Allakhazam.com: Final Fantasy XI

After meeting up with Pikko for a quick hello on Friday and hitting the hay, I awoke early Saturday for breakfast with the anxious Tarutaru and discuss what lied ahead of us. It was difficult to set anything in stone as we didn’t really know exactly WHAT was going to be discussed. We talked some about what was posted in Pikko’s thread and then discussed other things.

After breakfast, we decided to check on the forums to make sure Imperial Ninja didn’t kill most of you with Blade: Jin, which is when we bumped into several of the other premier site admins and Matt Hilton himself, in the flesh! We go, check the site, then return to the lobby and reunite with the crew and wait for the rest of the admins to arrive. Once we all gathered (with the exception of IGN at the time, as their flight was delayed), we headed out to a Hummer Limo. Needless to say, Pikko and I were ecstatic.

We finally arrive to the Square-Enix official office building after several P.Diddy jokes and a fright with the limo driver missing the turn and going in reverse in the middle of traffic (which became his theme for the day, to much of our laughter and (fear)). We were taken straight to the conference room first, which is called “Alexandria”. There, we were greeted with a HUGE wall thinger of one of the zones in FFXI. We chit chatted for a bit there and got comfortable, hoping that the two from IGN would arrive soon enough for the tour. Mocchi, Sundi, and Yasu ends up beating them to the punch and we decided to just go on with the tour without them.

The tour was fascinating, really; lots of posters, cut outs, action figures, plush toys, and dolls of several Squaresoft/Square-Enix games. It was eye candy for any SE fan, to say the least.We went into several offices/cubicles on two separate floors, which included meeting Customer Support, GMs, game testers, developer room, and yes…the president of Square-Enix himself. I’ll get into details about that later into this write up.

After the tour, we were greeted by the two IGN representatives. With that, we headed on over into the limo and out to lunch! We ate at this fancy looking restaurant who’s name escapes me, and I had Sage Sundi to my right, and Yasu Kurosawa to my front…

After lunch, we returned to “Alexandria” where the first thing that came up on the agenda was in-game events! They went ahead and made replicas of our characters from FFXI in the Atomos server for the event. While the names were different, I pretty much used my elvaan paladin with the whole valor set, sattva ring, a fully upgraded relic sword and aegis shield. Knights of the Round was fun! The object of the assault was just to kill as many mobs as possible within a 5 minute time frame. Two separate teams/assaults consisting of a party of three, one of them having a GM as a random toon acting as the camera man. (I truly mean random, he ran around as Lion, a moogle, a goblin, and I forget what else. Casting Protect on a moogle was amusing.)

While we weren’t directly competing against each other, we were trying to see who gets the most points. My team consisted of Pikko and Ganiman from FFXIclopedia. We completely stomped the competition. We owned all the way to the final match, where we went up against three from the committee at Square themselves. We beat them 33-20. Much laughter ensued.

“Alright, same strategy as before?”

“Oh jeez…they have a strategy? We should’ve practiced this first.”

Afterwards, us three and three more were to take on the Heroin BCNM as the 6 main jobs of the game (WAR, BLM, WHM, THF, RDM, MNK.) Matt was joking how the committee tried it the night before and pretty much wiped. Shanttoto is scary-wary when she 2-hours.Not scary enough, though! I played WAR and tanked while Pikko rocked WHM. Right at the last enemy (which was Ayame), she threw out a Benediction which caused the whole office to yell in anxiety. Ayame went down for the count and we won!

After the excitement and cheers, the XBOX360s were cleared out, and the meeting began. Lots of topics were discussed (which I’ll get into details later).

After the long meeting (which included a 5 minute break), we headed out to dinner. It was at this other fancy restaurant, but this one was primarily for seafood. Blech! I’m not a seafood fan at all, but luckily, they offered Filet Mignon, so I just took me that with mashed potatoes. It was good eat’n! Since that restaurant was close to the hotel, we decided to avoid risking out lives with the limo driver and just walk to the hotel, where we more or less just chatted the whole way through about random stuff. Really nice group of people; both the other premier sites and SE reps.

All in all, this was the best trip I have ever taken, and I was sad when it was all over. Everyone that I’ve met were down to earth and great people. I look forward to the next summit, which as Chiemi mentioned to me that night, will hopefully be for longer than a single day!

