Developing FFXI

Reality vs FFXI

2006-11-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

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.

The Picnic

2006-11-07T00:59:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

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.

Why almost everyone hates Ninjas

2006-11-01T13:35:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm not allowed to say this officially, but SE hates Ninjas.

Yes, we hate Ninjas.

When we created the job, we intented it to be a support type of job. We gave it Utsusemi for pulling reasons only. It's nice not getting hit, isn't it? You get some debuff-spells and some elemental attack spells and you can Dual Wield, spamming WS like a Samurai. We really wanted it to be nice.

But then the players took the job and made something horrible out of it.

I admit, Paladin was the only real tank then, but War/Mnk was also a good tank by this time.

But then you took Ninja, saw that Utsusemi completly eats damage and made it a tank job yourself. We surley never, anywhere, wrote that Ninja should be a tank job. We do not want Ninja to be a tank job. If you keep Utsusemi up all the time, how can you die then? How can you lose EXP and spent more time getting it back? That's just horrible for us!

Fortunatley we made the base DEF and VIT of a NIN not that great, so one Sickle Slash or AM spell and the Ninja is gone, a Paladin would survive that. But damn you for keeping Utsusemi up! Damn you, you cheaters!

That's worse for us then our official opinion about buying gil. Since the Gilfarmers at least play 24/7 and stay on this game for days, weeks, months etc. They give us tips how to make it worse for you since they play so often.

Thats OUR reason for hating Ninjas. PART of it.

YOUR reason for hating Ninja is that YOU YOURSELF use it as a tank. And therefor you hate US, quitting game. Thats the last part of our reason for hating Ninjas, that they make you hate us and quit the game.

But your reasons are just nuts. YOU MADE IT A TANK.

And now you moan about insane prices for Evasion gear and constant Shihei buying. And of course smart Crafters rise the money prices for it. You have to farm longer, it takes ages to get this Gil. You die laughable easy if Utsusemi is down and you need to be a millionaire or Gilseller to afford all this.

Furthermore Ninjas tend to become etilist assholes. Who wouldn't, with the insane amount of money and time you need to put in this job, and then some idiot puller pulls a link, getting you all killed. Or you don't get enough exp/hour, wasting countless Utsusemis. Creating more tension in this cesspool of people playing a game.

That's all true facts, and thats your reasons you hate Ninjas.

The only people loving Ninjas are Gilsellers. They can sell shit at insane high prices to them, they still will pay the Gil. Which they mostly bought before of them. Making it that they actually bought a Scorpion Harness+1 for 10 Dollar (or whatever price it is now) and not the millions of Gil you need to have.

SE hates Ninjas.
You hate Ninjas.
Ninjas hate Ninjas.
Gilseller love them.

Playing the Shame, er, Game.

2006-10-31T05:56:00.000-08:00

Since I started posting here, SE got flooded with E-Mails (I shouldn't have posted about our automated answering machine, some hacker disabeled it now) saying, it's unfair that a developer doesn't play his own game.

So I got an E-Mail from my boss saying I have to play the game now to calm down the people, or at least pretend I did.

Since I can't lie to you, I actually went into a store today and bought a copy of it. I bought it for PS2 since I don't want to be trapped without Windower and want to look up things. There were a lot of people there buying it, which made me happy, it still sells well. Must be our awesome marketing campaing and our new 3 Expansion Set.

So I played 15 hours in a row now, and that's my impression:

Installation Time

Oh come on you wussies, how can anyone whine about installation or Update times? I almost had none at all. Sure it loaded some minutes, but that's it. Don't be such crybabys about some minutes! Unbelievable...

First steps

Upon seeing this really awesome intro (never seen it before) I started playing in a really big city, I can't remember the name anymore. I don't care about the name, the city was just awesome. There were a lot of players running around, but no one bothered me with any shit. I got no tells, I didn't expect to get any tells anyway. I saw no stupid shouts, so I don't know what you are complaining about.
Okay, I admit the city was big and it took me 2 hours to see everything of it and talk to every NPC. But I liked that, it gave me the feeling of being in a world and not a nutshell.

