It's Enough to Make You Want to Rock Yourself Sitting on The Floor, Smacking Your Arm

when is release again?

It's time to play the waiting game. Tick tock, tick tock.

So apparently there's been a huge content leak. LET'S GAB ABOUT THAT IN A BIT. First off an explanation on an update delay:

Comic Con 2013:

Faiyt and I went to Comic Con this year. Anyone who knows me in my personal life know that I used to attend this schindig every year up until about a few years ago when it was Twilight-Con (why anyone is a fan of that series is beyond me) for a while. What a hot mess.

In any case we made a visit to Square Enix's booth and tried out the new Lightning game. It certainly looks cool, and the battle system is similar(ish) to that of FFXI-2's. But that's neither here nor there. I was hoping to glean some new information of FFXIV: ARR by the team that happened to man the booths at Square Enix, but honestly it seemed like their team consisted of slighly cringeworthy fanbois gone intern from the SE offices. Awkward didn't even begin to cover Team Squeenix Redshirt Brigade. It seemed doubtful they knew much if at all. The most I could really hope to get is information I hadn't heard already. But... there was a nice printed banner? And a rather large campaign to sign up for the last phase of beta? Yay.

Grab Yourself Some Depends or Taco Sauce:

either way you're gonna need a box o' these.

Yes. Tons of content was datamined and leaked. Though I haven't gauged the response from the development team, I would not be surprised if internally they are acting super shocked that this would happen. I would HOPE THEY ARE NOT though (it seems like no maybe, especially after reading a certain quip in this most recent iteration of LftP). Usually you could roll with leaks one of two routes, by either going nuclear or just letting it go and continuing. Secrecy is hard to maintain nowadays, especially with a smarter, older MMO crowd so I'd hope that some of them realized it would only be a matter of time and wear the shock better. I like to think that while they're upset they can't reveal it like how they wanted to, it just makes some of our FFXIV-starved audience hungry for more at this point really. 

PHAZU NO JUTSU:

Everyone is looking forward to learning exactly when Phase 4 will begin. There's been lots of speculation as to the exact date, and apparently it was enough for the JP development team to sort of respond by musing and chuckling about themselves about how we Americans are just so silly, taking words that they throw out there and somehow come up with a date and time of the actual start of P4. While I think it's ok to speculate, the response from the dev team over this imo wafted traces of dismissive amusement reminiscent of when I was back in the audience during the "QnA" (moar like Q n' gay amirite?) session of the FFXI Fan Fest. Maybe it's a Japanese thing and we just don't understand, but it's 2013, not 2003, and this kind of "Maybe if you believe in the heart of the cards it's true!" bullshit won't fly anymore. I'm hoping that the development team is in a position to ditch that mindset quickly if remnants of that attitude remain and keep an open transparent humbleness if they want to make FFXIV a successful MMO not just in Asia. Just super saiyan.

lemme work mah mighty prowers, plaes peoples, plaes

I foresee problems in the future with that attitude of the dev team knowing what's better, and in the end they just might be right. Only time can tell really at this point, but I'm just not convinced that this slow unearthing of reasoning really is the right answer at this point. Ultimately the MMO audience of 2003 doesn't exist anymore. I do believe FFXI only got as far as it did because as I had mentioned in a previous post, it was a lot of people's first times with lots of MMO's. Even the game itself was one of the first really populated MMO's out there, pre-dating World of Warcraft and like myself, only stuck around because we just didn't know any better. Today's audience is smarter, older, jaded, bitter, and most likely won't suffer "g'hohoho well aren't you amusing" giggle fests. Which brings me to another topic...

Bubble-Boy Vets versus Jaded Asshat Vets:

This to me has always been an interesting topic, especially regarding the players of FFXIV on a purely social level. Personally I could clearly tell some player types apart just by attitude who had stuck around 1.0 and/or FFXI, and those who ventured onward into other games, especially WoW.

this particular lalafel has managed the dismissive sneer to a precise science of fluid motion.

Because the FF MMO's heavily relied on community to get anything done in this game, it was imperative to retain a certain reputation within your server. This was exceptionally true of FFXI, at least from what I could remember, and it had always been that way since I played up until I quit in '06. If you were a complete peehole, you could expect to become an outcast of your server or forced to join other peeholes in their Peehole Linkshell until it imploded and re-collect into another Peehole Linkshell until that would eventually self destruct later or shuffle on despite their collective peeholeness (I am liking this word too much right now). Some of these Linkshells ran on their collective being hated on, working out simply just to spite their haters. It was a sad state of affairs when it didn't work out for the most part, but it strengthened the amount of reputation maintenance every player felt obligated to maintain if they had hoped to attempt greater milestones within their FFXI careers.

It made those who made the move to WoW from FFXI a bit of a jarring experience because as one would expect, "they all" were peeholes. While in the past the community may have existed more or less in WoW back then, it most certainly became a non issue when LFR/D went live, thus seemingly aggrivating the problem. Players from FFXI realized very early on that their ignore list would fill up rather fast, and when that option ran out, either stuck it out earning their thick skin, or peacing out. Sticking it out would change some though, I know I've seen it happen to myself and other friends who made the jump to Warcraft. It becomes that much more apparent when you're put back in an MMO where these FF only MMO players seem on a hairtrigger snootfest when/if you do something by mistake or don't act polite enough... I've seen it during the beta a lot. Like, what? It's easy to want to be as dismissive as they percieve to be, but of course one will always think they are more right than the other. You get boogers, and YOU get boogers, and YOU get boogers! 

Honestly though it's probably going to be a good idea to just accept the fact that there will Always be Peeholes. Anywhere. Here's some pics!

Faiyt and I decided to go through the character creator one last couple of times. Inebriating substances (not really?) may or may not have been involved in choices and reasoning behind why we chose the things we did. Pervy cat girls gotta keep pervyin'. Ain't even mayad.

Edit: Eugh, Blogger's photo uploading service is being a dink right now, I'll put up more screenshots later on tonight. Mayhaps a drawing too!