The Vanafest announcmentFollow

if XI goes free to play I'm quitting

I'm hoping for a few things.

- An announcement of the end of legacy PS2 support in 2013.
- An announcement of the beginning of PS3 or PS Vita support. I suspect the UI changes being done for PC are also prepwork for those versions.
- An announcement regarding additional mini content expansions, or even better, a new full expansion.

The likelihood of those is a strong possibility. Firing Tanaka and getting a new dev team would be a dream come true, but it ain't gonna happen.

Free to play wont happen without a MAJOR over haul.

You need in an in game store that allows for Credit card collection, which requires UI changes (not really possible on ps2/xbox since neither are on the list of ui updates).

That and what would you buy? You need TONS of micro transactions to balance out the gain. They would have to start selling dyna currency, alexandrite, gil, exp rings, sub job unlocks, area unlocks, private mounts. Might as well just sell mythics/relics/empy weapons.


There will be no ps3/vita support coming, that requires coders (not developers), and it is just to large of an investment for an old game.


End of ps2 support is possible

Mini expansions are possible (not full expansions, not after wotg took 4-5 years post release just to finish)

What were the major announcements for the past Vanafests? I can't imagine a 10 year old game having a full on expansion added to it. I might expect a add-on type mission set like the Moogle missions, but new areas, new mobs, etc. Not gonna happen with the skeleton crew that's likely left coding FFXI.

Wasn't that Tavnazia? If we were going to see it, WoTG would've been the time for it. Since they didn't give it to us then, unless they do yet another time travel arc, I don't think it'll happen.

It will be new stuff for jobs I don't care about. Like a 1,093th avatar, or the ability to heal your pet if you use 155% TP at the right time, or drain 3.

Catwho, while I would love either of your other two ideas, this one needs commenting;

DearJesus@#%^no. Please god no. FFXI was released on ps2 when ps2 was just over 2 years old, and within 3-4 years, the excuse "PS2 limitations" was already pretty rampant. PS3 is six years old. It doesn't matter how cutting edge it was, or what they've done to it in the last 6 years, the thing is 6 @#%^ing years old, and even if they give official ps3 support, within a year, it'll just be their new excuse as to why they can't do x,y, and z. Honestly, PSVita would be just as bad, this game wasn't designed to be played on a handheld, and if MMOs start working their way onto handhelds, I'm not sure I'll be able to take it. I could see, maybe, a redux version, like letting you manage your sh*t with the ps vita, or a support version that lets you do bonus stuff, but a full version where you're playing normally with everyone else? god no.

It'll be a pretty dick move to not allow everyone to get the mog suits available to Vanafest attendees.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11/event/vanafest2012/

Edited, Apr 27th 2012 11:30am by Zanece

I see them in the back of mind combining FFXI and FFXIV into one game. LOL
I would love to see a new expansion, new jobs and more tweaks. I love all of the improvements that they have been making to the game, however I do feel some of them should have been made long ago.
Vanadiel has much more lore to explore, and yeh I would love to see the rest of the world.
Also hell yeh to access to Blueblade Fell, relive the epic battle that many of us watched when we first logged on.

RAWR!

I dont care honestly. No matter what they release i'll always love XI. but im kinda hoping for new jobs? maybe small chance of male mithra(even tho that might be FFXIV only)? ; 3 ;

Considering it's the PS2's memory limitations that give us ridiculous things like 80 inventory cap (which honestly should give an indication as to just how close they are cutting it in their memory usage), and a resulting reliance on Porter Moogles, and the PS3 has about 8 times the memory capacity that the PS2 does, yes. In an absolute sense, it's not a huge amount of memory, but relative to the program we want to run on it, the difference is astronomical.

But again, if they were going to do it, they would have already done it. The best we can hope for is an increased willingness to let the PC version diverge from the other platforms.

While modern PCs have total memory that dwarfs 256 MB, that memory also is there to be shared by a ton of stuff all running at the same time, including a notoriously bloated OS.

I was referring to something that would run FFXI, which means Windows.

They could do something with the unused monorail area. It's been in there since day one.

I can guess which one is Pikko >_>

I kinda cheated though, since I've seen her in person and all!

The majority of the individuals on the site aren't eligible to buy tickets due to the restriction of needing to have Playonline IDs linked to Japanese Square Enix accounts (the whole region situation), and most everyone here falls under the North American/ European accounts. As for ZAM, the only member of the team that'd be able to go without costly flight expenses (and the whole ID thing, though we'd probably be able to get away with it due to it falling under media coverage) would be Elmer. Like last year, our coverage will basically be from the feed and up to date notes that we get.

WoW had a graphics overhaul fairly recently, while FFXI has stayed the same. My computer can barely play WoW on "Fair" (And I have to turn a few settings all the way down) when before it handled "Good" no problem.

Some zones in WoW, on a good PC, look jaw-dropping amazing.

Edited, Apr 30th 2012 8:50pm by Zafire

SE can make a new expansion. It would certainly cost less than FFXIV 2.0. They just choose not to. They got arrogant, think FFXIV at launch would be more successful than FFXI at its peak and they could starve cash cow FFXI and players would have no reluctance whatsoever to depart FFXI for FFXIV or feel offended at being offered the 'choice' of new shiny vs. sabotaged current shiny. They set forth a server merge plan and they did 1 round (which did kinda need it) and then a 2nd round, after FFXIV was shown to be a flop, even though people were saying it wasn't necessary. At least they didn't do a 3rd round. There are limits to their stupidity as unlikely as that notion may seem.