My very first EXP

I went right outside in this dusty-like area. You know, not that much water, little but strange plants. Hm, I guess I was in Windurst, since everyone says that's really big and outside it looks like arid hell. So I killed some mobs quite easily and tell you what: I got drops on almost every mob. And good EXP. I farmed and got good EXP at the same time.

WHAT ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT?!

First I thought: Hm, maybe those Items are worth shit, so I went inside again with LvL 3 now and searched the AH to sell it. Strange thing, I couldn't find it anywhere. I tried to /shout for directions, but my keyboard didn't work. Must have had a production error, well, Sony crap. So I gave up on finding the AH and decided to sell it to an item selling NPC. He gave me really good deals on all the stuff and I was able to farm about 30k Gil in 1 hour.

WHAT ARE YOU COMPLAINING ABOUT?!

30k Gil in 1 hour and I barley saw some other playing farming those things. Maybe on higher lvls you farm much better things and that's why I was left alone, or I played at a weird "time zone change" time, when JP just got up from bed, EU is in bed and US just goes to bed or something like this.

Since I couldn't find the AH, I bought all my armor and weapons and spells at NPCs. Really nice prices, at some point I had to farm some 20k Gil more again but I just went outside again and got to LvL 5 in the process.

I continued lvling until lvl 11 then, and I wanted to search for Party. Didn't see any "Party" menu in there, which got me confused. Maybe I got a bogus copy of the game, we got some of those out there, so I figured I continue to solo EXP.

My first Party

Tho after some time I wanted to do a mission and did some, then out of a sudden a helpful other Player joined my game. She (or He, was just the char model) even talked to me, like really speaking! Didn't know that Teamspeak works over PS2, I was really impressed. Maybe that's whats holding back PS2 storage space, having Teamspeak preinstalled. Well anyway, niceley she was the same lvl I was and that didn't push down EXP in any way, so we duo-ed a little. I must admit, she was a n00b, but really strong hitting. We easily soloed some mobs and got about 200-300 EXP everytime. I didn't see any Crabs or Goblins yet, maybe they hide somewhere deeper into this area.

The girl was really nice, she didn't even notice that I can't answer her. Stupid crap sony keyboard. Once another nice person, playing some other race I think it was a Elvaan (long sloppy ears you know), casted Protect on us and healed us a little. The bastard did some Kill Steals too, I tried to MPK him but it didn't work.

I went back to this city and sold all the items I got again to NPCs, making some other 30k gil. Way more than enough than I needed on this lvl. I even was so generous and bought the poor girl some better equip, maybe I can get her phone number this way. I just pray that she is as hot as her voice.

So really guys, stop complaining about EXP, Gil, LFP times and friendly players!

Hell, we even killed two NMs together!
Of course they weren't strong, we were only lvl 12 at this time, but hey no one was camping them. Maybe they have shit drops but who cares, no one was there to bother us.

We made really good EXP, farming was worth something and I could do what I wanted to do right away.

Heck, I don't know why you whine about traveling too!

I got a Chocobo right away! Maybe the game somehow realized from my IP that I was a developer and gave it to me with Lvl 1, and made all the other people disappear for me, making me have good EXP and drops because I am a developer, but it was really fun to play! And I really don't believe the game can judge that, because I programmed it. It treats everyone the same.

The same GOOD way. Why do you complain about this, it rocks?!

Seriously people, you are all nut weirdos wanting to complain about every little shit. The game is awesome, stop whining.

I can't tell you on which server I was, never showed anywhere. But it must have been the good server.

But I can give you now (maybe you are just on the wrong server and started with the wrong nation/race etc.) all the infos about the server and nation I was in.

Let me just look that up in the game, since I didn't care for that (because it doesn't matter at all)...

...
...
...

All right, I think I got it now.

I think the girl just mentioned the Server Name to me, it's the server: Ivalice.

