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Final Fantasy XI Beginning the Journey Again

Apr 26, 2010 Articles Recommend, FFXI|334views

Finally after weeks of poking and prodding by friends, I decided to reactivate my FFXI account and see how the game has evolved. What follows may not be pretty, but its a somewhat accurate description of my first few days back in Vana’diel.

Part One: Content ID Pitfalls

My friends that still play finally convinced me to come back to the game due to the fact that Square Enix had instituted a “Character Reactivation Service” that could recover my lost characters. “Awesome!” I thought to myself, I’d be able to hop right back into the swing of things with my friends and not have to do all the old content that I wasted hours of my life on back when I was in school. I headed over to the FFXI main page and attempted to reactivate my old character Faucius. Here is where I hit my first snag, I had completely forgotten my Play Online account information! I could remember most of it except for one number which drove me crazy. Then an enormous sense of woe flowed through me, it looked like I was going to have to contact the dreaded, Play Online support team.

Having come from a customer service background I am a very easy going person when it comes to dealing with my fellow customer support brethren. This all is stipulated on the quality of service however; my customer support department had a very high standard of service, so I expect that from all support teams that I encounter. Play Online had always been a thorn in my side with iffy support, so I was reluctant at first to contact them and tried to solve the problem on my own. After a few hours of cursing, frustration, and a few headaches I finally gave up and decided to reach out to them. One problem however, it was a Sunday and their support hours are only Monday through Friday during set hours.

After waiting a day, I attempted to contact their support team through the chat support on their website. I waited in the queue for about an hour before I was connected to a Customer Support “Agent”. I stated my issue clearly and concisely and asked if they could provide me with the account information that I so desperately sought. The Agent fired off a series of automated responses at me asking me for old information, some of which like the original credit card on the account. This seemed a bit silly being that I made the account years ago (and after many nights of losing your card at the bar, that number can change quite a few times). I provided them with all the information that I could and was met with a very abrupt, “You have not provided us with enough information, please locate said information and contact us once again.” I was then cut off from the conversation and left blinking at my screen with anger building in my belly. After contacting them again and asking for a supervisor (which was of course “unavailable at the time”), I finally received my account information and was ready to reactivate my old characters.

The character reactivation was immediate which was fantastic I must say, so I happily logged onto the ever popular Play Online Viewer (heavy sarcasm on that last part). I logged in and listened to the contemporary jazz music that still haunts my dreams; I then realized that I had to go and reactivate my old content ID’s in order to log in and play the game. After a bevy of menus and sub-menus, I finally had my content ID reactivated and ready to go; I was finally ready to play the game again.

Part Two: Back in the Saddle

I logged in to see the familiar sights and sounds of San d’Oria; the players running back and forth from the Mog house area, the bagpipe music that makes you want to rip your ears off and place them under your chair after a while. The memories were all flooding back to me and I was happy to be back in the game world. I met up with my friends and they gave me a shiny new link pearl so I could talk to everyone with ease. I was amazed at how friendly and welcoming everyone was, being that in most MMOs now adays, new or returning players are shunned as “Noobs” and are cast out as lepers of civilized game play.

I was filled in about the new level sync system and that when I made it to level ten again on one of my jobs, we would be able to all party together, regardless of level. This was music to my ears; FFXI was long plagued by hours of waiting around for a group if you didn’t have a “static party” to play with, (a “static party” is a party comprised of players that will only group and level together, mostly at set times during their day). I was also informed of the “Fields of Valor” event that was taking place; this allowed players to use these little floating books that provided them with mini kill quests out in their zone of choice. Completing these quests granted players with bonus EXP and Gil, as well as “Tabs” that could be used to purchase temporary buffs and food from the book as well. This, might I add, is a fantastic system that Square Enix has put into place. It allows returning players to quickly grind through those annoying starter levels, and it allows new players to have an easier and more guided “starter area” experience.

I quickly burned through my levels and was out into the Valkurm Dunes within a matter of hours. “This is where the game is really going to pick up!” I thought to myself; I was extremely eager to group with my friends again and enjoy the wonderfully complex combat system. I waited at the outpost for my friends to arrive and talked over our voice chat program about where we were going to go and what we were going to do. Once everyone arrived we all grouped up and the group leader set the level sync down to my characters level. We then proceeded to wreak havoc on the monsters in the zone for the next few hours, laughing and telling stories along the way.

Looking back on that night, that was exactly the gaming experience that I’ve missed so much over the past few years. Games in this genre have become incredibly stagnant in their communities as of late and that’s due to the overall design of the games in my opinion. It’s always refreshing to come back to a niche game and be reminded of why we still play the games that we play. We, as a community of gamers need more small MMO projects to keep us firmly planted to the ground. Big name projects that try to get millions of subscribers are all well and good and I can appreciate them for what they are. Every once and a while however, we as gamers need to be reminded of what MMO’s are at heart, a game that you play with other people. Granted, we take this with its good and its bad, but in the end MMO’s are about community and game play, not just grinding for hours to reach end game. For me at least, it’s all about the journey and the friends that you make along the way. After all, you can always tell when you’ve had fun in a game when later that night at the bar you can say, “Dude, you should have been there! This is what happened..” Ultimately I urge everyone to take a vacation back to their gamer roots and explore what brought you into this genera of gaming.

