Reality vs FFXI

I heard some complaints that our game is too real.

You have a point there. But some of them are just hilarious since we really tried our best to give you a real environment and had to work hard on this. It hurts our feelings to have you moaning about it.

Let me tell you how we saw the world and transfered that to FFXI:

First of all, sure you can fail while synthing an Orange Juice. What do you do in the real world? You just buy one at a store. Do you actually pick the oranges to get their juice, and then you have some pulp in it and just drain it down the toilet, running to the store again cursing this whole stuff? See, you can't even really make orange juice yourself in real life without failure, so why IG?

LFP taking so long?
When's the last time you woke up, called a friend and said "Yo lets party" and suddenly 5 other partyhungry people stand infront of you packed with beer (tank) and Aspirin for the beer-rum mixture (healer). You would have to organize, wait for people to have time and all that stuff. See, you can't even just party in the real world like that, so why IG?

Of course you miss Airships. But you can be glad about that, since inthe real world if you would miss a bus the driver of it might actually flip you a finger after driving away and laughing at you. We brought you missing vehicles without this horror ar least.

Imagine giant beetles. In real life. You would run away like a pussy or be stunned, unable to move. Be glad that you can kill them with a group of people IG, because surely in RL the national guard would come and try to nuke it with a tank or missile. You have it easier there in FFXI.

Or imagine a giant wyrm appearing. Try to fight your way through all the Paparazzi flashing it, trying to get the claim on the best shot. Go there with a camera yourself and some other greedy paparazzi will crush your camera and your skull. At least you don't get bruises IG.

Our ships and airships are never out of order. Show me one public transport system in real life that can say this about themselves.

You can ride a bird without training, in real life you would just brake all of your bones while falling down, wishing it could be just that easy like feeding it and then being able to ride it like in FFXI.

Try being BST in RL, yelling at Bees to follow your command. You would probably swallow one in the process, wishing you die fast now.

Gilseller ruining your game? Heck the mafia is everywhere in real life too, we just wanted to simulate that.

Other people not wanting you in their party because you wear the wrong stuff? Well look at the mirror in real life and judge by yourself how much that reflects your real life situation.

We brought you a world that is close to real and often superior to it. You should be glad you can do lots of stuff in it with a real feeling to it without getting hurt or arrested in the course of doing so.

So stop whining and next time your bus driver shows you his special finger think about our friendly Airship service that just lets you miss it and doesnt add insult to injury.

End of Evangelion er Time Sink

Allright, about the same time as Sqeenix I totally lost the will to write this blog anymore lol.

He and I stopped our Content IDs at appr. the same time and I guess it just normally takes 2 weeks to totally recover from FFXI and not want to think anymore about it. Besides I think I ran out of good ideas to write about and just writing to write something and then it sucks,... not my style ^^

The only thing I thought of was $quare€nix but you can't do much with that or how it actually warns you about Time Sinks when you Update POL or FFXI with this huge clock you can see then, this blue-ish thing...we all should have noticed it, subliminal messages and stuff. $€ can't say they didn't warn us ^^

I hope I made at least some of the readers smile and if you still play FFXI I hope you enjoy it, if you quit it I hope you enjoy not playing it too ;)

Thanks for reading.
Michael.

More Answers

After having answered already a lot of questions, you would think the player base would be satisfied now. But there are still a lot of questions unanswered, it seems, as you can see if you click the link on the title of this blog entry here.

Anyways, since I'm a people person I was so kindly to answer those question again, for our dear customers:

1. Why don’t players get XP in Dynamis? They lose enough while in there, and get almost nothing in terms of drops, would it actually kill you to give them some reward for even attempting the cluster fuck that is Dynamis?

Because Dynamis is the Shadow Lord getting sucked into some kind of Twilight-Emptyness world for playing around with Promathias strenght. Empytness is death, I don’t see why death should grant you EXP.

Furthermore, try to imagine the chaos when everyone in there tries to grab some EXP by killing something or getting his party to kill something. That would just be too much.

Like in real life, only real partys will give you valuable experience. Sometimes also bad one, when you dlvl and walk home with Herpes.

2. Why don’t players get XP for doing quests and missions? Doesn’t it make sense that people get more “experience” when doing something that is a new experience, more so than beating on the same old crab for four hours?

If an ambassador, who is trained in holding a pencil and looking smart, can just walk through Delkfutts Tower without getting killed, if whole armys of well trained fighters in Bastok are deadly afraid of Palborough Mines when a lvl 75 can go in there and raid the whole area on a solo massacre, if Venessa the sister of Aldo can just walk into Beadeaux without any harm (she’s a little girl for christs sake) where even lvl 60 players, trained fighting monsters, have serious problems getting to alone, you won’t get any EXP off of that. That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever when NPCs like that can just walk through there or are too weak to kill too weak stuff.

So no relation to EXP with missions and quests.

3. Why are there no people of color in your game? Do you have Ku Klux Klansmen as developers?

Because they don’t sell well.

We are in no way racists or anything, but already your questions brings us to the point where some players see some “racial unbalance” when “colored players” are missing. We don’t use words like that, we just have humans in the game, we don’t make a difference there like you did with your question.

And foremost, like I already said, they don’t sell well. Who likes Barret? All are Cloud and Sephiroth fanboys and they are white and have blond/white hair.

We’re not racists, we love money from anyone. We just give what players want.

Don’t even try to blame this on japanese people having small penises and therefor being afraid and envious of black peoples “equipment”. That’s racist thoughts, even though it might be true. I’m not allowed to talk about it anyway, this sort of thing could get my “unequipped” here…

4. Wouldn’t allowing people to jump from airships allow them to die and lose XP, and as bonus to you, de-level? I am surprised you don’t have more options for needless death while not in the field. Food poisoning from spoiled AH foods would be funny.

In order to do so, we must aknowledge that there is an Airship Glitch. But there is no such thing. There are no glitches in FFXI.

Except for when Vrtra pops on the upper lvl of King Ranperres Tomb at the Spook Camp. But we don’t call that a glitch but “hilarious”. (This really happened on some server).

About the food poisening idea: It should get you sick enough already to pay 30k for only 12 Sushis. No need for poisening there yet.

5. Jump and Super Jump are pretty stupid job abilities for such a cool job. Just saying.

Well with Jump you can lower the DEF of an enemy and with Super Jump you can reduce the Enmity of the player standing behind you. IF you use your 2hr Spirit Surge with it, which works every 2 hours. So imagine this:

Some Thief tries to SATA you and you want to make sure as a DRG that really you get the hate and not the THF, because you don’t trust SATA for some weird reason. Leaving out your weird reasons for wanting to tank. Super Jump helps you there.

But mainly Super Jump is there to annoy Paladins every 2 hours and lighten up the monotonic Party Routine. Nothing like using Spirit Surge + Super Jump on the Paladin as soon as your Black Mage starts casting Ancient Magic.

With Pentrathrust giving you immense TP boosts (which we already gimped) you can’t really want from us to make DRG an even better job and making it even more wanted in partys with those great abilites.

6. Does my Moogle clean up his own vomit after spinning for hours after I change jobs?

They don’t get sick, or else they wouldn’t be able to watch themselves in a mirror without cleaning up anything.

If he should get sick tho, through a glitch, but there are no glitches, he was programmed to vomit in your flower pot that you cared for for 4 weeks now every day. That’s the reason those pots only provide you with an Earth Crystal in the end.

7. If I can carry 40 beds in the same amount of space that I carry 40 potions, why can’t I just put the 40 drinks in the space of one bed, or are the bottles as big as beds?

Er.

Well that’s because…

Hm.

You know it’s because of…

It’s logical that…er…

Magic?

Next question.

8. I heard that one of the Galka configurations was modeled after your wife. Which one is it? If you mean which wife of mine: the one I don’t touch but is rich.

If you mean which Galka model: the one that looks most likely to have a fatal accident involing a banana soon.

9. Is gravity to strong in VanaDiel to allow us to jump?

Gravity is only strong enough to bind you to FFXI even though we have some minor game design flaws in it. The real reason why you can not jump is the immense gravity the Blackground creates, see my blog entry about the Blackground for this.

10. Do chocobo colors represent anything, or are they as meaningless as the CoP missions?

They represent me finally remembering some of the HEX codes for colors. I don’t know of more now, since I’m not mainly responsible for the Chocobo Raising programming, that’s some guy who we just like to call “Oh, him”

11. Why can’t I invite my chocobo watcher to my LS so I can talk to her that way instead of having to go to Windurst everyday to talk to her?