The map says the starting city is called "Rabanastre", not sure which nation that is, I think I heard "Dalmasca" somewhere. Must have been inserted with ToAU I guess, never knew we had such a nation in FFXI.

My bogus copy didn't even let me change my char name, so if you want to tell me IG what an awesome job I did as a developer on FFXI, just give me a tell on "Vaan", and if you need help anytime I'm sure this chick here "Penelo" will gladly help you out. But leave your fingers off her, she's mine with such a hot voice.

Stop whining now about FFXI, it just rocks.

We deserve money for this

The Blackground

2006-10-28T08:10:00.001-07:00

In a previous post I did mention that the PS2 storage space is holding us back in regards of displaying teenager chocobo colours correctly, thus showing the black background.

This post here now is about

THE BLACKGROUND

In the very early years of programming FFXI we didn't intend it to be the huge time sink - game it has become now.

When you program something you start with nothing. You have to fill it up with something.

So, for the ultimate nothing we didn't just use a black background...we wanted to be revolutionaries, a brand new game system, like FF always was is and will be.

That's why we created

THE BLACKGROUND.

It's not a simple black background, it's a virtual black hole.

A black hole is a very tiny thing that swallows everything in its reach, even light. So we had our perfect ultimate background now, the absolute nothing,

THE BLACKGROUND.

We didn't foresee the problems this would create.

When we had numerous people test play the game first there were decent drop rates (appr. 0.25%, meaning you get a nice item every 4th kill and 0.1% for rarer items, every tenth kill.), short LFP times and nomad moogles in Selbina and Mhaura, as well as Chocobos there.
The NPCs told you what to do and every item had a little description about it's effects, as well as how to activate a latent effect (there were NPCs telling you how upon doing a little quest each time involving killing a not too bad NM).

But then the effects of

THE BLACKGROUND

kicked in. The moogles, chocobos and helpful NPCs got swallowed into it. If you listen very carefully you can still hear a soft little voice IG calling "kuuuuuuuuuuupooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo" sometimes.

Have you ever seen this random Moogle appearing in Jeuno, outside of your Mog House? That's no glitch, that's

THE BLACKGROUND.

Or the left NPCs wandering around in areas with no owner? That's not NPC buddy, that was a helpful NPC swallowed by

THE BLACKGROUND.

Upon time this horrible thing even increased it's power, sucking the very fabric of space-time in. Unfortunatley with a love for TIME and not SPACE or else Buburimu Peninsula wouldn't exist anymore.

Everytime you LFP and it takes hours upon hours, it's

THE BLACKGROUND

swallowing your time, eating away at your nerves. It also emits "0"s (zeros), thus altering the drop rates to 0,025% and 0,001%.

Oh the horror!

We didn't know how to fix it, we really searched. But then Marketing told us that people still play and buy the game. That they start to believe it was meant to be this way and thought that's challenging. So we stopped doing anything against

THE BLACKGROUND

and concentrated on keeping the game running as is as long as possible.

If you find yourself ever searching for information in the game, decent drop rates, a system behind skill ups, real good travel options or a party, give up right here and now. You cannot win. It even swallows light for christs sake!

THE BLACKGROUND will get you too.

PS: This thing inspired us to creat Promyvion. If you want to see appr. how it is, go in there with random people from Jeuno, die 5 times and then lose the boss fight, with a de-lvl, wasted money, time and nerves. Voilá.

Bleeding You

2006-10-27T04:42:00.000-07:00

Back in the old days, when Al Zahbi was still capable of defending themselves without the help of 400 mercenarys from other continents, we developed the job Summoner (SMN).

We thought we did a good job, until the GMs test-played it.

They have to test-play every new stuff we include so they get familiar with it and can response to certain complaints about it better. Meaning, finding a better excuse that they can not help you.

Back in those days, the "Blood Pacts" were still called "God Pacts".

But as the GM played the job pre-release it occured to us that the job itself doesn't summon that often and mostly heals.