I’d like to end by asking you the players, have you returned to the world of Vana’diel lately? If not, what other old MMO have you recently returned to and what brought you back?

Article By:Eric Barnett

Tags: evolved, Final Fantasy XI, Vana'diel

A little more conversation

Mar 22, 2010 Articles Recommend|310views

Well, gee, not much has happened since the last time we did a community spotlight in this column. Except maybe for that little VanaFest thing, and huge drops of new info on Final Fantasy XIV, and the beginning of the latter’s beta testing. So, yeah, slow month all around. This should be a pretty short column, I might just start talking about my favorite beers toward the end.

All joking aside, a lot has been happening, and it has produced more than a few diverse opinions. The immediate response to the VanaFest announcements for Final Fantasy XI was covered a couple weeks ago, but there’s still the specifics to be hammered out. After all, it’s hard to take in server merges, level cap raises, massive content drops and new add-ons all in one go. Not to mention that we do still have another game coming in the not-so-distant future, one that’s shaping up to have an interesting positional aspect to gameplay. So let’s take a look at some of the noteworthy talk from Final Fantasy’s webwide community.
A rose by any other name would be xXx_rose_xXx
There’s a side to Final Fantasy XI’s upcoming server merges that hasn’t gotten quite as much press time — the fact that the people being merged don’t have a lot of control in the matter. And by “a lot,” we really mean “any.” Which servers are being merged in isn’t up for discussion. That means that there are going to be characters who find their names ripped away and changed whether they like it or not, something that Pet Food Alpha’s FusionX isn’t terribly happy about.

On the one hand, I can certainly understand the frustration. The flip side, of course, is that there’s no way Square-Enix could have handled this that would have been fair to everyone. Someone has to lose the name, and it’s not fair to the merged players to make it an ornate process. You could even look at this as the most fair way of ensuring who keeps what name, by making it wholly arbitrary and outside of player negotiation and control. (Remember, kids, “fair” does not always mean “likable.”) It’s still worth considering, however, and it’s an unlucky turn of events for the players being merged into a new server.

The Mod squad

Final Fantasy XIV probably won’t have Windower.But our demands of UIs are increasing, and thanks to games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online supporting a robust modification framework we expect quite a bit out of the gate for a game. This thread is a discussion of what might happen in terms of mods — whether they’ll exist, be sanctioned, and most worryingly be necessary for endgame participation.

The last one is pretty easy to answer: no.

I can think of perhaps one mod that’s ever been necessary for endgame activities, and that was shot down by Blizzard as soon as the first expansion dropped. Mods are there to make life easier; when they’re making life just plain livable, it’s time for adjustments. Given the much more icon-heavy and presumably information-heavy setup in FFXIV, I think many of the problems Windower was created to address won’t be present in the game from the start.

That being said, open-source mod development isn’t terribly likely. But Square could always surprise us.

Metal Gear Not-Quite-So-Solid, or the plight of the sneaky WHM
Most of my high-level experience in FFXI has been as a caster, either RDM or WHM, and so I’m very familiar with the complete unreliability of two skills that may as well be core class features. I’m proud to say that I don’t recall ever dying due to a Sneak or Invisible drop, but that includes a few just-in-time alcoves that I happened to locate.

There’s a bit of a debate here about whether or not the spells should be as variable as they are. On the one hand, there are purchasable items which do the same thing, and making the spells more reliable would undercut the value of Silent Oil and Prism Powder. On the flip side, it’s argued that not needing to purchase items is one of the advantages a caster has over other jobs, and it hardly seems fair that it’s gimped due to items that exist elsewhere with little connection. While I imagine less insta-death aggro sneaking in FFXIV, it’s an interesting discussion to consider, and it’s going to be telling to see how similar effects work in Eorzea.

FFXIV on the go?

With the advent of more and more mobile apps, it seems like the perfect opportunity for Square to offload some of the more tedious maintenance portions of the game into a simple click-fest on your iPhone or Droid. (I’d prefer a Droid version, because that’s the phone I actually own, but I’m not going to demand developers cater to me. I’ll just whine if they don’t.) Of course, by the same token, there are players who hate the idea that developers might take that as permission to create more tedious portions, or make it a de facto requirement that you load the app up on your lunch break so your plants don’t die.

The thing is, this is not exactly a new idea. Square did this already, after a fashion, for Final Fantasy VIII. It was a little less of an issue at the time, since no one outside of Japanese players or die-hard American fans owned a PocketStation, so the chocobo mini-game was a bit less vital. It also didn’t unlock anything particularly interesting in the game. I wouldn’t be totally surprised to eventually see an app devoted to raising chocobos or the like, however.

