Final Fantasy XI Online Premier Site Summit
July 25, 2008
by Crystal "Pikko" Watanabe
It’s late night Wednesday and I am safely back home after attending a very informative and exciting day at the 2008 Premier Site Summit at the Square Enix Los Angeles office in El Segundo, California.
My trip began late Wednesday night as I’d requested a redeye in order to keep a decently consistent sleep schedule while still arriving with lots of time to rest up, meet up with Vana’diel friends, and prepare for the coming day. Mr. Pikko came along with me so that I wouldn't have to travel alone. Our flight was delayed and we departed half an hour late, shortly after 11 pm. Oh, the troubles of living in a tropical paradise.
Having all Thursday free to fart around was pretty nice. The Dark Knight in IMAX is pretty awesome, even if viewed from the second row.
I've known Thayos in-game and online for more than two years now and though I knew he was tall, I really wasn't prepared for the giant that stepped out of the elevator at the hotel. Normally I'm used to standing next to mainlanders taller than I am, but I didn't even make it up to Thayos' shoulders with heels on! I suppose this was his way of further immersing me into a real life Tarutaru role. We took a back to back picture to show everyone just how much of a height difference there was between us.
Susperia and Pachichachi, two Allakhazam community members I had met at last year's Fan Festival, were so kind as to entertain their Allakhazam admins yet again. Details on this part of my trip can be found on my bento blog, Adventures in Bentomaking.
We'd been given summit homework by Matt Hilton, but I'm a career procrastinator and had only tossed some ideas around in my head. I worked on the details for my ideas that morning and went to the hotel business center to print them before breakfast. At 49 cents a sheet, it was as if the hotel knew the potential and opportunity printed on those pages. As Thayos and I looked over the menu, we saw Ganiman come into the restaurant. He was later joined by Gahoo. Sokaku from Warcry was sitting behind us at another table. We were to gather in the lobby at 9:45, so when it was almost time, we headed over and eventually more and more site representatives arrived. There were a lot of new faces this year.
As we waited, we chatted amongst ourselves until eventually an Escalade limousine pulled up into the front of the hotel. Matt Hilton and Robert Peeler stepped out and with that, we knew the 2008 Summit was about to begin. They met up with us in the lobby and informed us that the first meeting was scheduled to begin at 10:30, so we had some time to kill. Robert did a little dance number for us and we talked a little bit about the day to come. Eventually we all piled into the limo and began our trip to the office.
With more time to kill, Matt and Robert took us to the other side of the building to show us the new sign they'd finally gotten for their building. Even though it's just a sign on a building, it was still pretty awesome to look at. I guess working in procurement as an office administrator can make you appreciate all the work behind something like that. I sure pity the person who had to work on the purchase order for that thing.
You may have seen it if you live in Los Angeles, especially at night, since they told us it lights up. Unfortunately, that rather large piece of building juts out and blocks it somewhat. We asked if it served a purpose or if it was just for design and apparently it's just for show. I suggested they tell people it's built with solar panels that power all the servers. Third row down from the top, two slots over is the power source for Garuda, so don't even think about throwing rocks at that one!
Matt told us that the area outside the building used to be where everyone would take their smoke breaks, but that they were eventually told to head further out and are now banished to a corner of the parking lot. As if on cue, Sage Sundi and Mocchi appear out of nowhere in said parking lot. Eventually they noticed that the entire Premier Site group was watching them and hastily turned around, then realized there was nowhere to hide.
The address sign for the building is actually pretty cool looking, so Thayos and I decided to take pictures in front of the gigantic 999 sign. To the right, you can see me in front of it. I joked with Thayos that someone would Photoshop the numbers to be upside down to prove that us Allakhazam people really are the devil. Now that I've said that, I expect it to be on the forums within an hour. Chop chop!
We headed back into the building and went up to the third floor and then gathered in the Alexandria conference room, which was where we met at the last summit. At 10:30, we began our first meeting, which was primarily an introductory session.