First, we wanted to have a real reason people will go to their starting nation after having a high lvl job.

Second, Jeuno was too full.

Third, after so many people complained about lag in Besieged, we wanted to show that this lag is nothing compared to when you need to wait 5 minutes for everyone to despawn before you can talk to your raising NPC, giving you a new experience

Besieged: oh the lag, could please some of the players POP?!

Raising: oh the lag, could those asses please DEPOP?!

12. Is the logout timer and long teleport times really just so that people can’t easily escape a death during a fight? Are you all really that petty that you can’t even allow a simple teleport or logout to save someone some XP?

As many players forgot many things they do, due to long LFP and mind-breaking farming times, we wanted to give them a fair chance to remember that some seconds before the logout or teleport, to franticly try to stand up or make the White Mage stop his magic, which will almost always be too late.

13. I understand that some players actually like Ballista & Brenner. Could you please give me both of their names?

I asked a GM right now on this and he just said I should write the same when he gets asked what they actually do against RMT:

Personal player information is confidential, can I help you with something else?

14. Can I just get a one year pass for the airships and boats so the idiot NPC’s don’t slow me down while I try to board? I have that for the Mana Clipper, why not for everything?

Such a pass would be linked to a forced 1 year garantueed membership for your Content ID, and I can’t imagine very many people wanting this. So there’s no use of thinking of including one, since when you buy one for 1 Mil Gil you get pissed because of the price and quit after 1 month, having wasted your money.

15. Are coffer keys really the result of you misplacing your car keys and thinking it would be a good way to waste hours of a players’ time?

No, I just watched some Sumo ringer fighting and I laughed hard at the people trying to push themselves away and out of a certain zone while fighting for the same little spot to be in, that’s how we thought of coffers.

16. Do you really think we feel part of VanaDiel when we have to rescue the warp Tarutaru and the chocobo renter, or are you just stupid?

Well, the Warp taru was designed to rescue himself, but since he is such a bad warper he just warps himself into another prison cell constantly, while
the Chocobo Renter might get rescued by Chocobos, if they would be allowed in those zones.

So SOMEONE has to go and get them now and you can bet your testicles on it that it wont be me.

17. Which server are you going to migrate everyone to when you get rid of RMT?

We are getting rid of RMT?

In which world do you live? O.o

18. Will the new RMT special forces squad be as ineffective as the current crop of GM’s?

RMT special forces squad by US? Like US actually wanting RMT to go away? Again, do you live on Earth or Jupiter? Those people are there to redirect RMTs.

Like we wrote, we will focus on one zone or NM. Telling that IGE in advance, we suddenly don’t find “any RMT there” and move on to another area/NM, while IGE moves in there again.

In the course of this thing we will shut down 100 RMT sites that have like 2 RMTers/server alltogether, while IGE will still live on.

But if you mean the highly trained RMT special forces that are RMT who
know how to play, just see the Servers Fairy and Asura. You can be glad not to be MPKed right about after entering sky.

19. Was having guild shops closed on certain days and certain hours really conceived by a tapeworm?

This concept is in the game to bring you to a very tough philosophical question:

When a shop is closed, but still all the lights are on and the NPC seller still stands there, is it really closed?

(similar to the one about a falling tree and no one being there, just the other way round).

20. Why is PLD an advanced job, when any idiot can stand around and
just get hit?

Because you need to be an advanced idiot to use an Earth Staff for it, therefore reducing physical damage by only 20% (with your HP and the potential of a Cure 2 or 3 no difference at all and same hate shifting potential to the whm for healing you), not dealing out any damage with it and therefor not building up more hate than you could.

21. Why does it take 6 level 75 players to get Carbuncle Mitts, which is a level 20 item?

Because we thought after introducing SMN the players would recognize our game tactic and the game would collapse, already pulling many delevopers off to FF12. We didn’t expect FFXI to still last after SMN and that people would start the game anew, not having a lvl 75 job then to get their lvl 20 Carbuncle Mitts for their lvl 20 SMN.

22. Does Diabolos have any function other than just being cool to look at?

It’s there to kill you when you try to get it.

23. Why can’t you just develop decent items with more than one stat so that people don’t have to switch items in and out, especially since you only have a lousy 6 lines for macros? Do you find it realistic that people continually change clothes in the middle of a fight in order to get different stat bonuses? Just because your mother, wife and daughter are quick change pole strippers doesn’t mean we are too.

We have some items with multiple stats, some of them are hidden, some latent, but they are more or lesses specialized. We like the idea about equipment swapping, it’s fun to see White Mages try to find a target again.

And you should see some of the real Japanese Ninjas here. They swap stuff in and out its unbelievable. One moment you just stroll around, next second you have tiny bombs sitting where your kidneys where and a slight stingy feeling in the back.

We got inspired by that.

24. Was making Astral rings a level 10 item a way to get cocky Tarutaru killed while in the dunes?

It was an attempt to make BST wanted in a BCNM.

25. Could you make COR gear look a little more effeminate?

See PUP AF.

26. Why don’t creatures aggro each other?

Unless players, we were able to code a Codex of Honor into their program, meaning that if one creature aggros a desired RDM75 which they will kill and show him who really is boss, no other creature will try to MPK this mob just out of jeaulosy.

27. Why do ghosts look like floating butts?

So you can not only kiss the earth when you try to kill them with curing
spells but something else too.

28. Why do the rabbits all look stoned? Did they smoke the same stuff as you did while developing PUP?

Because I was under drugs when I designed most of the enemys.

29. The in game maps, their uselessness, and moronic acquisition suck. Just saying.

Don’t blame me, I voted YES for leaving maps out of the game to increase challenge of the game.

30. Why are the entrances and exits to areas all zig zag? Are straight lines taboo in your culture?

The only thing I know that is zig-zag is a players leveling process. lvl lvl lvl dlvl lvl dlvl lvl lvl lvl dlvl lvl lvl dlvl etc.

31. Once chocobo racing is introduced (I’ll hold my breath) are there any plans to expand it into the ability to use our birds in cockfights? Equipping bangkhas on their feet and having them fight would actually get me back into the game. For a few minutes. To make it a time sink, like everything else in FFXI, you could make people LFC (Looking For Cockfight [like you do on Saturday night]) and only allow certain level ranges for the birds to fight each other. The dead ones could be used to skill up cooking.

There are no plans to have cockfights with the racing. If you want cockfights, try to camp Lord of Onzozo.

32. Why can’t players equip the 75’ long weapons the monsters use to kill us as we zone?

Because the mob killed you. You can’t equip anything when you are dead, n00b.

33. Is SanDoria modeled after Paris, France? Both places are full of smelly and arrogant people who wouldn’t know a bath if it bit them on the ass.

Its modeled after any country that has tourism, accepting your money but hating your guts and calling you stupid foreigner behind your back. Only french and elvaans are that honest, though.

34. Why are there only 3 mining points in 5 square mines of a mine?

Because the rest is rock.

If you have a real life gold mine somewhere, not 100% of the wall is gold. And if so, you wouldn’t know it existed.

35. Why can’t I just have a chocobo digging skill stat? why do I have to guess and assume something as simple as this?

Try to crush the earth with your lips and pull out some burried item. Okay, you’re no chocobo, but its not simple see? So don’t expect a chart for that.

36. Can you introduce spurs into the game as a foot equip item? My chocobo needs some encouragement to move his useless ass.

We tried laughing gas-enhanced Chocobos, but they exploded after a few steps. Not really desirable.

37. Why doesn’t my chocobo run as fast as when I let him go? I don’t weight that much.

Every girl says that.

38. Was being one-shotted as I fade in from an outpost warp a deliberate design concept?

Its an imporant concept to ensure that some areas will be under Beastmen control and you wont be able to warp back from this OP. If it hits you, be proud to be a part of this natural thing just happening.

39. Who got the bonus for making a bomb core an item that must be equipped as ammo?

That’s Hitashi, a good friend of mine, responsible for skill up programming. He thought it might be a nice way to skill up Throwing.

Player “How do I actiave the Bomb Core? Maybe I have to use it?”
Throwing Skill goes up 0.2 points.
Player “…”

You can see the player is stunned by the nice skill up rate.

40. As a Tarutaru I can ride a chocobo, why can’t I ride a Galka? Is it the smell?

This questions sounds way to sexual too me, I’m sorry but I can’t answer this.

