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Final Fantasy XI Fan Fest 06

Last weekend the players of Final Fantasy XI attended their annual fan fest. 1up has a blowout on coverage of the event, with a rundown on the event's announcements, an interview with the development team, and a fan-fest edition of My Life in Vana'diel. Eurogamer was on the ground there as well, with some comments about cat-ear-wearing fans rounding out their coverage. From that article: "Whooping players, each hanging dry-eye-balled and pregnant-lung-ed with anticipation tiptoe transfixed. They swing on every word their creators choose to bless them with. Each announcement of gameplay tweaking and balancing, however mundane to an outsider (new spells for Black Mages! White Mages to be able to heal all ailments in one go! Warriors can now throw axes! Mog Lockers will be able to hold 140 items!) brings with it jeers or cheers from those players in the audience that will see their character's social stock increase or decrease as a result. Black Mages are to be penalised for questing in groups: Hell Yes! Hell No! All around players fist the air or stamp their feet in incredulous response to the microcosmically evolutionary pronouncements."

25 comments

  1. cat-ears? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

    Pics please! =^_^=

    1. Re:cat-ears? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

      neko mimi mode! ok.. yes, i'm a loser.

    2. Re:cat-ears? by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

      You're assuming that the cat-eared fans aren't balding, overweight men who wouldn't know personal hygene if it hit them in the face with a pound of delousing powder?

  2. xxxjonboyxxx by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1
    "All around players fist the air or stamp their feet in incredulous response to the microcosmically evolutionary pronouncements."

    That's funny. My customers react the same way to my products' release notes. Or at least they would if they ever read them.

  3. An Awesome Time by sarlos · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was one of the lucky thousand or so attendees there. It was pretty exhilerating seeing the future plans for this game. I uploaded all my pictures in a zipped file to my FileFront account:
    http://files.filefront.com/Fan_Festival_Pictureszi p/;4887263;;/fileinfo.html

    You can also browse some pictures uploaded to my xs.to account:
    http://xs.to/albums/114206161816073712224927.html

    Finally, I have a commentary I was updating semi-live on Allakhazam:
    http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10;mid =1141871674105963075;num=524;page=1

    --
    Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
    1. Re:An Awesome Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "It adds concepts such as "fun" and "enjoyable" which are unfortunately missing from FFXI."

      Too bad the WoW people forgot to add "endgame".

    2. Re:An Awesome Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that FFXI's endgame is worse - instead of 40-people raids, they do 64 people raids, and there are no guarenteed drops. (So you might kill some big boss monster and get nothing, while in WoW, you're guarenteed to get at least one Epic drop.)

      Not to mention that the FFXI version of Battlegrounds doesn't start whenever the queue is full, it starts at predefined intervals in a non-instanced area. If there aren't enough people when it's scheduled to start, it doesn't. Guess how frequently those games occur?

    3. Re:An Awesome Time by dbritos · · Score: 1

      Well i see you never played the game or if you did only got to lvl 40 max... the 64 max people events have alot of drops,the PVP is just 1 part and many many people play it every day. WOW = grind with furry people

    4. Re:An Awesome Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've played both. WoW offers no challenege at all, even when I could only play 1-2 hours a day. Level 60 in WoW? Oh, a few days. Level 75 in FFXI? A lot more, but you actually feel rewarded for the hard work.

      64 person raids? There's a couple 36 person raids and a bunch of 18 person raids currently in the game. WoW end game isn't rewarding. Sorry your opinion is different, but I'll stick back in FFXI.

  4. 43-0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone should write about how the Japanese Ballista team crushed their North American counterparts. 43-0.

    1. Re:43-0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      not everyone likes quiddich so much. =^^=

  5. WOWOWOW by mqduck · · Score: 1

    Each announcement of gameplay tweaking and balancing, however mundane to an outsider (new spells for Black Mages! White Mages to be able to heal all ailments in one go! Warriors can now throw axes! Mog Lockers will be able to hold 140 items!) brings with it jeers or cheers from those players in the audience that will see their character's social stock increase or decrease as a result.

