Final Fantasy XI-Bundled PS2 Hard Disc Explored

Thanks to IGN PS2 for its article discussing a hands-on look at the U.S. PlayStation 2 hard drive, bundled with Final Fantasy XI, which launches on March 23rd for $99. The article notes: "What's the big deal? ...well, let's just say that the Network Adaptor was the first step for players to get online, and the HDD is the next step... But in the short run, the HDD really only has one main purpose, which is to get players online playing Square Enix's potentially enormous MMORPG." The drive also comes with other advantages, as it's explained: "Players... can copy data from the (SCPH-10020u) memory card to a folder on the HDD", and it's speculated (although this is unconfirmed), that "SCEA might give gamers the choice to save data with games that require HDD use to either [memory card or HDD].

Comments

PS3

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be applauding Sony if they decided to support this hard drive with the PS3. It seems rather late in the lifecycle of this system to be releasing such modifying components, so having the ability to carry it over to the next would be great.

Re:PS3

[Mad_Fred]

I was thinking about the same thing myself. Feels like either very few games will take advantage of this, or many games will and people will be forced to make a $99 upgrade. I wonder if games will require the HDD or just take advantage of it. And if they go the second route, will they suffer worse than average load times and stuff because they're really meant to be played from/with help from the HDD?

Such thoughts aside, I find this a good thing. After all, it's been said that the Xbox 2 will only come with a HDD if the PS3 does. And I like my storage space :-) ...

Re:PS3

[Madriiax]

ehm, well, FFXI requires it. and there are already games mentioned with downloadable content coming out. and with a 40 gig HD i'm sure Sony has some plans.

Double check FFXI...

[Anonymous Coward]

A little bird at Sony said that, since the PS2 HD is coming out on the 23rd/24th, and since you get a free month of FFXI, your free period will expire around April 24th. Your next month will run from the 24th until...the 30th?!

Is Square-Enix serious in charging by "months" as opposed to 30 or 31 day periods? Can anyone shed some light on to rumors that your FFXI subscription is NOT prorated, and therefore subject to a monthly fee for a full....6 days (for that first month, assuming you activate your account at the launch)?

Re:Double check FFXI...

[Creepy Crawler]

They may be profit-greedy, but they're not stupid.

If they charged by a "month", I'd wager that they would not count it if you signed up even 1 day after Month X, Day 1. If you do that, you risk pissing most of your gamers off.

Re:Double check FFXI...

[Anonymous Coward]

When the free month ends (30 days), you are charged only the portion of the current month remaining, not for the entire month.

Any services activated after the free month is up will be charged for the full month plus an activation charge. So if you want to activate additional characters or Tetra Master, do it early in the month.

Re:Double check FFXI...

[OnyxRaven]

At the end of your free 30 days, you will recieve a bill from S-E prorated from the time of the end of your free period to the next billing cycle. Then its business as usual for that.

I payed something like $3.21 for my first bill on FFXI.

Re:Double check FFXI...

[djdanlib]

I'll confirm this. That's exactly how it worked for me -- I started playing at the end of November and I paid some small change at the end of December.

Just my $0.02 for those of you who need a second opinion!

Re:Double check FFXI...

[Anonymous Coward]

They only bill for time the account is active. You cancel in the middle of the month your'e gonna get a bill for day 1-15, not day 1-30

It's a minor nit-pick...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but it releases on the 23rd, not the 30th.

Re:It's a minor nit-pick...

[simoniker]

Hm, you're right, according to EB, GameTab, and many other sites. I've corrected the summary, since the IGN article (incorrectly) says the 30th - not spectacularly good fact-checking from them, unless the date has been moved very recently.

Re:It's a minor nit-pick...

[djdanlib]

I thought it was the 25th?

Rats, two less days to level before the PS2 crowd hits the servers and starts asking for power-leveling...

Linux Hard Drive;

[polyp2000]

I've had a hard drive in my Playstation 2 for, must be nearly 2 years now. The only question is; will this hard drive be compatible with the linux one; Also , will other games support it? ...ooh and yes does this mean we'll see more unnofficial distro's for ps2 like black rhino etc?