41. Why can’t a Galka equip a Tarutaru as a thrown item?

Because that’s nothing we consider so valuable that you would cry when you would accidently throw it.

42. In real life I have a 50/50 chance to kill an even match, and can easily one-shot that too weak to be worthwhile third grade handicapped girl. Why can’t I do that in the game?

You have the same chance in real life as in game to kill stuff that is labeled “Even Match” with 50/50 on an infinite time scale. Don’t blame me if the first 1.000 years trials get you killed all the time.

Even if you could hit this handicapped girl, the following police officers beating you to a bleeding clod wont make this plan that easy. Same IG.

43. All rabbits I have ever seen can be easily killed by a young child. Why are they so tough in FFXI? Did a bunny scare you when you were young?

Those bunnies are a special kind of hard-breed of bunny. To ensure their survival against Goblins and adventurers, they have been constantly beat for 4 months with other, weaker bunnies until they were released into the game.

44. If the intent of FFXI is to help others progress, why are Animas “Rare / Ex”, thus not allowing the losers without a life to get them for their friends that do?

The intent is to have others help you progress. Not be a slacker and not
show up at all for Anima farming. They actually have the quite normal drop rate for rare items that we wished to had, before the Blackground did his evil part. It doesn’t take too long to get sufficient Animas.

It only take 1-2 idiots in your party to lose you the BCNM fight though.

45. Did the idea to have the monster in Promyvion lick you come from personal experience with your dog and some peanut butter?

Since we received an Email about a few persons complaining that it is just dumb they could get licked to death by a Flesh in one-shot, we thought everyone should be able to experience this miracle, not just people who have to…lol…who have to…lmao…hahaha…get their coffer in…ahahahaha, oh my God, I as a developer just can’t say that without laughing! Have to get their coffer in Garlaige Citadel ahahahahaha!

46. The Promyvion areas look cool, why can’t the rest of VanaDiel?

The rest of Vana’Diel does, that is:

Lufaise Meadows
Misareux Coast
Riverne Site #A01
Riverne Site #B01
The Airship BCNM Area
Al’Taieu
The Grand Palace of Hu’Xzoi
The Garden of Ru’Hmet
Empyreal Paradox
Most parts of Aht Urghan.

But you have to have a certain level and much time on your hands to get to this places.

47. I understand that avatars, wyverns and other pets aren’t allowed in towns to cut down on the lag. Since so many people have quit FFXI and went to WoW, Jeuno is empty and the lag is basically gone, can’t you now allow the pets in town areas?

Jeuno is not empty, our Casino characters and those of IGE and those normal players copycating that are filling it up now.

48. If in can use a fire crystal to make a fire and cook with it, why can’t I throw it at a monster and burn it?

You can’t, your throwing skill is too low. You should have practiced more
with your Bomb Core.

49. The Konschatd Highlands are a completely useless and unneeded area. Just saying.

There’s no such area like “Konschatd Highlands”, just saying too.

I needed 5 days to learn to write Konschtat, so I’m picky on that one.

50. Is the nerfing of BLU timed to coincide with the release of decent gear for PUP?

You mean us just swapping the two job names, making BLU gimped and PUP über then? How’d you know we planned that?

Are psilocybin mushrooms supposed to take this long to kick in, giant baloney tube in green Kool-Aid mockingbird hemorrhage index adverbing canoodlehopper dingo pumper alleviate terragon?

All right, this nice cat picture messed up my format AGAIN and I don't got the nerve now to redo it. Since that would actually be working for you, a concept not known at SE.

I think my answers are satisfying again and only serve the purpose to keep people playing longer, so they can find new questions to ask me.

The Picnic

Today was a weird day for me. I don't know if any of you will understand this, since something like that has never happened to me before and I pray to God it will never happen again.


After I got up from bed, had a shower and breakfast I wanted to relax today because it was my free day.

But suddenly the phone called and a fellow developer from SE was on the phone. I could barley make out the words: "Picnic, do you need it? Please gather together!"

and that made me remember about the SE picnic that was scheduled for today. I wanted to forget that already but whatever, should be nice.

To strenghten our bonds we should picnic as a group of 6 people, so we get to know each other better this way. Guess when we are more my feeble mind gets too confused and less it's not paying off to go out of the house anyway, well, boss says so I gotta follow it.

I got another phone call as I wanted to leave, telling me about a certain dress code. Well hurray to me, now I gotta go to my second flat and get my stuff from there, since the things I should wear are not in this flat here.

As I left my home I somehow managed to lock myself out and got angry at me for it, but coudlnt help it now, gotta get my stuff from my other flat. Fortunatley it was in the same building, only on another floor, and when I arrived there the mail piled up infront of it. I threw away the 8 letters about some commercial stuff for some bird food and proceeded into my 2nd flat, greetings my gold fish with a nod.

Would they know where my stuff is? Of course not, they just float around stupidly doing nothing at all, I wonder why I even keep them because I do everything myself and they don't do nothing for me at all. They are nice to look at I must admit, tho.

Well, I got dressed properly so the guys would accept me to their picnic (as if I cared) and finally left to catch my train.

As I reached the terminal for buying a ticket, my Yen notes got rejected somehow. What the hell? I tried it 5 more times before the thing finally realized that I wanted to pay a ticket and let me advance only to see me missing my train and having to wait freaking 20 minutes now for the next one. I tried to think of something to do, like "read a book when you wait for something!" is something a friend of mine often likes to say, but fuck books I hate them. So I just stared holes in the air.

The train finally arrived and I got my ride to the parc. Well, not exactly to the parc, I still had to rent a bycicle and ride it there myself, but after another 20 boring minutes and a total of more than 1 hour now I arrived at the picnic.

All the people somehow seemed a little angry I came so late but also releaved that I actually came. But they shouldn't blame me, they wanted to have me wearing this stuff and I can't do anything to influence travel speed, it's just shitty in this area here.

The picnic was quite nice, except they wanted me to eat Sushi to be a proper japanese picnicer. I hate fish, especially raw one, but they forced me to eat tentacle sushi. I almost vomited but had too do it, since I wanted to keep a good relationship to my fellow developers. All went smooth and well, we crushed food after food, as suddenly a bee aggroed a developer, meaning just flying near him. He jumped to his feet madly and started running around like insane, screaming something of an allergy. 2 others yelled to him that they will sue him if he pulled this "monster bee" to them since they are afraid of getting stinged too and I just sat there unable to believe what I saw.

Some friendly japanese person came and got rid of the bee, seemingly one-shot it with his news paper, was nice to watch. Our sissy developer friend bowed to him, said much kudos and stuff like that and then walked back to us as cool as he could pretend he would be, but he still seemed frightened like a 12 year old boy.

We continued to picnic for 1 more hour before we got sick of it all and departed. Someone said "Thanks for the great experience, guys!" and I just thought what experience to have if you are frightened of a fucking bee.

I traveled back to were I actually wanted to be, at home watching TV, and that took another hour.

To sum this up: I wasted more than 2 hours in traffic to get to some weirdo dress code and forced sushi eating picnic where grown man freak out when a bee attack them.

I don't know if you can understand this or can find similiarities to this in your life, I just hope you can't.

Answers

Today I was pointed to a blog where a customer of us (you quit? come on, give it one more month, I bet you will like it again, I swear) asked a lot of questions.
My boss told me, when I already write a blog about my work I might as well answer those questions or try to hide the truth as good as possible.

Here is the set of questions: http://www.ffxitruth.blogspot.com/

It's here again included with my answers:

1. How stupid do you think we really are?

Well, put on some IQ scale or compared to some sort of animal or class grade? Hard to answer that, I would need additional information, like if you work at IGE or are a normal player already has a big impact on the answer.

2. Was farming included as game play for our immersion into your world, or just as a time sink to get more of our money?

Normal farming was always a part of the game, but players ripping themselves off at the AH and our friends at IGE helped to make it what it is now: a valuable lesson you learn if you don't buy Gil.
Go to IGEs site right now, I get paid extra for everyone whom I redirect to them.

3. What is your intent for SMN? Why don’t you make an effort to at least communicate to your players what you had intended for it to do? Did you either have no idea what you were doing or, in typical SE fashion, let the players do your work for you?