    Why do we want to listen to a non-gamer talk about FFXI? All you WoW players know you would be just as excited.

    --
    Property is theft.
    1. Re:WOWOWOW by sarlos · · Score: 1

      It doesn't help that a lot of the information in this article is false... >.>

      --
      Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
  6. Wow what a weak description by falcon5768 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Mog safes where like a fraction of the important info there. The whole thing was a first preview of sorts of the brand new expantion, the new areas and quests its adding (like Assault) and the three new jobs they are adding (Puppetmaster, Blue Mage, and Corsair) as well as a first time announcement of the addition of Chocobo raising and racing in game.

    The job adjustments while good and bad (as well as not finalized) was just a small fraction of the plans for the future.

    --

    "Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."

  7. Subjobs by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

    "The team would like to create incentive to get people to try new, unconventional job combinations to see what's effective (i.e. Paladin without a WAR sub)"

    Like WAR/WHM? Ghetto paladin for the win!

    Hell, I'd just like for my Warrior to get party invites without having to sub Ninja. But it's nice to hear that they're thinking about tweaks to make my Paladin more attractive (instead of parties having to "settle" for me and griping about it all the way), especially seeing how @#^*ing annoying it is trying to get into a party to do any/all of the Promyvion notorious monsters to begin the Chains of Promathia missions ("No, ABC Fansite says we require party set-up XYZ. Unless you're a summoner or a ninja, you can't come.").

    In fact, I noticed the article touched upon the negative aspects of that previous expansion pack, any word on if they'll be making any changes to them?

  8. Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Soo... the summary talks about mundane details, but no talk about the expansion, chocobo raising/racing, new jobs, etc etc, no mention of the real interesting stuff? To talk to the ls-mates (guildmates) that were lucky enough to go, the whole thing was quite exciting, including live music performed by the Star Onions, I'm tempted to go myself next year if they decide to hold another.

    1. Re:Huh by zoips · · Score: 1

      FFXI has the luck of being part of the MMO whipping-boy crowd. WoW is currently god, FFXI is currently good for wiping your ass according to all the WoW fanatics. Zonk plays WoW, comes as zero surprise that the summary would take the tone that it does.

      I'm looking forward to how they implement chocobo breeding and racing. Could be pretty cool.

    2. Re:Huh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WoW is currently god, FFXI is currently good for wiping your ass

      6 million versus - what is it now? Much less than a million. I'd say that speaks enough right there - WoW is well over 10 times as popular than FFXI. Especially when you realize that WoW is popular all over the world and FFXI is only popular in Japan.

      Given that the vast majority of the Western world couldn't care less about some crappy Japanese MMORPG, I'd say the summary was rather good - it concentrated on the parts that people who're never going to play the game might slightly care about.

      I'm looking forward to how they implement chocobo breeding and racing.

      See, I have no clue what you're talking about there. If the summary talked about stuff like that, the story would be completely worthless, like the losers wearing cat ears for no good reason.

  9. Re:Is this slashdot.jp? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, keep it with the troll mods. Over nine hours now, and this will be the 20th comment on the article. I think it's pretty clear that no one in the English speaking world cares about some Japanese MMORPG. Look at the "conversation" that sprang up from this article. NO ONE CARES ABOUT IT!

    It's not trolling, it's stating a fact. Slashdot should at least try to post articles people care about, and it's quite obvious that this one ISN'T.

  10. Re:Is this slashdot.jp? by zoips · · Score: 1

    Eh, if you want to shit on the game, be my guest. I don't think we need your blessing to continue playing a game we enjoy.

    Good job.

  11. Re:Is this slashdot.jp? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who said you can't enjoy FFXI? Go ahead, enjoy your Japanese MMORPG.

    All that was said was that there aren't enough Slashdot readers who play Japanese MMORPGs for it to be worth posting anything about it. You're more than welcome to enjoy playing it, but it's just a waste of a Slashdot story since almost no one outside of Japan cares about idiots wearing fake cat ears.