Saturday, June 23, 2012

VanaFest 2012 Rolling Blog Thingy: Day Two

2110 PDT:  Quiz time.

2030 PDT:  Adding stuff in the NA Comm Team stuff:


Instanced Dungeon:  Players can set difficulty, area size, and # of rewards -- this is in Aldouin.

Statue Pieces can create the situation.  Sounds to me like Moblin Maze Mongers 2.0

Looks like statues have three pieces:  One on difficulty, one on size, and one on possible rewards.

"Back on the Ranch":  All people are going to have their own area/instance/island??

You can raise monsters for various things, and fish and mine??

Basically, a change to HELM stuff.

Rune Fencer is basically a Paladin with the magical defense replacing physical defense.

New 2-hours:  2 examples:  WAR:  All attacks go non-elemental.  MNK:  Counter ALL auto-attacks

New enfeebling system, still finishing up on that.

Strengthen Protect and Minne about 1.5 X.

New black belt stuff and enhancement on boost?

Changes to Sange and Shuriken effects...

SMN:  Blood Pacts won't execute if there's no target.  Cait Sith to come in the near-future.

DRG:  Call Wyvern recast change to Merit I.

Play-as-a-monster sounds like it's a full PvP situation.  *UGH!!*


2000 PDT:  Round two from the resident jazz band, The Nanaa Mihgos.  English recap in 30.

1940 PDT:  Tenaka joins the panel...

UI:  Moveable windows of menus and like can be moved all over the game screen.

Definite attempt to ease access on the legal client.

And that's pretty much IT!  That's all from the Dev Team????

1900 PDT:  Dev Team Part II

Starts with a recap of yesterday's Seekers of Adoulin stuff.

First ten minutes look like one giant "Much Ado About Nothing" on the JP Stream.

SECOND JOB IS...  RUNE FENCER.

On to the 2012 Roadmap.

Starting with an overview of what we already know.

Then to the announcement and more information on the "Play as a Monster" situation.

PvP, as monsters, is possible.

A player can be almost any imaginable regular monster type.

1830-1900 PDT:  Looks like Kumi Tanioka on the side stage doing some quick riffs.  Dev Team II at the top of the hour!!

1800 PDT:  Day Two begins with another look at the Heroine's Tower.  There is a rumor going around that one trip into the Tower only involves fighting ONE of the five Heroines, with the 15 minute time limit.

Today's Round Two appears to be starring the Wings of the Goddess Heroine for Group B:

Lilisette, ASSISTED by Cait Sith.

(OW!)

And Lilisette can clone herself/be cloned by Cait Sith, if I'm seeing this right?

And Group A gets the Treasures of Aht Urhgan Heroine:

Nashmiera, and Ovjang and Mnejing are with her!  (And they pretty quickly routed Group A.)

Various "known" NPC's (Group A tonight just ran into Rughadjeen) populate the Tower to aid the adventurers.

There are preliminary mobs you have to defeat to get to the Main Event.  And, remember, you only have 15 minutes for the whole thing!

1735 PDT:  Second Dev Panel will NOT be exclusive Seekers content.  Roadmap stuff, other new stuff also in -- according to the NA Community Stream.

1700 PDT:  JP stream up again -- pre-show advertising from the JP Community Team, I think.

1415 PDT:  After what, at least IMODO, can be best described as a lackluster Day One (yeah, they confirmed the expansion, but when you basically have the NA Community Team playing so damn coy when they know their buddies on the Net were scrounging for the trademark information -- and that's the best they could do!!), Yokohama prepares for Day Two:
  • Another look at Heroine's Tower (we think)
  • More Seekers of Adoulin information, including the second new job in the 2013 expansion
  • Another performance by the jazz group the Nanaa Mihgo's (or however that's spelled)
  • Nobuo will perform later tonight
  • The English viewers might get a look at the "Project XI" panel from last night (it never made the JP stream, as scheduled, for some odd reason).
The thing that kinda gets me about the probability that all the "Dev Team" stuff being SoA teasers is:  With the expansion scheduled to come out some time in 2013, you've got to convince me, if you're Square-Enix, that your MMO division is going to survive that long!  Are you counting on the fact that you will get players to resubscribe what could be 18 months in advance?

But we can take one thing off the table:  The actual Dev Team, who has been very quiet so far this weekend, actually appears to have decided, according to one Tweeter in Japan, against putting FFXI on the PlayStation Vita.  (Have to think that's RAM issues, if anything...)

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