Don’t worry. It’s okay you’re not testing.
To which I can only respond no. No, it is not okay.

Not okay at all.

In all seriousness, we forget that the first round of testing doesn’t so much have bugs as it is one sustained bug with occasional patches of gameplay. And I do try to fit in at least one discussion that’s a bit toward the amusing side. This one fits the bill.

Mollified by VanaFest
I’m far from the only person who had rather high hopes going into the celebrated event, but I do seem to have taken a bit of an extreme viewpoint. Thayos posted an article before the event that actually informed one of the first columns I wrote, so to see his reaction to the announcements as a whole is certainly interesting. They’re not a hundred percent happy, but they’re largely positive.

Initial rush of irritation aside, I’d wager that most of the community is — and should be — fairly happy about the overall scope of what’s coming for FFXI. For those of us a bit less pleased, well, there’s always the sequel coming out.

That’s all the community highlights we have time for this week. (Or, if you prefer, that’s all the ones I could chase down and write about until my hands got tired, Scott Adams-style.) As always, send any links, questions, or requests to transfer enormous sums of money out of Nigeria to Eliot at Massively dot com. Next week will be another chance for me to go through all of the questions I’ve gotten, so by all means, flood the mailbox.

Tags: addons, class-abilities, discussion, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, Square Enix, Xbox 360

Not the happy fanboy

Mar 7, 2010 Articles Recommend|280views

Imagine, if you will, that a nice man comes up to you and tells you about a fantastic room. He leads you to this room, and at the far end of the room from the door is a cake. That cake is clearly delicious, and you’re told as much. Unfortunately, in order to reach said cake, you have to walk barefoot across an entire room full of rusty nails, broken class, and scorpions with a serious hate-on for human beings.

But then another nice man runs up to you. He says that he has excellent news for you about this cake, that it will make you very happy.

“So I don’t have to walk through all this broken glass and stuff?” you ask.

“Oh, no, you still have to,” replies the man. “But we’ve made the cake at the end taste even better. Isn’t that awesome!”

And at this point, anyone in the world would turn around and walk away. I don’t care how much you like cake, that cake just isn’t worth the trouble.

That, in a nutshell, is how I felt while looking at the announcements for VanaFest 2010. Because they’re going to make that endgame cake taste ever better, and that’s great. But that’s all the way over there.
Way back when I started writing this column, I talked about the problems that Final Fantasy XI faced for its future. And if there was one point I harped upon, it was the fact that the game needs to be more accessible. I had to start a new account, and I found myself absolutely crippled by the barrier to entry that lay in front of new players just to get things that it’s assumed you’ll be working with. Getting subjobs and an airship pass alone is a huge amount of work, and that’s not even the point when you’re moving into the meat of the game.

Not to toot my own horn, but I know this game pretty dang well. I was around when it first came out, and while I’ve taken breaks I never lost sight of it. And even I found the ramp-up to be a lot more difficult than it needed to be. This is with me knowing where everything is, where to farm, what sells and what doesn’t, et cetera. A new player wouldn’t know all that. They would get lost and leave, promptly.

Square-Enix has said, in short, that they don’t care. They’re adding new stuff for the invested and not tossing a bone out to people stuck at lower levels. And so the cake at the end just gets more delicious, but getting to that cake remains so torturous that the odds of tasting it are minimal unless you’ve already reached it.

I wasn’t expecting my reaction to the whole thing to be so visceral, but there it is. This event was, in every way that matters, a last hope for the game to go on being vital. By confining itself to the players they already have, the game is accelerating toward death faster than before. It’ll be several more years before it actually bleeds out, but it is bleeding and it will eventually go out. And if the fact that I write several thousand words about it every month didn’t make that clear enough — I like this game. Even with its flaws, I like the game and I want it to ultimately be successful.

For that matter, I want Final Fantasy XIV to be successful. But this doesn’t speak well of Square’s ability or desire to manage that game, either. They came so close with all the effort put into communication from VanaFest… and then they showed, essentially, that they had learned half of the lesson. They understand now that communication is king, but not how to fix what’s broken.

The weird thing — or perhaps the edifying thing — is that judging by the comments on our news post about the announcements, I’m not alone. Reactions ranged from resignation to irritation, without much love for what was changing. Or, more accurately, what wasn’t changing. Joakal’s comment sort of summed things up: “The changes are exciting, and would have been brilliant… 4 years ago.”

I realize there are people out there who are happy about this, such as the majority of the community over at Pet Food Alpha (who teamed up with Limit Break Radio for their live report on the event, and bless them for that). And you know, this is going to be pretty cool for most of the people already invested in the game. But it’s not what I was hoping for, and I can’t help but be just a little bit upset.

Okay, a lot upset.

(I’d be remiss in not pointing out that a rebuttal is already available before this column has even gone live. My viewpoint is not the be-all and end-all to this discussion. But I’m still on my soapbox here.)