We couldn't have unintentionally invented something more evil than this, so we left it this way. But that got me curious, because I know a good song from the band Metallica called "Bleeding Me". I thought it's really fitting and so I wrote an E-Mail to our bosses up in their ivory-tower in space (with all the money we make we can afford that. You would think SDI is an US idea. Actually it means "Square Defense Initiative". Upon too much complaints we launch missiles aiming down at the World Servers, destroying FFXI and slowly flying away to another planet leeching money from the un-aware civilization there. For further information on this see the character "Jenova" in Final Fantasy VII.)

Here is a part of the E-Mail I wrote back at those days and in it you will find the reason why "God Pacts" never saw the light and you all know it as "Blood Pacts":

"...so I figured to compare the song to the job SMN and therefor vote for "God Pacts" to be changed to "Blood Pacts". Here are the lyrics, judge with all your Yen-Wisdom:

I'm diggin' my way
I'm diggin' my way to somethin'
I'm diggin' my way to somethin' better

This is the beginning of the song and a real good reference to hilariously long LFP times for SMNs. I don't want you to imagine "digging" with a shovel here, I'm speaking about a spoon.

I'm pushin' to stay
I'm pushin' to stay with something
I'm pushin' to stay with something better

The players, as we recently researched, will try to convince themselves that the job still IS good, that it will be good at higher lvls and try to grind themselves up to this point. Can I hear a ka-ching from you?

I'm sowing the seeds
I'm sowing the seeds I've taken
I'm sowing the seeds I take for granted

"To sow the seeds you took for granted". Could there be a more beautiful metaphor for sending us more money than you actually thought? I just love our time sink concept. Please raise my salary to half of that of a japanese programmer, btw.

This thorn in my side
This thorn in my side is from the tree
This thorn in my side is from the tree I've planted

The Content ID they have and the decision to change to SMN and really stick to it because you "like" it takes its tolls.

It tears me and I bleed
And I bleed

Of course they bleed money. We don't want people to bleed out of their ears when playing FFXI, that would mean they would go to hospital and could not be online on our game to get ripped off more.

Caught under the wheels roll
I take the leech
I'm bleeding me

They player might notice here that accepting the TOS and now being trapped in it wasn't that good an idea, especially with all the time he has to think when he is LFP as a SMN.

Can't stop to save my soul
I take the leash that's leading me

Definatley he realized that here and still trys to put some positive things into his gameplay, "saving his soul". That's ok with me, as long as he plays.

I'm bleeding me
I can't take it
Caught under wheels roll
Oh, the bleeding of me
Of me
The bleeding of me

We, that is the workers on Earth here, seriously expect people to suffer under this, but they still will continue. We call this the "mosquito - not deadly but burning light" effect.

I am the feast that feeds the beast

We are not entirely sure how this line goes, it's hard to here. Some of us, like me, think the singer sings "I am the beast that feeds the beast" which would be a nice metaphor for the player - SE relationship. The internet community about lyrics isn't sure here either, we call this the "Allahkazam - Effect" spreading rumors and misinformation just so you have posted something in the net (leaving out our hired misinformation agents here)

I am the blood
I am release

As the SMN tried to release some "God Pact" other GMs told him to stop that shit and just Cure. Therefore he "Released" his pet again. Thats my main reason why I want "God Pact" changed to "Blood Pact".

Come make me pure
Bleed me a cure

Another nice one: "Heal me you with a healing "Blood Pact" you bish or release that stupid enhanced light bulb again" That's just my interpretation.

I'm caught, I'm caught, I'm caught under

LFP times take their toll on the mind of the players. Maybe we should include some noise when you get a tell to help people? But only when we experience a severe loss of players to the much more popular WoW, so for now NO."

The guys in outer space were very keen about my idea and liked the irony about it, so we changed "God Pact" to "Blood Pact" before we released the new job.
They said, that we actually put in a hidden warning now too about the job with calling it "Blood Pacts". If you would know all this that I just posted here, but it seems like no one figured it out yet.