Now that the fun stuff is over, it’s time for business.

The Nitty Gritty

Through out the day, we had several moments to talk to the SE reps about…well…anything FFXI related. I had a lovely chat at the lunch table, and also brought up several points in the actual meeting. I will try to convey all the information that is both still fresh in my memory and within my notes in no particular order.

Windowed Mode

We were informed that the game got approved to be windowable. Most of the information that we know of this was already mentioned. I don’t think it’ll be available in the upcoming March update (which is the 7^th, I believe), but will be available via a patch. We will get more into detail regarding it as the information is provided.

Server Selection / Server Migration

It was asked if there would ever be the ability to select your server instead of relying on the world pass. Much to their amusement, this was already announced to be true as of Friday on PlayOnline.com. Adding to this, though, we inquired about server migration. They also plan on including the service. As of yet, they are undecided if there will be a fee involved in doing so.

LFP / Linkshell Community

It was mentioned that looking for party is a bore and a chore. Several points were brought up, including the ability to search as multiple jobs simultaneously. The SE reps seemed interested in the idea. This lead to the announcement that they are working on player searching via the Linkshell Community site. They jotted down that idea and will see what they’ll do with it.

Linkshells

It was brought up how linkshells are nothing compared to actual guilds. From what they mentioned, it was supposed to be JUST a communication tool, and didn’t expect it to turn into a guild thing, either. They mentioned that they are not really planning on adding a guild feature, but will see what the developer team comes up with anyway. I brought up how if a LS leader leaves the game, it sort of leaves the whole LS to either make new pearls or just hope the remaining sack holders don’t go anywhere. I suggested something as simple as making the leader’s pearlsack tradable, to make it easier to pass leadership to another member without having to recreate a whole linkshell and redistribute pearls. Mocchi seemed interested in the idea. Sage Sundi, of course, told me to put that up on the auction house while we were at it. (He’s a riot! Super cool guy.) Conversation then lead off to allowing players to enable a “bazaar mode” where one could be sent messages to

Rare/EX Drops

I brought up drop rates. This caused quite the stir as I ended up having all the premier site admins giving my argument a stronger foundation. My initial statement was along of the lines of how the feeling of accomplishment is diminished when the item you work so hard for doesn’t drop. I further strengthened the argument with a general example which was “imagine waiting for a 24-72 hour monster pop to finally arrive, go through an vicious battle to attempt to defeat the monster, only to get a Fire Crystal.” While they laughed at the example, they were visibly taken back some by the comment made. Pikko added that going through such difficult battles only adds unneeded tension to end-game and more-so would cause a player to just downright quit. I don’t remember who mentioned this, but another example brought forth was something as simple as Leaping Lizzy. You have people who are literally 0/15 on that mob, and the item is Rare/EX. It was further discussed that the drop rates of non Rare/EX items should be changed, as that would affect the economy. Sage Sundi turned to me and assured me that this will be addressed and that I (we) should expect to hear from this soon.

Puppetmaster

At lunch, I was able to have a one on one with Yasu. I mentioned to him that currently, Puppetmaster seems to be an awesome job with much potential to it. First thing that I was told is that while Blue Mage and Corsair have been properly evaluated, there is still much up in the air as to how they will take Puppetmaster, and that it was the last of the three new jobs that they will evaluate. Despite this, I pushed forward to talk about the job, in which he seemed highly interested in. I mentioned that it is a job with almost as much versatility as a Red Mage, but still limited. Limitations I mentioned was how the tank puppet is great, but can’t be cured (you can’t live off of regen alone), how the mage puppet has a Bio habbit nobody likes, and how it’s silly that while the game description mentioned that you have a mind link with your puppet, the puppet itself has a mind of it’s own. This quickly caused Yasu to turn to Mocchi and speak to him in Japanese (Mocchi isn’t fluent in English) and tell him of our conversation. I’m hoping that our discussion will cause some welcomed changes to the job!

