Contests And Competitions

Friday afternoon we were treated to viewings of the finalists in the movie contest. Most of the six entries went the fanboy favorite music video route, but the ones that got everyone most excited were Machinima-style with either amateur VO (as the game features none) or overlayed text dialog. Between the Tarutaru zombie invasion starting from a resurrection spell gone wrong and the humorous, blooper-reel-esque look at what could be going on behind the scenes in Vana'diel, there were plenty of good laughs to be had.

Prizes for art entries were awarded in two categories on Saturday, drawing and crafting, the basic distinction being 2 or 3-D. Sketches, computer-generated art, a yarn doll, and a baby Chocobo figurine, among other pieces, were all displayed outside the main hall so attendees could cast their votes prior to the award ceremony.

The most exciting contest took place Saturday afternoon at about 2:30 -- costumes. Of course any time you go to a convention of fans you'll see some people dressed up, but it's always great to see how hardcore people can get with the details. Some impressed us by conjuring up fantastic costumes based on the brand new job classes recently announced, while others picked off-beat subjects such as a bulky Galka warrior dressed for the holiday season or the game's GM character -- a red knight.

A lot of work went into some of these costumes, but the judges' panel, made up of half the dev team, seemed to lean towards the original rather than the extremely ornate. In the end, a fellow dressed as Cid won the grand prize and was bothered the whole rest of the festival for a freeze-frame pic of the character's famous laugh animation.

For those with encyclopedic knowledge of FFXI market prices, monsters, geography, and spelling, each day featured an hour of the Vana'diel Quiz Show. Contestants chosen by drawing competed to recall as much trivia as possible. A round usually began with a quick The Price Is Right-flavored segment to determine who would get a shot for a prize.

The Developers Speak

Despite all the fun activities, probably what players really came for was to hear about the game straight from the developers, and to that end the attendees flocked to dev panels each night for announcements and answers to fan-submitted questions. The first night's session was proceeded by a huge list of tweaks being made to current job classes, such as added or modified abilities.

Then they launched into the panel proper with a discussion of new Wings of the Goddess features like the Allied Campaign, sort of a meta-game where territory is conquered by nations and different strategies and quests become available depending on the results of previous battles. Players will also be able to headhunt mercenaries to join their nation, including some well-known NPCs. Also in for the new expansion are expanded weapon and inventory slots, and plans are underway for a new seasonal lottery event, as well as a system whereby GMs can facilitate scheduled player-run events by placing objects in the game world.

Day Two's dev panel kicked off with an update from FFXI's fan-favorite developer Sage Sundi on the "Special Task Force" dedicated to eradicating gil (gold) famers, a topic he also covered at Austin GDC during Tanaka's keynote.

The dev team has made some impressive strides and found over 47,000 guilty accounts -- even through such simple measures as monitoring chat logs. They also managed to freeze over 1.1 billion in farmed gil, so that sellers are having trouble following through on their orders. Graphs portraying the amount of certain types of farmers (such as the ones who spend all their time catching and selling in-game fish) clearly angled down and to the right, further showing the progress. Lots of programming time went into adjusting quests and item drops -- one can imagine the difficulties involved in trying to make camping certain bosses not worthwhile to farmers, while keeping the quest experience rewarding for legitimate players.

More expansion news came out, including the fact that since player housing has now been opened up for friends to visit, there are going to be ways to make your own store inside with a signboard that boosts crafting skills as a side effect. Some difficulty tweaks, some stat bonuses, adjustments to the Chocobo Racing system -- pretty much everything they mentioned was based on things that players had asked for, proving "fan service" doesn't always imply panty shots.

It does, however, imply special hidden informational tidbits and Square Enix following through sometime soon on their promise to deliver a video of the team beating the most powerful boss monster in the game, Absolute Virtue.

The end of the festival was marked by a musical performance by The Smash Brothers doing rock covers of some favorite FFXI music -- but evidently not everything the crowd was wishing for, because there was quite a lot of shouting.

Composers Naoshi Mizuta and Kumi Tanioka were on hand, and Tanioka even sat down to a keyboard to play some more classical-style arrangements, including one new one from Wings of the Goddess.