First we had strong Avatars in the game testing phase, but that would have messed up game balance we thought. So we reprogrammed it and gimped it. Was still too strong, all people would have wanted SMNs in there party.
We readjusted again. And again. And again.
Then it got funny, so we did it again 5 times but stopped then before gimping it too much to become a "Party spot that is filled right now why ppl search a real job". We think now that SMN is a fun job to play if you like WHM and dont want to play WHM and want to wait for lvl 71, so it's for the real hardcore fans, the creme de la creme might I add.

Not everyone has it in them to play SMN!

4. Does smelly and foul looking Bastok represent any specific real life place?

Yes, that's a room in our building here where FFX-2 was developed. Well you know what came out of that.

5. Why are Elvaan designed so that only arrogant people choose to play them?

Because they want to play some character too and have money as everyone else they can transfer to us. And we hate Elves and stuff like that, so we let our feelings show through on this race.

6. I read that if you placed the maps of all the Windurst area together, they form Kanji that says “We are own all your base”. Is this true?

Actually it forms a vagina, but we don't think anyone ever has the patience or nerve to want to see this big area as a whole, so we included that as an Easter Egg to all 12 year olds playing the game and thinking that is funny.

7. Why don’t Mithra have as many nipples as my cat?

Because there are no male Mithras, so why add more nipples? Theres no mating partner to lure inot the bed, and the two they have now just serve to get other races to invite them into partys.

8. Do you really get a dollar / Yen every time someone on Allakhazam says “the PS2 is holding FFXI back.”?

No, I get paid a dollar for saying that myself on Allakhazam. We won't pay someone for doing our job, see "FFXI".

9. What was being smoked when someone agreed that the sub-job concept was a good idea and decided to implement it? Was it crack, marijuana, mushrooms or just plain stupidity?

We smoked Yen notes worth half a million dollar, since we knew with this system we would give us much more soon anyway.

10. Why do you refuse to attempt to communicate your intent on anything, even such basic and elementary things such as recommended leveling spots for level ranges? Do you really want players to just founder, guessing where to go, or, in typical SE fashion, let the players do your work for you?

Well theres the Brady Guide, why write something twice? Isn't it the fun of the game to find out yourself where to go? The only work we expect from our players is to have valid Credit Card information.

11. Was PUP conceived and designed while on LSD? Does it have any actual direction or purpose, or, in typical SE fashion, let the players do your work for you and decide its’ purpose?

There are also some young girls playing the game, so we thought we give them a job where they can play with puppets then. It might be gimped, I don't know, I just copy/pasted some coding lines from 4 other jobs and slotted them togheter, saw it didn't create a crash or system shutdown and was satisfied.

12. While there are several travel options in FFXI, (run, chocobo, airship, boat, teleport & warp) why are the non-magical ones designed so poorly? Do you actually think we feel “immersed” in your world when we have to wait from between 7-15 minutes for a missed mode of transportation? From a player perspective it feels like a deliberate attempt on your part to just waste our time.

You know how fast traveling in Japan was after US had a war with us, with our destroyed homes, roads, infrastructure here? Lets just say that Japanese dont forget that easily and the UN holds us back with other means of revenge.

13. Are outpost warps deliberately designed to be no longer really needed when you are of a sufficient level to use them?

First you complain about traveling and now you can just magically teleport almost anywhere in Vana'Diel. Seriously, you just want to complain on something, don't you? We like the concept of it, and also that if you change nations that you lose all your OPs.

14. Is there some coding restriction that prevents the Windurst warp Tarutarus from being able to warp you to any of the other three, instead of just one?

Yes, it's called "I'm lazy".

15. CoP sucks. Just saying.

Wait for new Aht Urghan missions. Just saying.

16. Is it poor coding, or deliberate tine sink, when you have to trade items to an NPC in the smallest increment possible to complete a mission or quest?

As you may know, with our NPCs not telling you what to do, they are dumb. You can't just overexert them with multiple trades. Give them a chance.

17. Is it a coding issue, or just your idea of a time sink, to not allow more than 7 items at time for sale at all the Auction Houses collectively? The graphic has 10 lines, and would it be really that hard to allow 10 items per Auction House?

It only has 7 slots because you can only receive 8 slots in your Delivery Box. Would all your stuff sale, if it were 10, 3 would be lost and go to IGE...wait a sec. Nice idea. Thanks :)

18. Is there a purpose, other than deliberate time sink that raised Chocobos are slower than rental ones? Is it to encourage us to care for our own birds, or just another way to keep us playing longer, making it so we have to constantly go back to a starter city, when your new expansion has all but forced people to stay in Whitegate to get anything accomplished?

It's like this: We already let you off easily with just feeding a chocob and then suddenly being able to ride one. Now to just care for one for 1 month and making you to an extreme good breeder with it, no way.

19. Are caterpillars, crabs and bees hated by the developers, since that is mostly what he had beat on until Aht Urghan? Are Colibris a result of a developer not getting a prize in his Fruit Loops?

All those monsters are there to ensure parents who watch their children play and actually pay the game, that FFXI is not a violent game of any sort, since you onyl fight things right out of Disney movies.

20. Giving XP bonuses in the new expansion area, but nothing even remotely equal in the original area, your way of herding people into Al Zahbi? Forcing people into being caught in besieged and doing assault so they can “experience” your new cool ideas?

It's a new way of making you cry when the Astral Candescence is lost, a thing that only serves the purpose to lure you to Aht Urghan, get you to exp there and do Besieged.
Might also have some nice touch to it, giving you more exp. But wait for surprise pop NMs who rip that EXP off of you faster than you can say "No I just got my level!"

21. Isn’t it time to get rid of limit breaks? It has no real place in the storyline and after four years how many players don’t just get a high level friend to do it for them? Do you not see it or are just too stubborn to admit it is a time sink joke waste of time?

Limit Breaks are there to force you to think about the things you already have achieved with the game, to make social contact with other to help you get this done and to make me laugh. I admit it.

22. Was BLU your answer to players asking for more solo content?

That and a counter to an increase of players leaving us, as well as testing out random numbers with spell learning.

23. Was having only one decent healing job and one decent tanking job deliberate, or were you to busy focusing on PUP?

The players mostly want to be DD, don't cry to me because no one really likes to play WHM or get hit all the time, and just dish out some cool damage with his cool weapon.

And I was NOT focused on PUP, I reject that.

24. Stevie Wonder can see who the RMT are, why can’t you? You state you can ban anyone, at anytime, for any reason. So why don’t you?

I'm already working on finding out your IP, should you ever want to try FFXI again. We can't just ban RMT, I read on forums that players have fun MPKing them. You don't really want me to take fun out of the game? Or GMs arresting those players then, they would have nothing to do? You want fun and money from people working removed, how horrible!

25. Do you not have programmers smart enough to make Dynamis an instance, or are you so afraid that doing something like WoW does it will diminish you in the eyes of the fanboi player base?

It is an instance!

As long as no one is there and 3 days have passed, you can do it instantly.

See? No wait time for "loading Dynamis" or "Boat to Dynamis arrives in 15 minutes".

26. Do you honestly feel that XP loss as a punitive measure makes your game feel more real and immersive? Do you really get a bonus whenever a player above level 60 down levels?

XP loss makes me feel more real, for I have a shield up here like everyone who works on XI saying: You don't have to be evil to work here, but it helps. The only person getting this bonus is when someone whenever, wherever down levels, but sadly I'm not that person. But I slept with his wife, teaching him a lesson there.

27. Was making a Galka look strong, but actually be lousy in all aspects, a deliberate decision?

All things that look strong are weak and vice versa. We just borrowed this principle from nature.

See, you could shoot an elephant, being big and mean looking, with a rifle very easily.
Try that with pubic lice. Not so fun anymore now, eh?

(Don't try this at home now. And if you do, you really deserve what you get)

28. Is regaining HP while healing supposed to be painfully slower than regaining the equivalent MP?

It's a lesson to teach you MP saving and make use of kneeling down, or I would have programmed that in vain. I don't like to work in vain.

29. If NIN was not supposed to be a tank, what the hell was it supposed to be? And if WAR and PLD were supposed to be the only tanks, why does WAR suck so bad at it?

NIN was supposed to be a puller. Nothing else. Get out there, pull, thing done? K just sit there and wait until we get the new mob.

Don't ask me why War sucks so bad at being a tank, probably didn't sub NIN.

30. Was RDM really called Refresh whore while being developed?

No, you must be talking bout Lucy, she comes here twice a week for us.

31. Mithras are hawt. Just saying.

Rawr. They have flees, just saying too.

