So some of you may have read the hoopla lately about how SquareEnix created a boss in Final Fantasy XI that occupied one of the top linkshells across all servers over 18 hours.. and still didn't defeat.

The complaints and negative publicity were possibly the first real public exposure of the long-time SquareEnix MMO to the general US public, and it definitely didn't impress. News outlets such as Reuters even ended up carrying the news feed; Kotaku had over a hundred comments on the article within a day or so.

All this led to SE swiftly adjusting Pandemonium Warden, which was the boss mentioned above. They also adjusted Absolute Virtue, the previously 'impossible to beat' boss as well. For the unitiate: Fighting Pandemonium Warden is much like a long, drawn out slugfest. Fighting Absolute Virtue? Currently there's no linkshell that can survive him for more than 4-5 minutes before he systematically exterminates everyone in the alliance. SE keeps alluding to a 'trick' or 'gimmick' on how to fight Absolute Virtue, but in the nearly 3 years that he's been in the game, none of the playerbase has figured it out. This year SE finally released a highly anticipated video of the fight, only to further dissapoint the playerbase even more when the video was more cryptic than the trick itself!

Of course, this didn't prevent the playerbase from trying. Time and again, creative players figured out ways to exploit the different loopholes in the game to help them 'lock' AV in a way so that they could fight him. Every time however, SE would foil players well thought-out ideas by changing code to disable each method. Long-time endgame players remember trying the 'wall of justice' or 'cutscene tank' tricks, only to have SE disable them within days of their discovery.

After this latest bout of media frenzy, SE lowered the hit points total of Absolute Virtue by a significant amount.. but then imposed a time limit on the fight to ARTIFICIALLY limit the length of time a linkshell could fight AV. They didn't really change the behavior of AV, at least as far as any players could tell, as AV could STILL rip apart a group of players if left alive for any length of time. So, what do the creative players do? Use the tried and true method of dishing out a HUGE amount of damage in a very short time. The 'kraken dark knight' strategy has been around for quite a while, however it could never really be used on Absolute Virtue because he simply had too much hit points; essentially the KC DRKs would run out of steam long before AV died before this update. But now, things were different.

A few of the BEST linkshells across all servers were able to hobble together the resources to field enough KC DRKs to kill AV in the past two weeks. Some linkshells, who had a few but not nearly enough actually put aside old rivalries to work together, something that hasn't been seen since the days before the North American PS2 release! The camraderie amongst the highest echelon of FFXI players was especially exciting. The beast that had been troubling players for years was finally falling, albeit to only a select few players.

So, what happens a week after all of this starts?

SquareEnix updated AV again. This time he becomes more or less immune to the 'KC DRK' strategy within a few seconds. SE again slips back into it's same routine, making the game needlessly frustrating for it's playerbase knowing full well that most players will keep playing even though they're annoyed. Why? Because the public media backlash has died down, and so there's no need to listen to the cries of the playerbase anymore.

If SE had only give REAL clues that players had a HOPE of deciphering 3 years ago, we wouldn't be in this mess now. If SE would only give REAL clues now, they wouldn't have another media ticking timebomb on their hands.

But, alas, it won't happen.

Last week, SE made two huge announcements, that have essentially trumped anything that has come out since the new expansion was released.

First off, the Mog Bonanza. Essentially an in-game lottery, the MB promises to be a chance for the everyday player to get something or lots of somethings, as the top prize is 100,000,000 gil. My previous post about how the economy is currently may no longer apply after July when the gil is distributed. Lots of players are trying to cap their chances at obtaining the big prize, and even some of the lower tier prizes are exciting as well.

Personally, as my secondary job is Paladin, the tier 3 prize of Hauteclaire is most promising, since Hauteclaire is an extremely rare drop from Khimaira, who himself only pops once every few days. This HNM is camped by 2-3 linkshells almost constantly, so my chances of obtaining one without joining any of those said linkshells is almost nil.

As for the second announcement: http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/topics/special/080502.html

The "new" relics SE promised us from FanFest '07! One for each job, and with unique weapon skills and models, it seems to have gotten players extremely excited about the prospect of obtaining a coveted weapon. There's not too much information as of yet however, so speculation abounds as to whether these will be comparable to the "old" relics from Dynamis, and as well as what SE plans on doing as far as the promised revisiting of the "old" relic weapons.

One of everyone's favorite subject in the U.S. nowadays is the economy. It seems the same sentiment is mirrored in Final Fantasy 11 as well.

