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The Mog Log: Final Fantasy nostalgia
There's nothing quite like Final Fantasy XI. Nor is there anything quite like Final Fantasy XIV. The two are similar enough that you can use one as a substitute for the other in a pinch, but both possess a certain feel that just isn't found in any other game. That's neither good nor bad; it just is. Watching the trailer for Seekers of Adoulin gave me a powerful blast of Final Fantasy XI nostalgia, and while I could wax poetic about how the game I remember isn't the game that exists any longer, that's not really the point. The point is that for all the frustrations of the games, there's a lot of joy in both. So today I just plucked my top five memories from both FFXI and Final Fantasy XIV to share with you, since I bet that some of you have the same sort of glowing nostalgia. Even if you don't want the good old days to come back (I sure don't), you can still remember them with a smile.
The Perfect Ten: Worst expansion names of all time
When SOE announced that EverQuest's 19th expansion would be titled Rain of Fear, I instantly found myself tripping over the name. I shouldn't have -- it's a few simple words that are first round picks for spelling contests -- but it defied the traditional naming conventions for MMO expansions. Many people I talked to kept wanting to write "reign" instead because "rain" seemed like a deliberate misspelling by some intern in Smedley's empire. Homophones aside, Rain of Fear is hardly the worst expansion title I've ever seen. The industry has had its share of bad names, from the confusing to the downright unpronounceable. Sure, we get used to these titles, and perhaps it's nit-picky to lug them out at such a late point in many of their lifespans, but petty is my middle name. My first name is Tom. And these are 10 poorly named expansions. Deal with it.
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.
The Mog Log: Playing in the epilogue
We still don't have a roadmap for the future of Final Fantasy XI, but now seems like a fine time to start speculating. Yes, the February update was nice, but it was only a patch on certain issues -- it makes leveling lower-level jobs far easier without giving players much of anything new to do. And while the game is at an age when running out of things to do is pretty darn unlikely, we're still going to need some content on the horizon, something to look forward to. (Especially since a lot of the older content we can do has been somewhat invalidated.) I've said before that I'm hoping for another boxed expansion, but I've also said before that I have my doubts about whether or not that's actually viable. But even if we just get another add-on trilogy (which seems more likely even if it's not what I want), we're still going to be dealing with a massive shadow that Final Fantasy XI has been living under for a very long time now. To put it very bluntly, we're running out of a resource that's far more valuable than PS2 hard drive space -- story.
The Mog Log: I left my heart in Whitegate
There's still nothing much happening in Final Fantasy XI or Final Fantasy XIV at the moment. Well, OK, there's plenty happening, just not a great deal of news to discuss. I imagine that won't last very long, especially with the Final Fantasy XIV poll having ended on Friday, but right now seems like the perfect time to reflect on the past. And that inevitably leads me back to Final Fantasy XI, to my favorite expansion and the one that feels most vibrant to a North American player. Treasures of Aht Urhgan wasn't the only expansion that was released here, naturally, but it was unique in the game's lifespan. Rise of the Zilaart came with the game from the initial NA launch, Chains of Promathia produced very divided opinions (which several columns covered, if you missed it), and Wings of the Goddess is really just a slight funhouse reflection of Vana'diel proper. But Aht Urghan was new, vibrant, and the sort of expansion you could really sink your teeth into. It was, I'd say, the best one the series had.
