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FFXII News Coming At Square Enix Event
Gamespot is reporting on the upcoming Square Enix Summer gaming event at the end of July. From the article: "As expected, the most anticipated stage presentations at the event will be the two planned for Square Enix's upcoming role-playing game, Final Fantasy XII. On day one, series' music composer Nobuo Uematsu will discuss the game while showing off some new footage. The company will also be making a major announcement about FFXII."
You've got a slight point about FFXII being a .hack ripoff (although Kingdom Hearts would perhaps be a fairer comparison, as it's both older and also by Square), but personally, I'm going to wait and see.
Almost every installment of the Final Fantasy series has changed something about the game-world or play-mechanics from the previous installments. Every-time, we see the more short-sighted of the fanboys wailing about how this is the ruination of the series and how it's removed everything that ever made it worth playing. Personally, I take the longer view. Every time Square have changed the play mechanics, they've managed to create an interesting and enjoyable game, rather than "just another sequel". The only recent title in which they *didn't* significantly change things, but rather went for a deliberate nostalgia trip, was FFIX. This seems to be to be a title that's largely forgotten when people talk about the series these days.
Real time action done right is fun. Granted, it isn't my idea of what Final Fantasy is, but the games have gone from rigid turn based combat through to less structured delay based combat so why not realtime action? We've seen the begining of the end for the series before (VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XI have all been called that by people who didn't like abandoning squatty sprites, changes in the magic system, nostalgia-fests, voice acting, same world sequels, or online play respectively and I think it's safe to say that if V had come out in the US between IV and VI, fans would have complained about that as well) and while there are certainly people who prefer the older games (I'm replaying FFV at present and I've probably played FFVI through more times than any RPG other than Chrono Trigger (if you don't count Nethack)), but I doubt we're at the end of Final Fantasy. At least, if we are, we aren't at the begining of the end.
Now, then... almost at world 3.
Remember RFC 873!
Yes, but not a FF MMORPG; FFXII will be single-player. The new SE MMORPG is called "Fantasy Earth: The Ring of Dominion": http://www.playonline.com/fe/
It's planned for release this year in Japan. No plans for an NA release has been announced yet. According to SE, it will include "strategy" elements; your guess as to what this means is as good as mine.
Chris Mattern
No, they aren't going to replace FFXI yet for several very good reasons.
FFXI is less than 3 years old on the Japanese market, less than 2 years old here in North America, and less than 1 year old in Europe. There are very few Japanese players who have seen everything in the game, and even less North Americans. Ask any Rank 10 player how long they played to get there. Nobody wants the game to end, because you can only see so much in a day and there is a huge library of content in the game.
They just announced FFXI for the upcoming XBOX 360. Making it obsolete before it is released would be a very unwise idea. SE doesn't like shooting themselves in the foot - notice how they killed Square Pictures after one bad movie, and are also making games for Nintendo systems again. Also, if they release FFXI on the 360, we can expect another few expansion packs for it after that - and sticking to the one expansion per year trend, it's got some life in it yet.
The player base is still trending upward very rapidly, so you can believe they are still making new content.
Some people claim FFXI is dead and they're quitting because they can't have fun. I claim that their play experience was ruined by the multiplayer aspect, when they really wanted a single player game. Yes, folks, the game forces you to interact with other people in order to move through the storyline. Get used to it, that's what the second M in MMORPG stands for - Multiplayer. The famous nerfs, like DRG Penta? Those are for our own good... I don't like when someone can exploit a bug in the AI or game mechanics to gain an advantage.
FFXI is a great game without bringing my computer to its knees. I really don't care if I am way over-equipped to run it, I just want to enjoy the game - and I can.
They're actually quite easy.
So, if you have III, it's 1+1+1=3. If you have LXVI, it's 50+10+5+1=66.
Where it gets mildly confusing is when you have a lower-value numeral preceding a higher-value one, as in the case of IV or XL. In these cases, you read it literally as "1 before 5 (4)" and "10 before 50 (40)".
For practice figuring these things out, all television shows have a production date at the end (usually following the credit rolls). Present shows are easy (MMV -- 1000+1000+5=2005), but try those from the 80s or 90s. For example, MCMXCVII = 1000 + 100-before-1000 (900) + 10-before-100 (90) + 5 + 1 + 1 = 1997.
Hope I haven't confused you further.
But Maaa! Everyone else has a