Re:Linux Hard Drive;

[Lorien6]

I forget where I saw it, but I do remember reading it somewhere that newer games won't work with the linux harddrive...google it and you're sure to find it, I did it earlier in the week. So I think you're stuck on that point :)

Re:Linux Hard Drive;

[Futaris]

But surely the filesystem of the linux hard disk can be modified. Perhaps you can just dd the filesystem from the game harddisk onto the linux one?

Re:Linux Hard Drive;

[Moonpie Madness]

No it wont work with FFXI or any other proprietary game. You cant boot up w/o that memory card with the other hd. Sorry buddy, that's why that linuz hd just plummeted in price

Re:Linux Hard Drive;

[Madriiax]

does your band support reparations or something?

Curious

[Lorien6]

I wonder if FFXI or the hard drive upgrades will cause problems for anyone with chipped systems... Anyone know?

Shame SCEA took out compatibility

[Millbuddah]

The HDD would be a much better investment for me if more games supported it over here. From what I understand, many games released here have had the HDD save feature removed by SCEA. Anyone know if there's any patches that'll be available so that you can save to the HDD ingame? I know that Xenosaga and many other games had this feature stripped out when they crossed the pond.

Re:Shame SCEA took out compatibility

[PKFC]

Well, Xenosaga still has an HDD.IRX file on the disc. It claims to be a linux package (iirc) and also says that it can read ext2, ext3 and some swap variant. I'm very curious to see if it comes to life upon detecting the HDD or if it was just disabled and left there (talk about lazy).

Re:Shame SCEA took out compatibility

[PS2 INFORMANT]

I am fairly certain that the Japanese version of Xenosaga had no use for the HDD in that country (even though they have had the PS2 HDD for quite awhile now.) Thus I doub't Xenosaga will have any use for the device in America or anywhere else, would be nice though.

Re:Shame SCEA took out compatibility

[PKFC]

"Xenosaga Episode 1 - Installs to the HDD to decrease load times. Allows you to save your game and load it to and from the HDD directly so that you don't need a memory card. Takes up 1,792 megabytes."

according to http://www.sscorpio.com/~bungiefan/psbbn_faq.html

It even had two video files comparing load times with and without HDD support.

Re:Shame SCEA took out compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few games such as Xenosaga that simply have HDD access disabled, not stripped. FFX is another one. There are people who have patched Xenosaga to get it to install to the HDD.

Game saves

[Masem]

I don't play on getting FFXI (not very interesting in the MMORPG aspect), but I'm getting very annoyed at the fact that the PS2's memory card feature has not been improved at all. While an 8meg card is good for probably the average PS2 user, I'm trying to juggle cards around to find space for all my saved games; add to the fact that 50% of the PS2 games have no clue about any other memory card slot besides the first one (at least most RPG games recognize this). Even if the HDD was seen as a memory space for games outside of FFXI, you'd still run into problems with games not recognizing that it's there. I'd also love to see a PS2 card that can have a PS1 memory block partitioned off so that I don't have to switch back and forth when going from PS1/PS2 games.

The GC has a really good-sized mem card option (the 512 block one, yet to fill that for about 20-30 GC games), and the XBox has the hard drive which seems impossible to fill with all the Xbox games out there (and while that's gone in XBox2, the mem solution is much better than the PS2's 8meg card). It's hard to believe that the 8meg card can't be improved to reach 16, 32, or even more memory space without a bit of tweaking. I knwo there's 3rd party solutions, one that I'm using that requires a 8meg card to initialize to the PS2, but this really is something Sony needs to look into, particularly with the PS3 so far off on the horizon, and with games like SOCOM and GTA taking huge chunks of space.

Comment on actual article.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok i read this article yesterday, during which all i kept thinking was the fact that i stumbled outside of IGN and onto some fan kids website, The first page describes the actual graphics on the box...which there is a picture of IN the article plus everywhere else on the internet that is covering Final Fantasy XI for PS2. The second page consisted mostly of how easy it was to install...once again something i would know when i got it since it comes with instructions to install. I guess the article is following in the tradition of the rest of IGN which is just re-write what's on the back of the box so it's content takes up 2 to 3 pages.

Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[djdanlib]

Hey, I'd like to welcome all of you PS2 people to our world a little in advance.