32. Is windowed mode not available because your programmers can’t just “copy / paste” from the Arch Bell windower? Wouldn’t windowed mode allow them to buy gil while in game, thus making you more money through your I.G.E. subsidiary?

The only reason it's not allowed is so people are able to speed hack, thus having GM ban some people and our marketing department can write once every 3 months "Actions taken against cheating accounts, 3000 deleted". We wouldn't care about it, since everyone uses it anyway.

33. Is there really a Japanese only SE / FFXI forum that will not display for any non Japanese ISP?

If I say yes now, it wont help you much anyway, you're not japanese and can't view it. Not saying that there is one now.

34. Was the Aht Urghan expansion made “TP burn” focused in response to those whining about mana burn, even though mana burn parties are more rare than a Dynamis drop and about as fun as farming beehive chips?

Aht Urghan was created to see how many people would believe that while all this time they played the game, no one discovered this continent and made maps of it, suddenly a whole new gigantic continent is there which the Zilart seemed to have missed totally.

35. Why wasn’t more thought put into making AF1 decent and having stats that complement the job and each other?

No one would want AF2 then or buy overpriced, real good armor.

36. How exactly do I fail in synthesizing orange juice?

You used apples, painted orange.

37. Please fix the delivery box system do my new in game friends “Qwerty” and “Asdfg” can send me more than a million gil.

IGE normally trades IG, since Delivery Box can be tracked back easily. But you should know that, if you know those persons.

38. I don’t understand the VanaDiel consensus. Hoe can you know the percentage of each job since most fanbois are every job, except PUP?

We had statistics about deleveling of jobs only (the only real thing we measure), and derived from there our statistic. Half of it was guessed by the way.

39. Please confirm or dispel the idea you have to face a certain direction for crafting. I understand you like people to face away from you so you can mount them from behind, but this concept should not be transferred into the game itself.

We confirmed that the crafting compass is correct.
Yes, there is North East South and West on the compass.

We didn't get what all those colours should mean, but the directions of a compass where correctly in there.

40. Do you have more than 20 play testers and are they human beings?

When we start we have about 500. Depending on how much people complain about IG stuff then, some of them...lets just say they disappear and never existed. Period.

41. Was the person that created the concept of latent affects given a raise when he should have been fired?

He achieved the honour to live up in the ivory tower in outter space now, drinking all sorts of alcoholics with the SE managers and having more than one Lucy. I envy him.

42 Do you really think staging points are better than just having a teleport crag in the Aht Urghan expansion area?

Sure! Now there are 5 ways you can die and WHMs won't make any money there. Smart, eh?

43. Why can’t I train my personal chocobo to go into areas the rental ones cannot? Why can’t rental chocobos go into all areas, since no monster ever attacks them? Are the rental chocobo owners just stupid or assholes for not allowing this?

The Chocobo itself was designed as a smart animal. It doesn't go anywhere really dangerous, like a dungeon or a city (too much players there, it's scared of people). Your raised ones can do that neither, because you are not a master rasier. If there should be ever a NPC able to do that, we will just let it disappear, like a test player.

44. Is it just sadism, or is there an actual reason sneak and invisible have a variable timer?

It's the thing that won me an SE-Award. That's reason enough for me to have created it.

45. Why do you have to be a certain level to just put on a cool looking hat?

The coolness would crush your mind if you weren't trained by slaying thousands of Disney monsters already.

46. Did you design it so that the melees that charge so much for an Erase scroll want it so often?

Not this way.

We desigend it open economy controlled by players, pushed the start button, sat down, watched, and saw all our wildest dreams come true!

47. Is it a design glitch, or just a deliberate time sink, that I get to stupid to ride a chocobo if I am under level 15 even if I have a license?

Since Chocobos are smart, they wont let you ride when you look like a n00b. Get some decent levels and maybe stop riding some against trees or rocks, they might treat you better after this. Might. Find out. Go play FFXI again.

48. Why are your programmers too stupid to incorporate windowed mode, but smart enough to turn chocobo raising into a 1 month nightmare?

I had Macou inserted into my veins when I started here, maybe that explains it.

49. Why couldn’t they just make an option that said check here if you want a black chocobo, or do we have to wait four more years for that, like we waited four years just to raise them?

Since our real genetics arent at the point where you can choose the hair colour of your unborn child, and by God hopefully never will, since it is against nature, we at SE felt that we shouldnt go against nature here too.

50. The boat ride to Al Zahbi sucks ass. Just saying.

There are some pretty whales to watch. And some birds. And rocks.

51 Forced grouping seems to be the core concept of FFXI, when the concept should be for the players to have fun. Why? A game designed with grouping as the most fun and efficient way to level is a good idea, but having the solo ability almost non-existent is not.

Because we like people to get together. To have one person make a mistake and 5 others suffer from it, to have 6 person needed and 1 having to go to dinner now or his Mom gets angry, to have you all feel and see our game, delevel together and then have a good laugh at it, while you actually hate yourself inside.

It's like real life.

52. Was crafting and having to farm an idea born out of the idea that players need something to do while waiting for a healer or tank to log on?

Actually it was born out of a deep hatred against Disney animals.

53. Wouldn’t it have just been better to design a game the level gap was less severe, or where partying with 2-5 players was as viable as the party with 6? Just because WoW did it does not mean it is a bad idea.

6 is a good number to me. Like 6-pack of beer, 6 maidens for me if i invent somehing cool like latent effects, 6 GSers enough to totally own sky with bots and so on. 6 is our GOD here, most people here like FF6 the most, we just try to share our love with the number 6 with you players.
Showing you with all the others possibilities, that anything except 6 or a multiple of it is just wrong. So very wrong.

54. Was the quest log made vague so that only hardcore players wanted to play? Do you really think forcing us to go to the internet for all the answers makes us feel more “immersed” in the game, especially since we have to log out to do it?

Since no NPC really tells you what to do, why should the Quest log do so? If you log out and in enough it will add up to another month of your enjoyment in this game, we are just helping yuo stay in touch with the game community by slightly forcing you into it longer! Be happy with that, others games like WoW get old fast and you wonder why you bought this game after all, since it's so short.

55. Does an SE executive really kill a kitten every time AF drops in Dynamis?

No, the Dynamis just adjust itself to sleep-resistent mobs and making one BLM AoE spell go off faster than the others, while a WHM can't turn off auto-run.

It's quite beautiful to see this, really.

---

All right, I hope that answered a lot of questions for you and enhanced your enjoyment in game!

Don't forget IGE, they want to eat too.

Commercials in FFXI

Last night we discussed product placement in XI and if it would pay off or not. Sadly we decided against it...man, I had such great ideas.

For example, when you start to engage a HNM or a God in Sky, the mob you are fighting could take a moment to ask you if you already thought about life insurance, before he kills you.

Since all people have to fight Maat eventually and most will use an Icarus Wings, I thought of calling the Icarus Wing "Red Bull Wing" from now on. For the extra energy boost! I also wanted to include a NPC selling you Red Bull Wings, he would be called "Red Bull" and being a Galka, because you know:

Red Bull gives you Wings.

With all the Refresh-Drinks out there, how about a Refresh-Candy? It could be called the Mentos Cookie, "Mentos - The Refresher!".

Think of the possibilites.

When you LFP for more than 3 hours, a little text would show in your Chat Log:

"Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a Snickers."

Should you get K.O.ed and lie there for more than 10 minutes without Home Pointing or getting a Raise, a text would remind you of IGE.

"Hey buddy, don't take it so hard on your self. Everyone buys Gil, why don't you too? You wanna be cool, don't you? Go buy Gil, it only helps you"

You would need to inscribe to the VRA (Vana'Diel Rifle Association) before you could equip a gun, a WHM using "Benediction" would appear in chat log as

Players uses Benediction (approved by the Christian Church).

The Auction House would have been renamed to E-Bay and if you die more than 4 times in Dynamis, which would surely create a headache for you, an Aspirin commercial would pop up.

There's even a guy on the server Asura called "Smokeone" that everyone knows, since he has very annoying /shouts in Jeuno and made himself some reputation long ago with it! You can't tell me that this is not a char some guy from Marlboro created for commercial reasons.

Coming to Marlboros, they would not do Bad Breath anymore but "Pleasent Nicotin Smoke that only Pussys think is dangerous".

Your Moogles in your Mog House would suddenly wear little Mickey Mous hats and talk about a magical land where you can ride with Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as the Aht Urghan Corsairs starting to sing suddenly and point you to Paris too.

