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The Starlight Celebration approaches for Final Fantasy XI
The end of the year quickly approaches, and if you're a veteran of Final Fantasy XI, you know that means it's time for the Starlight Celebration. The music changes in Jeuno, the snow falls, and players get to enjoy a bit of Christmas cheer in the game as well as out of it. And like most events, this one has a new wrinkle for its newest outing: it seems a handful of Goblins have decided to get involved in the celebration, taking some presents that weren't intended for them and leaving adventurers to recover the missing gifts. Missed a previous year? That's all right -- you can still obtain one of the many cozy furnishings or festive costume pieces through a variety of event merchants and packages scattered throughout Vana'diel. The event will start on the live servers on December 16th and run through December 31st, plenty of time for everyone in Final Fantasy XI to get a solid dose of some holiday cheer.
The Mog Log: Narrative voices
One of the things that I've said for years about both Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV is that these are MMOs that love story. Other MMOs have a narrative, sure, but it's in Vana'diel and Eorzea that story is really a big part of the game's appeal. There's a definite push in both games for players to take part in a narrative, to feel as if they're taking part in an epic story. So let's not kid ourselves. There's another game coming out that offers to do the exact same thing, and it's doing so with a real set of chops. Star Wars: The Old Republic is on its way, and it's staking claim to the same territory with a very different presentation. Both Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV are niche games that are never going to have the same sort of mass-market appeal as BioWare's behemoth; that much is a given. But the real question is what happens when one of the big selling points of these niche games is co-opted. Is the story in Star Wars: The Old Republic better? Will it even matter? What happens when someone else decides that story is a good place to hang a design philosophy?
The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XI classes, round 1
The character creator in Final Fantasy XI was my first exposure to character creation in MMOs, which is disappointing. There's no way to paint it as a good system, at least not to someone who is more or less powered by character customization. But it did give you your first six options for character class, and since we're starting the no doubt many-part series on character classes in both games as of today, it's relevant. At the beginning of the game, you choose a class selected from the same six classes that have made up the "default" arrangement for the series since, well, 1987. Today, I'm going to take a look at the three physical classes from that initial assortment: the Warrior, the Thief, and the Monk. We're going to be using the same initial criteria that kicked off this series, so take a moment to look at that if you're unfamiliar. Without further ado, let's get to classes!
The Mog Log: Fluffballs on parade
Despite what it might have seemed like, last week's column was not actually meant as a direct response to Final Fantasy XIV's announcement of class revisions. It was just a happy coincidence, really. I could go into more detail, of course, but I had already planned on talking about the eponym of the column, which I haven't done since I kicked the column off in the first place. Moogles are ubiquitous in Final Fantasy XI, and while they're a bit rarer in Final Fantasy XIV they're still not a secret. This is understandable -- after all, the small little critters are part of the glue that holds the series together conceptually. So it's odd that when you get right down to it, they're only peripherally involved with the settings of the games they appear in. Despite the ubiquity of the moogles, it's debatable whether some of them are even there.
The Mog Log: Class philosophy
I'm willing to bet that there are MMOs out there with more classes than the online Final Fantasy installment, but there aren't any that spring to mind with such a wide array of classes and such a schizophrenic outlook on how they work. In both Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV you can switch between classes freely, each class with its own emphasis... and yet you can also port abilities from one class to another in some fashion, thereby blurring the distinction of each individual class compared to its peers. If it isn't obvious, I've been thinking a lot about classes, how they work in the games, and where the two different implementations succeed or fail. So I'm going to start off by taking a look at classes as an overarching construct, what they should be providing for both games, and what the developers seem to want from the classes in a game-wide sense. If this sounds about as interesting as watching paint dry, next week we'll be taking a break to talk about moogles. For now, though, let's talk about what a class should have.
Final Fantasy XI goes 11-11-11 wild
You totally can't blame Square-Enix for taking advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime 11/11/11 calendar event to throw a Final Fantasy XI promotion. That's serendipity, right there. With the "11 on 11-11-11" sale, the company is unleashing a thunderstorm of lightning deals. Starting off, curious players can give Final Fantasy XI a try for free for 14 days with a new account. If the sampling is deemed subscription-worthy, the full Ultimate Collection Abyssea Edition can be purchased for 50% off the retail price. This package includes the core game, four expansions, three scenarios, and three Abyssea battle areas. And while you can't purchase it today on the 11th, Square-Enix wants to let you know that the Final Fantasy XI Plus soundtrack will go on sale on the 15th. This two-disc OST has previously unreleased tunes from the game and PlayOnline. Players who snag a first-edition copy will also get a code for an in-game keyboard that will play a random tune when you enter your house. You can only preorder this right now through the Square-Enix store.
