Forgive me if I'm more than a little pessimistic about this "tour"...

Well, it sounds as if the Community Team at least wants it to be known that they will kiss the ass of at least some of the representatives of the player base and deign them (and, by extension, us) with their presence.

The Community Team, over the next several weeks, will be appearing on several of the podcasts, starting with Pet Food Cheater on the 29th of April. Tamtu and Sooraya will get another ".5 episode" as they have the Community Team for an "Annual Events" session one week later. And Aneiro and his merry band take their shot at the Community Team one week after that.

Each of the three shows is going to take a look at the different aspects of the Community Team and events within Vana'diel. None of the shows, at least in concept, will overlap.

... and pardon me if I don't see this effort as one bad piece of PR after another -- one heaping, steaming load of shit from a company which has definitely deserved its reputation as one of the worst with public relations, rules enforcement, and basically anything having to do with the actual player base.

I expect a steaming load of nothing in these three shows, with the exception of mutual ass-kissing and dick-sucking from the shows to the Community Team and maybe one off something that might appeal to 5% of the player base.

Why? I've said it before: Square-Enix has stopped caring about Final Fantasy XI.

Final Fantasy XI is their two-dollar whore that they pimp out for everyone's $12.95 a month so they can stay relevant in an MMO market which has left them firmly in the dust.

ACP is a perfect example of this: A completely half-assed "storyline" with a quarter-assed system which basically almost turns the beastmen in six regular zones into bot-fests if someone actually can pull something decent from the "goodie box" in Jeuno.

The thing is: I can understand, especially in the age of RMT and all that crap (I'll address that in a moment...) about the augments and the like, but FFXI is really beginning to appear to be in a situation where most real upgrades need you to RMT -- with Square-Enix.

Mog Satchel? $10.

New content? $10/3 months, with no real expectation that the 3 mini-expansions will come close to what you paid $30 for before with the regular expansions.

And that is my beef with "What are we paying for?" I said a number of times that I felt that the three expansions, in total, should have as much content as a full regular expansion, and, if ACP is any indication, not close...

(So that covers that part of it...)

It's clear that they really have put most of their efforts behind a game which, given the current market, may never make it, especially if Square-Enix continues to fall on it's ass and not deal with some of the real issues with what's going on, in FFXI and beyond.

So forgive me if I'm more than a little pessimistic about this as anything more than "Square-Enix supports PFA and LBR and the like..."

If they really wanted to answer some questions about the game, how about a few of these??

When the Hell are you going to ban Windower-users?

When the Hell are you going to actually start prosecuting RMT???

When the Hell are you going to basically admit openly to the player base that the reason you won't tell them anything more about Absolute Virtue is a tacit statement (sotto voce) that most of the people who would take on AV have no real idea of how to play the game as Square-Enix allows under the rules?

When the Hell are you going to ban all the botters?

How about this: When are you going to make it actually worth it to play the game legally???

Of course, none of this would get answered, by anyone at Square-Enix, because, to do that, would be basically an admission of what I've said all along... Since it's all about the fucking gil and gear, the rules are meaningless unless the abrogation is flagrant enough to deal with, but not widespread enough so the hooker can't get her fix.