I suppose I can at least be happy about being right on-target with my predictions. We didn’t get a new expansion, we did find out when the beta for Final Fantasy XIV would start, and we got more add-on scenarios. We’re also getting several more things, and that’s pretty darn nifty.

And once you get past the disappointment, everything they’re adding? While it is a swan song to the game, it’s a really cool swan song. Pretty much everything players have been asking for is in these announcements — a huge jump in level cap, the last two prominent avatars added to summoners, the end of the game’s last major storyline, et cetera. It might be silly to hope for the game to expand at this point, after so many years of enjoyment and so many experiences that it’s already given us.

But you can’t help but hope for something more, especially when you’ve enjoyed a game for this long. You want it to keep going and keep improving, even if you know the sequel is coming. It happened with EverQuest, and it’s happening again right here. At least we’ll always have Jeuno.

Tags: community, Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, Xbox 360

Rumor: Final Fantasy XI to Be Closed this Year

Feb 19, 2010 Articles Recommend, FFXI|470views

Tags: Final Fantasy XI

The worrying future of Final Fantasy XI

Jan 30, 2010 FFXI|330views

There’s a growing unease in the Final Fantasy XI community. It’s one of those subtle things that no one is willing to outright talk about, but it’s still there, just beneath the surface of a surprising number of discussions. And it’s a bit unusual for an MMO, because it’s not fear or anxiousness about something being broken from the last update or an upcoming update.

No, it’s more about the question of whether the upcoming updates will be the last, or if there will even be any changes that could break something. There is an elephant in the room with a big number fourteen on its side, and while few fans of the game are upset that Final Fantasy XIV is coming… well, it raises no shortage of questions about the future of the game we’re already playing.

And it’s not new. People were saying as far back as the leadup to the July update that something was rotten in the state of Jeuno. But when coupled with the promise that Final Fantasy XI isn’t over… well, there’s an excellent article that almost every fan needs to read on Allakhazam, summarizing what no small number of fans have been thinking. Where are we actually going to be when the dust clears?
Let’s be perfectly clear about something: no one is forecasting the absolute death of FFXI. EverQuest is still running along and getting expansions, and that game isn’t precisely attracting new players at an alarming rate. One might argue that part of the reason is that the entire Station Pass concept makes also playing EverQuest on occasion far less daunting than having a completely separate subscription, but that’s a discussion for another time — and really, would it be so difficult for Square-Enix to give us an FFXI subscription along with Final Fantasy XIV?

Probably not. But there isn’t a whole lot to indicate that we’ll get any such thing, which leads us to the problem of how closed FFXI is becoming to new adventurers.

When I started a new account, it was after a long break, and I was immediately struck by how much smaller the world felt. Not that I think the game has hemorrhaged players too badly — it makes money back for Square quite handily — but if you’re starting the game, just think about all of the things you need to do right out of the gate. You need your subjob. You need your airship passes, both to Kazham and to the capitals. You need a pass to get on the boat to Al Zahbi, and you need a chocobo license. You have fourteen advanced jobs to unlock, Tenshodo reputation to gain, and a whole boatload of spells to buy.

All of this is going to cost you a lot of money, and several of these things are going to all but require the help of other players. Your subjob items are unobtainable solo until Level 25 or so, and if you think you can hit 25 easily with no sub, I envy your skill at overcoming obstacles. Oh, and let’s not forget that you also need to do several missions and travel through time for several of these, while shedding a silent tear for those people who don’t know to run through Garlaige Citadel in the past.

We have a lot of barriers to helping new players get to a point where they can just start experimenting with options. We don’t think about these things that much, because we didn’t have to do them all at once. If you’ve been playing for most of the game’s lifespan, you just had to do one or two new things each expansion.

The bonus is that there is a real sense of having reached new and expanding plateaus even if you already had jobs at 75. The downside is that it makes the game an increasingly closed system. High-level players are much less willing to help a low-level character get their subjob garbage or kill that stupid wyvern so they can become a Dragoon, because it’s old hat. There’s enough of a top-end population that they don’t need to sweat it all that much.

From the perspective of Square, I can’t imagine the game looks all that salvagable. They’re not seeing huge numbers of players leave, but they’re probably seeing a slow trickle down with the occasional slight trend back up. New players are going to have a very long climb ahead of them.

If we want FFXI to stick around after FFXIV launches, some of that climb should be — must be — removed.

Make subjobs more obtainable. Make it possible to travel to Al Zahbi and Kazham without so many hoops to jump through. Make the rank missions below 6 or so soloable at a reasonable level — or, heck, just make all of a nation’s missions soloable. The vast majority of people playing the game have been sitting at Rank 10 or near enough for an eternity. The time when gathering these things was an accomplishment is long past, replaced with a time when these things are absolutely mandatory to your play experience.

Yes, the endgame is wonderful and engaging, but most new players aren’t ever going to get there at this rate. They’re going to quest a bit, get discouraged when they see the slog that’s awaiting them, and then they will leave. And by all indications, FFXIV will not have this barrier to entry. The designers have said that they disliked the forced group leveling mechanics and that they want to do away with it. People will have a much easier time picking up and playing.