The Mog Log: Five zero
The march to the level cap in Final Fantasy XIV is nothing like that of its predecessor, but it's still an undertaking. The fact of the matter is that leveling shouldn't have taken me nearly as long as it did. The game has been out for over a year, after all. But between my usual inability to pick a class and stick with it, natural disasters, and various other circumstances, it was only a couple of weeks ago that I finally hit level 50 on my Gladiator. Receiving the full red cobalt set a level earlier did mean that the level was a bit anticlimactic at the end, but it all balances out. But now that I'm here at max level, I can look back on the path as a whole and have a different perspective on several parts of the game's structure, both the good and the bad. Especially since it's the first time around that really matters.
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.
Newest update to Final Fantasy XI is empty inside
With Halloween just around the corner, perhaps your thoughts have turned to some of the genuine horror lurking throughout Final Fantasy XI. The Emptiness that was the focal point for several parts of Chains of Promathia was genuinely terrifying, conceptually as well as mechanically, for a very long time. (The removal of level restrictions made it a bit less frightening to run through.) So it's fitting that the game has just unveiled a minor version update in time for the holiday that takes players back to the Emptiness for a few new battles. New Burning Circle battles can be fought at the spires of Holla, Dem, Mea, and Vahzl, using orbs obtained via Kindred Seals. Victories produce items that can be traded in at the NPC Shami for rewards. There are also updates to the Voidwatch battles and a few bugfixes, which should prove a nice garnish to the main course of the update's Emptiness-related battle candy for Final Fantasy XI's players.
Final Fantasy XI gets an updated roadmap
The promised day is coming to Final Fantasy XI. Specifically, the promised day on which the level cap finally reaches its long-awaited new limit of 99, something that players have been waiting for more or less since the game's launch. But that's not the only thing that's coming around the bend, as detailed in the game's new roadmap stretching from this month out until March of next year. While the dates listed are only for the rollout of features onto the game's test server, it still gives a good idea of what players can expect shortly thereafter. Updates to jobs and Merit Points are pretty easy to predict as the game rolls to its last update of the level cap, as are the addition of new Magian trials. Players can also expect updates to the Voidwatch battles, new Burning Circle battlefields, and a variety of quality-of-life improvements to several facets of gameplay. There's no hint on what might be coming after March, but it looks as if Final Fantasy XI will at least be starting the year off on the right foot.
The Mog Log: Beauty of the beastmen
Well, it turned out to be a very good thing that I wasn't planning on talking about Final Fantasy XIV's patch 1.19 today, since it's not quite available just yet. That includes the absolutely enormous list of updates and changes to crafting, with several items apparently being yanked out of rotation altogether. Use up the ones you have and get ready to just vendor the rest, from the looks of it. Perhaps make some lumber ahead of time. At least your inventory woes should be somewhat diminished. But this week's plan wasn't to talk about the patch; it was to talk about beastmen once again. Regular readers will note that I've already spoken about beastmen once before, taking a look at the often fascinating societies of non-human creatures living outside of the major cities. (I'm using "human" as a blanket term here for hume, elvaan, tarutaru, etc.) Today, I want to look at this in a bit more depth. What exactly do both Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI use the beastmen for in terms of storytelling? What makes them compelling and interesting?
Newest version update lands for Final Fantasy XI
It's time for players to advance once again in the latest update to Final Fantasy XI. Another increase to the game's level cap has gone live with this patch, with the new cap set to 95, just a stone's throw away from the promised height of 99. But the addition of the newer cap and all that it entails isn't the only thing of note with this update, which includes new battlefields, the next installment in the Voidwatch battles, and of course a plethora of new items and balance tweaks. Along with those major changes comes a host of smaller updates, including a long list of items that can be sent through the mail to other characters on the same account and the addition of Grounds of Valor tomes to several areas previously lacking them. Dynamis has also received another pass of updates, up to and including the option for players to resell any timeless hourglasses they no longer have a use for. It's a good day to be a Final Fantasy XI player, even if waiting for the update to download might feel like an eternity.
The Mog Log: Throwing out the barriers
If you're starting Final Fantasy XI fresh right now, you'll have the most fun if you have absolutely no idea how much stuff you have to do -- not just because it's intimidating, although that's certainly an element, but because it's a huge pile of things that you can't do by yourself in any meaningful fashion. You have to rely on charity or making friendships based solely on your charming personality because you've got pretty much nothing else to offer when you start off, and no one at level 85 really wants to go farming for subjob items yet again (to say nothing of gysahl greens). These sentiments are not new. This is not something that I have never said before or a thought that had remained unexpressed for ages until just this moment. I've long talked about the fact that there's a huge barrier to entry for the game, one that essentially locks the game in for the people who are playing right now and no one else. But for all that talk, I can also see some very good reasons to keep those barriers in place because they're providing some useful functions -- or at the very least, they're not actively harmful.
The Mog Log: Point by point
Physical levels are leaving Final Fantasy XIV. We've all known that for a while, to the point that I even wrote a column speculating, in part, about what will happen to the whole bonus point system once that change goes live. As it turns out, what will happen for the time being is that it will be abandoned altogether, with character development going automated until at least 1.20. No more allocation of points to attributes any longer, and no word on what this will mean for the many traits designed to muck about with attribute distribution. This is going to result in a bit of a downgrade for some players (if you're physical 40 and leveling something at rank 10, for instance), but by and large it's also going to help correct a longstanding issue that the game has had. We've got a lot more options for playing around with attributes and abilities when it comes to FFXIV than we did in Final Fantasy XI, but the downside of the breadth has been the simple problem that no one knows what the attrbute values actually mean. You know the number, but the number itself is pretty much meaningless.
