The History of Final Fantasy XI/2005

Navigation Pre-Release & Beta 2000 - 2001 Release & The First Year 2002   The Rise of the Zilart Era 2003 The Chains of Promathia Era 2004   Conclusion of Chains of Promathia 2005 The Treasures of Aht Urhgan Era 2006   Conclusion of Treasures of Aht Urhgan 2007 The Age of Mythical Weapons 2008   The Add-on Scenarios 2009 The End of the Level 75 Cap 2010   The Beginning of Post-Abyssea 2011 The Level 99 Era 2012   The Seekers of Adoulin Release 2013 Seekers of Adoulin Conclusion 2014 The Rhapsodies of Vana'diel 2015 coming in the future! Back to the Main Page

Header Key     News Entry     Version Update     Beta Information     FFXI In-Game Event     Merchandise Released     Real Life Event in Japan     Real Life Event in North America     Real Life Event in Europe

2005 - Xbox 360 Version Announced, Conclusion of Chains of Promathia

In 2005 it was announced at E3 that the Xbox 360 version of Final Fantasy XI was under development. The Xbox 360 Beta test of Final Fantasy XI started in December, the same month the console was released.

No expansion packs were released this year, but the conclusion of Chains of Promathia's main storyline was released, as well as significant new content added with version updates.

Jan. 1st, 2005	Birds of Happiness visit Vana'diel
	A family of six birds - Bird of Wonder, Bird of Peace, and four Birdlings were released on Vana'diel. This event was much like the year before, where trading items to the birds granted temporary buffs.
Jan. 19th, 2005	Al'Taieu's first appearance!
	During an Intel-sponsored corporate presentation touting Intel's Centrino chipset, Square Enix staffers, demonstrating the microprocessor's ability to handle heavy applications, brought out Final Fantasy XI highlighting a new area called Al'Taieu. At this point, this area was highly discussed in the Chains of Promathia storyline. This confirmed that players would be able to travel to the celestial capital.
Feb. 11th, 2005	Valentione's Day 2005
	The first official Valentine's Day event, dubbed "Valentione's Day" in Vana'diel, took place starting on February 11th. Character's created before February 4th, 2005 were delivered a Inferno Crystal to their mailboxes. This was done in order to use in synthesis to create signed Love Chocolates/Truelove Chocolates for that special someone.	Mistake Delivery? As this was the first time that people received campaign/event items from "==MHMU==", many thought it was a mistake from an unknown person and returned the items.
Feb. 14th, 2005	First Largescale Banhammer
	Over 800 accounts which repeatedly violated the PlayOnline Member Agreement were permanently banned from PlayOnline. The violators were not RMT, but instead they were actual players who would form groups to monopolize the hunting spots of NMs. They also repeatedly performed harassment and MPK actions against other players.	The official announcement for this ban used the term "Grief Tactics". This caused players who thought that others were monopolizing their experience monsters or NMs to begin calling GMs more frequently and on a whim. Some of these calls were warranted, but many were unnecessary and petty.
Feb. 24th, 2005	Opening of Al'Taieu & Fishing Changes
	Further Chains of Promathia missions were added, along with opening the Al'Taieu zone. The region Lumoria was added, but is not subject to Conquest, so it was not added to the Region Info screen. More quests added centered on Chains of Promathia areas. Numerous Ballista system changes. "Multi-Ticket" Key Items were added for barges and manaclippers. The ferries between Selbina and Mhaura as well as the Airships were exempt from this. Mannequins can now be purchased from Fyi Chalmwoh after completing your first mannequin via the quest It's Raining Mannequins. Old mannequins could also be turned in to get a discount on a different race's mannequin. Forest Carp are now accepted for the quests The Rivalry and The Competition. The reward for turning in a fish for either above quest is now the same as the price when selling one to an NPC (10 Gil). ENM Battlefield system was introduced. Level 30 Cap: Simulant You Are What You Eat Playing Host Level 40 Cap: Bad Seed Test Your Mite Level 50 Cap: Pulling the Plug Level 75 Cap: Bionic Bug Follow the White Rabbit When Hell Freezes Over Brothers Holy Cow Sheep in Antlion's Clothing The record for the best clear time displayed when entering a battlefield now also shows the holder's name. When cleared by a party, it also now showed the number of adventurers. It is now possible to skip event cutscenes for battlefields that have already been cleared. (Event Skip) New Notorious Monsters added to Chains of Promathia areas. Morion Worm will now escape under the ground after a time has passed from commencing the battle. This would effectivly end the fight. The Merit Point system was expanded Already existing categories had their limits increased. Group 1 merits were added for each job. If a target from a Ranged Attack moves out of range, the shot will now automatically miss. This update highly altered the Shield system. A Shield Block would now reduced the amount of damage taken. Before, every shield block would negate all damage. The "Shield Size" system was introduced. Smaller shields would block more frequently but for less damage. Larger shields would block less frequently for more damage. Shield usage will now be determined after any evasio effects are considered. Flash and Blind were now different status effects. Accordingly, Flash no longer cancelled the effect of Blind. Banish spells now caused more damage against undead. White Mage - Divine Veil added, Raise III (Scroll) was made available from another source. Samurai - Zanshin added, Third Eye is no longer cancelled by Magic, Songs and Breath Attacks. The ability also now anticipate Multi-attack abilities used by monsters that target a single opponent. Dragoon - Super Jump was renamed for wyverns to Super Climb. The Artifact Armor Storage System was implemented. Several shops had new goods added to their wares for sale. Logging was now possible in Misareaux Coast, and the results in Lufaise Meadows were adjusted. Almost every fish able to be caught via Fishing was now sold to NPCs for half of the cost before. Alchemic Ensorcellment was added. Anima Synthesis cost was reduced to 20,000 Guild Points instead of 30,000. Cluster Core and Snow Lilly can now be traded. The Fishing system was majorly changed, and the "Left/Right" pull system was added. The search comment system was now divided into multiple categories, allowing players to specify what they are searching for. When entering a Mog House, the camera now always positions behind the character. Chat filters now became more detailed regarding NPCs. New Spells: Banish III	Shield Update The shield update took a lot of getting used to for players. It was a major change, but eventually became a very welcome one. Before this change, shields rarely blocked and Paladins would often try out AGI builds. Afterwards, Shield Skill became in high demand. The Kaiser Schaller and later on after Limbus was released, the Boxer's Mantle became staples of any Paladin's equip sets. Chat Filters Useful? The chat filter change now actually became useful. Players could specifically filter what they didn't want to see more effectively. Fishing Change Against player's wishes, the fishing system was changed in hopes of fighting fishbots. The new system worked for awhile, but of course new bots were introduced that could be used with the new system. Additionally, almost all remaining profit was slashed from selling fish to NPCs. Artifact Armor Storage The new storage system was very much appreciated by players, even though it was extremely limited. A whole set must be stored, so players could not only store "useless" artifact without also storing useful ones. Players often only used this system when changing jobs in order to free up precious space. It also cost 1,000 Gil when claiming your armor.
Mar. 1st, 2005	The Doll Festival 2005
	The event was held from March 1st thru March 14th. The stages and decorations returned. New this year were the costume rice cakes. Eating them turned players into little girls of the same race. Hume Rice Cake, Elvaan Rice Cake, Tarutaru Rice Cake, and Mithra Rice Cake.	Depending on party setups that were in the zones, players could recieve Sweet Rice Cakes from moogles. Sexism in FFXI? This was the first year that the costumes were added. This is an event based on the Japanese holiday "Hinamatsuri" (often called "Japanese Doll Festival" or "Girls' Day"). English players were very confused and didn't understand why there were little girl costumes, but no little boy costumes. A couple months later, the "Sword Festival" would take place revolved around males, and little boy costumes were added.
Mar. 3rd, 2005	Final Fantasy Entry Disk 2005 Released in Japan
	This disk included the base game and the Rise of the Zilart expansion. The PS2 version sold for 4,800 Yen (Tax Excluded) and the Windows version's price varied. This was the first FFXI Windows disk that was in DVD-ROM format. DVD-ROMs were rare at the time, and not many people had a DVD player for their computers yet.
Mar. 6th, 2005	iGames Tour 2005 Gardena, CA
	Final Fantasy XI joined in the iGames Tour 2005, and the first stop was at Gardena, California in the shop "Internet PC Cafe". The address was 1451 W. Artesia Blvd. #3 Gardena, CA 90248. The business has since closed. Events: 22 vs 22 Ballista match 40+ player Tarutaru run Q&A with Sage Sundi Free Play machines, allowing guests to login to their own accounts Virtual tour illustrating the world of Vana'diel Merchandise Store Picture booth with models in Mithra RSE FFXI Trivia and Raffles Q&A Session Transcript Intro Question: Please discuss the latest version update. Latest version update information Continuing scenario and expanded quests in Chains of Promathia Opening of Al'Taieu area (We have free play characters in the Al'Taieu area for you to explore and enjoy.) Addition of ENM quests A big change in the fishing system Further balancing of Ballista New wearable equipment Vault Question: Will there be more mid-level content in Promathia? Of course. We always take all character levels into account for version updates. For instance, this version update includes content for mid- and high-level characters. Empty Notorious Monster (ENM) quests have also been added. Vault Question: Will there be more dynamic NPCs? (For example, will beastmen ever invade cities?) Very much like the NPC escort quests, we are currently considering various events and quests where the player can join forces with an NPC. To answer the question however, we won't rule out the possibility of beastmen invading cities, but the development team is working very hard to provide something more entertaining than just beastmen invading a town. Vault Question: Will there be any specific changes to any jobs in the near future? Yes, we will be making changes and additions to jobs. The next update will implement new Job Abilities and adjustments for the Samurai and White Mage jobs. We do have plans to continue to adjust and add new elements to widen the appeal of game play for different jobs. Vault Question: Will there be more options/features that will enable character avatars to be more unique? We don't have nay plans of adding more features in this area since this is due to the memory limitations of the PlayStation®2. Vault Question: Are there any plans to raise the level cap and balance out the game structure along with it? We currently don't have any plans to raise the level cap for the game. Currently a character is differentiated by vertical character development (leveling up), battle strategy, available equipment and Merit Points, not to mention the constant game balance that is done. Of course, if the game reaches a point where it warrants a level cap raise, we will consider it. Vault Question: Will there be any solutions to over-camped HNMs? In the previous December and February