SE related stuff would be in there too, when you would face Vrtra or Fafnir a NPC would tell you to "Go get your Dragon Quest!!! Er. Sorry, I mean go get your Quest with the Dragon done!".

Everytime a user would use leet speak, a message would pop:

Good with numbers, eh? Why not create a bank account at XXXXXX then?

and if you would say ORLY the actual bird would appear reminding you how sweet he tastes.

You see, the possibilities are practicly without a limit!

But sadly SE voted against it, saying IGE already brings us enough money, we don't need to push it.

:(

Game Shows & Presentations

There are a lot of Events and Game Shows out there where different Game Companys meet and show their new products to the public.

SE is really busy on those shows and I had the chance to be on some of them, representing FFXI.

There was, for example, this Event where we presented the Aht Urghan Expansion to the public, announcing the new jobs, and answering questions.

I had to be there too and I was slightly lost. I never played the game, I only coded it, but there I was confronted with maniacs that know every drop rate of every item and ask you questions...oh God those questions...

It's like you wrote a book about school mathematics and now some hobby-mathematic-fanatic asks you if his computation of the decaying rate of a sandwich (with cheese) in the Middle Eastern desert is correct or if he should have included the mating rate of bacterias too?

I sat there while we presented PUP to the public, with this Galka in full PUP AF (looking like a woman trying to fit into a circus tent thats too tight for her) and saw the players expressions "What the...".

After it we had a sort of Q&A thing, and some people came up to me asking me tons of questions.

Player 1 (dressed up like an Elvaan with some, it seemed like it, Spock Ears):

"Could you maybe tell me the drop rate for the Light Spirit pact when you fight Crimsontooth in Temple of Uggalephi?"

Me: "What?"

Player 1: "Crimsontooth, the HNM SMN Tonberry for the Carbuncle Mitts"

Me: "Oh yes. They drop every time, don't worry."

Player 1: "I didn't ask that, I wanted to know the approximate drop rate for the Light Spirit pact"

Me: "What' that? I did so much things on the game, I can't remember now" (translation: I have no fucking clue what this guy is talking about)

Player 1: "Um...thats the pact that lets you summon a Light Spirit"

Me: "Just buy it in a store"

Player 1: "Err...you can not buy this in a store, it is a dropped item only."

Me: "Oh, really? Just kill the mob it will drop."

Player 1: "Yes, but what's the approximate drop rate?"

Me: "5"

Player 1: "5? 5 what?"

Me: "I need a 5 minute break, my coffee ran out, Sorry"

After this I hid one hour in the men's rooms.

I feel sorry for this poor guy though. I just opened up internet, looked up the light spirit pact and do remember now. It's those things that drain your MP and do nothing. Why does this guy want this, I wonder? Weirdo.

Then some really hot chick came up to me, dressed up as a Mithra. Now, I might not understand anything about the game since I never played it, but Mithras I do understand I can tell you!

She thanked me for programming such a good game, and I started to wonder if she really plays it. Anyway, after all this "glory to vana'diel" crap she talked about and asking me tons of questions about chocobo raising which I always answered with "No worries, it wont have any glitches, I promise" I asked her for her phone number.

That got her puzzled I can tell you.

But you could also see the gleam in her eyes. Dating a SE developer! I can only imagine the thoughts running through her mind like "Maybe I can get him to chance some things in game" (which I won't, since you are not working at IGE) and being a famous player now in FFXI since she banged a developer (which might happen, but before rumor spread I would accidently delete her character).

Turns out she already has a boyfriend, which she says plays a Galka.

I'm so frightened now, I told her. Oooh a Galka, can he even walk without aid in real life?

After this insult and my penetrating stares on her goods she called for her boyfriend to come over. Boy, he really WAS a Galka. That what was coming over to me seemed like Mount Everest on legs. Suddenly I felt very small and prayed that this guy does like everything about FFXI and if he doesnt like some parts of it would believe me that my colleauge programmed it.

He stared at me and said "Are you the guy programming shit like Absolute Virtue 2hring at will multiple times, making Dynamis horrible and SMN Galkas the laugh of people around the world and now trying to hit on my girlfriend here?!".

I gave a typical SE answer to a direct and clear question from a customer:

"Might be."

I had to promise to give him a Yin-Yang robe IG as well as code 999 Mil Gil on his account and he wouldn't beat me up for Dynamis. That was a fair bargain. I kindly asked him what his char name is and on which server he was, to transfer it to the right person of course.

Then, later at work again, I quickly logged in with one of my 6 Allakhazam accounts, and with 1 of my 30 killingifrit - accounts and started threads about the user after transfering all the stuff. First I wrote a commercial for IGE,w hich is practical for SE anyway and giving me the reputation of being a Gilseller. Then I said I'm searching this particular player, asking if his 999 Mil from IGE arrived and congratulating him again for the yin yang we farmed for him in return for buying so much gil from us.

In the following days every normal player tried to MPK him. And they did it, because the GMs were told by me that they shouldnt punish anyone for doing so. After 2 weeks he deleveled from SMN70 to SMN50, not logging in anymore. So I used his Password and had a GM log him in, placing him in sky, deleveling there to SMN2. To add insult to punishment, I transfered all his 900 mil gil (he bought a Kracken Club) as well as the Kracken Club to the Gilsellers, which were very pleased then and got a new rush of new costumers from this big commercial thing that resulted out of this.

He should have just given me the phone number of his Mithra chick.

I already wanted to leave, when a thing bumped into me that you might call "Fanboy". After virtually sucking my toes, and I had to lift him up multiple times NOT to do so in real, he asked me TONS of questions at once. About stuff I had no clue about. He was sooo annoying. I didn't, and no one at SE, ever wanted to be bothered with questions about FFXI and now I got flooded with it.

I told him to give me his name and birthdate and I would send the answers to him, because they are too much to answer now.
He didn't even wonder why I wanted to have his birthdate.

Maybe he found out, after wanting to drive home again and not finding his car.

Where was it?

Car, (Do You Need It?)
(/search) South Korea (Help Me Out) (Please).

Two other programmers had a nervous breakdown after this event, always mumbling stuff like: i dont know,...i really dont know...stop it...stop the questions...oh god...
But a bath in Gold Coins quickly healed that.

The special items we coded for this event will break after 3 months, when everyone already forgot they got it.

The real reason I went to this event was a free buffet and because I was forced to by SE.
The real joy I had there was getting a car to South Korea and ruining some players joy in game via other means than my normal job.

Al'Taieu

When we coded the Chains of Promathia add-on, we had two guidelines to follow from management:

1) Make it hard
2) But this time, make it also rewarding.

That puzzled us. Up to know we just had to make things hard and slightly rewarding with a chance of a thunderbolt hitting you for instant death while farming (taken out of the game though...boss said that would be too much).

So we set in our coffee kitchen and thought:

How can we lure everyone into doing it, making it a pain after all where you need really good game experience AND make it rewarding at the same time? How can a horror trip be rewarding? How can Mike Myers, after stabbing you 8 times in your chest, give you a nice smile after it and say "Sorry buddy, it's the way I am, but if you survive, I swear I will give you 1 million dollar"?

The first concept we stole off of BCNMs. The capped fights were extended to capped areas. Capped in Level and fun. Have you ever done a Promyvion? You know what I talk about.

But we started even more evil than before, unintentionally.

When you do the nation mission for rescuing your ambassador (a n00b who somehow got into this absolutley deadly Delkfutt's Tower, survived that and got imprisoned, while everyone else gets gang-raped in there though he is supposedly trained as a fighter and has a sword with him) you might run into the starting Cutscene of CoP and think: wow, nice rank mission Cutscene, do I have to fight Bahamut now?

I can hear you say: What, but theres the CoP title bar and all in it, how can someone believe that is part of the rank mission?

Don't ask me. Maybe farming for too long or the LFP times did something to their brain. I have no clue, but people were disappointed after it that they couldn't fight Bahamut. Which we immidiatley included into further CoP missions:

"Seeing THE no. 1 bad-ass wyrm of FF and not being able to fight him the whole, normal CoP missions long".

Now, inside a Promyvion it is dark, scary, a hint of death in there. Emptyness IS death. Oh I just wrote a spoiler and it makes me happy to see all of you cry now, but I guess you won't make it past our Airship Fight anyway, so be glad that you learn that somewhere. On first launch it was that unbelievable hard, that you needed an Alliance to go up and still died a lot. We laughed a lot, but got sad...how could they ever feel the future tortures if they get discouraged on Promyvions already? So we gimped it, for more torture fun.