And similarly… yes, we do need a new expansion. These things should really go hand in hand. One of the wonderful things I remember about the launch of Treasures of Aht Urghan’s launch was the fact that everyone, no matter the level, was diving in together. People were playing new jobs at low levels, or taking the chance to level another job because it would set them apart from a sea of pirates, blue mages, and monks playing with dolls. People were exploring and trying new things, at all levels, because the content was all there.

That, to me, is the sort of thing we really need to hear to confirm that there’s life left in FFXI. At this point, the critical mass at endgame is simply unavoidable. And if it’s only targeted by making a new area to travel to, well, it’s going to become yet another barrier to entry in a game with too many of them. Over the game’s lifespan so far Square has consistently turned out expansions that were deep, immersive, and full of content and additions that were relevant to everyone, enforcing the idea that a Level 15 WAR/MNK and a Level 75 DRG/SAM were both, at the end of the day, adventurers with common goals and shared hopes.

Of course, the flip side is that they’re just going to spend the whole time telling us how awesome FFXIV is going to be and when it’s getting released. Which, as consolation prizes go, isn’t all that bad after all.

Tags: Expansion, Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV, Opinion

FFXI Developmental Tour-The November version update

Dec 29, 2009 Articles Recommend, FFXI|446views

There’s a new version update out on the Vana’dielian streets, and that means we’ve journeyed to Jeuno to meet up with our super-seekret contacts at Square-Enix and talk shop on what’s new in Final Fantasy XI.

This latest expansion pack, A Shantotto Ascension, comes bundled with the November version update, as is customary for the past few updates to the title. So, in addition to being able to pay 10 bucks to attempt to foil Professor Shantotto’s aspirations of having her own empire, the game has been updated with a brand new crafting system called synergy, the new ability to add “slots” onto your items and upgrade them with evolith modifications, more job updates, and an improvement to the existing wedding system!

As you can see, it’s a busy time in Vana’diel, and we got to jaunt around the world and find out more. So come along, follow in our adventurous footsteps, and find out what all the fuss is about!
The Legend Torn, Her Empire Born

The tour opened up with a long journey (and by long, I mean a magical teleport that took two whole seconds) to the bustling town of Windurst, where I was introduced to a cutscene featuring the magical experiments of the great Professor Shantotto.

For those of you not in the know, Shantotto is one of the game’s foremost black mages and makes appearances in many of the Windust questlines and even the world event questlines. She’s a curious little woman as she speaks entirely in rhyme, usually showing up as some sort of powerful figure or weasling her way into adventures. In short (but not shorter than her), she’s a little full of herself. Then again, if you could bend space and time, you’d be full of yourself too.

In any case, the opening trailer showcases a rare accident in the Professor’s experiments, creating a large warp rift that pulls her in and triggers a gigantic explosion (shown above.) The Professor disappears from Windurst from some time, only to later reappear with an army of odd, Tarutaru-like solders. However, the Shantotto that reappears is nothing like the old Shantotto — this one is fixated on creating her own empire and conquering all of Vana’diel to showcase her might.

The adventure pack is sure to take twists and turns while it showcases Shantotto’s inner-mind and explores one of Final Fantasy XI’s title characters in the depth she’s deserved for years. While it comes with the update, the Shantotto Ascension adventure pack is an additional 10 dollars to actually unlock the content. Complete all of the quests, and be rewarded with some awesome new leg armor to complete the set you’ve been building with the first two adventure packs.

The Hunt is On

After previewing the expansion pack and the cutscene, off we went to try our hand at the combat portion of the game’s new crafting system — the hunt.

Hunts are very much like the game’s Fields of Valor system, where players accept quests to kill specific notorious monsters throughout the world. Now, these are the same notorious monsters that have been in the game since launch, so expect to see some people camping Leaping Lizzy all over again. These hunts can literally be hunts as you try to track down the game’s tricky rare spawns, plus some brand new ones added just for the system.

Once you successfully take down the monster you’ve been after and return to a Hunt Registry book to confirm your kill, you’ll be rewarded with an evolith unique to the monster and the hunt currency of scylds. Scylds are marks given by hunts once you complete them. While the lower level hunts require no scylds to start, the higher level ones do. So, if you’re looking for those powerful evoliths and difficult hunts, you have go jump through some hoops and do lower level ones first before taking on big game.

Speaking of evoliths… that leads me right into the next segment…

Evoliths, Synergy, and explosions, oh my!

The evoliths rewarded from hunts are the game’s newest form of item augmentation. Similar to the gems of World of Warcraft, gems augment everything from your attacks and defense to how your abilities function. These new crystals are slotted directly into your equipment, allowing you to augment anything to your heart’s desire.

If you want to throw an evolith onto a weapon, you’re going to have to etch a slot into it first, and that requires the crafting portion of the game’s brand new augmentation system — Synergy Furnaces.