So here you have an example of SE actually releasing information about the game! Don't complain now because it is not really useful but just a slap in the face of SMNs.

The really awesome thing now is, that the song

"Bleeding Me" is song number XI on CD1
has a play time of 9:01 (the average Airship wait time)
and is on the album S&M.

Do I need to say more?

The FFXI Nazi

2006-10-26T04:31:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: Neither SE or the Developers there are affiliated with Nazis. We do not hate people of any special race/country/religion here.
We just hate all people equally.
Even more so, when they don't buy our products or complain about them. Don't get me started about FFX-2 here.

Now that we cleared that I can freely say that we at SE sometimes have the feeling of being the Third Reich.

"OMG what did he write there?!" I can hear you say.

I wrote we have the feeling of being the Third Reich, not being it or being proud of it. But you can give your thanks to one certain species of player that evolved in our game Final Fantasy XI.

Upon studying we only came to the conclusion to call him

"The FFXI Nazi" which made us the Third Reich somehow.

This sort of player has all the aspects you would know of Nazis.

First of all, what he says is right and everyone else is an idiot and wrong. Those are the people that exactly know which gear you should wear as a job, which subjobs are "aryan" so to say and what you have to do and should never do in an EXP party and in the whole game all the time.

Where does he take all his knowledge from you might ask, because we surely didn't include it in the game? He believes he got it from us, the "Führer". We intented all this to be the only true way, we "told" him that somehow, he will follow our "orders" and spread his virtual Darwinism.

Those players even believe we inserted De-lvling as a mean of natural evolution. Only the people following the right path of "nature", his path, will survive and level, the rest will die and downlevel in evolution.

We inserted De-lvling to annoy the hell out of you. To keep you playing longer, because all those hours finally add up to 2-3 more months you spent on game.

This person also has a Nazi-like way of speaking. He doesn't speak to you, he blantly repeats other shit he read from "higher ranking officers/players" and thinks they are closer to the ultimate truth and glory of the Führer SE.
Things like:

"Refresh me!"
"You sub /nin now or I will kick you!"
"Just go farm!"

Note the resemblence to Nazi language. He threatens to kick people if they don't follow his orders, clearly wanting to use violence. He thinks farming and aggriculture is cool, because thats what the german girls did back then apparently, if you believe Propaganda.

This "FFXI Nazi" is even on a constant war against his biggest enemy: Fun.
Of course in his weak and stable condition of his mind he has to search a scapegoat for that.
The "jews" in this metaphor are "World of Warcraft" players.

Ever heard "If you don't like FFXI, then go play WoW!"?

It's like: if you don't like our idiology then go play with those people.
A WoW player is, in the view of the FFXI Nazi, not worthy enough of FFXI. Because WoW is totally inferior, look at the shit graphics for example. It's so easy to play and have fun, that's not a true challenge for a real "aryan" FFXIer.
They are the créme de la créme and inferior games will fall upon their might and the 1.000 month reign of FFXI will become true.

After reading all this, you sure wish that the Americans could save us again, bombing and invading such shitload of wasted words in a mind not bigger than his penis, and end this.

Unfortunatley, most "FFXI Nazis" are Americans.

We do not know why, we can only assume.

It might be that they have Bush as president for a long time now and need to live their aggressions because of that somewhere, or that they are already taught in the USA that everything the US does is correct and if you don't like it get out of the country you son of a "stars and stripes" hater, you Arabian piece of shit.

We truly don't know, but we know the grave situation here.
We do not want to be affiliated with mentalism of the Third Reich, so to all FFXI Nazis out there, those are the words of your "Führer", listen carefully:

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

1) So, your allmighty Führer gave you all the blessed instructions on the game? Are you really that stupid? What instructions?! The whole instruction booklet is a waste of paper, we inserted 99% decoy NPCs that only talk deranged shit, we do not help anymore, we make things more and more complicated to find out, so STFU, all info you have from "us" is from other idiots on the game thinking they know what we want of them, but they dont. We want money, thats it.