Everyone loves to complain about how the economy in the game is in a depression. SquareEnix has been banning RMT (real money trade) accounts left and right, and billions of gil leave the servers every month. Unfortunately, this is gil that would have recirculated back into the economy in one way, shape or form. With that gone, everyone has become a lot more stingy with their spending, and conversely items that formerly commanded millions of gil now sell for several hundred thousand. There's also a huge gil sink known as Dynamis, which costs 1 million gil each time a linkshell attempts it. Most linkshells will run twice a week, and on an average day, probably about 5-6 linkshells will enter Dynamis. So, 35 million gil a week dissapears into oblivion. Same goes for events such as Limbus and Einherjar, however the costs are a bit lower. Even with 10 people entering a Limbus area however means 300K gil dissapears from the economy.

As for gil generators, pretty much the same ones exist now as they existed 3-4 years ago, when the economy was healthy. So it seems gil making hasn't kept up with the bannings, and everyone is slowly bleeding their gil away...

At least it seems that way. In reality, the markets are alive and well. The trailing zeroes aren't as long when you look at the AH history, but everything else has decreased in tune with each other. Shrewd buyers who watch the weekly cycle of buying and selling can make a decent living just watching the auction houses. High level crafters can reliably synth items that sell for a profit.. to NPCs. Farming basic consumables for said crafters can turn a tidy profit as well.

SquareEnix did start adding some endgame-type content already, in the form of HNM monsters such as the sand worm:

Was an interesting fight. This thing steals your abilities, and uses it back on you. It was amusing when the ranger in the party went "uh.. it just Eagle Eye Shot me," as he died.

Been a few months on hiatus from this blog, but I think I'll be posting here more from this point forward.

What has transpired since FanFest 2007 and the release of the new expansion? Sadly, the last update from SE didn't give too much in the way of new missions/quests or unlock any of the new areas like Shadowreign Jeuno or Xarcabard. It seems like the content for this expansion is still only trickling in, and much of what was promised at FanFest has been sitting on the back-burner.

Hopefully we'll see SE ramping up in the coming months.

As for myself and the adventures of Rhealana..

In FFXI there's multiple jobs, and for each of those jobs, there's an "ultimate weapon" or "relic weapon". This is much like any other Final Fantasy where each character has a final optional weapon they can obtain that is considered the pinnacle of that job. Each weapon actually takes quite a bit of effort and game currency to finish, on average taking players several months to over a year to finish once they decide to start.

Rhealana's chosen job is the dragoon. The relic weapon for that job is Gungnir, the fabled spear of Odin.

Rhealana obtained Gungnir on January 10th, 2008.

Its been two weeks, and the dust is starting to settle.

Dancer can officially now be declared the victor of the two jobs as far as public reception is concerned. At least on Garuda, at any point in time there are twice as many DNCs as there are SCHs. However, questions have started to arise; do DNCs have sufficient abilities and usefulness for endgame? At the moment, with only a B rating in dagger skill, and a heavy reliance on TP for most of it's job abilities, against endgame type mobs it may be less than useful when daggers keep doing 0 damage. A DNC at Lv.75 will have a base 250 dagger skill, whereas THFs have 272. Fully meritted, with Love Torque, a DNC can get to 273, but that only means their daggers do as well as a just-reached-Lv.75 THF.

I do hope that SE realizes this and either provides meritable ways to gain TP, store TP or increase the dagger skill in one way or another. Right now my DNC is sitting at Lv.38, and it's been quite interesting reaching this level. Two DNCs in a party can definitely main heal, as the Curing Waltzes are all instantaneous.

As for scholar.. well, its a very mixed back. Some of the new damage-over-time spells have potential, but they're all MP-expensive, and don't last very long at lower levels. Only time will tell whether the mage community can figure out how to extend the length and make them worthwhile.

It's been 5 days since Wings of the Goddess went live.

A few hiccups here and there with the servers accompanied with some emergency maintenance has put a slight dampener on the fun aspect, but nevertheless there seems to be a LOT to be excited about.

SE did it right this time in making the two new jobs easily unlockable; the constant shouts in Whitegate in the first week of TOAU was painful at best. I was able to unlock Dancer within the first hour that the servers went live with WOTG content.

A few things I've observed so far:

- The missions are a little lacking. 2-3 missions on the release date which are all solo-able make for a very short intro to WOTG.

- The overwhelming majority opinion is that Dancer > Scholar as far as new jobs are concerned. This could also just mean Scholar just needs more time to be 'broken' in.

- Campaign is a hit, at least amongst the people I play with. One guy boasted gaining over 20k xp over the weekend from just doing Campaigns, which also accumulate Allied Notes for him; he's got more than enough to be swimming in the new movement speed boots.

- Although there's barely any mission content, the new areas are spectacular, and the new mobs are exciting.

- SE's new windower.. needs work.

..here's the images shown throughout the two days at Fanfest: