---
Kallo decides to take people like me to task for my views regarding the relationship between FFXI and FFXIV in this little gem:
Kallo, let me put my position down, again, this strongly:
When they decided to start working on FFXIV, the Square-Enix Dev Team pretty much gave up on Vana'diel. This is not something which just started with the revelation that Rapture is Final Fantasy XIV...
(And does that one guy on G4 now sound prophetic in claiming exactly that in the video blurb which Aneiro flamed several months ago?)
The point is that there is a certain amount of energy which must be put in by Square-Enix to maintain and make this experience in Vana'diel good for all the players. Now (especially with the recent updates and what they are planning for the next one), all it appears they wish to do is to keep the customer base happy -- when most indications appear that they are NOT...
If you don't believe me, go back to when I really started realizing that Square-Enix might not be giving a damn about XI anymore: the January 22 bannings. In fact, go back to your very own network's program on those bannings, Kallo.
I can understand that this kind of a venture is a business, but it is BAD BUSINESS to neglect things like obvious RMT website rings (more comment on that in a bit...) and the like. One has to wonder how much they really do care anymore, except to try to get us to bite and put down the money for either advanced hardware or a PS3.
---
Speaking of RMT:
They're still spamming us. 2 yesterday. Another today. Probably more as I continue to be on today.
The first question I have is why they aren't going after the websites for this -- if they claim that they will and can go after the phishing websites (*cough*which I would venture a bet are largely one and the same!!*cough*).
I mean, I'll tell you right now: Especially with my stands against not only RMT as a criminal enterprise, but most of the top-level players as same, the only reason they probably haven't tried to hack my account is that they don't consider it worth it to do so!! Risk-reward...
These sites really can go after two things: Either the credit-card information on Square-Enix' files, or the gear and gil of the character to sell it off in RMT-land!
But it is clear that RMT continues unabated...
Which gets to point #2: The rapidly dropping price of RMT gil.
I mentioned this about a week or so ago when I pulled up one of the first reports I sent to the Special Task Force, when a million gil on this particular bunch of criminal bastards was selling (in February of 2009) for about $48.
The tell I got, from the same company, now has the price at $22.19.
I still think there's something really rotten in Rotterdam here. It's not like the real demand for RMT gil has gone down (though there are some who think that the effects of the RMT PWNER 1.337 have significantly cut down the number of buyers -- yeah, come back to me when the number of players using illegal third-party Windower software doesn't outnumber the number of legal Windowed Mode players by a factor of at least 3-1).
Something is going on here, and I have to wonder if it's one of two other things:
1) That the three sites advertising to players are, in fact, Square-Enix front operations to make a little extra cash and then ban them all on top of it.
or
2) That some massive new means for this particular company to farm egregious amounts of gil has been discovered and not nerfed yet.
My bet is still on #2.
---
Decided on my next levelling project, and started it last night.
Levelling WHM to tele-whore/subjob level (38-40 ish).
It now stands at 17, and, once I finish the required daily stuff, it's back to the Fields of Valor (especially that the daily Kulili fights to level DNC to a reasoned level aren't draining my tabs seriously!) to get it to 20 and beyond. This won't be a short thing -- took me a month or so to actually get my NIN to subjob level after I started it.
But just something interesting to work on some stuff and farm some tabs and AH stuff.
---
Since when did some of these stacks of crystals go for 4K now?? RMT??? Probably, from what I've heard...
Posts
3 comments:
The Water Crystal pricejack is because of, primarily, ACP. With ACP11 the demand for silent oils skyrocketed quicker than supply on materials could keep up. This, following the rules of economics 101, drove up the price of subsequent bottleneck materials, and water crystals are the least farmed low-tier crystal out there.
It also does have something to do with RMT, one of the main postulations on what they're doing for gil is having massive amounts of trial chars cycling flowerpots and growing a batch of wildgrass seeds and NPCing whatever comes out.
Basically their trick is to start up the trial character, get 1 or 2 harvests of wildgrass seeds in, and transfer out the 10 flowerpots to the next trial account before the first one expires or gets banned.
I just looked, Wildgrass Seeds + Water Crystal + Brass Flowerpot have possible garbage yields of Fire Crystals and Gysahl Greens, which are approximately breakeven NPCing, but the other yields are 8-12 Azouph or Sharug Greens, which would be about 2.5k to NPC on prime yield, or 8-18 Tokopekko Wildgrass which would be like 6k to NPC on near-prime yield.
You do this across 10 pots on hundreds of characters, with a pot rotation to save money, you can get 2 full yields from each character, that's an average of 80k per character. Not spectacular but when you rotate several hundred of them(it takes no effort to maintain a massive gardening rotation), it would add up.
Good heads up, ixthyse -- and, for those who need Silent Oils, how about levelling DNC to 30 and using Spectral Jig, realizing that you're (unless you've already got the group and the six of you are running up at the same time) going to need two runs up the Tower just to get to the fight...
To use your comments to tie together two previous blog posts:
For the record, I just got an RMT tell about 10 minutes ago with a price of $19/million.
It'd only take about 12 characters to pull that kind of cash -- and if these RMT rings have, literally, 100s of such characters (which, to bring the second previous post into this, would explain the massive inflation of the number of characters in Vana'diel -- Square-Enix' claim of two million and all that bullshit) on every server, that would explain the price implosion, the supply _ex_plosion, and the explosion of RMT tells.
Consider: If there's no credit card # or any of that involved in getting a trial character, here's what the RMT scum can do:
-- Create trial character.
-- Get necessary materials from previous trial character before previous trial character completes their cycle.
-- Farm massive gil.
-- Give necessary materials to NEXT trial character (see 2nd step, above).
-- Get banned for RMT tell advertisements before the character expires and must be paid for.
Now, one has to wonder if even doing a trial character server would be enough. It is probably time to abandon the trial system altogether.
Post a Comment