2) So WoW is inferior to FFXI? I guess Tetris is inferior to FIFA Soccer games then too? What, you can't compare that? Right you fucking idiot, you can't compare FFXI and WoW too. "But but, my Führer, they are both MMORPGs!" I hear you cry. Yes, but if you ever get out of your idiotic "I know it all" idiology and actually try the game once, you would see that the game system is totally different. But you won't because you are Aryan.

3) Evolution does not exist in FFXI. Devolution exists. We see it everyday, as fresh happy players turn into something worse then a True Sound high lvl mob. They scream at other players for minor reasons, kick ppl, order them around, we just laugh at that. De-lvling is not Evolution. De-lvling is us kicking you in the stomach.

I hope that settles that now.
The only thing you can say about us that might be bad, is in the header.

We hate people who don't pay us money, yes, it's true. In our opinion they deserve their unhappy lives they have without our games.

But we do not care about their religion, race, nation, sexual orientation, computer console they have.

Their religional allegiance should belong to us.
Their race should be anything that is rich.
Their nation should be SE shop.
Their sexual orientation should be "getting fucked by SE"
Their computer console doesn't matter, we produce "good games" for every console now anyway.

So fuck you FFXI Nazi.

The FF - Ministry.

Devinitions

2006-10-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

While working on evil deeds to make the game of FFXI more challenging, we are allowed to surf the internet for information.

SE highly recommends to research the Inquisition and the workings of Bureaucracy.

So I surfed the internet randomly and found this blog here:

www.ffxitruth.blogspot.com/

It seems someone discovered our online gaming recipe.

Upon reading all this I also found some "Definitions" and I wanted to comment on them out of the view of a Developer. Like an insight for all of you how this terms are called here at good old Vampire-SE.

On a weak attempt to be creative, oh and I don't mean FFXI here now, I titled this blog "Devinitions" like a cross of Definitions and Developer. The same way your e.g. cross a baby-bear with Uranium and get a Moogle. Or you with FFXI makes money for us.

I will take some of the terms the blogger tried to define and will write my point of view as a Developer, leave some out, and add some others.

Here's the insight into the brain of SE now:

Player : Yen.

Alternate/Mule : Yen SEed ("squared". Got it? No? Call our phone line for complaints and questions).

Terms of Service : We didn't program it, we don't like it.

Limit Break : Yen/hour * 50 hours.

Party : forced online globalism that makes a sound like ka-ching and gives me a warm feeling upon going to bed.

Seeking for Group : seeing our boss smile.

Puppetmaster "I was drunk".

Crafting Random Crystal-Break Mayhem.

Chocobo : "We realized they had to be in there 10 minutes before launch in Japan".

Besieged : "Thats for Hiroshima".

Invisible/Sneak : We LOLed.

Mission : "Having your son write up some story because the good ones had to go to FF12 and 13".

Player Controlled Economy : "Contract with IGE"

IGE : Mother. No really, I'm forced to call it "Mother".

Gilseller : "He who has a problem IG and really gets dealt with it, like d/c-ing NA players who could outclaim the GS bot"

D/C : To press a button and laugh

Teleport : Helping people too much, should-be-gone.

Windurst : Increased-money area

Camping : "I got an award for inventing 21-24 hour repop timers".

Sky : IGE capital (pre-contracted).

Sea : Putting Final Fantasy into Final Fantasy XI and making it worthless to have access to

Airship : Flying money machine.

Ship : Swimming money machine.

Bibiki Bay ship : Swimming money factory.

Chocobo Raising : There are no glitches.

Farming : "Something the Yens do to make money but actually we do".

Drop Rate : "To have a monkey flip a 25-sided dice". I have to feed him, don't laugh. It's not funny to get excrements thrown at you, I feel like a person playing FFXI...

SE Developer : Hey thats me :)

Mithra : Anime-chick for JP player-base.