Synergy crafting is not your boring sit down, pull out a recipe book and pick something to make type of crafting. This is hands on, wheel spinning, pressure monitoring, furnace thwacking crafting. You’re going to get down and dirty with this new system, and when I say down and dirty I mean “hurling yourself face first into a violent explosion.” Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Synergy is a complicated system, but it breaks down into the simple act of adding a piece of armor or weapon that you want etched into the furnace and then pressure cooking it with elemental fuel called fewell. If you can raise the right set of elements to the levels the item needs them to be, then the crafting is a success.

As the item is etched, the elements will introduce a few problems — pressure, elemental impurity, and shield degradation. High levels of impurity in the furnace can lead to the furnace exploding in your face, while pressure makes the explosion that much more deadly when it goes off. Should the shield around the furnace hit zero, as denoted by the constantly falling health of the furnace, the elements escape and you’re left with a fizzled recipe.

Luckily, you can get five of your friends to help you keep the process stable. It’s a five person minigame of frantic furnace thwacking (yes, you can really thwack the furnace) as you try to keep everything in check. Sometimes you’ll even need other players, as some recipes need people with high levels of different tradeskills to work on the furnace.

Needless to say, evolith/synergy crafting is rewarding, fun, and complicated. More games should take a cue from FFXI and introduce some wonderful cooperative crafting games such as this one, to make crafting less of a bore. I wish I had more time to describe the other side of the system that is creating brand new items through synergy, but I just don’t have the space.

Here comes the bride!

Finally, after all of this killing and explosions, my character rushed off to a fantastic wedding on the beach, set up by the development team. It was a nice end to a frantic day, although I didn’t exactly look like a well-groomed bride as I stood next to my paladin husband, all dressed in white plate mail as I stood there covered in synergy ash and monster blood.

The game’s long-standing wedding system has been removed from the hands of the GMs and placed into the care of the automated event service, as you can now purchase your wedding through NPCs, buy the appropriate materials with gil, and set up wedding pieces anywhere in Vana’diel with the automated event service. While you lose the touch of a real human “priest” officiating the service, you gain the ability to have the wedding anywhere in the world and not wait for the GMs to have a free date.

As the sun set over the cove and I waved goodbye to my guides, I had to admit, this update was pretty nice. While I was a bit iffy on the wedding changes, the brand new innovative crafting and the playful fun of A Shantotto Ascension more than made up for it, not to mention the job changes and brand new Wings of the Goddess missions that I couldn’t even fit into this article.

If you’re a Final Fantasy XI buff, you already know all about these brand new things added to the game and are probably working to raise your synergy skill levels. But if you’re new to the game, do yourself a favor and pick up the game, it’s four expansions, and all three of the adventure packs for 11 dollars on Steam during the holiday sale. That’s one dollar over the cost of a standard adventure pack, and you get the entire game and 30 days of play. So don’t sit on the fence, pick it up and enjoy the 6 years of content, wonderfully complicated difficulty, and rewarding storylines/cutscenes that the game has to offer. It’s not Warcraft, and it’s better for it.

Tags: FFXI, Final Fantasy XI, Tour

Square Enix Sued For $5 Million

Jun 25, 2009 FFXI|986views

Square Enix of America is being sued for allegedly deceiving 100,000 customers for “unfair business practices, false advertising and unjust enrichment” regarding online title Final Fantasy XI.

The plaintiff, San Francisco resident Esther Leong, claims that Square Enix “lied about or concealed its monthly fees, penalties for late payments, interest, restrictions and other things that should have been fully disclosed at points of purchase” — basically, Square Enix has been “deceptive”.

The court filing reads:

The deceptive advertising, unfair and undisclosed business practices, and concealment concern, among others:

i. Licensing of the online games software disguised as a sale;
ii. Monthly fees (”fees”) to play the online games;
iii. Penalties for late payment of the fees;
iv. Interest charges for late payment of the fees;
v. Charges while the online game account is suspended;
vi. Termination of the right to use the online games for late payment of the fees;
vii. User restrictions and conditions related to the online games;
viii. Termination of game data for payment of the fees.

The class action lawsuit is seeking in excess of US$5 million in damages. (Reported by 1UP.com)

Tags: FFXI, Final Fantasy XI, Square Enix

Final Fantasy XI:Getting Maat’s Cap

May 24, 2009 FFXI|1,005views

Adventurers of Van’adiel love to run around town in their hard-earned gear, showing off their achievements in the game. So why not start the quest that will reward you with one of the most ‘fashionable’ head pieces in the game to show off around town, that also is a wonderful piece to macro in for situational use? The truth is, Maat’s Cap is a wonderful hat to macro in for weaponskills, SATA, straight tanking, jumps, cures, nuking, etc. and the added enchantment of Ru’lude Gardens warp isn’t bad either. So why doesn’t every player have this hat? The versatility and potential of this hat would make it a wonderful addition to every adventurer’s wardrobe, and the fact that all jobs can wear it entices even the laziest leveler to level up some jobs to be able to equip the hat. So what? How do you get it? It’s simple, to obtain Maat’s Cap, you must complete the quest “Beyond the Sun”, which is accomplished by defeating Maat with Bard, Beastmaster, Black Mage, Dark Knight, Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Paladin, Ranger, Red Mage, Samurai, Summoner, Thief, Warrior and White Mage in the 70 cap quest called Shattering Stars.

