Heavensward

Fan Festival Was Amazing

Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on TwitchThere have been several community events that I have watched over the years for the various games I have been into.  I’ve watched SOE Live, and Blizzcon… so I guess I was expecting the Fan Festival to feel pretty much the same, but in the end it felt considerably different.  With Blizzcon there is always the feeling that the folks from Blizzard are imposed upon to be up in front of the fans, especially during the question and answer sessions.  SOE Live on the other hand feels more like a gathering of loyal fans to a long running franchise, but even it felt different.  When one of the members of the FFXIV team was on stage, they were practically glowing with excitement at being there.  If you think about it, I guess it makes sense… because this is a game that was so bad during the 1.0 launch that they simply could not charge money for it.  These team members have through a monumental effort turned the listing ship around and not only stopped it from sinking but made it the second most successful subscription MMO on the market.

Watch live video from finalfantasyxiv on TwitchI think it goes deeper than that however.  Each time a developer of any stripe was on stage, they were almost vibrating with excitement about talking to the fans.  Naoki Yoshida aka “Yoshi P” the producer of Final Fantasy XIV and the man mostly credited for the games resurrection… was only actually scheduled to be on stage a few times.  However he ended up sitting in on damned near every panel because you could just tell that he was having a blast at the festival.  The man however that needs the lions share of the credit for pulling off this event as smoothly as it ran is Michael Christopher “Koji” Fox.  Not only was he a constant bundle of enthusiasm over all matters lore, but he spent the majority of the conference live translating for every dev panel.  This is a pretty monumental feat, and his localization and lore panel is one that everyone should see.  Right now the twitch stream are these two 10 hour blocks of video… but I am hoping that these get broken up into individual panels.

Since the release of the game my friends and I have talked about just how awesome the localization and quest writing is for this game, and come to find out…  that is almost entirely the work of Koji Fox.  The Japanese version of FFXIV apparently lacks almost all of the flavor that the English version of the game has.  During the Lore panel they gave a few examples of a Japanese quest that was extremely utilitarian contrasted against one of ours that is all about amazingly bad puns.  I feel like the game would not have been nearly as successful were it not for all of this diligent work during the localization process.  Apparently it has been noticed, and the Japanese version is going to be much more closely related to style of the English client from this point on.  It almost sounded like things would even start in the English client and get translated to Japanese, but I might have misunderstood that bit.  In any case Koji for me at least is the reason why this game is so damned sticky.

Heavensward

It is safe to say that I have not been this excited about an expansion in any game since the months leading up to the Burning Crusade.  There is just so much that I am looking forward to in Heavensward, not the least of which is the unlocking of Ishgard.  I am in the minority among my friends but I love Coerthas, and not because I particularly like the elves that inhabit it.  I love snowy climates, and Coerthas is like the king of all snowy climates because it has Dragons and the Dragoons.  I am looking forward to having Ishgard be the fourth city state and am hoping that it has a grand company associated with it.  I am also hoping that the political assholery that is the Coerthas quest chains…  does not represent all of Ishgard as a whole.  The other thing that I am completely pumped about is that we don’t have to wait over a year to see this expansion.  It is currently slotted for Spring of 2015 which could mean as early as March, but potentially as late as May.  This is the way that you announce an expansion…  a few months before release so that your fans have enough time to get excited about it, but not so much time that it feels like it is extremely far away.

I think the thing that excites me the most about Heavensward is the potential for new classes.  It has already been stated that there will be several new classes and jobs to learn with the expansion, and over the course of the Fan Festival there were a few leaks.  During one of the panels Gondai the battle team developer held up a Batman shirt, verifying one of the long held rumors that we would be seeing the Dark Knight.  During another panel it was leaked that Samurai would also be included.  Between those two I am pretty much in heaven.  Both are two of my favorite jobs from the Final Fantasy series, and you can damned well bet I will level both of them… and depending on the particulars will likely switch to Dark Knight as my primary job from that point onwards.  I have loved that job since Final Fantasy IV and always found it so damned disappointing when Cecil changes to being a Paladin.  My theory is that Dark Knight will be the DPS half of Warrior, and likely use Two Handed Swords…  but who knows.

2.4 and Beyond

The most exciting bits for me however had nothing to do with the expansion.  We have been waiting anxiously for the 2.4 patch to launch, and during the Live Letter managed to get a definitive date.  Next weekend will be the London Fan Festival, and a lot of the job related information is being held back to reveal during that event.  However the Tuesday immediately following London, the 28th we are getting the patch that introduces Rogue and Ninja, the Final Coil of bahamut and a bunch of Quality of life tweaks.  What I am really hoping is that since Second Coil of Bahamut is getting uncapped in the amount of loot you can get from it each week… that they might be doing the same for Syrcus Tower.  If nothing else the Soldiery gear should be considerably easier to get since once again they are introducing a brand new Tomestone category “Of Poetics”, which means they will be converting existing tomestones and lowering the price of items.

What is awesome is that Heavensward is not terribly far away, but they have a whole bunch of stuff that will be going into the game in the meantime.  They confirmed that the Golden Saucer area will be going in during 2.5 and with it Chocobo Racing, various mini-games and the thing I am absolutely amped about…  Triple Triad.  This was a card game that existed as part of the Final Fantasy VIII game where you collected various cards throughout the world and dueled other Triple Triad players.  The game play was extremely simple to pick up, but hard to master.  I am so ready for this to be in game and expect me to duel a lot while hanging in our housing zone.

Community Spirit

There is a massive rundown on Reddit of all of the things mentioned during the Live Letter during the show yesterday.  I highly suggest you check it out if you are wanting more information.  Needless to say it is a super exciting time to be playing Final Fantasy XIV.  If I was not already enamored with the community I would have been after the Fan Festival.  The community spirit was constantly apparent when they dealt with players.  There were a number of events set up for players who were attending the show to compete in.  Among these was a preview of the as yet to be released Odin Primal fight.  Teams of players had 15 minutes to defeat the encounter, which pretty much meant at maximum they had two attempts.  The end result was not only bragging rights, but also an “I Beat Odin” shirt only available during the convention.  What sprung up around it was an atmosphere of folks cheering on other teams as they tried to get their own shirts and the sharing of tips and pointers.  As you talked to players that were defeated by the encounter, all they wanted to do was get back in line and figure out how to tweak their strategy for the next try.

Watching the crowds and watching folks on twitter talking about the experience… it was like the entire group was this big family.  I was so happy to see that this same spirit that we seem to have on the Cactuar server, apparently exists on all other servers as well.  I feel like each player that has made a home on their server, feels the same way about their own server as being truly “awesome”.  The most interesting thing was listening to the various social channels in game during the event.  It felt like most of the community was tuned into the festival and sharing tidbits of information they just saw.  There was so much cheering over various things, not the least of which was the announcement that the Atma drop rates would be more than doubled starting in 2.4 and the Animus books themselves would be considerably cheaper after the Tomestone conversion.  Folks are amped about what is coming during the next few months, and I feel like there won’t be a single dull moment until we arrive at the launch of Heavensward in the spring.  If you could not already tell… I am extremely excited.

#FFXIV #Heavensward