JP player base : Customers.

NA player base : Add-ons.

EU player base : EU? What?

Notorious Monster : "Nice Money"

Auction House : Instrument of Yen self-torture and IGE bureaucracy

Dynamis : De-lvl festival (we couldnt include that like the Harvest Festival, so we thought of Dynamis).

Promyvion : "The inside of our hearts". We have to be like this, I'm sorry.

Ranger : "Just gimp it, I need a new Lamborghini".

Boat – Al Zahbi : "Inserting porn music and getting away with it".

Summon - Carbuncle : "Radioactive, useless squirrel".

Summon – Diabolos : "Having Yens stand in line for nothing at all"

Summons - General : I'm the devil.

Summons – Elemental Avatars : "Draining MP - Mind & Patients".

Fame : "Code Error". No, really, we didn't even know that's in there. Fame Levels? I never programmed sh*t like this. Don't complain to me that no meter or bar shows your fame level. But IF I would have programmed it...no meter or bar would show your fame level too. I don't wanna get fired.

GMs doing their job : "A reason to get fired".

/Tell noise : Finding a new way to annoy players and trying to keep more Yens IG

Downtime of Registry Servers End of Month: We are not stupid.

Updates : Work. Ugh, everyone hates that here.

Finally:

Final Fantasy XI Online : Money-Milked Cow for further offline games.

---

So, now you had a view into the mind of SE.

If you still like the game now, that's great!
If you don't like it anymore: just try it six more month, I bet you will like it again then.

I NEED ANOTHER LAMORGHINI!

Just Call Me Johnny Cash

2006-10-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

There's a song from a fine artist called "Johnny Cash".
It's called "San Quentin", it's about a prison...so punishment, isolation, bad treament.

I thought...if you really understand FFXI like I do as a Developer, this song really is fitting for the game. So I took the freedom to rewrite the lyrics. Lines I changed are in italics:

"FF Eleven, you've been livin' hell to me
You've blistered me since my first Content ID
I've seen 'em come and go and I've seen them die (+delevel.)
And long ago I stopped askin' why (I know why, its my doing as a developer)

FF Eleven, I hate every inch of you. (there are much inches to be hated with all the useless areas)
You've cut me and you've scarred me thru an' thru.
And I'll walk out a wiser, weaker manthra;
Mister Developer you can't understand.

SquareEnix, what good do you think you do?
Do you think that I'll be different when you're through? (You will be. Less money on bank account, wasted whole months In Game Time and becoming a dick to everyone who slows you down in real life somewhere.)
You bend my heart and mind and you warp my soul, (well not without at least Black Mage 17 or a Warp Scroll)
your time sinks turn my blood a little cold.

FF Eleven, may you rot and burn in hell.
May your gameplay fall and may I level to tell.
May all the world forget you ever stood.
And the whole world regret you did no good.

FF Eleven, I hate every inch of you."

Of course we at SE never get phone calls like that.

In fact our complaint phone line is a little machine that constantly repeats:

"Please hold the line. We will answer your call shortly."

This gives the impression that many other people are in line infront of you, which isn't a lie basicly and that someone really sits there and answers phone calls while at the same time being cost effective. Theres no person sitting there. The only person coming near this automated answering machine is the cleaning crew brushing some dust of it.

But should ever, somehow, slip some sort of criticism through to SE, expect the following line from us that Johnny Cash used before he started his above quoted and slightly altered song "San Quentin" (containts alterations too):

"We've been thinking about you guys yesterday and we've played the game 3 times before,
We think we understand a little bit how you feel about some things,
It's not our business how you feel about some other things,
And we don't give a damn how you feel about some other things
But anyway, we tried to put ourselves in your place...

But we couldn't stand that for very long
We like to be on the receiving side."

Actually that line is the automated email-answer that gets sent if someone sends more than 5-Emails to us, trying to complain about IG stuff. If you send less than 5 E-Mails, we reply that you just should call our "Complaints Phone Number" linked to our dust-collector.