updates, we've made changes in spawn requirements and loot drop ratio. Not only did we change things at the system level, but from a support stand point we've started to aggressively enforce rules and policies to players who cause grief by camping these HNMs. We'll continue to analyze player behavior and make sure that all issues are addressed. Vault Question: What is the next step for PvP? In regards to the conflict PvP, we are planning to implement a new system different from the current Ballista matches. We can't give any details, but we did take in the most common feedback we've had from the players of having a much "smaller battle"... Audience Question: Will there be more of a "guild" like feature (linkshell) in the game? No new plans at the moment. There may be a new design within PlayOnline that won't limit this feature to FINAL FANTASY XI. Audience Question: Will there be any official information available for character stats and their correlation? It's an aspect of the game design we are currently considering to make changes in. From a technical stand point, it's not a difficult task. Other MMO titles provide similar services, each having a unique method in how the information is provided. Square Enix would like to consider alternate ways in being able to present this type of information depending on play style. Perhaps utilizing the web or even mobile phones can give birth to an entirely new way of game play that can be attractive and fun. Audience Question: How will Square Enix resolve the issue with the lack of the HDD compatibility with the new model PlayStation 2? Millions of the older model HDD-compatible PlayStation 2s are still available and we will continue to support them. Picking up a used or refurbished model is currently the best solution. Audience Question: Will there be any steps taken to manage the gil inflation in game? Gil inflation is a huge factor in making the game enjoyable for everyone. We can't explain any specifics at this time, however we do have detailed ideas on how to balance out inflation within the game. We do have long term plans to continuously improve the balance of economy. Vault Question: Will FFXI be more solo-friendly like other MMORPGs? To keep up with the diversified play style of each player, we are always creating and adjusting the game to accommodate everyone. We do want to clarify that we won't be taking away from the current game play, but rather introducing new ways to play the game by presenting new elements to the game. We won't rule out this factor. Vault Question: Will there be any new weapon types made in the game? There are possibilities, although I will add that a new weapon type will bring forth balance issues with other jobs and battles making it a difficult factor to add. Vault Question: Will FFXI be making any adjustments with the upcoming release of Fantasy Earth? FINAL FANTASY XI will remain what it is and other titles will not affect its direction. PlayOnline was always designed to support multiple titles and therefore does not require each individual title to be adjusted. Vault Question: Will there be a new expansion coming? This is undetermined at this time. Vault Question: Will there be an official FFXI forum? We have no plans at the moment. However, we are planning to make posts on one of the premiere sites soon. Audience Question: Is there anything Square Enix can do to fix the lag between the servers in Japan and the North American players? Our technical team has done comprehensive network testing to verify network hops as well as extensive ISP testing. We have data that confirms that there is no difference in lag between players in North America and Japan. Audience Question: Will there be Nomad Moogles in other areas? It's a good idea. We'll take it into consideration. Audience Question: Can you tell us about the new fatigue system for fishing? The new system was recently introduced so let's give it a try and see how it goes. Audience Question: Will there be any new low to mid-level items that stands out from the rest? There are no plans to make any additions of items in the mid- to low-level range that stand out form the rest. The reason behind the similarity between items in the low- to mid-range levels is to distinguish the unique higher level players from the masses. Audience Question: Will there be any adjustments made to alchemy weapons so it will have a higher ratio of proc? This is where we need everyone's help in collecting data. Adjustments will be considered after thorough investigation so all of your feedback is important. Audience Question: What can I do to help stop gil seller activity? Simply not advocating or taking part in any activity that goes against the rules and policies is the best you can do to help create a fun playing environment in Vana'diel. Vault Question: Will there be region specific servers? (EU, NA, JP, etc...) We have no plans to create region-specific servers. The reasoning behind our decision is that FFXI is a cross-platform, or rather an open platform architecture where content is provided to the users without boundaries making it possible to reach a community on a global scale. From a service provider perspective, being able to deliver content globally, we can take advantage of the different time zones and reduce data center costs. This also allows the servers (game worlds) to be continuously populated by players around the clock. As a result, we can provide an extremely high level of service at a lower cost. The auction house service has advantages where the in-game economy overcomes the language barrier and creates a thriving economy 24 hours a day. Vault Question: Will FFXI be playable in windowed mode (PC) We currently have no plans for this. Vault Question: Will there be world/account transfer services? We are considering the future possibility of character transfers between worlds and accounts. Understanding everyone's play styles and their situation is important in making the appropriate decision in when we do implement it. But we are also making sure that any character sales actions cannot be exploited in the system. Vault Question: With the recent ban of 800 accounts, will Square Enix continue to take timely actions for future incidents? We at Square Enix will not permit any behavior that causes any grief towards other players. We enforce our rules and policies daily to discipline or ultimately terminate accounts of those players that cause such grieving to other players. Any behavior that goes against our rules and policies will be strictly dealt with. Vault Question: How long do you plan to add content to FINAL FANTASY XI? We at Square Enix will continue to provide content to our customers as long as they continue to play FFXI Audience Question: Will there be more vocabulary added to the translation feature? Yes. We also require feedback from you the players in order to make an appropriate change. Audience Question: Do you plan to make any changes in spawn times for monsters? If a change is required, we will consider it. Again, feedback from you the players is important in making such changes. Audience Question: Will there be more Job Abilities added for the Bard and Summoner jobs? We will be adding new ways for players to obtain new Job Abilities, not limited to the Bard and Summoner. Audience Question: Will there be any Throwing Weapon Skill added in the future? Though we can's disclose any details, we will be adding new ways to obtain Weapon Skills and Spells for higher level players. Audience Question: Does the direction you are facing take any affect when you synthesize? It may depend on what you're synthesizing ;) Audience Question: Will there be any updates planned for FINAL FANTASY XI with the coming release of the PlayStation 3? No comment. Audience Question: Below are notes from comments we have taken that players would like to see implimented in the game. More options for the search feature Addition of Paladin exclusive spells Invite other players to the Moogle house Addition of Gods to the new Al'Taieu area New playable extra jobs Futuristic twists such as Gun Mages New forms of transportation
Mar. 26th, 2005	Egg Hunt Egg-stravaganza 2005
	Following the previous year, the Easter Egg Hunt event was held from March 25th to April 4th. The event itself was the same as 2004, except that three new Furnishings were added: Lamp Egg Wing Egg Flower Egg
Apr. 14th, 2005	Part I:The First Return Home to Vana'diel Campaign
	The first ever Return to Vana'diel campaign was held from April 14th thru July 13th. This first campaign allowed players whos characters were deleted to be recovered. Furthermore, a new registration code could be obtained during this campaign. Nowadays, characters are not deleted unless physically done so within the game.
Apr. 14th, 2005	The First DDoS Attack
	The same day that the Return to Vana'diel campaign took place, the first ever DDoS attack was executed against Playonline's servers. Countermeasures were taken, but this attack still made it difficult to log in to Playonline for several hours.
Apr. 21st, 2005	EXP TNLs Standardized & ENM Expansion
	The Hu'Xzoi and Ru'Hmet areas in Lumoria were opened. New Chains of Promathia Quests were added. Ballista expanded, and Diorama Abdhaljs-Ghelsba was opened. The Armor Storage NPC introduced in the previous update can now also store popular low level armor sets. Clamming expanded on Purgonorgo Isle. Harvesting and Mining could now be done in the following areas: West Sarutabaruta Newton Movalpolos Giddeus The Marble Bridge coaster Key Item was added. This item tells players who zone into Upper Jeuno if your welcome inside on that day. The quest In the Name of Science was expanded in accordance with the new zones and new monster families added into the game. Inside the Belly expanded, and more fish were accepted by Zaldon. Experience Points required for levelling up after level 51 was standardized, instead of the random amounts before. Overall, this lowered the experience points required to reach 75. New ENMs added: Like the Wind, Shell We Dance?, Totentanz, Pulling the Strings, Automaton Assault, Fire in the Sky, Bugard in the Clouds, Beloved of the Atlantes New Notorious Monsters added in CoP areas. Mannequins can now be posed with the following emotes: /sit, /salute (all nations), /hurray, and special race specific poses. Guilds now sold the Synthesis Image Support belts. New Fishing rods added. The Relic Shields involved with obtaining the Aegis Relic Weapon were added. Confirmation messages were added when purchasing items from another player's Bazaar. The "Tired" system was added to Fishing and after being Raised. This is a delay between casting your line again and after accepting a raise. New Spells: Army's Paeon V	Relic Shield The Aegis and the related relic quest were added in this update. Naturally, they used the expansion pack area Lufaise Meadows for the Amaltheia fight. When the other relic weapons were released, only Rise of the Zilart was out. Players were surprised with the multiple currency types needed to upgrade the weapon. Speculation was that the final stage was a random Dynamis currency type for each player. After a few players reached this stage it was discovered that it is always an R. Goldpiece.
Apr. 28th, 2005	Feast of Swords
	The first ever Feast of Swords event took place, and became an annual Vana'diel event. Players had to receive the Wooden Katana from a moogle, and be restricted to level 1. The goal was to attack the Samurai NPCs named Tatenashi Armor, Tukukazazu Armor, Ubuginu Armor and Hachryu Armor. They were placed around the three kingdoms. After attacking them to a certain extent, you had to report back to the moogle. Rewards included: Hume Mochi Elvaan Mochi Tarutaru Mochi Galka Mochi If players kill one of the Samurais, they received the Hardwood Katana.
Apr. 28th, 2005	Ballista Royale
	An official announcement was made on the Playonline website regarding Ballista Royale. The event was a Ballista championship. There was both a North American and a Japanese championship held.