Fellowship NPCs

Also at lunch, Ganiman brought up Fellowship NPCs. He inquired about the point of weapon upgrades as the damage seems to be the same no matter which weapon you give to the NPC. Yasu confirmed that the weapon itself is purely cosmetics, much like whatever armor your NPC uses. On the other hand, though, he did mention that the weapon types vs mob types ARE still in effect with your NPC. This would mean that a NPC using Hand-to-Hand would infact do more damage to bones than to say a NPC using a javelin against bones, to make one example. I brought up how I wished there was a way to control your NPCs actions, more specifically, to get rid of AoE weapon skills. I went as far as even using the Gambit System from FF12 as an example of an incredibly well thought out system. I also inquired about NPCs in Aht Urghan, in which he replied that they are still working on that. I mentioned that if there’s any area one shouldn’t be allowed to summon their NPCs would have to be Al Zahbi; imagine 700 players with 700 NPCs! Yasu laughed and fully agreed.

GMs/Customer Support

One of the general misconceptions that literally pains them and frustrates them is that they do not listen to their player base. Matt Hilton told us how he stares at his screen sometimes, reading the forum posts stating this, and he just wants to literally post an argument against it; but things aren’t that simple. Everything is a process to ensure the proper customer care is done. While Matt Hilton, or any SE rep, could speak on their behalves, they also represent Square-Enix as a whole, both with and without Final Fantasy 11. That in mind, he can’t post anything that he’s not approved of, as saying something false would make them, as a whole, look bad.

The myth of GMs being hired by SOE was obviously debunked as we entered the “GM Room” in our tour. We were able to meet several GMs, including the senior GM. A GM could easily go through 30+ calls a single day and average out over 8000 calls per week. More or less the same goes for the customer support line. Often times, people post that they reported a player to the GM and the GM did “nothing.” It actually turns out that whenever a player gets reported, that player goes through some research to make sure that the GM call has merit behind it. This is to weed out players who make false calls (which happens often. RMT even tries to do it to knock of legit players.) They are trying their very best to provide players with a better environment to game in.

Another GM myth is that EN GMs can’t handle anything with JP GMs. This is actually quite incorrect. They have a constant camera feed to the GM office in Japan (of course, also inside their SE office). Through that and various other tools that monitors the overall haul of the game, they keep a close connection to the GMs in Japan and will send any Japanese player GM calls to them, respectively (and visa versa.) While GMs seems to be a thankless job, they strive to continue to do their best to make the game environment as smooth as possible.

The Forums

Matt Hilton averages about 5 hours per day reading forums on all of the premier sites, and even non-premier sites. He restricts himself from posting for reasons already mentioned, and also to prevent the notion of –any- site favoritism that might or might not develop if he happens to post on any one particular site more often than another. I mentioned to him that it was much preferred if he would at least log in so that we see when he’s viewing the site, so that the player base could be at ease. He’s going to make an effort to try and be more active on the premier site forums, from what he mentioned to us. He definitely takes passion with the game and wants the player base to be happy. While he can’t really plop into every thread just to say “we’ll check it out”, I’m sure you all will be seeing more of him in the future, whether it’s via lurking or actual posts.

Random Tidbits That Were Discussed

-Vista compatibility is currently in the works and should become an available patch soon.

-No plans for a re-release of FFXI for the PS3, as the PS3 is already backwards compatible.

-No plans for Macintosh.

-All information that is to be announced is done simultaneously for NA, JP, and EU. They never intentionally announce something for just JP first then NA/EU. We mentioned to keep us premier sites in the loop!

-More merchandise and better advertising was advised. Currently, their commercials shows a random MMO, while Final Fantasy has always been generally known for it’s in-depth plots.

-RMT was not discussed. (We left the deadhorse at the forum.)

-They plan on holding another summit for the premier sites; this one better planned that would involve official player questions.

-We (Allakhazam) plan on keeping in check with them via e-mail.

-The grand majority of them all play FFXI in their spare time.

-Sage Sundi was embarrassed that the Tribunal wasn’t updated in a bit. He’s planning on working on that!

-The difficulty in finding certain features of PlayOnline.com (for instance, Feedback) was addressed.

-They have no plans to discontinue FFXI support or shut down the game at all.

-They do plan a new MMO. No information (at all) was given to us regarding this, but we were assured that this will not affect the continuation of FFXI. They plan to continue to expand the game onward.

That somewhat wraps up the meeting! Here’s waiting for the next one. Keep in mind guys, SE –does- in fact care. Send Feedback Messages and post on the forums! It’s the KEY way of being heard. Even louder now, that they’ve given us the tools to act as your loudspeaker! Hope you all had as much fun reading this as I had writing it!

(Take care.) (See you again!)