I wonder now...should I point out why you could compare SE with Johny Cash even more than written above?

Well.

If you don't get it, you know what you have to do.
You have internet and can find all infos about our game on other non-SE-sites, so I'm sure you can find our phone number for complaints on our page too.

Don't even try to send an E-Mail.

Chocobo Genetics

2006-10-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

Yes,

I admit it, we intended to be Chocobo Raising the way it is now.

You see, it all started when we first launched the game in Japan.
A programer had the idea to insert Chocobo Raising and boy, we were all for it! So, we figured: how to determine what abilities and stats your chocobo will have? We stuck to nature and learned about the concept of...

DNA

Boy, thats really something. Its very tiny, even tinier than our skill up rate and we didnt believe something like this could ever happen, and its full of information. Its like all the info we should have included into the game winded up in a tiny little string.

It took us a mere 5 minutes to find out the basic building stones of DNA: 4 thingamabob. Out of ease we just called them Jim, Bob, Tom and Bill.
It somehow amused the japanese programers to have tiny tiny tiny little americans.

Oh well.

Then came the shock: It took us 10 more minutes to find out that this thing DNA is huge. Immensly huge. Like billions of billions coded text in there. So what to do?

Yeah, you guess right. We just programmed it step by step. First we researched the basic concept of DNA, of its growth, function, of the DNA codes. That took us longer than we expected. Something like 3 or 4 years, I don't know exactly anymore. You forgot to count after you have to work every day 20 hours on this shi...fun thing.

We apologize for that but hey, now its great, isn't it?

All of you whiny babies should stop complaining about Chocobo Raising. There are no glitches.

I mean, what did you expect?

It's a freaking bird, did you ever see a REAL bird in nature? After 1 month of growth, how "fast" is that bird? Yes, as fast as our birds are. Okay, ours are fully grown then, but we had a vote if it would be too much asked to have the full maturity phase of a grown out bird inserted in the game denied with 8:5 votes for "Not yet".

So 1) stop complaining about its speed. It's 20% faster than traveling on foot. Sure, some real fully bread IG chocobo might overtake you, but you have to pay Gil for that so its an advantage.

Next: why you complaining about medicine and food it needs? Of course you need to FEED it and TAKE CARE for it. What did you think? It's not our fault all the food is crafted only. Did you ever see Aspirin growing on a tree? Or special herb pastes just sticking out of the ground and you only have to pick them up in the real world? 'Course not!

So stop complaining about 2) having to pay prices for food and medicine from other players. You would need to do the same in the real world.

Color...another cry-factor for you. Did you really think everyone would get a special chocobo? Whats so special about all ppl having colored ones? And please dont ask whats so special about a, lets say Black Chocobo. Well its Black. Thats it. Can it learn more? Who knows. Find out. It might have an 2% advantage in traveling speed. Or maybe 0.2 skill up on certain abilities. Maybe it also is just black. Find out, its a game, why do we have to tell you everything? We're not a Walkthrough Company you know.

Different looking Chocobos as "teenagers" were sighted and then they all turned yellow. Some had black feather tips, other white ones. Ppl got disappointed then but...don't blame us, blame Sony. Their file storage capacity is holding us back there on the PS2. Normally they would all have white colored tips, but because we needed to reduce the storage space SOMEWHERE, we just left the white color away from a good amount of other chocobos, only showing the black background.

And most importantly:

STOP ASKING US QUESTIONS WHAT THE DIFFERENT THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR CHOCOBO ACTUALLY DO TO YOUR CHOCOBO.

We know it.
It tooks us freaking 3-4 years, or was it 10, HELL I CANT REMEMBER, to decode the whole DNA and figure out what certain genese and influences actually does.
You think we give this info away free now eh?
You think we are stupid?
Think again.

Just on a side note:

The thing about Chocobos not waking up anymore. That might be a glitch. I don't know yet, I don't own FFXI.

I only work here.