Holy Fucking Shit Part I: That blew me away...

It is obvious that Square-Enix wants to save Final Fantasy XI now.

I said they had to come big -- they came GIGANTIC today.

VanaFest 2010 just wrapped up, and it's three hours that will resonate over Vana'diel for a LONG time to come.

I would like to go over several things while I finish up some work on Ro'Maeve before I (*FINALLY*) go to bed.

1) They have finally thrown in the towel on getting new players for FFXI.

They have made FFXI "75 or GTFO", in a number of ways.

-- 75, it is already being discussed online, may now be no more than MIDGAME. I mean, I've discussed it here before, and Square-Enix finally admitted that the game no less than _starts_ at level 75. 2/3 to 3/4 of all the players online in-game are on a 75 job.

And now, what, 5 new Genkai jobs, 24 new levels (and we all want to see the XP curve -- and does this mean the XP curve TO 75 changes as well??), and then what the Hell are we going to get if we get to 99????

-- They have basically now publicly told the players that most of the new content from this point on in FFXI is endgame content. And then they go and explain why...

-- And what does a 99 situation now leave for stuff that 75's would have a lot of trouble with? Soloing HNM's more often?

-- And then, a pay-to-play mini-expansion new AF3 endgame zone, Abyssea.

Like, WTUF???

2) It is clear that they are ready to allow more low-man situations.

-- Abyssea could be done with a party.

-- Think of (current-) endgame situation of choice at level 99.

3) They are finally addressing (some of) the server problem...

We are basically about 3 1/2 weeks (the date I've heard floated is March 23) from losing 1/4 of the FFXI servers. The list is in the other post (which I hope is somewhat freaking readable... Sorry!).

ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

Of course, this isn't even talking about the 3PP stuff I've been speaking of since SE spoke of it themselves two months ago.

(Of course, they're also admitting that RMT was propping up a number of these servers, because reducing the number of RMT has meant that they now have to kill 1/4 of the servers anyway.)

So how many REAL characters are there on FFXI? 500K, MAYBE 1M???

4) The playerbase finally gets some key things they have been asking for...

-- More endgame content and more stuff to "pwn".

-- BLM will get Meteor in the highest levels.

-- SMN _finally_ gets their 2 summons...

and many many more.

Let's just say this is going to take some time to sink in. There will be an HFS series on this blog -- when I get around to it.

Now, a few more fights, and I go to bed.