Thursday, March 19, 2015

Oh my dear God, they didn't...

Well, the good news is you don't get an immediate shutdown.

The bad news is that you might get it WORSE.

With about 48 hours notice, Square-Enix Japan announced a press conference for "The Future of Final Fantasy XI".

What we got was not what we expected. Some people are probably happy that the game is not shutting down.

The first major announcement was the final scenarios to the game. 

Rhapsodies of Vana'diel will be the final set of scenarios added to the game, the first of which to be added in the May version update.

From the digest, it's going to tie in fourteen years of FFXI.  The other two parts are in August and November.

One major prediction came true and then some:  PS2 support is ending in one year's time.  So is XBox's.

And the major event coming forward is apparently "The Goddess' Gala", incorporating both in-game campaigns and other campaigns.

The second of three major announcements was the announcement of a new Vana'dielian mobile game for Japan only -- Final Fantasy Grandmasters.  This took up the bulk of the 45-minute presentation.

But then the third one came, and, when it did...

They are planning to partner to get a mobile interface for actual FFXI play -- with one of the worst and most corrupt such companies around, Nexon.

OH...  SHIT!!

So you're not only possibly creating "All The Bravest II", but you're doubling down with the people from Maple Story and all the hacking and shit and cash-shops and the like from that???

Are we going to have a Final Fantasy XIV left when you guys are done???

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They appear to only be shutting down FFXI because it is developed on PS2 devkits, and they only have a couple dozen left working in the world. A final expansion is reasonable, considering they can't keep churning out more if the dev kits die, and they don't want a big multi-year expansion like WotG or Adoulin to be in progress when the kits die and they no longer can make the content.

Console support is ending because Sony is shutting down DNAS, which only FFXI still uses, and Microsoft is shutting down their matchmaking servers that connect players to the game. That's in March 2016, which is an amazing run for PS2 online service.

They never migrated their development environment to Windows when they had the staffing and knowledge to do so. They seem to have learned from that in respect to FFXIV, which is developed on PC, not PS3 or PS4 dev kits. When the PS2 dev kits are dead, they can no longer make new zones, character models, or sounds/music for FFXI on any platform, since it is all translated from the PS2 environment.