Apr. 30th, 2005	iGames Tour 2005 Oahu, Hawaii
	The next stop on the iGames Tour 2005 was at "PC Gamerz" in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. The address was 99-082 Kauhale St, Suite D-2, Aiea, HI 96701. Events: Boss Battle Bash (See more below) 40+ player Tarutaru newbie marathon Q&A with Sage Sundi Free Play machines, allowing guests to login to their own accounts Virtual tour illustrating the world of Vana'diel Merchandise Store Picture booth with models in Mithra RSE FFXI Trivia and Raffles PC Gamerz in Aiea, Hawaii was the first battleground for the live FINAL FANTASY XI event, the Boss Battle Bash! This event was the perfect opportunity for friends and linkshells to meet up and demonstrate their elite skills in front of a live audience. A victory against one of the brutal bosses earned teams fame and fortune, while a defeat will force you to refine your tactics and try again another day. The rules of the event were as follows: Create a team of 6 people at the event. Decide on player jobs, team name, and boss to battle. Head to the event desk to register your team. Give the event desk receptionist your team information. Receive your team's approximate play time. At the appointed time, follow your escort into PC Gamerz. Set up your macros and buff for battle. You're given 5 minutes! Beat your opponent within 15 minutes to win the prize! Note: This event took place on a private server with premade characters. Participants must have been in attendance at the local event to participate. Limited race availability and no duplicate jobs in a team were allowed. Boss Name Prize Dark Dragon Level 25 Characters Dear Friends Pamphlets Time Bomb Level 50 Characters FINAL FANTASY XI Atlas or FINAL FANTASY XI Game Simulant Level 30 Characters 1 Square Enix Game (Limited to availability) Playing Host Level 30 Characters 1 Square Enix Game (Limited to availability) Dvorovoi Level 40 Characters FINAL FANTASY XI T-Shirt Helltail Harry Level 40 Characters FINAL FANTASY XI T-Shirt Osschaart Level 75 Characters Logitech Coordless Rumblepad 2 Controller Evil Oscar Level 75 Characters Logitech Speakers Ouryu Level 45 Characters Nvidia Geforce 6800 ULTRA ??? Level 70 Characters Intel Motherboard and CPU Q&A Session Transcript (Tanaka) General Updates Ballista specific area We've introduced a player defined Ballista area in the latest update. The new Ballista system will allow players to define rules and number of participants. New wearable equipment Once again we've made additions to wearable equipment with this update. We've also added new synthesis recipes and rewards for guild points. Others New mannequin poses, more ENM quests, changes in clamming, and new items for collection and mining. >>>Mid level players Reduced experience points for leveling We've made adjustments to the amount of experience required for levels 51 and higher.The amount required to gain the NEXT level as well as the amount of experience lost from death has been reduced. >>>High level players Newly opened areas Two new areas, Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi and Garden of Ru'Hmet have been added. You can encounter new life forms in these new areas. (Allakhazam) How much of the game is affected by elemental direction? Does it affect synthing? Magic? skill-ups? (Tanaka) Yes, of course direction does take affect. There are two types of elemental effects, one being normal and the other being an extreme condition that will directly take affect on battles. As for synthsis, I have no comment. Try them out for yourselves and let's see what happens. (Allakhazam) Are there going to be any newer, more unique ways of transportation? so far, we have teleports, chocobos, flee, and warp. could you possibly add some kind of movement reward for the players who have hit 75? (Tanaka) There's plenty of room for designing this area and we're always thinking of something. We'd like to hear your input so we can continue to improve these areas. (Open Question) Will FINAL FANTASY XI support an official RMT system? (Sage Sundi) We understand that other MMORPGs have taken a step to openly trade virtual items for real money. However for FINAL FANTASY XI, we have a End User License Agreement that clearly prohibits any RMT activities. Also, the game isn't designed to adapt to such system and therefore we have no plans to make RMT official to the game. We believe that the competition has embraced this system to eliminate the RMT organizations, but we'll take our stance by continuing to fight RMT. (Allakhazam) What was the hardest part in designing the graphics for FFXI? (Aiba) Vana'diel is such a vast world that being able to create something out of nothing and populating the owrld with so much content was the most difficult task I had in graphics (Allakhazam) Do they plan on adding any additional Avatars/Summons? (Tanaka) We don't have any comment at this time, however there are still many summons from the FINAL FANTASY series that have not made an appearance yet, so look forward to what's to come. (Open Question) Will FINAL FANTASY XI ever support queueing of macros? (Tanaka) It's possible to add such a feature. This feature basically affects character status and with that in mind having such macros can introduce new issues like lag that can create an imbalance between people. If we can manage to create such a feature that can fit into the current macro system where the macro duration isn't too long, it can be possible. (Allakhazam) This is the most far fetched suggestion I have but here goes. Can we buy a little stand that allows us to set a shop up in towns, that way we can sell more then what we have in our bazaar^^ I would like to open a shop in town. (Tanaka) From an overall game balance and economic impact, we need to be able to control the number of items a single player can carry at once. We've taken incremental changes in this area by increasing the number of items a player can carry through quests and items. The idea of having a bazaar stand is quite interesting, perhaps we can somehow use this idea for a future event. (Allakhazam) Was there anything special that you put into the graphics of FFXI? Something that you might have payed special attention to? (Aiba) Creating each area in FINAL FANTASY XI was difficult, but the one thing that I consider special is a floating island called Tu'lia. (Open Question) How do you plan to deal with players who use packet sniffing? (Sage Sundi) If a player is using some type of packet sniffing tool they're still required to be present at the location to be able to do that like any other player, so at the moment we have no plans on pursuing to nullify this behaviour. (Open Question) What's "The Return Home to Vana'diel Campaign - Part I" ? (Sage Sundi) This campaign focuses on players who have quit PlayOnline and want to return to Vana'diel for a limited time. During this campaign we will issue both PlayOnline and FINAL FANTASY XI registration code for no charge and your character will be restored to when it was last activated. For the first character, we will additionally provide free play until the end of the month from when you return. Part 2 will be for players who have quit FINAL FANTASY XI but still have a PlayOnline account. (Open Question) What's "Vana'diel Adventurer Recruitment Program" ? (Sage Sundi) This is a new campaign for friends of players who have not experienced FINAL FANTASY XI with attractive incentives. If you invite a friend to Vana'diel and play for a given amount of time, both the inviter and the invitee will receive unique in game gifts only attainable through this campaign. An example of one of the many items given will be an item that can be used so that the two players of different levels can adventure together and gain experience points. The campaign will start on 5/10 (PDT) (Allakhazam) Kind of a simple question, will SE be implementing a live chat feature for Linkshells or Parties? You know what I mean, the head set thing that can be plugged into a USB so people in the PT or LS can talk to each other rather than type. (Tanaka) For XI, there are issues with harassment that require us to track text log for verifying ingame activities so at the moment we have no plans to add this feature. If we were to implement such feature, we would apply it to a title such as Front Mission Online where data is exchanged between a P2P network. We also believe that from a role-playing aspect it doesn't appeal as much, I mean a husky male voice coming out from a Mithra or a Tarutaru or a high pitched voice from a Galka would be quite strange. (Open Question) Why can't Moogles take items back and forth to the Moogle house for you? (Sage Sundi) Moogles are basically house sitters that takes care of needs within the house. Moogle affinities are also inherent to only within the home as well, therefore the work the Moogle does stays inside the house at all times. (Open Question) Will there be more a variety combination of main and support job combinations? (Tanaka) Players choose the most efficient combination in jobs for battles. This is a tactical issue and job combinations and party structure will fall into a certain type. We've added the Merit system that could broaden the job combination and game play that players want, but we're always trying to make improvements. (Open Question) Will there be any other PvP options than Ballista battles? (Tanaka) I've mentioned the new Ballista area that we've introduced, but we are also thinking of a new PvP system based on what we are gathering from what the players want. This system will be a conflict PvP that will focus on smaller number of players that you can look forward to. (Allakhazam) What's one aspect of FFXI that you are happy with? (Aiba) Every idea starts off small and then is projected onto this world called Vana'diel. My happiness is when my designs are experienced by players and their enjoyment. (Open Question) Will there be any interface for FINAL FANTASY XI between the PSP? (Tanaka) I'll answer this in a two part answer. As for creating a PSP version of XI, it would be extremely difficult for the device to handle the update data since this is an online game. Unless the device has this capability, it wouldn't be fun to play any online game. Secondly, if we want expanded features on the PSP, it's quite possible. We would have to hear what these featuers should be from you the players, so keep those ideas coming in!
May 8th, 2005	5th Vana'diel Census
	In addition to the regular points of interest, items with high auction rates as well as Synthesis Skill distribution were listed.
May 11th, 2005	Adventurer Recruitment Program
	The Gold World Pass was introduced. This pass allowed players to join the world of the player who provided the pass, and rewarded the special items Guide Beret and Sprout Beret to the recruiter and friend.	The Guide Beret and Sprout Beret used to have different stats. After the implementation of Level Sync, they both became quite useless. Guide Beret Enchantment: Restrict level to match Sprout (Sprout must be level 50 or less) <1/1 0:30/[30:00, 0:30]> Sprout Beret Enchantment: Remove level restriction on Guide <1/1 0:30/[10:00, 0:30]>
May 13th, 2005	Third Annual Aventurer's Appreciation Campaign
	The campaign was held from May 13th thru May 30th. Speaking to Moogles in the three nations would once again display character statistics. New this year were the Homing Ring and Return Ring.	Due to popular demand, these rings were later added to the Adventurer Recruitment Program in July of 2005.
May 17th, 2005	Final Fantasy XI for Xbox 360 announced at E3 2005
	During the Microsoft Press Conference at E3 2005, Final Fantasy XI was announced for Xbox 360. It would be Xbox's first MMORPG. The Xbox has never done as well with sales in Japan as it has in North America. The Xbox 360 version announcement was well received in North America.
Jun. 7th, 2005	Part II: The First Return Home to Vana'diel Campaign
	Part II allowed players who dectivated their Playonline IDs but not terminated their Playonline membership account an opportunity to return to Final Fantasy XI.
Jun. 7th, 2005	World Emigration Application
	Due to the overpopulation of certain Worlds, the opportunity was given for certain high population worlds to emigrate free of charge to other less populated worlds. The worlds eligibe were as follows: Applicable Worlds for emigration to Midgardsormr: Shiva, Valefor, Caitsith, Sylph, Ragnarok Applicable Worlds for emigration to Remora: Bahamut, Odin, Siren, Unicorn, Gilgamesh, Asura Applicable Worlds for emigration to Hades: Phoenix, Carbuncle, Fenrir, Ifrit, Diabolos, Fairy
Jul. 19th, 2005	The Game Changer
	The conclusion to the Chains of Promathia story was impelemented. Adventuring Fellows were added. Four quests allowing adventurers to obtain specialized beastmaster hats were added: A Generous General? A Moral Manifest? An Affable Adamantking? An Understanding Overlord? The fortune teller Emila was added. Titles undergone adjustments: Gil cost to change titles was lowered. Does not cost gil anymore to check available titles. NPC Bards now sang out the title of the adventurer in /say when a player changes it. A random title can now be chosen free of charge once per Vana'diel time. NM titles now available in Kazham and Rabao. The chocobo riding delivery quest was implemented. The Return Ring and Homing Ring were now obtainable with Conquest Points Mannequin Pumps and Minstrel's Dagger can now be reobtained if tossed from the same place it was attained (Quest giver). Mythril Plate Armor could now be stored as a key item with the armor set storage npcs. Sea NM System was introduced. Meret appeared in Tavnazian Safehold, who exchanged special items from Lumorian NMs for equipment. Experience Points can now be earned by defeating a wider level range array of monsters. Furthermore, Decent Challenge and East Prey now provided more Experience. Experience Points chain bonuses in level capped areas now granted experience at the capped level rather than a player's actual level. Almost all Chains of Promathia areas had monster locations adjusted. Ranged Attacks damage and accuracy are now calculated based on the distance from the monster and the player. The higher a monster's level is in regards to a player's, less damage will be dealt. The player's enmity now decreases when a shadow image created by Utsusemi is absorbed by an attack. Weather will no longer have an effect on the distance a player can be detected for monsters that detect based on the use of magic. This update gave birth to the "Double Weakened" effect of Ranged Attacks and Magical Attacks. Players who are KO'd again while already in a weakened state now had zero ranged accuracy and zero magical accuracy. Before the update, a player who fought a monster without using auto-attack would retain his claim on the monster, even if he was KO’d in battle due to poison, etc. This was changed so that when the player dies, the monster becomes unclaimed. Before the update, a monster that was claimed by a party or alliance would occasionally go unclaimed when magic or a weapon skill was used on the monster as the monster moved out of range before the magic or weapon skill could strike. Ninja Toolbags were implemented. Prices at guild stores that run out of stock now had their prices vary based on supply. This can raise to a maximum of 5x the lowest price. Monopolization Nerf: The Archer's Ring, Leaping Boots, Emperor Hairpin and Peacock Charm were moved to BCNM fights, and replaced by rare/ex or ex version that grant the same stats. Furthermore, Aquarius no longer dropped Damascene Cloth. The Timepiece furinshing was introduced and rewarded to adventurers participating in the Adventurer Recruitment Program after 100 days of activity. Players could no longer /tell other players who are on their blacklist. <ft> was added to text commands to target their adventuring fellow. The Conquest Map could now be displayed in Non-Conquest areas (Such as Lumoria). Many Ballista changes were implemented including: Players could now join an unbalanced team in the middle of a match. Ballista Earring and Ballista Band were now able to be borrowed for free from the Pursuivant in Ru'Lude Gardens. The system of “Open Entry” for official matches, in which all adventurers were allowed to join the force with the smallest number of participants, has been done away with and replaced by a system called "Temporary Entry," in which players may join a force regardless of allegiance. However, the player's entry is temporary, and similar to Diorama Abdhaljs-Ghelsba's "Auto-Balance" feature, the players may be redistributed for balance when the match begins. In Ru'Lude Gardens, the player will be able to view Diorama Abdhaljs-Ghelsbas reservation status. Reservations for the next two days (Earth time) will be shown. The NPC Tillecoe will now inform the player of the match’s level restriction when a match at Diorama Abdhaljs-Ghelsba is set to allow general participation. Temporary items will now be distributed at the start of official matches held at the Pashhow Marshlands. A section of the Ballista rulebook that is read out by the Pursuivant has been changed. The rate of success for Foe Lullaby and Horde Lullaby has been lowered for players with bard as a support job. A limit has been imposed on the amount of HP that can be absorbed by Bloody Bolts HP Drain effect during Ballista.	Epic Chains of Promathia Conclusion Along with the version update, the song "Distant Worlds" was added to the closing cinematic. This was the first vocal arrangement song in Final Fantasy XI, and appropriately fans went nuts over it. The song became the staple Final Fantasy XI recognition song. The arrangement was performed by Izumi Masuda, pictured to the right. Ranger Nerf Before this update, Rangers were one of the main sources of damage for a lot of content. This ranged from Sky Gods to Chains of Promathia Missions and even Ranger burn merit parties. The job went from OMGRNG to LOLDRG status overnight. The distance change implemented in this update took players way off guard. No longer could they be close range and melee for TP (Kraken club was a popular item for Rangers) and unleash weapon skills. Ranged Attacks and Weapon Skills would often miss if performed in melee range. This combined with the double weakness change caused many players to quit and never return. Ranger would soon see its return later on, however. Ninja Tanking Even though Ninja Tools could be bagged, the change made to enmity regarding Utsusemi made it extremely difficult to Ninja tank HNMs. Ninja relied on not taking damage and keeping enmity over time. Provoke was usually no longer enough to hold the hate required, so Ninja had much more difficulty tanking. Double Weakened To add insult to injury, Ranger was also nerfed in the aspect of double weakness. Deaths were very common at this stage of the game. Rangers and Black Mages would often brush off a death and continue their damage. This was no longer possible. Many strategies had to be refined with the change to Ranger distance and Double Weakness. Dynamis also was much more dangerous with Black Mages before almost always being in a weakened state. To this day, North American/European players do not understand that Double Weakness only affects Ranged and Magical attacks. OTHER JOBS ARE NOT AFFECTED, STOP SAYING YOU ARE DOUBLE WEAK IF YOU ARE ANYTHING EXCEPT A RANGED ATTACK OR MAGICAL ATTACK JOB! RMT Nerfs Popular low level equipment was suddenly moved to BCNM fights. Leaping Lizzy, Valkurm Emperor, Stroper Chyme and Argus saw RMT disappear, and legit adventurers come in trying to claim their Rare/Ex equivalent armor pieces. Long gone were the days of RMT in Ordelle's Caves telling us to fuck our mothers. Unfortunately, this made the more competent RMT groups move to sky. Ballista The Ballista updates were welcome, but many players still did not participate in the regular schedule due to lack of rewards usable outside of Ballista itself.