So it’s simple, right? Beat Maat on every pre-CoP job, and then he gives you his hat. It’s a lot harder than that: First, you must have these fifteen jobs leveled to at least 66, which is the minimum level to enter the battlefield “shattering stars” , in order to even begin this quest. Second, you actually have to beat Maat for it to count towards your progress in the quest. You can repeat the battle as many times as possible until you actually defeat him, but defeating him can be hard, depending on the job. At level 66, it’s possible to beat Maat, yet it usually requires capped skills, expensive gear, and taxing meds and food. Even with the best gear, food, and capped skills, a win isn’t guaranteed at level 66, so it would be smart to take into other things such as moon phase (if you’re leveling Summoner, for example), the particular day (for Black Mage, Red Mage, etc.), and what time it is (for Ninja). All of these aspects will help you beat the relentless Maat the 15 times required for your hat.

Maat’s Cap will be a very arduous piece of equipment to obtain if you are the perfectionist that enjoys wearing the most expensive, hard to obtain equipment for whatever job you’re leveling at the time. If this is the case for you, and you love playing Final Fantasy at your own slow-paced speed, then trying to speed your way to a Maat’s Cap won’t be any fun at all for you. If this applies to you, then simply level these jobs at your own pace, getting the jobs you enjoy all the way to 75, and the jobs you don’t particularly care for to 66, fighting Maat only when you feel your character is able to defeat him. If you play like this, don’t expect your Maat’s Cap any time soon, if ever, but that’s just how some people are. For you more fast-paced players that can get a job to 75 in three weeks, the thought of a Maat’s Cap is more viable, and the reality of actually having one is a reality that can actually happen pretty soon with some hard work.

Here’s some pretty decent advice when starting Maat’s Cap quest and not knowing where to begin: Unlock (if you haven’t already) all the extra jobs at the same time, and level all of them to 20 before you do anything else with them. This is made possible, because, through level 20 most gear is interchangeable between jobs, separated only by mages and DD’s. So pick up some versatile, cheap armor, and spam through every job through the dunes, and decide which jobs you want to do from there. As disgusting as leveling 15 jobs through the dunes consecutively sounds, after you finally finish, then you’ll never need to go back through that step in this quest again, and you’ll thank yourself for doing that later, I promise. With every job unlocked, and every job at least level 20, the ‘hardest’ part of getting every job to 66 is finally done - with the horrible events that happen in the depths of noob-infested Valkurm Dunes, Qufim Island will be very promising — and now it’s time for some classic, grinding experience points parties in FFXI.

If you’re serious about obtaining your Maat’s Cap, then it would be very wise to conserve and recycle Gil as much as possible, spending large amounts for items only when you absolutely have to. The good thing about leveling up many jobs at once is that a lot of jobs typically wear the same gear at those respective levels. A Scorpion Harness, though expensive, can be used by almost all of your DD jobs that need accuracy, so it’s wise to purchase these expensive, yet necessary items. For job-specific gear, such as Scythe’s, Great Axes, Long Swords, Guns, Bows, etc. that you’re sure you’ll only use once, it would be wise to re-sell these items as soon as you level out of them, to effectively recycle your Gil. This will ensure that a little bit of Gil can go a long way, and also that your inventory slots won’t be maxed out on unused items.

There are some jobs, Summoner for example, that has essential items, that are unfortunately rare/ex, and some time must be spent to obtain them. Unfortunately these items are pretty much essential to the job, and time must be spent in order to receive them. So you can either take the time to receive these items the same day you unlock all the jobs, as you aren’t even leveling them up at this point, or you can do them while you’re completely exhausted from leveling, and need to do something else before you collapse from boredom. Some necessities that can be received fairly easily (and free!) include: some ichi spells for your ninja, all the summons, Carbuncle’s Mitt’s, Evoker’s Ring, for Summoner, RSE for all jobs, and selected AF, there are some items you simply must get for survival in the experience points party world.

I hope this guide hasn’t scared you off from trying to obtain Maat’s Cap, rather, I hope it has served as a source of inspiration for all aspiring adventurer’s out there wishing to obtain one of the most powerful headpieces in the game. So now it’s time, absorb what I’ve told you, kiss your social (or endgame) life away, and prepare to be the envy of all your friends.