The first person to introduce himself was Global Online Producer Sage Sundi, someone who we are all familiar with. He told us that he's been with the company since 2001 and that he's currently working on global community management, the development of FFXI, and the development of Square's future MMO.
The next person to be introduced was Mocchi, whose current job title is Community Planner. His job is to communicate enjoyment and allure for FFXI, excite the community, and make players around the world happy. He works as a bridge between players and the dev team. Mocchi has been the guy behind such battles as Heroes Combat, Heroine's Combat, and The Gathering Storm.
Saori Hill from the London office was in attendance this year and she was someone I had not met previously. She is currently the Community & Service Manager. Her job is to coordinate activities and support the European players.
Yasu Kurosawa was introduced next. He's been with Square Enix since 1997, making him the "oldest" employee there. His previous jobs include monster scripting for Parasite Eve and Battle Director for Final Fantasy IX. His current role as North American Online Producer is to make us all happier.
Kenji Nakamura is a Community Manager and his role entails gathering community data, interfacing with the community, and assessing benefits to the community.
Robert Peeler (shown to the right of the TV in the photo) has been with Square since 2002. He's worked on many games including Secret of Mana, Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, and Final Fantasy XI. As a Senior Community Relations representative, Robert looks into the community climate, community promotion, and does event planning for things such as the Fan Festival.
Matt Hilton is a Senior Community Relations representative as well, someone the Premier Sites know very well since it's part of his job to keep the communication lines with us open. He's been with Square since 2001 when he began as a QA tester. Since then he's worked on games such as Final Fantasy X, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy X-2, and Final Fantasy XI. Matt looks into community promotion and event planning along with Robert.
You hang around Matt and Robert long enough and you begin to see just how much they work together. I mentioned the 80s cartoon Gummi Bears at one point in the limo and they were able to break into a perfectly synchronized Gummi Bears theme song just like that. If only I had co-workers who would do that with me. Instead I am left with people who say they will sing and then leave me hanging. I won't mention any names. If I did though, it might possibly start with X and rhyme with sodas.
Next, the representatives from the Premier Sites were asked to give a brief introduction of themselves. Susie Ford and Daniel "Sokaku" from Warcry introduced themselves first. Leo was there to represent Stratics (above photo on the left). Claire (Opalflame) and Josh (Hiryu) were new representatives from IGN Vault and they talked about how they've had to do a lot of work on the Vault database since it had been for the most part neglected for quite some time. Having gone through something similar with Allakhazam a few years ago, I could really identify with the task they have before them. Sven from Online Welten, who traveled all the way from Germany introduced himself next. Thayos and I gave a little blurb about our roles at Allakhazam. Joel (Gahoo) and Chris (Ganiman) introduced themselves as being from FFXIclopedia. We ended the introductions round with the representative from Jeux Online. Saori then let everyone know that Jeux Online was now going to be officially recognized as a Premier Site. Congratulations to them!
With introductions done, we went right into the next presentation about all the events that had transpired since the last Premier Site Summit. We went over the purpose of Community Relations, the definition of Premier Sites, benefits to both Square Enix and Premier Sites from the relationship maintained, and reviewed plans we had talked about at the '07 Summit.
When we left the Summit last year, I was very happy with the steps Square Enix was taking to create a stronger and healthier community. It made me feel more confident in them as a company and the relationship between them and the sites had definitely undergone a huge transformation. The only real downside of the Summit last year was that being the first Summit, I was a bit overwhelmed with everything and felt that I hadn't spoken up nearly as much as I could have on behalf of our players.
However, this year I felt much more at ease and this enabled me to bring my questions and concerns across without the previous feeling of being out of my element. This says something about what the Summit and the year that followed has done to improve the relationship between Square Enix and its Premier Site communities. This year was certainly no different in opening new doors and bringing up fresh ideas for rejuvenating the happiness of the players in the community. Some new things proposed by Square included assistance with promotions in-game with GM support for pre-approved events (separate from the player support mentioned at Fan Fest), sponsorship of prizes for contests run by Premier Sites, and recognition of Premier Site status.