Jul 21st, 2005	Sunbreeze Festival 2005
	Instead of being called Summerfest, the summer event now adopted the permanent name of the Sunbreeze Festival. The event was held from July 21st thru August 22nd. Swimsuit outfits and the Goldfish Bowl were added as main prizes for the event.	This year's summer celebration revolved around the "Azimuth Circle" event. Players had to team up with another adventurer and work together by examining Check Points and following the direction it says to go. At the end, players would obtain the Hopipi Doll and Pumimi Doll. These were traded to the other adventurer and then to the moogle to obtain the new swim suit outfits. HQ sets were also implemented. Every time the event was done, you received one piece. In order to obtain the HQ pieces, you had to equip the outfit and repeat the event. Since every race/sex had two pieces, the event needed to be completed four times in four different areas to obtain the full set. Normal Quality Pieces Race/Sex Top Bottom Hume Male Hume Gilet Hume Trunks Hume Female Hume Top Hume Shorts Elvaan Male Elvaan Gilet Elvaan Trunks Elvaan Female Elvaan Top Elvaan Shorts Tarutaru Male Tarutaru Maillot Tarutaru Trunks Tarutaru Female Tarutaru Top Tarutaru Shorts Mithra Mithra Top Mithra Shorts Galka Galka Gilet Galka Trunks High-Quality Pieces Race/Sex Top Bottom Hume Male Hume Gilet +1 Hume Trunks +1 Hume Female Hume Top +1 Hume Shorts +1 Elvaan Male Elvaan Gilet +1 Elvaan Trunks +1 Elvaan Female Elvaan Top +1 Elvaan Shorts +1 Tarutaru Male Tarutaru Maillot +1 Tarutaru Trunks +1 Tarutaru Female Tarutaru Top +1 Tarutaru Shorts +1 Mithra Mithra Top +1 Mithra Shorts +1 Galka Galka Gilet +1 Galka Trunks +1
Jul. 30th, 2005	Square Enix Party 2005
	The event was held on July 30th and 31st at the Nippon Convention Center (Makuhari Messe) in Chiba, Japan. Visitors were able to play a lineup of 12 games, which included the major two that were absent from E3 the month before: Final Fantasy XII and Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (both for the PlayStation 2). The entry fee was 1,000 Yen ($9.15 at the time). The event was focused on all Square Enix games, and Final Fantasy XII had the spotlight. FFXI did have a few things going on but no major announcements were made. The battlefield Heroes Combat was able to be challenged for the first time. Players found themselves face to face with Trion, Volker and Ajido-Marujido. On the concert stage, "The Republic of Bastok" was performed.
Aug. 2nd, 2005	Bug Fixes and RAGE!
	A problem was addressed with the Azimuth Circle not being able to be completed. Adventuring Fellow NPCs now disappeared after defeating 71 enemies. Signal Pearls will no longer activate when there are six or more players in a party. An issue where armor intended to only affect a players wyvern would also affect Fellows. When asking for a new Signal Pearl, the relationship between Fellow NPC and player will slightly decline. After certain quests were completed, Fellows would remain around longer. Stona now would work against Level 5 Petrify. NM Pets would now con Impossible to Gauge. The popular HNMs below now "Raged" after a certain amount of time has passed after being claimed. King Arthro / Simurgh / Roc / Serket / Capricious Cassie / Lord of Onzozo / Behemoth / King Behemoth / Adamantoise / Aspidochelone / Fafnir / Nidhogg Synthesis Material Silica was made more easily obtainable. Furthermore, Glass Sheets now yielded more per synth. These changes were made due to complaints at how hard it was to create Goldfish Bowl. The /blockaid feature was implemented. The command was implemented to alleviate grieving tactics, although it was ineffective unless everyone in the alliance had it on. Players could no longer receive Trade offers from players on their blacklist. Players could no longer immediately claim monsters right as they appeared. If attempts were made to claim a monster before this random period has elapsed, those players were unable to act for a few seconds.	Raged HNMs HNMs now went into "Rage" or "Hyper" mode after a certain amount of time (usually 30 minutes or 1 hour) if they have not been defeated. After that amount of time, its stats gradually rose over the course of 5 mintues before becoming fully raged. It became nearly impossible to deal any damage, and the monsters would eventually one-shot any tank. This change was very welcoming for English and Japanese players alike. Linkshells were now required to come with a larger force ready to kill quickly. Before, they would often come with a small force that either took a long time to kill it, or even held it for hours on purpose to change the time of death to be more convenient for their timezone. Although the video below is from 2006, it gives a taste on how crazy HNMs became after being held for too long. Claim Delay Before this change, HNMs would often pop claimed for many North American players due to lag. This changed evened the playing field a bit, but not totally. The claim delay also gave birth to many new FFXI Claim Bots. Some even had the functionality to connect to other linkshell members. If done properly, it would then setup automatic staggered claim timer delays for each member which gave the best chances at claiming HNMs.
Aug. 13th, 2005	iGames Tour 2005 Rochester, New York
	This was one of the only East Coast Final Fantasy XI events. It took place at Arena 51, a local shop that hosted multiplayer gaming, lock-ins, and many other events. The address was 376 Jefferson Road, Rochester, NY 14623. The business has since closed down. iGames Tour 2005 Rochester, New York Events: Party vs Party Rumble Q&A with Sage Sundi 40+ player Tarutaru cure marathon Marathon Awards Merchandise Store Picture booth with models in Mithra RSE Costume Contest and Raffle Prizes included cordless controllers, surround sound systems, and even a custom Promathia PC Q&A Session Transcript Warcry: Nobody actually knows what "magic accuracy" is specifically. Can you please explain it? Sage Sundi: Magic accuracy decreases the ability of a monster to resist a spell cast by the player; for example with spells like Paralyze, Slow, etc. Community: Do you plan to integrate a war-system like the one seen in the opening scenes of the FFXI intro? Or battles that take place between the kingdoms? Matt Hilton: Right now we do not have plans for that, but we do like receiving suggestions via the PlayOnline website and viewer. If you have suggestions you really want to see implemented please submit them through those methods and they'll be passed to the dev team. Warcry: How much of an impact on landing/duration for enfeebling based spells does the skill level have? Sage Sundi: The higher the enfeeble skill, the more accurate you will be with landing the spell against monsters. However, the duration the spells last is random. Community: How much of Vana'diel has already been uncovered? Can you give us any more information on the new expansion pack? Will it be in the "Far East"? Yasu Kurosawa: We did announce that the expansion pack is coming, however the content we cannot discuss at this time. Usually we announce more info at large events like E3 or Tokyo Game Show. Of course the new expansion will be a new zone because things are always evolving in Vana'diel, so please watch for upcoming announcements. Warcry: Are there currently any plans to add a second tier to some spells such as Paralyze II, Slow II, Gravity II to make them more useful? Sage Sundi: These spells are useful at high level as they are because they are based on the enfeebling skill of the user. So even using a level 4 spell (Paralyze) on level 75 monsters will be as strong as their skill level allows. However, Ninja's level two tier spells (Ni) are not based on the player's Ninjutsu skill. Community: Is there anything I can do to boost my Treasure Hunter job trait? Yasu Kurosawa: We leave the fun to you to figure out! Community: Why are you so against 3 rd party programs for FFXI? They don't all hack the software and often assist the player for the better. Yasu Kurosawa: We want to protect the legitimate users and our corporate stance is to take the extra precaution to do that. Using windowers and allowing players access to the desktop makes hacking easier, so in FFXI if the full screen mode is terminated, we stop the game from running. Community (follow up): Well in that case, why not create official add-ons or integrate these useful functions into the game itself? Matt Hilton: That's a good suggestion, like I was saying earlier; please submit these ideas through our website or the Viewer. We really do read them and compile reports to be sent to the development team. Warcry: Given the recent difficulties in obtaining the updates in the last two patches with the DDoS attacks, etc. is there an alternative method of downloading planned for the PC version? Sage Sundi: The FFXI client is designed in a way that every time you log into the server it checks the update, but it's an old design that hasn't been updated. I know other MMO titles have different methods. Our PlayOnline dev team is in constant talks about creating some new methods to update the game to alleviate problems during major updates. Community: With all the additions of rare/ex items to the game, do you have any plans to double or triple the Mog Safe? Yasu Kurosawa: It's a great suggestion and we'll pass this info onto the development team. Community: Does the Charisma stat affect the Warrior ability "Provoke"? Matt Hilton: It's kind of one of those rumors that floated around and just spread. Maybe only the development team knows the true answer for that. Warcry: The current trend is for some linkshells to monopolize certain NMs or HNMs making it difficult for other players to obtain specific items. Are there any plans to change that? Sage Sundi: In our last two patches we think we have alleviated those issues. We have GM teams that compile where there is a large amount of congestion. From time to time we speak with the dev team about which of these issues needs the most attention. Matt Hilton: What happened was many players would "hold" a monster with few people until reinforcements came even though another group was ready to fight the monster. I've read a lot of feedback from players saying this last update has done away with holding monsters. We'll continue to look at ways to improve these past issues. Community: I realize you can't talk about the next expansion, but if there are any possibilities for new jobs, what kind of jobs have been considered? Yasu Kurosawa: You're right, I can't talk about that. But I can ask you what you want! Geomancer Blue Mage New tank Gambler New refresh job Mime Pirates Necromancer Warcry: You've stated in the past that Ninja were not meant to be tanks but since then it's changed. Are there any plans to make Ninja more like damage dealers? Sage Sundi: We know that now Ninja are like tanks, and because of that we can't alter them to become better damage dealers, or they'd be unbalanced. One idea is to use merit points to boost the areas you want to improve for dealing damage (STR+, critical +, etc.). Community: What will you do to improve Dragoons? Matt Hilton: I think the main problem is that the stigma against Dragoons is so ingrained in players' minds that no matter what we do to change it, Dragoons will feel like more should be done. We're always listening to suggestions, though. Community (follow up): What about the fact that "Call Wyvern" takes two hours to refresh and your wyvern can die in the first fight? Matt Hilton: Ah, that's a good point. The biggest complaint from Dragoons is that once the wyvern is dead, they're out of luck for two hours. We take suggestions very seriously, more seriously than I think our fans realize, so if you have any, please submit them through the proper channels. Warcry: After playing for a long time, sometimes players grow unhappy with their character's gender, name or race. Are there any possibilities to change that through a quest or an event? Yasu Kurosawa: Unfortunately, we don't have any plans for that. A character is the player's identity and their friends all know them as a certain character. It wouldn't make sense to suddenly change everything about someone. Community: Are there any plans to transfer characters between worlds whenever the player wishes? Sage Sundi: Actually we do have a plan in place. When we recreate the billing system at the end of the year, then we can start creating new systems like world shifting. For instance, GM's have the ability to move characters between servers so all we need to do is connect those systems with the billing system. So yes, we have started working on that. Warcry: Who do we talk to about problems with GMs? Yasu Kurosawa: You can submit problems through the Viewer