Chris "Pwyff" Tom was invited by Square Enix on a guided tour of their latest mini-expansion, "A Moogle Kupo d'Etat." Is this a sign of more communication to come!?

A few weeks ago, a very surprising email was sitting in my inbox. It read: INVITE - FINAL FANTASY XI VIRTUAL MEDIA TOUR. When I initially read it, I'll admit that I had to do a double take, as, to me, North American Public Relations and Square Enix just don't seem to mix very often; or perhaps I should say they don't mix often enough! Personally speaking, I've been a constantly recurring character within the world of Vana'diel since the North American launch, but 2009 did not see me firing up PlayOnline on a daily basis - I was taking a break from all of the drama that came with several of SE's banning sprees, as well as the game in general. In the end, I suppose I was also a little bit disenchanted with these absentee landlords who developed the world we lived in, but were missing when it came to maintaining any form of decent communication.

I'm sure everyone remembers Thayos' and ElmerThePointy's very well written article, "Has Square Enix Banned Logic?" where they scolded SE for their complete lack of communication regarding our latest credit card conundrums. Even earlier than that, we have Thayos' "The Silence Of The Devs," where the topic may have been different, but the core theme was definitely the same: "SE needs to speak up." Finally, even earlier than that, we have things like the salvage duping bans, which, while they were applied with good intentions, ended up, once more, exposing those lost lines of communication between SE and their most dedicated player base.

All in all, things looked fairly bleak until I received this invite to the FFXI Virtual Media Tour. I'll have to admit, however, that it's fairly depressing when you realize that Square Enix so rarely communicates with their player base, a media tour is considered some kind of developer communication - it's really not! Either way, I walked into this armed with a few questions of my own as my in-game tour guide, Matt Hilton, proudly showcased SE's second mini-expansion, "A Moogle Kupo d'Etat - Evil in Small Doses." Matt let me check out the new Ninja abilities, the newest monsters, the latest Moblin Maze Mongers addition, the neat player created events, the new quests and upgradable weapons from the Pixies, the 'union' treasure system in Campaign and SE's cool new imbuing system that uses tabs earned from Fields of Valour. I also realize that most of you have checked this stuff out already, but perhaps there are things that you missed, or forgot to check out.

First of all, when it comes to the latest of SE's mini-expansions, I must say that I really like the quality of the cut scenes that I was shown. There are many things that Square Enix is, but unprofessional is definitely not one of them; I'm always so surprised at the quality of the cut scenes they can create with the in-game engine. Of course, I wasn't able to walk through the entirety of the Moogle Kupo d'Etat missions, so it could be that it just turns into another "get me this, this and this" type of quest, but I found myself chuckling at my poor Moogle's plight.

For the new Ninja abilities, I was very happy with the direction in which SE seems to be taking the game. A friend of mine once mentioned that, as a game gets older, it needs to 'evolve' its fundamental game play in order to remain fresh and new in the market. The new Ninja stance changes, "Yonin," and "Innin," give Ninjas a solid choice when approaching their battles, and this obviously goes along in theme with the RDM and WHM stances, as well as the SAM and SCH ones. You can probably guess that SE will be giving everyone a 'stance' system at some point down the line, and I really like the concept of it. While I wouldn't like to see my beloved FFXI transform into some kind of World of Warcraft 'mash-1-until-out-of-energy" game, most players will certainly agree that having more low cooldown abilities (with around one to two minute timers) gives the user more room to develop a unique fighting 'style' and makes combat, in general, a lot more dynamic and intuitive. Here's a suggestion, SE: don't give Warriors stances that grant bonus defence or evasion, just give us a tanking stance that lets us proc Retaliation more! Nothing says absolute happiness like a full DD Retaliation tanking WAR/SAM with a solid healer behind him.

Finally, with the smaller changes implemented by SE, like the addition of the 'union' treasure system and the Fields of Valour imbuement concept, it does feel as though SE is paying more attention to improving their current content, rather than throwing out random mini-games to distract players from their problems (Chocobo Racing and Pankration, anyone?). While they did add a new Moblin Maze Mongers mini-game, I'll admit here that I never did do much in the MMM; it still seems incredibly complicated and a little bit difficult to find anything worthwhile.

During the in-game tour, I also attempted to engage Matt Hilton on more sensitive topics, like the recent credit card bans, and generally grill him about SE's lack of communication. While Matt's responses weren't entirely satisfactory, it's easy to see the limitations that can be imposed on a North American 'branch' that operates as an extension of the main Japanese company. Hilton noted that SE knows about the problems, but they're still "looking at how [they] want to approach the issue." I hope this means that SE is planning some kind of reimbursement for all players instead of meaning that they just don't want to talk about it right now, but eventually everyone will forget about it and move on.

Hilton did mention that these North American Media Tours, while primarily aimed at simply "getting FFXI out there in the eyes of the people," are also a product of SE attempting to participate more in the community. Hilton went on to say that "community wise, we're trying to get more time with the premiere sites, like Allakhazam, and talk more via Q&A." Hilton did acknowledge that they have done Q&A sessions in the past, but he noted that these were few and far between, and they typically took months to get back to the sites; he hopes for a faster turnaround and more frequency when answering the community's questions.

On a final note, while most of you know that Shantotto's Ascension, the third 'mini-expansion,' will be coming out eventually (Hilton said that they have not confirmed a date as of yet), the SE team still needs to decide if they will continue along the lines of these mini-expansions for Vana'diel, or if they'll go back to the good ol' massive releases, like Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urghan and Wings of the Goddess. As well, apparently a lot of media outlets took Tanaka's words a little bit too literally when he said that they had "content planned for the next year or so." What Tanaka meant was that, just like any other MMO, they still had at least a year's worth of content already planned out, but this in no way suggests that FFXI will stop receiving updates in a year's time.

In the end, while my in-game media tour with the North American FFXI team did come two weeks after the expansion was already launched, and no real 'new' information could be pried from my guide's brain, I can't help but feel a little glimmer of hope after this tour. While SE certainly has a lot to learn before they can get to the level of public interaction that Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, Blizzard's Lead Systems Director of World of Warcraft, has maintained over the past few months, I think going from zero community interaction to a nice little in-game tour is still quite an improvement. It was a very confident Matt Hilton who informed me that he believed FFXI still had a long future ahead of itself and, after checking out some of this newest stuff with him, I think I'm finally inclined to agree.

P.S. A very warm thank you goes out to Dana Whitney of One PR Studio and Tyrone from the FFXI team for helping me with my corrupted FFXI installation woes.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com