Still they were hard and the job Summoner did marvelous in those battles. Get 3 SMNs to Astral Flow in there and you cant lose, more or less.
This was our present to SMNs. And the present to ourselves, seeing ppl suddenly lvling SMN to 30, needing more time IG to do things.

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.

The next torture mission we included is CoP 2-5, where you have to fight 3 "Mammets". They look so funny, all in black, no real face, use some gimpy "I poke you attacks first", run like their backs are broken! You will laugh the first minute of the fight, because their HP drop quite fast too.

And then my companys philosophy on the game kicks in. Suddenly 2 of them turn into Black Mages, spamming deadly AoE horror, while the other uses his shield and your MNKs Hundred Fists is like a Benediction to him. While two gang up on yuor most important jobs here, the third just roams around stabbing everything in sight.

The easiest form of this fight is the "DRG" form. Maybe thats why loldrg came in the first place, you can't tell me only the gimping of one WS did this.

Anyway, it's unbelievable hard and we had reports of people needing well over a hundred tries on this, as well as others wanting 3 tanks and 3 healers for it, making people nuts and forcing them to lvl a tank job or healer job up to lvl 40.

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP.

We made 3-3 easier, to lure you to the next insanity.

The Diabolos fight.

You know in ALL FFs except FFXI, when you sleep a mob you can nuke it and it wont wake up? Only physicly attacking will do this? We changed that in FFXI. But we really thought it was cool, so we included it here in this fight again!

NOT FOR YOU.

For Diabolos of course! Now he can Sleepga you all while at the same time inflicting a very deadly 20 HP/tic Bio on you, AND YOU WONT WAKE UP. The programer who did this got the companys "Dr. Evil Award" for it, we had a blast seeing people on forums spamming threads like "OMG HELP" or "cheating Diabolos".

But, and thats where we input the first Reward for you, this fight was a gift to the DRKs in this game. We know they have some bad reputation, but on this fight you need a stunner or you are dead. BLM cant Stun in this fight, but DRK can. Seeing Jeuno full of

"CoP 3-5 Diabolos, Do You Need It? DRK only, 5/6" was our present to you (a part of you at least). And to us too. We saw 1.000s of people suddenly leveling DRK up to 40 just for this mission.

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP
Dark Knight to 40 for CoP

After this, we have the Ouryu fight, 4-2. It's basicly a flying warmachine, you need to invest farming to get items to stop him flying. Most people went for the "sleep/magic nuke" tactic, but that needed a tank.

I said tank, not Ninja.

That needed a Paladin therefore. Since most people used to lvl up NIN to 40 for the Mammets on 2-5 because they didn't want to get hit, they now had to lvl PLD to be able to hold the hate. To 50. Yes, 50, since this fight is 50 cap. But also we saw a rise of SMN and BLMs to 50 for Garuda 2hr or Freeze. All because of this fight.

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP
Dark Knight to 40 for CoP
Paladin to 50 for CoP
Summoner/Black Mage to 50 for CoP

It somehow got easier now. Granted, you have to farm for keys in Sacrarium on 4-3 then go slay many Orcs to erase Fomor hate again, because otherwise all the Fomors in the boss fight room will kill you, without a mercy. We had another Promyvion in there now, but it was much easier. A little slap in the face, beacuse the "Promyvion of all Promyvions" is a walk in the park after all.

5-3 then just is a long set of missions, but one outstanding battle here is the Snoll Tzar.

We thought: Why treat people bad all the time? Bad, just in one way, with long fights. Lates make a short fight. Lets make a fight where you lose after 45 seconds or little more than a minute if you dont kill the mob then, no matter what. Thats the Snoll Tzar.
How did people react on this?

First, they said whm is useless on this fight, since he cant deal damage. We programmed this. If 2 chars die, they cannot deal damage. Whm useless on this fight? You already start to punish yourself, you're taking away my job!
Secondly, an increase of SAM and /SAM jobs for Meditate and TP built up before going in there. We loved that, since it was now:

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP
Dark Knight to 40 for CoP
Paladin to 50 for CoP
Summoner/Black Mage to 50 for CoP
Samurai to 50 or 25 for CoP

But then it got really interesting.

You take your Airship to Al'Taieu. Well you think you do. But you really run into an unbelievable mission hell, probably the hardest mission in the whole game, CoP 6-4. The notorious Airship fight.

It consists of 3 parts:

5 Mammets (Good bye 3 tanks 3 healers tactic)
Omega
Ultima

The thing here is, that the 5 Mammets can sometimes and often will, kill you with ease. Sometimes you can win, but you have to make it through this first stage to see Omega. Omega then has tons of HP and very deadly attacks. IF you beat that, Ultima comes and you need to kill that too, with little less HP but more deadlier attacks. You have 45 minutes for all.

Doesn't sound that hard, does it?

Well, do you think you can rest once in this fight? Except when your whole party gets whiped and you reraise? You cannot rest in those fights. You need to fight/cast constantly. Which means you need to have large amounts of items with you, which means you need to farm like made or visit our mother, IGE.
There are also special items on this fight here. They are gainable by a long quest, and thats why playes rip themselves off on the AH with those items. Last time I checked, one of those items costed 134k Gil on Asura server. And you will want 4 of them, 2 for Omega and 2 for Ultima. 520k on Asura just for special items. With the prices on Asura for meds, you can come up to 1 mil gil for the whole party for just one run.

And then the 5 Mammets kill you in a minute and you didnt even see a glimps of Omega.

You just bought a Reraise II Item for this? It has 10 charges? After it, it will have 3 or 0 charges, believe me.
You are a tank? Buy 20+ Hi Potions.
You are a mage? Have 10+ Hi-Ethers, and at least 6 Yag Drinks with you. As well as Hi Potions, Reraise Items etc.

This mission is one of our proud moments in CoP. It's very hard, but still people will try it. They need large amounts of money to even try it or they will die. And after it, they wont even land in Al'Taieu but have to do more missions to get there.

I love my job.

The next missions are a joke sadly, but then comes the real Airship Battle to Al'Taieu, where you have to fight Tenzen. A buddy NPC you had, that now wants to kill you. He can SC with himself of course and if you let that happen, you'll just lose, no matter if you survive that. So hurry hurry! And foremost, lvl up a real DD job. A big DD job for this uncapped cap fight now.

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP
Dark Knight to 40 for CoP
Paladin to 50 for CoP
Summoner/Black Mage to 50 for CoP
Samurai to 50 or 25 for CoP
Black Mage/Monk/DRK/whatever DD up to 75 for CoP.

But now you are finally in Al'Taieu.

And that's our real reward for you, since this is the first time we really put Final Fantasy into Final Fantasy XI. Dreamy area, nice music, weird fantasy mobs, and end-game-im proud im here - electronical penis. Be proud, we are too.

We are especially proud of our Yovras.

If you have never been to Al'Taieu, and thats 90% of the people reading this here, you do not know what a Yovra is. A Yovra is a very, very deadly mob that looks like a gigantic UFO.

"Sure, ill just avoid that and make a big circle around it."

We dont let you avoid that that easily.

Yovras float in the air, HIGH above you. You have to tilt your camera up to even see them, then approximatley judge where they are, and then try to avoid them, so they dont drop down on you.

But the real funt hing is, you also have to look down at the sea, at which surface you walk in a Jesus like way. Since the sharks down there can jump out, if they aggro you, and give you a hard time too.

Being surrounded by deadly mobs from under the sea AND up in the sky, having your camera zoom from down and up and down again, we just had to input something deadly in there.

The next missions are rather easy...but before you fight Promathia, you have to fight 4 pots.

"4 Pots, lol, they are easy, aren't they, pots dont do much damage?"

Hello, we are SE not a friendly candy-seller.

We programmed them to be 2 RDMs and 2 BLMs. It's an uncapped fight, and you will die in there. It's not intended to be won without a party whipe. You may sleep them first, but that only works with Elemental Seal. Every 10 minutes. So after 2 minutes you have 3 angry pots waking up, wanting to rape the blm taru who just made them sleep, all of them casting AoE tier 3 or AM magic.

Thats my version of heaven, seeing 6 characters get roasted by ceramic.
Players decided that BLM is a good job in this fight, for Sleepga and heavy AM spell nuking, because they are weak to magic attacks.