or the website. GMs do not have the ability to edit or change the content so you don't have to worry about a GM deleting your feedback. Franko Fonseca: Hi, I'm the Online Player Relations manager and I oversee the info center and the GMs. If you have problems with a GM what you want to do is go to playonline.com > Service & Support > E-mail forms > Comments & Suggestions. We do take those comments very seriously. Community: As much as I hate going to Valkurm Dunes why is there no Moogle in Selbina? Arec Nevers: Basically the reason why is that it's a game design decision. We can only take comments from the community and pass them along to the development team. Community: How do the experience points for your Fellowship NPC work? Why not allow the NPCs health to be displayed under yours? And finally why not make it possible to call your NPC more than once every 20 hours? Matt Hilton: The first part we'll have to keep under wraps. The reason you don't see the fellowship NPC's health/mp under yours is because they're not actually in a party with you and you don't see it above your chat log because that spot is reserved for your avatar or Wyvern HP. As for the cool down of 20 hours on the signal pearl, that's another issue we've heard a lot of feedback on, so maybe it can be changed in the future. Community (follow up): It's possible to click on your NPC accidentally to dismiss them and miss their text due to chat log spam, is there any changes coming up to fix this issue? Matt Hilton: That's exactly why we're asking for feedback and suggestions sent from the website or Viewer. If you find issues that you feel need to be addressed, please don't hesitate to bring them up. Community: Are you still going to support Final Fantasy XI on the PS2? Yasu Kurosawa: Yes. I can't talk about the Sony's plans to support their own hardware, but I know that we will continue to support the software. Community: I've played every past Final Fantasy and in every one the cap is level 99, why level 75 for XI? Is it because subbing Red Mage would open up the possibility of Convert? Yasu Kurosawa: I don't think so, but we don't know for sure. Increasing the level from 75 and up has always been discussed, but there is so much to do before that, we're worried about those things first. Community: What are you doing to stop the gilsellers? Franko Fonseca: As far as reporting gilsellers, it's always very difficult to track down for sure that the person you're saying is selling gil is actually selling gil. It's something that's very difficult and we're investigating different ways to ensure we take action against the people that are actually selling gil. Sage Sundi: We do continue to ban additional accounts every month and that's all we can do right now. Still we're looking for more efficient ways to do it, to make the experience better for everyone. Community: Are there any plans to implement things to keep players occupied while waiting for parties? Matt Hilton: There's already a few ways to keep players interested while waiting for parties, such as synthesis. But we're always open to suggestion. We hear players would like some more mini-games to be added, so that's one thing to take into consideration. Community: Is there going to be any way to separate Content IDs from one account to another? Sage Sundi: It's technically possible, but it all depends on how much of a desire there is for that function. Community: Are there any plans to add a "Refresh II" spell? Yasu Kurosawa: It makes sense, but right now there are no plans for it. Community: Is there any chance that the NM Morbolger, that is needed to do the Monk Brown Belt quest, can be changed from a 24 hour period so that more players have a chance to finish the quest? Matt Hilton: I believe that quest things that require items like that should not have such a long spawn time like that, but we're always looking for suggestions. Community: Sony has done their own measures to battle gold sellers in EQ2, please tell me the same methods will not be used in FFXI. Also, my Samurai is 75 and all of my Weapon Skills are single hit and I can sometimes even miss on level 5 enemies, what's up with that? Sage Sundi: Square Enix and Sony both hate gilsellers. In FFXI we will never support gilsellers by creating separate worlds for them. We'll also never start selling gil to our players. Matt Hilton: As for your second question; Samurai intentionally have one-hit weapon skills because of their various TP boosting options. As for the accuracy of your weapon skills that's why the level 70 "Hochiman" exists. Each piece gives "Weapon Skill Accuracy"+ stats. Try macroing the equipment in before using your WS for better results! Community: Are there any plans to add throwing weapon skills for Ninja? Matt Hilton: It's been suggested in the past and if it's something you'd like to see, please submit it through our suggestion section. The more responses we receive on an issue the higher the chance that we can get it implemented.
Aug. 16th, 2005	Final Fantasy XI Vana'diel Collection 2005
	This disk included the base game as well as the Rise of the Zilart and Chains of Promathia expansions. The MSRP was $29.99. Again, this disk was in DVD-ROM format. Many players had to bootleg the files from the internet and use the CD keys that came with the game, because they didn't have a DVD-ROM Drive. The package included a Vana’diel Buddy Pass which allowed a friend to create an account and play the basic FINAL FANTASY XI game free for 30 days. Also included is an iTunes Collector's Card for a free music download from the FINAL FANTASY XI Collection.
Aug. 24th, 2005	The Star Onions Debut Album Released
	The album was named "Music from the Other Side of Vana'diel". 10 songs were on the CD, and the price was 2,500 Yen (Tax Included).
Aug. 26th, 2005	Blitz Buffalo 2005
	The first incarnation of the annual Buffalo event took place. The days it was held was from August 26th thru September 5th. Buffalo NMs named Toro appeared in the areas around Jeuno and Tavnazian Safehold. The idea of the event was to defeat the NMs. If too much damage was inflicted, players were blown back to town or their Home Points. After defeating the NM, a ??? would appear. When examined, players would be awarded with the Red Sash. Occasionally, a rare version of the NM named Miura would spawn instead. Defeating this one would reward the HQ version of the sash Dash Sash.	Rare Sashes After the event concluded, there was no way to obtain the sash rewards again. They were removed from the future Blazing Buffalo events until 2014.
Aug. 27th, 2005	Final Fantasy XI Summer Carnival 2005
	This event was so far the largest FFXI event in Japan. It was organized by Enterbrain Corporation (the publisher of Famitsu) and hosted by Hirokazu Hamamura (president of Enterbrain). All event attendees received the postcard below illustrated by Mr. Katsuya Terada. Events included: Discussion panel with the development team Ballista Royal Japan - Semi-Finals and Finals "Lovehame" from Siren took first place FFXI Merchandise tables The Star Onions Live Performance Featuring Naoshi Mizuta on bass, Kumi Tanioka on piano and synth, Tsuyoshi Sekito on guitar, Masato Kouda on synth, Arata Hanyuda (From The Black Mages) and Michael-Christopher Koji Fox on drums Songs Performed: Yuhtunga Jungle, Rolanberry Fields, Mog House, Awakening, and Selbina Nobuo Uematsu and Masuda Izumi made a surprise appearance, and Distant Worlds was performed. Attendees who purchased a Star Onions CD also received the pin pictured below	The Nippon Youth Center is located in Tokyo's Meiji Jingu Gaien district. In order to be used for a site for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, it was dismantled and totally remodeled into a hotel with 220 rooms and 1250 seats. The grand opening was on August 1st, 2017. The picture on the right on top was taken back in 2005 on the day that the FFXI Summer Carnival was held. The lower picture is the building today. Some exclusive loot included: Tshirts with "Summer Carnival" printed on them (below) Hand Towels (below)
Sep. 12th, 2005	Ballista Royale North American Recruitment
	Recruitment began for Ballista Royale's North American Tournament. Groups could apply on the official Playonline website. The Stars Cap and Laurel Crown were announced as Server Finals prize and Chapionship Prize respectfully. The overall winning team members would also each receive a custom build Promathia PC.
Sep. 14th, 2005	Distant Worlds Single Released
	Distant Worlds was released in Japan as a single on September 14th, 2005. The price was 150 Yen (Tax included). A week later on the 22nd, it was available on iTunes in North America.
Sep. 16th, 2005	Treasures of Aht Urhgan Announced at TGS 2005
	The third expansion for Final Fantasy XI, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, was announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2005. TGS 2005 took place from September 16th thru September 18th. Final Fantasy XI had a section set up within the Microsoft area. The game drew the most attention in the booth. In addition, a playable demonstration of the Xbox 360 version was on show. A chocobo competition event took place among visitors.
Oct 4th, 2005	FFXI Xbox 360 version at X05
	On October 4th-5th in Amsterdam, Final Fantasy XI was demonstrated at the X05 event held by Microsoft. Several new areas included in the forthcoming expansion pack announced at TGS 2005, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, were shown. It was the first opportunity to see FFXI on Xbox 360 connecting to one of the actual worlds currently in service. The Xbox 360 consoles which were used to connect to the public server were fitted with USB keyboards. Using the combination of its controller and the additional keyboard, FFXI handled like a dream! Performance on the other hand, was not the best.
Oct. 11th, 2005	Limbus Introduced
	The Limbus system was introduced. Both Apollyon and Temenos were added, as well as Sagheera. Artifact Armor +1 was added Many changes were implemented to the Adventuring Fellow system. Level Cap quests were added. New fellow combat systems added. Fellows now have HP bars. A timer was added to the lost chocobo quest Many new items were made obtainable by Mining and Harvesting in West Sarutabaruta, Yuhtunga Jungle, Yhoator Jungle, Giddeus, Zeruhn Mines and Korroloka Tunnel. The one-way door when walking straight after zoning into The Garden of Ru'Hmet was made accessible to walk through from both ways if a player is far enough into the Chains of Promathia Missions The number of dolls that can be summoned by a member of the Spheroid family now has a limit. This limit was placed on a spawn-by-spawn basis. Killing the monster and waiting for a new spawn has a fresh timer. The number of elementals that can be summoned by a member of the Aero family now has a limit. This limit was placed on a spawn-by-spawn basis. Killing the monster and waiting for a new spawn has a fresh timer. An issue wherein players not participating in an Expeditionary Force mission were able to attack the pets of the expeditionary force monsters has been addressed. The first Experience Points enhancement items were released. These were the Chariot Band and Empress Band. The bands themselves were nothing like they are today. The Chariot Band gave EXP Bonus +75%, Max Duration 90 minutes, and Max Bonus 500 exp. The Empress Band gave EXP Bonus +50%, Max Duration 180 minutes, and Max Bonus 1000 exp. The Event Storage NPCs were added. New navigational charts were added. It was now possible to see the comprehensive list of recipes at Guilds. The key item Metal Ensorcellment was added. Many new jug pets were added. Several more Ballista changes including: New Temporary Items. More Temp Item Vouchers added to the list of KIs obtainable with Ballista Points Blood Pact effectiveness range was extended Duration of the resistance effect to Lullaby increased. Ninjutsu effects used to be able to "lock" players from drawing weapons if repeatedly used. This was fixed. The amount of points required to reserve Diorama Abdhaljs - Ghelsba was reduced from 200 to 100. Ballista Royale rules were now able to be set in Diorama Abdhaljs - Ghelsba.	Limbus Limbus was a fun event for causal players to get into and farm Ancient Beastcoins for good profit. Many endgame linkshells wanted to participate, but few had enough players with sea access to effectively add it to their schedules. Experience Points Bands The new bands immediately became a hit with most players. Unfortunately, they were not very powerful. With the slow pace of experience points back then, it was still a welcome change. Players were excited about easier ways to earn experience, and were looking forward to the future for more items like the rings.
Oct. 12th, 2005	Xbox 360 version of FFXI Beta Announcement
	The Japanese FFXI Beta was announced first. When purchasing the first production version of the Xbox 360 unit in Japan, the FFXI Beta Disc would be distributed free of charge at the store. Beta service or disc distribution would not being, however, until December 10th, 2005.
Oct. 21st, 2005	Trick or Treat 2005
	The event period was from October 21st thru November 1st. The event itself was practically the same as 2004, except new bomb decorations showed up around town. Additionally, fruit was not tradable like it was the previous year. New equipment included the Pitchfork and the Pitchfork +1. To obtain these, you must team up with a partner and stand under the new bomb decorations while wearing a certain combination of costumes depending on the area you are in.
Oct. 22nd, 2005	iGames Tour 2005 College Station, Texas
	This was the last stop of the iGames 2005 Tour. It took place at Netzone Centers, a local shop that hosted multiplayer gaming, lock-ins, and many other events. The address was 1702 George Bush East Suite 102 College Station, TX 77840. The business has since closed down. Events: PCs open for FFXI play Party vs Party Rumble & North American Debut of Heroes Combat Q&A with Sage Sundi 40+ player Tarutaru cure marathon Merchandise Store Picture booth with models in Mithra RSE Costume Contest and Raffle Prizes again included cordless controllers, surround sound systems, nVidia 7800 gtx video cards, and a custom Promathia PC For more info, see the BG Forums Thread Q&A Panel Transcript FFXI Stratics: Are there any plans for expanding the current weapon types? (For example, a whip?) Sage Sundi: There's always the possibility, but it's extremely difficult to balance all the jobs whenever a new weapon type is introduced. So currently there are no plans for it. FFXI Stratics: It's very difficult to complete a fully upgraded Relic-weapon because of the amount of ancient currency required. Are there any plans to allow players to trade Dynamis drops, like a Griffon Hide, to the Goblin NPCs for currency? Sage Sundi: We understand that it's really hard to get those items from Dynamis, but it's going according to the developer's plans. We don't want to the weapons to lose their value by making them widespread and we've been monitoring players' progression ever since the introduction of Dynamis. Matt Hilton: So far it's going according to what the developers have intended. It's one of those items that not every player is meant to have, so those that do earn it have a huge sense of accomplishment. Audience: Stroper Chyme is a normal monster, not an NM, so why is it wrong to charm it? Matt Hilton: Basically it's a form of griefing to take and hold control of any monster that players are hunting for a specific drop. That's why GMs will often ask players to release the monster if they are only holding it to keep it from other players. It's definitely less of an issue now that the item it drops is EX. Audience: Are Blue Mage special abilities going to be based on TP or MP? Yasu Kurosawa: There will be announcements at a later date. Sorry for the boring response... FFXI Stratics: Are there any plans to reduce or remove the three-day waiting period before a player can re-enter Dynamis? Sage Sundi: There are several reasons we made the three-day interval restriction. Dynamis is basically a private zone, which limits the amount of people that can enter it at one time, so we can't have many players reserving them too often. Also, we want to control the amount of Dynamis items that are in circulation. Finally, if a group fails a specific zone they have a second chance to challenge it within the same week. Matt Hilton: If it was only a one-day interval there would be a lot more congestion for the more sought after zones like Dynamis-Xarcabard or Beaucedine. FFXI Stratics: Melee has accuracy food and mages have MP boosting food. Is it possible there could be some avatar- specific food in the future? For instance, increases avatar accuracy or attack. Matt Hilton: Right now there are no plans at this time, but, and this is a direct quote, there will be "something" added for summoners in the near future, not necessarily related to food... Audience: What kind of graphic upgrades can we expect from the Xbox 360 version? Yasu Kurosawa: The Xbox 360 version will support 720p, so that will look great running in your living room. Many people prefer to play on their PS2 because they can be comfortable in the living room with a nice TV and stereo system, so the 360 version will provide an even better experience for those players. Our goal is to surpass anything that we've done for PS2 and PC. It'll still utilize the same models and textures, but it will look very nice. FFXI Stratics: One of the biggest debates in the summoner community deals with the stat found on the artifact armor "avatar: enmity: -". Who receives this effect? Sage Sundi: The enmity status is related to the avatar, not to the summoner. It's useful to use "avatar: enmity+" when you want your avatar to keep the hate. FFXI Stratics: All the cool upgrades are usually aimed at melee classes like weapons, armor, etc. Every weapon type even has one quested weapon skill related to it; wouldn't it be nice if there were questable spells, too? Sage Sundi: It's definitely a good idea. Maybe we should create more mage-related opportunities that can differentiate players because now only melee have such a wide variety of weapons or armors to stand out, right? Matt Hilton: We definitely are preparing to add new songs and summons, and the development team does think its okay for some players to have certain spells that maybe others don't so we're looking into the possibility of doing something along those lines. Audience: With the recent server down time is there any way that Square Enix can keep us up to date with what's exactly going on? "Maintenance has been extended" doesn't really explain anything. Sage Sundi: Every time we change something within the server, whether it is hardware or software, we have to reboot the entire system in a specific order and it can take up to two hours. So working for two hours then doing the reboots can takes up to four hours. We will take the suggestion about keeping players more up to date back with us to the development team. Audience: Players can go into monster's cities (Davoi, Giddeus, etc.) but why don't the monsters ever come into the player cities and attack? Maybe once a month have a type of event where players have to return home to defend their city. Yasu Kurosawa: Maybe for an event that could be very interesting... FFXI Stratics: Almost all high-end or endgame content requires large groups of people to complete. However, the rewards for completing these tasks are generally individual in nature. Are there any plans for future endgame content to provide communal rewards for all participants instead of only rewarding whoever gets the loot? Matt Hilton: Basically that's what we began to implement with the ENM battles, a chance for smaller groups of players to work together for a group reward like exp and items. It's only one of the first steps we've begun to implement, so keep an eye out for more. FFXI Stratics: Does the spell "Deodorize" have any use? *audience applauds* Matt Hilton: While there are no monsters that are based solely on smell, there are monsters that will continue to chase you no matter how far you run away. Those monsters are also active to your smell as well as the initial aggro method (sight/sound). Running through a stream to wash off your scent and deodorize work very similarly. Audience: Will Xbox 360 require an extra fee to play since Microsoft charges a fee for Xbox Live? Yasu Kurosawa: Microsoft will have the free Silver Xbox Live service and Final Fantasy XI will be playable through that, as well as the Gold Xbox Live service which requires a separate fee. Audience: What do you plan on doing about economies that are affected by gilsellers? Is the banning of accounts still continuing? Matt Hilton: Economies are created by players, it's not possible for us to step in and dictate the prices for highly sought after items. We also can't wipe entire price histories and say "Start over." Everything is run by the players. Sage Sundi: We're still banning hundreds of accounts a month for real money trading. Audience: Do you have any plans to "nerf" the Black Mage job? Matt Hilton: This is a big topic in the community because of the interview our producer Tanaka-san had with 1up.com where he mentioned that they are looking into ways to adjust the class. That's the only information that we have to go on right now. Sage Sundi: When we release the expansion we will use that opportunity to take a look at new and old job balances. FFXI Stratics: Are there any plans to add new missions to the three nations? Or is Rank 10 the final mission level as far as those are concerned? Matt Hilton: We're happy with all of the effort required to achieve Rank 10 and don't have any plans to increase it beyond that right now. That doesn't mean that we won't be creating new mission based storylines in the upcoming expansion, though. You could always go for Rank 10 in all three nations! Audience: Are they ever going to add Nomad Moogles to Mhaura and Selbina? *audience applauds* Yasu Kurosawa: I'll take your enthusiastic response to the development team! *laughs* FFXI Stratics: Are there any plans for more increased storage for Mog House or storage? Sage Sundi: That's similar to the graphics in that it's a limitation due to the PS2 memory and we cannot expand too far. We're looking into new methods right now. Matt Hilton: The problem is expanding the storage or slots for over 1.6 million characters would definitely cause a large strain on our current systems because the PS2 isn't aging well. We are looking into ways to relieve the stress on players' inventory as seen by the new NPC storage additions in the last patch. Audience: In the promotional footage of the new expansion, a civilized city is shown in the background. Will it be possible to change allegiances to that new city? Matt Hilton: Unfortunately, we can't answer any Aht Urhgan related questions... Yasu Kurosawa: I do have some good news for you, though. Soon we'll be announcing a large event that will involve bringing some of the development team here to clear up a lot of player questions, so please look forward to that. FFXI Stratics: Are there any plans to allow summoners to access blood pacts that the Avatar Primes use in the BCNM battles? Matt Hilton: The answer that we received from the development team about this question had a big smile at the end of it. We're considering various things like this and that's all we can say for now! They're really having fun with summoners! Private BlueGartr Interview with Sage Sundi We were privileged to have a private interview with Sage Sundi, in which we got to ask a lot of questions that people in the HNM community have been needing to know. The detailed version of this is a much more thorough read than the summary, from the front page, but both will be here. Also, I'll start translating the interview into Japanese. I'd like to thank Freddy Hachi and Yasu Kurosawa for helping with the interview setup, and for being so helpful at the event. Freddy Hachi is a PR guy at SE, Yasu Kurosawa is a Producer for FFXI based in Los Angeles, and Sage Sundi is the Global Online Producer of the Community and Service Division which is based in Japan. I also was introduced to Matt Hilton who works at SE and deals largely with the NA community and would like to schedule an interview with him as well. Question 1 Berticus: The change that was made to when mobs pop when they can become claimed, that was a brilliant change. Almost every American player loves that so much and it's changed the game greatly. What was the rationale behind that, and when did you guys know about it? Sundi: Actually we knew that problem maybe since a couple years ago. We still have the number one GM call as MPK, you know, "someone just killed me." We tried to change the GM policy and it didn't work. And then also, well, we changed the system how the monster pops. Still we have a lot of calls about MPK, so we'll make a change in the next patch, to change more. For example, in EQ2 there's no MPK at all. Once the monster's target is dead, it will move back to the original position, not aggroed to anybody. So we're not going to create it exactly the same as EQ2, but maybe we're going to post some thread in the forum somewhere to get more ideas. We've been talking to the Battle Team for around 2 months and we stilll didn't come up with any good ideas. Ondori: You know, beforehand, before the change was put in, NA players couldn't get claim. But since it, they've been able to get claims. It seems like you have a timer, that when it pops it sort of delays a little bit, and that seems like it's really really made a lot of people very happy. Sundi: Right. We still don't know exactly what's the reason. It could be, someone told me, how many hops you have from the US to the Japanese server. But it doesn't show up on the server's log, and also we heard that there's a certain gamepad with a turbo feature. So, we knew that it was unfair, and that's the reason that we changed this. Question 2 Berticus: This is Bikwin. Last week he got Excalibur - full relic - we finally got it. To pay for it we used money for 7.5 months of dynamis, that's 74 runs, and we spent about 200 million gil to get money from bazaars. So, the question is, why is it designed to take so long, and are there any changes in store to make it easier? Ondori: Was that intentional? Sundi: Yeah, that's intentional. Not my intention, but that's mainly from Mr. Matsui. Matsui san and also Gode san, that's the Battle Team. And ever since we put Dynamis in the game, we have been monitoring activity almost every day every week, to see how many people actually get the higher weapons. We think that's still intentional, I don't want to see a lot of people to have these stronger weapons.. Ondori: I see that there's also some people who say there are other ways to find Dynamis money. Fishing, and then there was a rumor about the Strange Apparatus. And some people also say there's the CoP Dynamises listed in the game data, that nobody knows about. Are those scheduled to be released this year? Or will those have the same currency? Sundi: Currency has to be within the 6 Dynamis areas. We're not going to change that. However, maybe, umm... should I say that? Well, yeah, maybe there's a chance of some Dynamises to drop, something, not currency, but some way to... do something. You guys will know in a couple of months. I'm not gonna tell. Ondori: Will it make getting relic easier? Sundi: It's a little too tight to get those items. Yeah, we're gonna tweak it a little bit in the future. Question 3 Berticus: Since Al'Taieu got Jailers and Ix'Aerns, we've killed a modest total of 22. But the pop items weren't 100%, we got more like 50%, and as for the torques and capes, we got 5 out of 22 more like 23%. Comparing Al'Taieu to Tu'Lia, why aren't the pop items 100%, and why are the loot pools so shallow, with 1 torque only per mob. Sundi: I don't know. Hahaha. Ondori: That scares us, you gotta know. Sundi: Right, well, actually I didn't know until now. So I've got to talk to the Battle Team. Ondori: But just to reiterate on that, it seems like the pop items - it seems like there's 4 tiers - the pop items along the way are never 100%, and if you get all the way up to a certain point, and you don't get the drop, you have to start all over again. So some people say that that's pretty aggrevating. Sundi: It could be bugged. It doesn't seem like it's the intentional way to design. Honestly I don't know, so I have to check into it. Question 4 Berticus: We popped Jailer of Love about a month and a half ago, with about 40 people, and we fought for 4 hours. We died to it. We got torn apart by it,. it was really hard. But our problem was that we couldn't damage it. We couldn't get it past 90-95% the whole fight. You know, with 40 people we threw everything we had at it, but it's autoregen sent it straight back up. We did a 1500 Chi Blast from 100% and it was back full in about 20-30 seconds. Ondori: We estimated that the auto regen on Jailer of Love, is about 200-250 HP per second or per tick. And that seems like it might be bugged. Since sea is such a new area, we were hoping that in the latest patch that that was fixed, that the regen wasn't as strong. Do you know about that? Because there are a lot of people who are actually thinking about not popping it. Sundi: We received a lot of GM calls and e-mail saying that it might be bugged. Again I honestly don't know exactly what's going on but, when we put in those zones a couple of months ago... There might be a way where you can fight with them, not just straight to them, but it could be that there's a way. Bikwin: We killed Jailer of Temperance, and for that you need different weapons. And we figured that out. Jailer of Love we tried everything and we didn't die, we could handle it, but we couldn't damage it. Ondori: It felt impossible. Sundi: Well I don't think that's a bug. The response from the dev team regarding those players' comments... Ondori: Maybe it was designed to be beaten a few months out, like right now not to be beaten but to be beaten in a few months with more gear and more additions having been added. Sundi: Well the other players have those items. You've seen the other players with them haven't you? Bikwin: We've compared with other LSes that have tried this as well and they died, they failed. Ondori: We have a very large network of HNM LSes and no one gets it. And 2 LSes, us and one other group who has talked about popping it... Sundi: What about the Japanese linkshells? Ondori: We read on 2ch that a lot of them have tried it and they can't kill it either. One person made a fake post but couldn't post any screenshots. Berticus: Our thing is, with 18 people to handle the adds, even with another 18 people, like 4 involved in tanking and 12, 14, 15 people involved in damaging it, we still could not damage it, it's just too fast. Sundi: We have about 30 or 40 people on a Q&A; team to check how strong all the monsters are. We also have an internal dev team Q&A;, 18 people, that work for them. Before we release the patch, they test how, they like, actually fight it. They mainly are working for the Battle Team, so I'm sure that there's a way somehow. At least that Q&A; team could beat it, right? If they couldn't beat it, we were not going to patch it. Bikwin: If they knew how to, if there's some secret... Sundi: I guess so. Well if you have a forum or something, maybe I can write something later. Ondori: We have the largest NA HNM forum, so you know, if you would come in... Sundi: I have great interest in that. Ondori: You could even maybe post there. Sundi: We only have like a relationship with Stratics, or IGN, etc, and yeah we need to integrate those core players. Question 5 Berticus: What percentage of Treasure of Aht Urgan, the new expansion, is going to be level 75 endgame content? Sundi: Not really. Everyone is complaining that there's no solo content, so we're adding the solo content and lower level content. Because I know everyone hates Promathia, it's kind of boring right? So we're also not going to add another ranking system. Now the maximum is rank 10, we're not going to put any more stories after 10. We may put more stories, but for this expansion, it's basically for jobs and low-level content. And also solo content and solo zones. Ondori: If you look at games like WoW, WoW has a lot of solo content. And that's the reason that it's been so popular. Anyone can log on and play. The one thing we notice in WoW though, is that there are a lot of zones [instances] that you go in that have a lot of NMs, not like Dynamis where you go in and kill a lot of small mobs over and over again. You go into a zone and you kill 5, 6, 7, or 8 HNMs - hard mobs. I think that would really benefit the game as a personal suggestion. Sundi: Well the solo content is a lot of easy content. Players will consume that content too fast. So that's going to be our main thing. We're also going to put in new NMs by the patches in the new expansion. Ondori: We like to see the NMs, please, more. Sundi: Sure, we will. Question 6 Berticus: With the current merit points, if a player levels a new job, or gets a Ridill and wants to up their sword skill instead of a previously raised weapon, or just makes a mistake, they have to lower it, and then they have to earn it back to raise the new stuff again. Are there any plans to address this? Sundi: I see. Still there's a lot back and forth back and forth talking about it. Not just from the battle team but also from the dev team. And we'll just test it. We want feedback. Ondori: The merit point system was strengthened in the first part of this year. Everybody really loved the meripo system. I think a lot of people were hoping for more meripo, maybe like job abilities that could be bought with meripo and stuff like that. Sundi: Does this sound like EQ1? Ondori: This sounds like EQ1. Sundi: We still need to revamp the system. Maybe this year we're going to start beta for xbox 360. We're expecting a lot of people to be coming in and those are going to be like a lower level, so then we need to rebalance it. Ondori: I heard that you guys recently had a show in Amsterdam. How did that go? Sundi: That's more like a media event, but we showed them the new expansion. December 10th is the beginning of JP beta. But we still haven't decided how to distribute the beta kit in the US. But it's going to be huge. It's not going to be like a beta test, more like a beta promotion. Ondori: We saw that in some of the picutres some Xbox360s with the expansion installed. So does that mean the new expansion is maybe going to follow directly behind? Sundi: We're going to continue to test for beta a couple months, then it will be released. But it has to be at the same time in the US, EU, and Japan. Ondori: Do you think that the US will get a beta chance before the end of the year? Sundi: I can't answer that. Question 7 Berticus: This is our biggest question. Ondori: This is the biggest question. Berticus: Everybody is very interested in it. Nidhogg, King Behemoth, and Aspidochelone, they've dropped the best loot pools in the game since they came out over 2 years ago. Any new improvement or addition to this game hasn't matched or surpassed that in all players' opinions. Tiamat, Jormungand, Vrtra, and Ouryu, when those got added we were very hopeful that they dropped - since they were extremely hard - that they would kind of put Nidhogg, put KB, at a lower priority. So these incredibly hard mobs - 2-3x harder than kings - don't drop as good loot. Sundi: There's always a loot table discussion. But we maybe are going to change that. We also need to add new spells. You know spells usually just drop off a monster or are bought from an NPC. So maybe we should create some kind of quest, to get new spells or new songs. It's always that new stuff is going for the Warriors or the Paladins. Ondori: For example, the Monk Black Belt, that takes very long, and you have to be very lucky. A lot of people have asked, you know, there's 3 dragons, which came out at the same time. A lot of people wondered if they would ever had a Monk style, doesn't have to be a Monk, but for example they drop 3 pieces and you trade it in for an item. Sundi: Oh, oh, ok. Ondori: Or abjurations. Sundi: Yeah that's a possibility. But I am concentrating on not weapons for melees - maybe for mages in the future. Mages, maybe 5% of mages have a crucial spell, or something. I want to see that - a big difference between mages. Ondori: Yeah, for example, if you have a SJ of WHM, so like RNG/WHM, and someone else has RDM/WHM, the RDM can't land spells better than the subjob. So a lot of people have wondered why there have been BRDs with SJ WHM landing silence or paralyze on Kirin, but a RDM can't. So a lot of people wonder if that part of the game is a little bit broken. Sundi: It's not broken, but we always need to balance each job. You're going to see new spells and songs in the future, the near future. So we will change that. Ondori: That sounds great. Question 8 Berticus: We'll end with this one. Is the HNM, camping, the haijin playstyle incorrect in your opinion? Sundi: It was correct when we created the game at first. We didn't intend to addict people to the game, but somehow we did. But now we realize we have like a 100 people right now and we see a lot of people that become haijins like that. Yeah, now I don't think it's a good idea. So we may change that. Berticus: Are those players' opinions and.. do you take them into consideration? Sundi: We have a lot of emails from not just players, but maybe parents, and we have to listen seriously. But maybe still, even if we could sell 4million xbox360s, a lot of regular players start coming in. We have the majority of players as the light player. But still we have like 10% of the core players. We have to provide both contents, that's all. So we're not going to kill the camping, or core playing style, which I like, so there's always a camping style. Also there's a lot of content for the light players in the future. Conclusion Ondori: We're really hopeful in the future that you guys will focus a little more attention to the HNM community. We really hope that in the future that there is a future. We hope that there is more content that takes time but rewards you well. Sundi: Alright, thank you very much. Ondori's Thoughts After this interview, Berticus, Bikwin, Peng, and I talked to Sundi some more. We thought for a while, and were a slight bit confused. We had the impression that the people at these igames shows were fairly close to the cutting edge or dev team. Well some of them are, but not as close as we'd have liked for them to have been, and they aren't allow to say much of anything. That is a fundamental difference between American game companies and Japanese game companies. But wait! Later that night I recieved word about a multi-day event that may be based in California that will involve the Dev. Team and the press/players. This excites me, and I can only hope its a FFXI event and not a SE event; meaning I hope the event is centered around FFXI and the products or expansions that surround it. New information was released, but nothing earth shaking. Compared to the other events that have happened across the USA, I felt that there was more player-SE interaction than at any other. I could be wrong, but I feel that this is in large part due to either Yasu Kurosawa or Matt Hilton at SE. It seems like SE is listening more and more to its player base. It seems like new changes are coming, and SE is choosing to focus on the distinctions between all of the mage jobs that are in the game. I can only hope that SE will start to focus more and more on endgame additions. I'm going to make a quick Everquest 1 comparision. When I played Everquest, there were very FEW times that I ever felt like I had hit that 'Invisible Glass Ceiling'. What I mean by that is there was no visible cap. Endless number items to get, HNMs to kill, and hundreds of merit style bonuses to get. I'd really like to see a robust merit point system introduced. One that would really show why this game is so unique, job switching and sub jobs. For example, -The ability to turn on or off an ability or traits in your mog house once you get it. -Weapon Skills expanded with more Weapon Skills or other Weapon based unique traits. -Meripo-unlocked job abilities or job traits that would make you really want to meripo. -Job merits that have some abilities that you could use when you sub a job too. Sundi and other talked about the Playstation 2 being a big stopping point for the progress of new armor and textures. In Everquest there were 3-4 gfx engine upgrades, but you could choose any one of them. So if you wanted low lvl gfx for speed, you could have it. If you wanted to see just how cool your new armor really looks, you could load the game in full models and check it out. This design allowed tons and tons of items, and it just recycled textures and models for machines that couldn't handle the real textures, which is far far far better then just not adding stuff. These are the 2 things (meripo, PS2 setback resolution) that I'd personally like to see changed. This all comes down to more content, and I think we'd all like to see more end game content in these 2 month wide patches. Since this expansion looks like it is NOT going to be an expansion for hardcore endgame players, I'm really going to be curious how SE will keep the interest of end game players that have 2-5 level 75 jobs now. As a player the game myself, I'll just have to wait, and hope that this expansion will give lvl 75 players more of a home then CoP did. Berticus's Thoughts was a little fun, little entertaining, little amusing, little messed up.. lol. Meeting up with other people who play the game was a great opportunity. We got to meet Bahamut people including Totien, Elitaone, Demples, and Tonkounakinakinaknai as well as some cross server people including Vade, Rasengan, and some dudes whose names I forgot. The events looked like a pretty good time, but we didn't really participate in those. Our main purpose was to get some communication going, and that we did. I'll report a few of the issues we learned about outside of our interview. First, PS2. PS2 has openly been called a hugely significant limiting factor on the entire game. Matt said quote "PS2 hasn't aged too well" during the Q&A, and Sundi and Yasu both mentioned that storage, textures, and thus new conveniences and gear were limited by PS2 memory shortcomings. To both cases of 1) they're not telling the truth and there's some way around it or 2) they're telling the truth and letting something this dumb limit the entire progression of the game, we pretty much say otuya, or something. That really shouldn't be the way it is, and I hope it gets worked around. Secondly, Square's feelings on endgame. This seems like a pretty hopeless uphill battle when looked at from some perspectives, but a few things can really remedy the deep sense of worry someone like you or me feels when you think Square is ignoring endgame. Matt Hilton is our new unofficial endgame champion contact, who said that some comments such as the expansion being majorly solo were not comprehensive and that endgame is definitely a concern. Even more promising is the dev team meeting that's supposed to be announced soon. The details are unknown as of now, but actual devs, who are hopefully people who can resolve some of the largest endgame questions, will be present for a multiday event. Ondori somehow raped the zip file containing the pictures before he went to bed so the archive is corrupt and I don't really have anything to post. I'm going to go to bed too but I'll fix this up tomorrow asap. Also when I get wound down from travelling I'll try to convince Nikkei to do a LS update, or find out what happened & do it myself during the early part of this week. Hopefully players' outlook on the game can be strengthened by the new channels of communication that seem to be slowly opening. If the dev team event grants us a lot of access and is truly open for suggestions and our concerns, then I seriously believe we will make a difference in FFXI's endgame.
