.With Final Fantasy XI, this was the brutal nature of the game. Being one or two levels away from your party resulted in decreased exp for everyone involved. Being three levels or more meant the party just didn't work at all and experience was ruined for everyone. It was unbearably hard to get parties, because everyone had to be within 2 levels of one another. With the recent advent of level sync, however, those days are long gone.
Final Fantasy XI's development team sits down for a round table discussion
The development team of Final Fantasy XI, everyone's favorite notoriously hard MMO, recently sat down with Carolyn Koh of MMORPG.com during their annual fan festival for an in-depth look at why the team made some of their decisions in the game's design and what we can look forward to in the future.The roundtable is being introduced in a three part discussion, which covers topics like the campaign system of the latest expansion, questions about the items and jobs, and questions regarding PvP and the future of Final Fantasy XI. With the game recently making headlines with a controversial server transfer policy, it's good to see a bit of positive coverage paired with some insight into the 6 year old game -- especially with new features like Moblin Maze Mongers just appearing. Plus, our favorite addition to the game with the December update: No more sales tax in Jeuno! Can't forget about that. We think it's about time for us to clean our equipment chests.
Final Fantasy XI devs threaten players with forced server moves
Server populations in massively multiplayer online games can be a delicate balancing act. Popular servers are very much the hubs of these games, where players can easily forge bonds with one another in a lively social environment. But log into a desolate server and you'll wonder what the point of playing an MMO is when there's no one else around. Many developers try to balance server populations by offering free server transfers, and sometimes bonuses of one type or another as a reward for making the jump. This has been an issue for developer Square Enix with Final Fantasy XI and the overcrowded Odin server. However, their efforts to disperse the crowds have been unsuccessful, leading them to take a more drastic measure: forced emigration. FFXI-centric website Petfoodalpha suggests that Square Enix's deportation solution (or alternately, world splitting) creates more problems than it solves. Fusionx writes, "Surely there has to be a better way to deal with this than randomly distributing people from the server to others. Friendships would be broken, linkshells would be destroyed. More importantly though for Square Enix: They would lose subscribers." When a developer identifies a high server population as being a problem, and when players don't take advantage of free server transfers or other incentives, do the devs really have any other choice but to take away choice?