We talked about having regular Q&A sessions at specific times of the year to provide a better flow for questions. The idea came up to have IRC interviews with the dev team with pre-approved and translated questions and answers. The IRC chat would merely provide a different type of delivery of the information for the community in order to make the players feel more involved than simply reading a press release about the latest answers to questions about the development of the game. We discussed various ways to keep the community excited about the version updates before, during, and well after the patches.
In closing, we went over the various changes that the Premier Sites went through over the past year. Allakhazam was up first and I was very much unprepared for it as I saw that The Mog House show was listed. I couldn't remember when our first show was! I'm such a disgraceful hostess! Even worse, I couldn't even remember what date we launched the Wikibase on. Luckily, Thayos was able to help me out in that area. With this meeting concluded, we began a tour of the office before heading out to lunch.
The reception area displays had changed since I had last been here and I saw a lot of really cool merchandise. Thayos is so tall that if he wasn't tilting his head over, he'd have been taller than the glass cases! Beside these glass cases there are lots of standing cardboard displays with games and posters all over the walls. My favorite one had to be the section that showed all the chocobo dolls. Being the mom of two toddlers makes you a little numb to stuffed animals, but these were just too cute. I found the slimes a little unnerving though. I mean really, what are they staring at?
The first place we toured was the PlayOnline Info Center. We'd visited this area last year, but this time entered through a different door. The supervisor Micah was a different person from the last tour and he explained to us a little bit about what they do at the Info Center, including account recovery! (more on that later) There was a gigantic cutout of Lion near a wall and I just had to get a picture next to her. I think she was actually taller than Thayos. Best of all, there is a Jack Ball on top of her head. I love those things! This makes Lion even cooler than she already was. I think maybe next summit I should show up with green and blue straps tied across my forehead and a Jack Ball pinned to my hair.
Next we headed to the GM room, but it was nearly deserted. From what I remember last year, the GMs start to come in at around 1 PM. We got to meet Ruth, the former Wedding GM. Last year she was the only Wedding GM and we didn't get to do more than a quick wave at her. She told us that she'd been training other GMs to handle weddings and so now she was doing something else and the responsibility no longer rests solely on one person. That was good news to hear! I can't imagine being the only person to handle weddings. Ruth was very nice and what made her infinitely cooler was the PaRappa the Rapper doll at her work station. Give her atittude in game and she'll Kick-Punch-Block you in the face.
We walked around the Community Team's office area where we saw Chiemi and Franko. Chiemi has the Tarut cards on the wall outside her office! We saw where Robert, Matt, Yasu, and Sundi work. I saw my batch of Brownies of Doom already open and dwindling, which was a good sign of their taste quality! I'd meant to bring Kaolian's Peanut Butter Cookies of Mass Destruction too, but ended up running out of time.
After the tour, we headed outside to go to lunch. Our limo driver got us lost and we ended up turning into a little shopping center. Matt pointed out where he buys groceries and does his banking. This is valuable stalker information we will keep to ourselves of course. Lunch was at a place called Salt Creek Grill. We ate in a room off to the side that had window panes all around and above, providing really great lighting. It's probably confusing to some as to why lighting should be anything to talk about but it made you feel as though you were eating outdoors, but with air conditioning. That's my kind of lunching area for sure!
Thayos and I sat across from Robert and Micah, who gave us more details on the account recovery process. Since account hacking due to attacks on the client itself is a relatively new problem, the tools and protocols for complete account recovery and rollback were not yet in place. When a customer calls to ask for their account to be restored, the Info Center representatives must manually go through zone logs to find out exactly what needs to be replaced and/or recovered which is obviously a very time consuming and exhausting process. He assured us that the tools for swifter recovery were being worked on and that account recovery should be a much smoother process once that is completed. This was great to hear!