Tags: Final Fantasy XI

Final Fantasy XI: CoP Survival Guide

Apr 17, 2009 FFXI|898views

There comes a time in every Adventurer’s life when the Final Fantasy storyline MUST be completed. This gruelling and unfortunate experience is one of the many arduous necessities of the game that must be completed in order for your character to become anything in FFXI. So this week, the focus will be Chains of Promathia (often abbreviated CoP, or PM). This expansion was released in the United States in Fall 2004, being the second expansion in the existence of FFXI. Though no new jobs were added to the game, a new endgame area called Al’Taieu, or Sea was premiered in this expansion, which is home to quite possibly the most difficult HNM to defeat in the entire game, Absolute Virtue.

Sadly, just like almost everything else featured in FFXI, completing CoP, to acquire Sea, and all of the other goodies is going to take hard work, time, and many other resources that hardly seem worth it for all you people out there just starting up the missions. The unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on youe perspective) truth is that all of the hard work, effort, sweat, tears, etc, is worth it, and any player that doesn’t take the time to complete CoP will regret not having access to the endgame delights of Sea. This is where I come in; not to give you a meticulous step-by-step walkthrough of each mission, complete with exact details straight down to the appropriate time to take a bathroom break, or to wipe the sweat off your forehead (a wonderful website called FFXIclopedia will do a better job than I ever could, anyways), I’m here to give you some useful information that you need, and some helpful tips needed to help you grind down and man your way through CoP!

First, make sure you have Chains of Promathia installed and registered on your account. Okay, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that your brain has the mental capabilities to understand and complete this step without further expansion on the topic.

Okay, so more seriously now, the first and most important tip I can give you is to have a steady foundation and an established character before even attempting to complete CoP, or any set of missions, for that matter. If you don’t have at least one job to 75, I advise you stop reading right now, get on the game, play until you do, and then come back. Seriously, CoP is filled with complex and demanding missions that pretty much require you to have at least one 75 job, if not more. Not just for the maturity, and skill for the game that you develop subconsciously through countless EXP parties, but also by providing your party with versatility needed to meet the constant demands that each and every mission brings, plus, already having a 75 job prevents the constant interruptions that would occur when the level cap raises, and you’re left with the task of levelling your job up in order to catch up with everyone else.

Now, there are primarily two ways to complete CoP: Either stand in Whitegate for hours upon hours shouting, at the mercy of other people to help you, or, the more viable solution, create a static. You can either create a static, or join one, though I like to make sure things work correctly, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll just end up making one too. So you’ve never made a static before, and you’re obviously scared, not knowing if you’ll do a good job or sink completely? Don’t worry, I’m still here for you, and I’ll list a couple of things to consider when creating a static to ensure that it dominates CoP with authority.

First, when recruiting people, make sure that they have a viable schedule that corresponds with yours; your best friend in the whole wide world may be on the same exact mission as you, and you guys want to static together, however, if your schedules are too conflicting, and a weekly time cannot be established, then it is best to leave your friend for someone else with a more available schedule. It sounds harsh, and probably is, but the truth is that if you want to get done with CoP without frustration and complete at least one mission on a weekly basis, then it is best to pick static-mates that have similar schedules to you.

Another equally important factor is the language barrier that exists in Final Fantasy, and the importance of being able to understand each other in a static. Be sure to recruit members that fluently speak the same language as you. Be it Portuguese, French, or Pig-Latin, it is imperative that everyone speaks the same language. If not, obvious flaws are immediately detected. As expected of yourself, make sure that members of your static have multiple 75 jobs, for versatility, and make sure that you have a defined tank, healer, etc from the start. Exchanging phone numbers is also very practical, not for prank calling, but to keep in contact with people, and to be able to call them if they happen to miss/skip a mission. It is also a good idea to either use an empty Linkshell, or create your own CoP static shell, which allows you to /lsmes the established times, with any side notes; items people will need to bring, list possible time changes and/or cancellations in the static for that particular week, that kind of thing.

The last bit of advice that I can give you is to be heartless, yet fair. It’s unfair and the static as a whole suffers if one person consistently skips your static for something else. You need to show people that you’re serious about finishing CoP, and warn them about their absences, and if that particular player still decides to ditch your sessions, then don’t think twice about kicking him from your static. There are plenty of people out there willing to fill his/her spot in order to finish CoP. As a little last note, remember not to be too hard on yourself. FFXI is a game full of hits or misses, and your static will have its share of misses, trust me. Don’t worry about this, and more importantly, don’t yell at people, as this will only make them upset. If and when you fail, remember that you failed as a team, so get up, dust yourself off, and succeed as a team.

Completing CoP missions is going to be very time consuming and difficult. Did you just get laid off of your job? Good, then this is a perfect time to start up your static! Just remember to set aside a chunk of your Gil dedicated solely to completing CoP, as there are many small items you’ll need to pickup along the way. Also, if possible, try not to sell your lower-level gear, as you’ll just end up re-purchasing it for all of the level-capped BCNM and Boss fights. Now it’s time to take in all that I’ve told you, breathe a deep-breath, and login to FFXI, knowing that you are ready to take on this massive feat.

Tags: Final Fantasy XI