FFXI was at a crossroads back in 2010. They did add new content (Trial of the Magians, raising the Level Cap) and Abyssea was just a buffer to buy them more time. It was clearly a dead end, a gaiden, a side tale. The crossroad was the path to new lands, new wonders or the path of spinning in circles and going towards a plain horizon across kinda pathetic looking grasslands. They've clearly chosen that road to a slow, quiet end though they've strayed from it a little, adding some new content, but its clearly not that other road. Abyssea was supposed to buy time to develop a new expansion, whether they started in early 2010 when Abyssea was plotted or late 2010 when FFXIV was sleeping with the fishes, but as is seen, they clearly never even planned to make a new expansion in 2010 or even at least most of 2011.

FFXI feels like this scene with SE. The fans are shouting to SE "You're going the wrong way!" yet SE reacts to us like John Candy does. FFXI is the car (the clip cuts off right before that scene).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_akwHYMdbsM

It's kind of funny that inventory space is such a huge issue in this game, given that, all things considered, when you compare available inventory in FFXI to other big MMOs, the difference is staggeringly in FFXI's favor. I'm basically talking about every MMO that uses the @#%^ing retarded Inventory bags system, which is most of them, where you start the game with like, 20 slots at most, and it takes all sorts of insanity to increase your max by reasonable amounts, either huge in game costs (similar to FFXI, but honestly, most of the gobbie bag quests are @#%^ing dirt cheap), or huge RL money costs. The most I've ever seen is maybe 100 available slots in field, if you're lucky/rich. Sure, we can only draw on 80 active slots, but by endgame, every player can, with relatively little effort, draw on 140-160 slots, minimum, if not up to 240, and that doesn't even touch the fact that our available bank space is so much more expansive than inventory-bag games, for far less work. Total available active storage is... 475ish slots, since you have to account for a couple of slots to access the 80 MH storage slots. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the storage npcs and the fact that muling is game-legal.

All of that, and we're still hard-pressed to find/make @#%^ing inventory space

A fun alternative is EVE's inventory, where every item has volume, and your inventory space is a set volume (and every ship that has huge cargo space is also either defenseless or a floating brick with no offensive capability, just sh*ttons and sh*ttons of HP) Ships act as your active/field inventory, as well as your armor, your weapons, your transportation, and your character. Each NPC-owned Space Stations has nigh infinite (Talking in the hundreds of millions of cubic meters, and with the ability to buy extra cargo storage that increases over all storage while taking up less space than it has internally, despite the paradox) storage space for each player, as well as for any corp(guild) that pays the fee to have a corp cargo bay at the station . The only draw back is that each station's storage is limited to that station, and can't be accessed from another station. If you forget sh*t in one, you can't just hop in the nearest station to get it, you gotta go all the way back.


Vlor (Or a shrunken Hellboy. G'damn vlor, you look like hellboy and have mdenham's voice. Is anything about you unique?), Usagi, StupidmonkeyNo one of importance, I'm assuming ... what was her name? The Lady who ran the FFXI-Wikibase forum... I think it started witha C? or maybe a K? She was on siren for a bit and we did dynamis together, so it's really bothering me that I'm brainfarting like this... (I'm also totally guessing that it's her because I've never seen a picture of her before, but she's the only other female FFXI admin that I'm aware of), GigantorThayos, and Pikko

Edited, May 1st 2012 1:05pm by Jinte

Edited, May 1st 2012 1:07pm by Jinte

I have 40 inventory slots in each of my bags on EQ2 and I think I have 5 of them (?) I dunno, I have yet to run out of space. Maybe I have more than 5. I am really not that observant about them because it seems like they never run out. It helps that you can have craptons of stuff on the AH indefinitely too.

It also helps that there is no gear swapping really that I can see (at least haven't figured it out if it does exist) and only 1 job on a character. (Though I really wish that wasn't the case. I love my character but I would love it more if it could change jobs)

Edited, May 1st 2012 11:17am by Olorinus

Actually, that is Wilmakitty from Asura, she is a friend of mine from the game that I had never met face to face until that fanfest. Also one of my very best friends

I knew you were older than hellboy, but I thought MD was older than you tbf though, he seems like he's in his 40s despite the fact that he isn't.


That was my next guess. By which I mean "Notexosothepicisn'tawesome" so I'll substitute;

The F2P model itself isn't evil, just what a dev does with it. Most games that deploy as such are unfortunately likely to have some kind of shortcoming (usually graphics) or outright look to clone something else with no meaningful deviation. In XI's case, it's not like there aren't a shortage of possible convenience perks you could market that aren't outright buying items. There's also what I personally refer to as the "useless market" that covers pets, vanity items, and so on that I'd never buy, but otherwise see people gobbling them up. And I'd still love to see contests where people could design items and the winner gets added to the game. This is more likely in the vanity sense, but who knows, maybe the design could be liked to enough to get statted gear.