The Mog Log: Far too much accountability
Sometimes, it's really hard to figure out what in the world Square-Enix is thinking. I don't really make a habit of defending Square on principle; I defend stuff that's defensible in the first place. There are decisions that might seem odd, but they make logical sense and can actually be defended in the correct light. That's mostly a function of trying to see a reasonable set of decisions and reasonable motivations amidst what can sometimes seem baffling. It's not always an easy road. And then there are times when I can't even start to decipher what in the world anyone in the management train was thinking. Even when I do decipher the thought process that led to the action, it's the sort of thing that leads to some mixture of bafflement and irritation at the overall lack of thinking. That's my reaction when I look at the whole Square-Enix Account merger fiasco for Final Fantasy XI -- something that could have been a great idea but wound up just being an overall terrible execution.
The Mog Log: Duo feature
A few weeks back, I got an email from a reader talking asking about getting back into Final Fantasy XI after a long absence. As he put it, he and his girlfriend were thinking of going back to the game together, duoing their way through Vana'diel. Which is a great idea, as it's a game very well suited toward duoing, now more than ever with the existence of varied regimes and training manuals. Of course, there's more to the equation than just throwing two classes together and hoping for the best. There are a lot of things that you can do to make your experience harder than it needs to be, something that I'm unfortunately familiar with from my own experience. So this week, I'm going to take a look at what you can do to make your life easier when running as a team, no matter what resources are available to you in terms of jobs, gil, and fellow players.
Final Fantasy XI brings out another Mumor event for the summer
Summer means different things for different people, but if you're familiar with Final Fantasy XI events of years past, you know it includes a summer event out of place anywhere other than Vana'diel. Fantastic Fraulein Mumor is coming around once again on August 2nd through August 14th, and just like previous years, there are plenty of fun activities for adventurers of all ages at this seasonal stage show. And just like with previous years, the stakes of the lore have been upped just a little more this time around... But that's not the biggest draw for most players -- that would be the variety of cosmetic rewards and seasonal minigames that the event brings with it. This year is no exception, with players able to take part in the stage show to help ensure Mumor and Uka emerge victorious against demonic forces. Successful participants will earn a new yukata to show off participation, as well as unlocking new levels of challenge in the goldfish scooping minigame. And really, if you're a fan of FFXI, isn't the promise of taking part in the yearly magical girl event reward enough?
Final Fantasy XI outlines the road ahead for classes
Final Fantasy XI has a pretty expansive list of classes, and while that gives players plenty of freedom, it can pose a headache for design trying to keep each job distinct. But the development team has managed thus far, and the latest update previewing the future philosophy for job adjustments shows that there are still more elements to be brought into play. Each of the game's 20 jobs has a unique vision and role, with several potential new abilities discussed. While none of the directions design is taking jobs will be of huge surprise to veteran players, there are some interesting promises of future abilities and goals. For example, the team wants to give Beastmasters the tools to be useful and desirable in a party, while Dragoons are potentially getting more enmity management and more synergy with the wyvern. Final Fantasy XI players should look at the full rundown to see where their favorite class sits in terms of design -- as well as hints of what might be coming down the line.
The Mog Log: Winging right along
Out of every expansion that Final Fantasy XI has sported, Wings of the Goddess feels the most incidental to me in some ways. Not that it was bad or unimportant or anything of the sort, just that it wasn't quite like the other expansions in the game's history. Part of that is because of the fact that it was released at a time when I was taking an extended break from Final Fantasy XI, but part of that is because it's probably the least ambitious of all the game's expansions. Rise of the Zilaart was unambitious, but for most gamers in North America, it wasn't really a distinct expansion so much as another part of the core game. Chains of Promathia and Treasures of Aht Urhgan were both ambitious, with the former probably being the least successful of the lot and the latter probably standing out as the "best" expansion. That leaves WotG in the unenviable position of being the mediocre expansion, just good enough to beat out the nadir but not nearly good enough to reach the game's apex.
Final Fantasy XI may be ported to PlayStation Vita
It's not definite yet, but signs are pointing to a possible port of Final Fantasy XI over to the recently announced PlayStation Vita in the indeterminable future. Siliconera reports that Square Enix is mulling over a basic port of the aging title to the beefed-up portable platform. While the plans are not definite at this point, it's an intriguing concept especially when you consider Vita's Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities. Hiromichi Tanaka, former lead designer for Final Fantasy XI and producer for Final Fantasy XIV, says that while a Vita port is a possibility, the difficulties of working with the PlayStation 3 mean that a version on that console doesn't look likely (the PS3 version of XIV is still in limbo). Final Fantasy XI recently received a dollop of quality-of-life improvements in the July update.