We were also sitting at the same table as Sage Sundi. During lunch, we talked about the Mog Bonanza and RMT concerns behind the lottery. He filled us in unofficially but we were able to get a more official answer about the lottery during the Developer Q&A session after lunch. The next Fan Festival came up and I believe the answer to that was they are looking for a place to hold it. Sorry East Coast fans, but it sounds like this Fan Fest will be West Coast again. Still, don't quote me on that, it was just the impression I got.
Returning to the office turned out to be a challenge for the driver again. We passed the office once before turning around to get back to Square Enix. Once we were back upstairs, Thayos and I took our chance to have a photo taken by the sign in front of the elevators. However, we asked pro photographer Matt to take our picture and as you can see, he took our picture in front of ;QUARE ENIX instead of SQUARE ENIX. Despite this, rest assured he takes great in-game photos!
Once we were all settled back into the Alexandria conference room, the first half of the Developer Q&A Session with the Community Team began. Amusingly, Sage Sundi started things off by informing us that he had eaten too much.
When the first half of the Q&A had concluded, we went into discussions of goals for the year to come. The main goals of the Community Team are to excite the players and increase communication. We discussed having regularly scheduled Q&A events potentially distributed via strictly supervised IRC chat sessions and ways to increase the effectiveness of patch promotions. Premier Sites are now encouraged to request support for site contests or events in order to liven up the community as a whole. This led us to our next discussion about event ideas from the Premier Sites.
Each site was given a chance to voice a few ideas and we heard a lot of good ones. I had written up all the details on the ideas put forth but decided to take those details out so that the community could be pleasantly surprised by anything that ended up being held jointly between a Premier Site and Square Enix. Keep an eye out for events and contests! Their sole purpose is to keep you happy and excited about your community and the game.
At this point the conference room was needed to set up the XBoxes for the in-game event we would be participating in. We all moved down the hall and we passed another conference room called The Mog House! We pushed chairs into the Behemoth conference room (don't worry, he wasn't in there) and I headed back out to take a quick picture underneath it. That would have been the coolest place to host a live show of The Mog House! I wish I could have peeked inside to look at the Moogles, but the sign stated "Occupied" so that was out of the question. Perhaps this is where the MHMU discusses everything related to events!
The meeting continued as we discussed more community issues and other ways to build stronger communication lines between the community and Square Enix through the sites. When this meeting was over, we took a short break and then met up back in Alexandria for our in-game event, which turned out to be pretty exciting.
Matt announced to all of us that the Alexandrite requirement for the Nyzul weaponry would be decreased in the next patch and that the final quest for these weapons was going to be added into the game as well. This final quest would be a battlefield test. In addition to this exciting news, Matt also announced that the weaponskills we would be using with the weapons were going to be obtainable by players without completing a mystic weapon, something that definitely sets it apart from the current Dynamis relics. As if that wasn't enough, the development team had been working very hard to get seven Nyzul Mystic Weapons to work with their new weaponskills on the Atomos server for us to play around with. Each site would be getting an exclusive on a specific weapon (selected by Square Enix). Allakhazam was given the red mage weapon, the Murgleis.
Being a career Red Mage, Thayos was beyond excited about this unique opportunity. To be the first red mages in the world to use the mystic weapon and its new weapon skill was an awesome thing to boast. He said if the servers shut down the next day, he would still be happy because he got to use the Murgleis.
We changed a few settings, made a couple of macros, then went in to a battlefield with a very powerful TP regen ability to ensure that we could use the weapon skills over and over in a five minute period. Robert was kind enough to play our White Mage but apparently he is severely weak to chigoes as he kept dying. I laughed at this but then got my bachi when I volunteered to be the white mage for Leo from Stratics and died in the same shameful fashion.