We have worked hard to promote friendship, fairness, and community in our world. Please observe some basic guidelines of etiquette while you enjoy this beautiful world. It's not all "don't"s, so please read and consider carefully.

1) Don't cheeze. Seriously. That means: Powerleveling, botting (including fishbotting), using cheat utilities, purchasing and selling gil/characters/use of characters/powerlevels from anyone, and the extremely low and dirty tactic of setting Follow and going AFK while you're in an EXP party. This just hurts you because you won't learn to play properly, and might just anger a lot of people. Your reputation will be ruined if you try this - be careful what you do to save time. Oh, remember, purchasing anything in-game, using cheat programs, and botting are violations of the EULA. You don't want to get your future 75th level Beastmaster deleted, now do you?

2) Don't beg for money!!! There are countless people who know how to make gil (the FFXI currency) legitimately - ask around in front of your local auction house and someone will gladly tell you their favorite ways to make some fast cash. There is no real reason you need to get that extra 5k RIGHT NOW other than laziness. And expect us to laugh at you if you ask for money for a kit (complete set of equipment) when you start over with a level 1 job. Your old job can go stomp some newbie mobs (monsters) for money real fast.

3) You have all the time you want. The game doesn't end at any specific date. Don't complain about how you don't have enough time to make that last trip to get items, or level properly, or do quests for small change. Do learn to enjoy each session and be patient. You will be partying with the PC players before you know it, so hang in there!

4) Choose the name wisely when creating your character. You don't want to run around with some name you'll hate later - after all, who wants to have a name like "PhatL33TBuddha", "Sl1m3M0ld", "Somebody" or "TehSUX0RZ" after the novelty humor wears off? No, I haven't seen those names in-game or looked to see if they existed. I suggest EBON, the Everlasting Book of Names (sorry, no link), or perhaps some random name generating website. Oh, please don't pick the names of previous FF characters - they are almost all taken anyways. This is your avatar. Let it represent you.

5) Please set fair prices when you sell items. This includes all current players - don't abuse the new[bie] players' wallets. It's very tempting and simple to cause market inflation, but we trust you to have good judgment in this regard. And on the other side of the same issue, don't purchase things that are overpriced. It just encourages the greedy. Charge a reasonable amount for a teleport - and expect to pay for a teleport. Do not charge for a raise, heals or buffs!

6) When seeking a party, use the Comment field. You can tell who's looking for what kind of party by looking at the little colored dot next to their name in the search function, if any - and see what they have to say about themselves. The "Edit Comment" function is poorly documented but please use it and read others' comments. Japanese players who don't want to talk to English players, and vice versa, will usually say so in their comments.

7) Learn your role in your parties. This is very important! One puller, one tank, and one healer: these are the base ingredients for a successful party. Macros are the key to skillchains and magic bursts - discussing these are not a waste of time, contrary to what some impatient players will tell you. Listen to your teammates and stick together as a party when travelling.

8) Select subjobs wisely. Watch the interaction of the stat bonuses to see which combinations mutually weaken each other, and avoid those. No warrior should have a mage job subbed. At the very least, if you must sub a mag

Re:Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[djdanlib]

Oh, crap, I'm sorry.. I forgot to end the B tag in point #8.

Re:Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[shadowcabbit]

Hear hear.

the appropriateness and usage of the abbreviation/racial slur "Jap". (It's a degrading racial slur. Ask someone who lived in the USA before 1975, and use another abbreviation. I suggest J, JP, JPN or just typing it out.)

I've always used the country codes, like .us, .mx, .ca, .jp, etc. Most computer literate people know immediately what I mean and those that aren't that smart usually catch on.

You don't need a raise before you hit the mid-teen levels. Some would argue higher, but I'm telling you that's the absolute lowest you should ask for one at. If you get turned down, oh well - just ask more people.

I have to disagree. Ask for a raise anytime you remember seeing a WHM wandering around (WHMs over level 25, that is) or a high-level RDM (over level 38). It helps you out by saving you a few XP, and it helps them out by giving them a chance to build up their casting skills. Sure, it's expensive, but the odds are good you won't get turned down. However, yeah, there's a limit-- don't bother asking before level 5 (you can easily get the lost XP back in one or two good fights). Additionally, make sure that if you see someone lying dead and not respawning, you should shout for a raise for that person. It's the nice thing to do.