Dec. 7th, 2005	Jeuno - Starlight Celebration track released on iTunes
	The track "Jeuno - Starlight Celebration", which was first released during the 2004 Starlight Celebration event, was made available on iTunes in Japan and North America. The price was 150 Yen (Tax Included)
Dec. 10th, 2005	Xbox 360 Beta Test begins
	The Xbox 360 console was released in Japan, and the Final Fantasy XI Xbox 360 Beta Test commenced. A dedicated world for beta participants was opened named Hydra.
Dec. 13th, 2005	Dragoon 2 Hour SP Changed
	The quest Waking Dreams to obtain Diabolos Prime was added. The BCNM The Wyrmking Descends using a Monarch's Orb was added. Many adjustements to the Adventuring Fellow including: Level cap increase and quests for them. More weapons and armor available to Fellows. Easier to skillchain with a Fellow if using the "Fierce Attacker" style. Enhancing Magic used twice as often if the Fellow is using the combat style "Soothing Healer". Level correction adjustments to Fellows. Corrected attack/delay when Fellows used Hand-to-Hand. Fellows would no longer leave immediately after being called by a character in an alliance of 4 or more members. The quest for a Tactics Pearl was made easier by moving the ??? in Holla to the first floor. Escort for Hire quests - The NPC now disappears if players participating do not interact with them within 5 minutes. It is now possible to see if a Limbus area is occupied. Fishing Rank system is now available. Anti-MPK Update: This update made non-NM monsters dissappear if they somehow exited their normal radius. Binding a monster next to a player without aggro will no longer force the monster to attack them. Dreamland Dynamis areas introduced: Dynamis - Valkurm, Dynamis - Buburimu and Dynamis - Qufim The original limit on participants was set to 36. Relic Armor +1 and Relic Accessories introduced. Beastmasters now receive 100% of experience points when using a pet with Call Beast. Using Reward now includes a Regen effect. Dragoons 2 hour ability was changed to Spirit Surge. Call Wyvern was changed to a 20 minute ability, and only able to be used when Dragoon is set to main job. Jump - Temporarily weakens enemy defense. High Jump - Enemy's TP is reduced by a percentage based on damage inflicted. Super Jump - As seen from the enemy target's position, the closest party member behind the Dragoon has their enmity reduced by half. Wyverns now have the equivellant of the job trait Subtle Blow. Merit Point System: The maximum number of usable merit points has been increased in all categories in the following manner: Combo total and sub-categories: HP/MP Attributes Combat Skills Magic Skills Others Combo total only: Individual job categories Monster placement in Phomiuna Aqueducts and Sacrarium adjusted. An issue wherein the delay between disengaging from an enemy and being able to attack once more not being equal to the delay of the weapon equipped has been addressed. This delay is calculated after considering Haste and Slow effects. The Crow Jupon set can now be stored. Patissier and Stewpot Mastery Key Items added, obtainable with Guild Points Items marked as “Rare” have been removed from the rewards obtainable through the Brigand's Chart quest. This change will reduce the chance of empty treasure chests appearing. Monsters that appear during the Pirate's Chart quest in the Valkurm Dunes can now detect characters that are using Sneak. The Albatross Ring and Pelican Ring were retired and new versions (with the same name) were introduced. They had six times the amount of charges but six times less duration. The old versions were no longer obtainable. This change allowed less risk of the charges being wasted due to the durations, but offered the same effect with more charges.	Light at the end of the tunnel for Dragoon At last, a decent update for Dragoon was implemented. Players were excited for Call Wyvern being changed and for the new two hour ability. This caused a bandwagon of Dragoons to hit Vana'diel as players tested the viability of Dragoon. Light at the end of the... WRONG tunnel for Beastmaster With the Anti-MPK patch, many Beastmasters found it very difficult to solo because Released pets disappeared. Jug Pets started becoming more popular than Charm starting with this patch. Dreamland Dynamis Dreamland Dynamis was also out of the question for many linkshells for the time being. The whole boss system was very different than everyone was used to, and it took awhile to figure out mechanics for each zone. Many of the Accessories were best in slot for jobs, and highly coveted. Many linkshells dropped their Dynamis - Xarcabard/Beaucidine/City farming in hopes of learning more about the new dream dynamis zones.
Dec. 16th, 2005	Starlight Celebration 2005
	The Starlight Celebration was once again held from December 16th thru December 31st. Decorations adorned the trees and popular areas throughout all home nations. New this year were seven christmas greeting cards with no gil inside. Aldebaran Card Betelgeuse Card Canopus Card Capella Card Pleiades Card Rigel Card Sirius Card You were given these cards by moogles who instructed you to trade them to an adventurer with a certain job and level. It was possible you could have the required job/level, and you could change to that job and complete it yourself. After receiving the card back, you had to trade it back to the moogle again. Completing this four times rewarded you with the Dream Robe. A Dream Robe +1 was available with the same process, but those adventurers were "wearing red" meaning they needed to also equip a Dream Robe or Dream Robe +1 and repeat the process.
Dec. 18th, 2005	Final Fantasy XI Fan Festival 2006 Announcement
	The event would take place at Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles. It was also announced that the event would be a three day event, it would have the premier of a playable version of Treasures of Aht Urhgan, and the Ballista Royale championship would take place.
Dec. 18th, 2005	Final Fantasy XI Internet Cafe "REAL VANA'DIEL" Closes
	The shop itself was talked about earlier on the page, but more information will be here. The shop was operated by Melco Online Entertainment, a major PC part manufacturer at the time. Specifically, Buffalo was the affiliated company by Melco Group who was in charge of operations. The shop specialized in Final Fantasy XI, and was operated at considerably higher standards compared with other Manga and Internet cafes in Japan. Guests were served with meals as well as fruit juices and chocolate drinks (Fanta, Qoo, Cocoa, etc) for free. The venue was often rented out for offline Linkshell meetings and christmas events. FFXI could be played on the latest PCs. English and Japanese versions were both installed and available. THe PCs satisfied recommended specs at the time, which were very expensive. Players who wanted to experience the best play experience often went to the cafe. In addition, there was a smoking area that resembled a San d'Orian Rent-a-Room Mog House. The store was conveniently located in Akihabara in an old warehouse building. Clerks often cosplayed as Hume Females and Mithra wearing RSE equipment.	The area it was located was called "Akiba-kei". Akihabara is a district in Chiyoda, Tokyo where many otaku, or obsessive anime, manga, and video game fans gather. Akiba-kei is a Japanese slang term meaning "Akihabara style". It dates back to the early 80s and refers to a subset of otaku who spend much of their time in and around the Akihabara area of Tokyo and are known for their strong interest in "fantasy worlds...anime, manga, maids, idols, and games" The Akihabara area in central Tokyo is well known as a marketplace of cutting edge technology. In recent years, it has developed strong ties to the Japanese gaming industry, as well as to anime and manga publishers. These ties are one reason why Akiba-kei culture has expanded outside its geographic area, to manifest on the Internet in the form of websites. In addition to patronizing the famous electronics stores around them, such as: LaOX,Akibaoo and more. Akiba-kei frequently open their own shops in Akihabara. Many of these shops are run by Akiba-kei in cosplay, who may claim that such attire is the rule for them rather than the exception. The shops offer a wide variety of goods and services: some sell model or ornamental weaponry; others are modeled after antique reading rooms; and still others sell quirky or innovative foodstuffs.
Dec. 20th, 2005	Xbox 360 North America Beta Test Announcement
	It was announced that the February 2006 issue of the Official Xbox Magazine would contain the beta disk for FFXI on Xbox 360. The issue would go on sale on January 17th, 2006.
Dec. 27th, 2005	Closure of Development Information BB & Altana Encyclopedia
	The Development Bulletin Board was used to provide information on and exchanging information about FFXI version updates between Square-Enix and players. The developers exchanged opinions with each other about version upgrades and Playonline. However, if opinions or requests other than the agenda are submitted, they were deleted and a warning email was delivered to the user who posted it. Many ideas were used, however. Requests such as the Escort Quests and an increase in Item Trigger popped NMs were written to this board and they became implemented. Together, this Developer BB and the Altana Encyclopedia closed on this day.	The decision to end the life of these features was made because at this point, community sites have developed and became far superior sources of information for players. SE considered that these sources have finished their roll and pulled the plugs.

Navigation Pre-Release & Beta 2000 - 2001 Release & The First Year 2002   The Rise of the Zilart Era 2003 The Chains of Promathia Era 2004   Conclusion of Chains of Promathia 2005 The Treasures of Aht Urhgan Era 2006   Conclusion of Treasures of Aht Urhgan 2007 The Age of Mythical Weapons 2008   The Add-on Scenarios 2009 The End of the Level 75 Cap 2010   The Beginning of Post-Abyssea 2011 The Level 99 Era 2012   The Seekers of Adoulin Release 2013 Seekers of Adoulin Conclusion 2014 The Rhapsodies of Vana'diel 2015 coming in the future! Back to the Main Page

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