We had all seen the weapon skill animation for Death Blossom in video promotions before, but to be able to actually use it was an extremely fun experience, especially when you could just use it over and over on mobs. Yasu and Saori came around as each site began their rounds of fighting and explained to us the added effect that the weapon instilled upon the user when equipped while using the weapon skill.
IGN Vault was given the Thief weapon called the Vajra, Warcry tested the Terpsichore for Dancers, FFXIclopedia had the Ryunohige for Dragoons, Stratics had the Kenkonken for Puppetmaster, Online Welten tried out the Death Penalty for Corsairs, and JeuxOnline had the Yagrush for White Mages. I got to see some of the other weapon skills in use and they were really amazing. I was especially fond of (for no particular reason...) the White Mage weapon skill, Mystic Boon. You can read more about it at JeuxOnline.
When the event was over, we all gathered around the conference table to go through the second half of the Developer Q&A answers with the Community Team. With that meeting concluded, the official business of the summit came to an end and we all took a short break to use the restrooms, take photographs, and chat a bit while we waited to head off to dinner.
Not wanting to spoil his reputation for taking the long route everywhere, the limo driver took an exceptionally long time to get us to the restaurant. He passed it twice trying to get us there and even pulled into a little gas station to turn us around. We ate at a yakiniku restaurant called Chosan Galbee. We have a lot of Korean food restaurants out here in Honolulu so I was pretty excited as it's one of my favorite foods and the cooking style is always a fun experience.
The president was there to eat with us, though I didn't get a chance to meet him until after dinner. Thayos and I sat with a different set of folks this time around, getting the chance to talk to Matt, Franko, and Sean on a more personal level. As always, they were a fun bunch to spend time with and with the meetings behind us, I'm sure Matt felt a little less stressed about everything. Or maybe not, but hey, we still had fun! I was happy to see that the restaurant staff was cooking the food for us; this isn't always the case. I noticed that the waitresses each had tags with numbers on them instead of names, which I found highly amusing. The woman cooking the food in front of me and Matt kept shoving her elbow right in my face, so I had to dodge her a lot. Talk about having a feisty waitress!
The food blogger in me came out and I tagged this picture that has absolutely nothing to do with gaming at all with an Allakhazam logo. The meat tasted great though, so I'm sure Allakhazam won't mind being associated with good food. More and more of it kept coming and we all started to feel sluggish. As the saying goes, though, there's always room for ice cream.
The people who chose vanilla got theirs first, served in martini glasses accompanied by tiny little spoons. I mentioned that I actually prefer to eat ice cream with little tiny spoons, but saying this of course meant that when the green tea ice cream came out, no tiny spoon was provided. I was left to eat my ice cream with the gigantic spoon provided for dinner. Franko and I joked that this was to hit people with to get the last piece of meat.
Eventually it was revealed that more food was ordered to keep us occupied while Kenji went back to the office to pick up their gift bags for us. In each bag were three of the nation key chains and a baby chocobo plushie!! Then they announced that, to encourage contests, each Premier Site was being given one copy of the Final Fantasy XI Piano Collection CD which was autographed by composer Naoshi Mizuda. Stay tuned for details of our contest for this!
One last course of fruit arrived and I was so bummed because I am a fruit fanatic, but had no room at all. We said goodbye to people, took pictures, said thank you, and piled back into the limo. We got back to the hotel at around 11:30 PM or so, meaning we were all pretty exhausted. Thayos and I hung out in the lobby with Daniel from Warcry and Claire and Josh from the Vault to post updates and highlights until 1:30 AM!
The events were fun, the meetings informative, and the company most pleasant. With the new event collaboration opportunities given to the Premier Sites, there are high hopes for an even stronger community over the coming year. I want to thank the Community Team and Square Enix for a wonderful time and a very successful summit. The staff here at Allakhazam hopes to do as much as possible to contribute to the overall healthiness of the community.
Full gallery of pictures; click for larger view.
 The Premier Site group in the limo. |
The Square Enix signage outside. |
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