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP
Dark Knight to 40 for CoP
Paladin to 50 for CoP
Summoner/Black Mage to 50 for CoP
Samurai to 50 or 25 for CoP
Black Mage/Monk/DRK/whatever DD up to 75 for CoP.
Blacg Mage to 75 for CoP, alternatley
Red Mage to 75 for CoP or
Summoner to 75 for CoP (but thats a joke in this fight, really).

Behold, you made it this far.
And we have another Reward for you, since the Empyreal Paradox BCNM really is awesome. Well, the look of the BCNM area. Promathia is a God, he wont just die upon seeing you. I programmed him to love to use Meteor, a 600+ Damage AoE attack.

To not totally break you, we gave you two NPCs to fight along with you, Prishe and Selh'teus. And they are really the only ones who can win you this fight. Prishe is programmed to be the thign you always want to be: a soloer. She can hundred fist and benediction, can make a light skill chain alone and then MB on it with Banishga III. She is totally capable of soloing Promathia with just a little healing help.
Selh'teus flys around, sometimes stopping Promathia for some seconds.

Most people just tend to heal Prishe all the time and have her solo Promathia, while their melees in the party long passed dropped dead.

If you made it this far and win, you get to see some kick ass Cutscenes, I must admit that. And you get some really good ring, which you can use with lvl 30. But I guess you dont have much lvl 30 jobs anymore with

Summoner up to 30 for CoP.
Tank/Healer job to 40 for CoP
Dark Knight to 40 for CoP
Paladin to 50 for CoP
Summoner/Black Mage to 50 for CoP
Samurai to 50 or 25 for CoP
Black Mage/Monk/DRK/whatever DD up to 75 for CoP.
Blacg Mage to 75 for CoP, alternatley
Red Mage to 75 for CoP or
Summoner to 75 for CoP (but thats a joke in this fight, really).

but enjoy it anyway!

All I wanted to say with this:

If you make it to Al'Taieu, through a lot of pain, dlvling and Gil, you are in an area that is more FF than any other area in the game.

And a Yovra will kill you there, with Prishe as the soloer you always wanted to be laughing at you and /poke-ing your corpse.

And your neat Tavnazian ring, to teleport you to Tavnazian Safehold when you dont need that almost not anymore, because you already did 85% of the CoP missions.

And Limbus, a Dynamis Light.

Enjoy it as much as we did with programming it and seeing thousands of people lvling up jobs they never wanted to have for the CoP missions, needing at least 3 months for lvling all and then 1+ year to make it through CoP.

Numbers

When you are a programer, developer, much laughing person, numbers are very important to you. Numbers are very important for SE too.

Let me explain you this:

We start simple and make it way more complicated, sucking you in to reading this post with luring you in here with easy stuff and then making you addicted to it, so you can't stop, but the numbers already will start to crush your skull in, but you can't stop because it was so easy and fun to read in the start. If that reminds you of something, just take a look at your Windower for a second and start to think.

Here we go now for real!

1. XI: Numbers are important to Final Fantasy XI. We couldnt just simply name it FF II you know, because that already exists. Not FF VII either, and not FF XX because that would confuse ppl more with "wtf did i miss 10 years or what?!"

2. $$$: Sell numbers are important to use. Sure thing, thats one part of my private jet I have.

3. You have been warned, Asura: Players numbers are important. 2nd part of my private jet. If this value, named X, drops under a certain limit, named ZOMG, we will bath the Server in Ant Acid and thats it for this world then.

4. Stay: Ant Acid costs much here. At least the amounts we need to kill a World Server. So don't even think of World Transfer or leaving the game.

5. (Good Job!): The more complaint emails we get, the more we know we did our job well.

6. WoW vs CoP: The more "WoW is so much better, im gonna play this now" we see, the more we think about maybe changing a little something with a huge impact in your minds, but none at all in game. May I point you to making Shadow Lord uncapped fight. Did that help anyone? Well yes. But for whole long? Until we slapped you in the face with CoP lvl caps.

7. 12: 12 Items you can stack. First reason for this is a cheap way of hammering the number "12" into your mind. On 31st October you all went to game stores and bought FFXII. Guess why. Secondly, we thought its a nice low number to have 13 same items, 12 already taking up one slot, wasting 1 "likely" 12item-stack slot with the new one again, only to have that fill up to 12 too, you see the next item drop on your last item slot, get the quickly programmed Rare/Ex right before you got the farmed item you wanted, which you will lose then. The Ra/Ex will be a Ra/Ex version of a flint stone (it will be red) while you farmed for stuff that takes ages to get and is worth 50k gil a piece on the cheapest surfer.

8. 6: 6 People it needs to effictivley party. Did you never wonder why we wanted to have exactly 6, a maximum of 6 ppl in a party? Let me tell you why. Have you ever had a full Alliance? 18 ppl right? Whats so special about that? Look here, on your Party screen that popped:

6 players
6 players
6 players (including you)

3 times "6". 666.

9. 18: Sub job quest with LvL 18: see above, 3 times 6 = 18.

10. 30: Advanced Jobs with Lvl 30: By this time you got to know our Mandragoras, since from lvl 25 you party in Kazham (we predicted that with Taro Cards). I was told to program the most fucking annoying mob ever. I coded "Dream Flower" PERSONALLY. Yes, it was ME! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

11. 21-24 hours repop timers: Thats just evil by itself. That needs no further explanation.

12. 10% EXP loss when you die from current needed EXP: A trick. Very simple. 10% isnt much, right? Doesnt sound much. Wait until you reach a lvl were you are so high in your job it would be a total waste of time not finishing it to 75, and every death and the 10% rule just makes you want to cry in a corner.

13. 6 initial jobs: Think thats because of the Party setup of 6 ppl? No, its just another way to sneak a 6 in again for 666.

14. /random from 0 to 999: Another one, 666. 999 turned over is 666, and most likely when you figure all our tricks out you will have 0 fun IG anymore.

15. The ultimate horror: Do not read this if you are pregnant, have a weak heart, blood ciruclation problems or other medical unstable conditions.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Read at your own risk.

"Once there was a BLU who wanted to solo the Blue Magic "Refueling". It comes from Cluster type mobs and is very important, since it is Haste for the BLU. He checks the internet and sees that the only Clusters are in:
Mount Zhayolm - lvl 75-80, no survival chance
Riverne Site #A01, 40 Cap: no survival chance alone
Riverne Site #B01, 50 Cap: get raped if you try it alone
Lufaise Meadows: 30-40ish: soloable!

The BLU read on the conditions of those Clusters to appear, since he already has CoP finished, ran through Lufaise Meadwos 1.000 times and never saw a single freaking Cluster there.
It must be something between 00:00 and 7:00, internet isnt sure.
There must be no weather effects on.
There must be fog weather.

Sounds easy.

Night 1: Arriving at about 21:00, waiting there 30 minutes. Lightning, Wind, Lightning Weather. Still hope!
Night 2: Arriving at 19:00, waiting 30 minutes. Wind weather
Night 3: Arriving at 23:00, waiting 30 minutes. No weather, no fog. At about 5:00 Wind weather. Hope fainting.
Night 4: Arrivel time, 20? 23? Wait time: too long. No weather! But also no fog.
Night 5: Arrivel time: whatever, wait time: i hate myself. Wind weather.
Night 6: Arrivel time: desperation. wait time: suicide. FOG weather! Cluster seen, claimed! Did 3 WS, NO Refueling!!! FUCKING THING KILLED ME!!!!! GOD DAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!

The Blu then decides to talk friends into spending time on Mt. Zhayolm. Much much Clusters there, shouldnt take too long.

15 minutes into fighting: Seen some Refueling, not learnt yet, anytime now!
30 minutes into fighting: All Right, system wants to joke with us, but any second now!
1 hour into fighting: My head is getting numb. Freaking Refueling spamming assholes!!!!
1.5 hours into figthing: 30th Cluster? 40th Cluster? God damn, I want to die. Refueling oh nice, sure i will learn it not now. See, told ya.
2+ hours into fighting: Players learns Refueling. Did I want this? I can't remember...why am I here again? Did I get what I wanted? Must be, everyone cheers at me, applaudes and stuff. Yeah to me, I guess. I did a good job as a BLU standing around for more than 10 hours getting this shit. I'm gonna try it right now. Wee, lame animation. That sucks."

The numbers that calculate weather, fog, mob doing WS, your chance of learning it, are 666times more evil compared to the numbers that control your chances of winning in Las Vegas every night you want to.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Please call your doctor now, should you suffer from pain.