Charge a reasonable amount for a teleport - and expect to pay for a teleport. Do not charge for a raise, heals or buffs!

Good points. One other thing to remember is that the Auction Houses may not be the best place to buy or sell your stuff. Let's say you're overloaded with useless stuff and you want to get rid of it. Set up your bazaar to sell the stuff at a far lower price (say, 50% to 75% of what the AH's average bid is) and sit down near the AH. Then go get yourself a sandwich or something-- take a break, but DON'T LOG OUT. When you come back, about an hour later, the odds are good you'll have sold at least a few things.

And expect us to laugh at you if you ask for money for a kit (complete set of equipment) when you start over with a level 1 job.

If you've lasted long enough to get to level 18, you should have an extra 2000 gil or so lying around. The lesson here is either save your newbie equipment or get real good at selling at the AH. On a related note, you could probably do better at the AH than the newbie vendor on the prices for the level 1 gear.

Allow me to add a couple more points:

Crystals are a good cash crop. You get crystals by having your country's military cast Signet on you, either just inside the city gates or at an outpost your country controls. Use Signet! While under the effects of signet, you can earn crystals in areas that your country controls. Additionally, you earn Conquest Points that can be exchanged for goodies by your military. But the crystals are really important. They're used for item synthesis. After a while you might want to concentrate on the more expensive crystals like Fire or Lightning, and start donating the Earth and Water crystals to the military to gain rank points.

To get a subjob item, you MUST party. For the Mhaura subjob quest, the Bloody Robe (dropped by Bogys) is typically the hardest to find. (not sure about the Selbina quest) You're sure to find a group willing to fight the appropriate enemies at any one time-- hang out either at the town's gates or near where the monster spawns.

Do not be a dickhead. I think the Friday Penny Arcade sums this point up nicely. "Normal guy + anonymity + audience = dickhead". You will find that if you have a reputation of being an ass, it will be very hard to find a party.

Follow sensibly. I was in a party where-- no lie-- we all wound up going in circles because everyone was following someone else. It was pretty amusing watching two mithra, three tarutaru, and one elvaan all chase each other around, but we got sick of it real fast. Agree on a leader or driver and go from there.

Oh yeah, have fun, too. It's a great game, but most of these rules are pretty common sense, which is probably why they're most violated.

Re:Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[Psmylie]

One minor quibble RE: point #8...

Yes, you want to be informed as to the advantages and handicaps of your job/subjob combination... but, in the end, simply play whatever you want. If you want a warrior with a White Mage (which is really not useless, a couple of cures or cure2's can help keep the hate on the tank) then go for it. Learn how to utilize your class to the best of your abilities, you might find some hidden surprises in some combos that make them fun and interesting (although, maybe not the absolute best) to play.

Re:Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[Colazar]

Well, good luck.

From what I've seen, you could post something similar on just about any MMORPG out there (details altered to fit game specifics of course), it would all be a really good idea for everyone to follow it, and it would still be completely ignored by idiots/griefers.

But if you don't at least make the effort, then they've already won. So good luck to you.

Re:Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[JolieBlanc]

The Selbina subjob quest is typically acknowledged to be easier, as Ghouls are more common -- _but_ there's the added problem that it's the more popular of the two quests to do. So the Dunes are usually pretty heavily camped (or was while I was playing) and the other places to run into ghouls tend to be pretty brutal for your average level ~20.

Re:Letter to PS2 players (offtopic)

[Madriiax]

don't bother asking before level 5 Actually, you don't lose XP when you die under lv. 5

Maybe, probably not

[Artifex]

I'm hardly going to buy an overpriced drive in order to play a game with an additional monthly fee, or worse, throw out the game entirely just because I want the drive. Especially with a Playstation 3 due out in just a couple of cycles that will likely (hopefully, as this is old tech) be incompatible. But I've been interested in adding a drive to my Playstation 2 that games might see (instead of the ones that comes with the incomplete and crippled Linux sets) ever since it was promised, when the console was released, years ago.

However, according to the article, the utility disc will allow you to format the drive and run diagnostics, etc. Has anyone had experience installing a standard hard drive with the network adapter (standard IDE and molex power in standard spacing, just begging for this) and using the disc to get the drive working?

Alternatively, has anyone decoded the format and ripped the partition data from one drive to another? (Note to the gathering sharks: again, I'm not interested in copying the MMORPG, which would be understandably illegal. I just want my Playstation 2 to recognize hardware I install to work with games I have paid for.)

Re:Maybe, probably not

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't be able to use non-Sony HDDs without patches and a mod-chip.

Hmm...

[josh glaser]

I'll probably just get the PC version, because it's cheaper. But, like any MMORPG, the reason you play it is for community - can anybody who plays FFXI tell me if there is lots of people playing? Thanks!

Re:Hmm...

[DarthWufei]

There are tons of people playing, but it really depends on the server. There isn't really a barren server, just don't have many people. I believe Ifrit is one of the servers, but really, there's plenty of people there so you won't slow down any. Though are those huge servers, like the one I'm on, Ragnarok 3k-5k are usually online at a time, just about as many Japanese as English players, so hehe. Oh, and don't forget, if you don't like that server you're on, you can always get a World Pass to join another server, but make sure you do this early on as it will only you CREATE a character on another server, not move an existing character.

Re:Hmm...

[602]

Around January 1, Square Enix announced that there were 500,000 subscribers. Divided among 20-25 servers, that's about 20,000 players/server. At this moment, on my server, there are 2134 people logged in, which is typical. So, there are plenty of people playing.

One important point is that the PS2 players are going to need a keyboard. FFXI is a very social game; players will want and need to type to talk to other players.

Re:Hmm...

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

I've been playing the PC version for just over a week now. I'm on the Asura server, and after having just recently played EverQuest, this game world (or maybe just this server) seems almost barren by comparison.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people all around, but you're not constantly having to push and shove your way around like you're in a subway station at rush hour.

I'm not a big fan of anime (I like it, just don't LOVE it like a lot of geeks) and some of the in-game stuff is a little too "cheesy" for my taste, but over all I'm really liking the game so far, it's a welcome change of pace and has been a lot of fun so far.

Re:Hmm...

[djdanlib]

At off-peak times early in the morning here on the U.S. east coast, there are always at least 3,000 players on my server. Since the U.S. is pretty much 99% asleep then, most of those can only speak Japanese. So your best bet if you want community is to arrange your schedule so you can play well after the U.S. is awake and online - I've heard that evenings are best, but I have not been able to observe this due to my current work schedule.

Your World?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a clue.

Everyone pays thier 12.99 a month just like you..

Asking people to follow these "rules" you have laid out is like asking the Pope to go to a nudie bar.

Get ready for the unwashed hordes, because there is NO stopping them.

Re:Your World?

[djdanlib]

I assume you have never played this game, and have no idea what it is. If that's false, then you are a disgrace to online gaming.

These are not my "rules." They are the unwritten code of conduct that virtually everyone agrees with online, and countless others have posted just about everywhere else. There's a little bit of wise advice mixed in there in between the guidelines. Very little of this was a black-and-white Thou Shalt Do This And Not This rules document, and if you think about what I said, you can see why I would say it.

I don't know why I wasted my time writing this reply to an Anonymous Coward...

a selective reply

[Madriiax]

1) I PL my subjobs all the time. And I also think it'll be difficult for PS2 users to bot, which is good news. It would be impossible to run a seperate program while running the game. 4) I beta tested FFXI for PS2 and it had a name generator built in. Can't remember if the PC version does but you didn't mention it... I desperately encourage this to be used. 5) Hey, that's how economy works. If people want something bad enough to pay whatever you're asking for it, then the demand is obviously that high. If it took you an amount of work to get said item, then you deserve to get whatever someone will pay for it. At the same time, newbs aren't gonna have 100k gil when they start. If you want to make money, you have to price for what they can actually pay. A truly "outrageous price" won't sell, so there's really no problem with it. Strong economies aren't built on "morals". There are some other bias opinion-based rules in this piece, but I think they identify themselves, and people should be able to make their own decisions.