Seekers of adoulin information updates where?

[Phogg]

----------------------
Not sure if this counts for anything "official" but here are some of the SoA monster concept art from the

I saw all of those images during the live streams when they announced the expansion at Vanafest, so those are nothing new.

It would be nice, especially given the slow pace and skimpy content recently, to have some concept of confidence the expansion won't come out half complete a year from now.

[Elphy]

I see SoA as a failsafe in case ARR bombs out the way 1.0 did.

They released aby around the same time as XIV, making mega weapons/gear easy to obtain and removed obsticals like exp grinds, lvl restrictions from storyline quests like CoP to gear up ppl fast and rush them through the story so they could feel they achieved what they wanted in the game and could move on. Then when XIV bombed they rushed to fix a few things and slapped together some time killers like NNI and Meeble Burrows. Adjusting the lvls on already existing endgame and adding a few new gears, some that they didnt even bother to reskin, gave the playerbase more to do.

Then they announced SoA, my guess to bring back the ppl leaving XIV as it wound down and went free again, keeping the fees coming in. They will release ARR and if it bombs go all out with SoA and if ARR is a mega-hit they will likely release SoA with minimal fanfare.

However if ARR delivers what its promising I can see it being a hit and XI just winding down with servers merging as they loose thier playerbase.

[Elexia]

Bit too much self entitlement going on here, mixed in with a bit of hipster. Giving the expansion away would be pretty stupid in either case.

That was the point.

[Luvbunny]

Yup exactly as I mentioned in other post. It's all bait and switch strategy and playing it safe. If they are smart at all and learned from their mistake, they will and should make SoA a fantastic expansion that abolished old school and completely reinvent the game yet again similar to what they did to Abyssea. Make better crack, more rewarding and addictive than ever and focus on casual gamers, the ones they can hook line and sinker for a longer period of time than your typical hardcore that consume contents like ravenous pigs. As FF players, you probably will want to try ARR, out of curiousity and whatnot. Please learned your lessons from FFXIV, stop being the idiots who will get suckered the second time around. Wait till it hits bargain basement price of $10 before you spring for subscription, it should be free to play anyway. Their last attempt to save their online game can be releasing FFXI HD version, sort of a realm reborn for FFXI

[Elphy]

Yup exactly as I mentioned in other post. It's all bait and switch strategy and playing it safe. If they are smart at all and learned from their mistake, they will and should make SoA a fantastic expansion that abolished old school and completely reinvent the game yet again similar to what they did to Abyssea. Make better crack, more rewarding and addictive than ever and focus on casual gamers, the ones they can hook line and sinker for a longer period of time than your typical hardcore that consume contents like ravenous pigs. As FF players, you probably will want to try ARR, out of curiousity and whatnot. Please learned your lessons from FFXIV, stop being the idiots who will get suckered the second time around. Wait till it hits bargain basement price of $10 before you spring for subscription, it should be free to play anyway. Their last attempt to save their online game can be releasing FFXI HD version, sort of a realm reborn for FFXI

Spoken like a true hater who either has never played xiv, or just played it when it was bad and got too comfortable with xi's many flaws. And yes it has many flaws.

A company is allowed to make new games and graphically, playability and coding wise ffxi, while fantastic in 2002, cannot live up to the 2012 gamers standards, hence the relatively small (albeit loyal) playerbase. The amount of money they have spend redoing xiv is a drop in the bucket of the amount they would have to spend to redo xi and the ever shrinking playerbase cannot make up for it.

And if they redid xi everyone who is raging would rage even louder simply due to the amount of things they would have to change to make it viable in the current market. And they would have to change alot to pull in enough ppl to pay monthly fees to make up for the cost or an overhaul. Its just not realistic from a business point of view.

So be careful what you wish for, FFXI reborn would most likely not be what you think.

[Vivik]

Spoken like a true hater who either has never played xiv, or just played it when it was bad.

Considering ARR has not been released yet how is anyone able to deduce that it is now good?

[Sotek]

Why do people still think ARR is going to fail? People must literally have no information on it to believe that.

XIV failed because, at launch, all it had was a poorly designed server (and that's putting it lightly) leveling which was inhibited by the stupid fatigue system and a few class related quests and missions. That was it really.

Currently, XIV has the same shitty servers, leveling without fatigue and Inns in fact boosting EXP while you're logged off (so the opposite of the fatigue system basically), job quests, quests in general, three Primal fights (old school SMN fights with better rewards), a greatly expanded upon main quest line with an amazing finale, two low-mid level dungeons (one instanced), three endgame dungeons (all instanced with stupid speed run requirements), Hamlet Defense (instanced version of Campaign, due to server limitations) and Relic weapons (which are far more like Mythics). Oh, and an absolutely amazing soundtrack.

ARR will have a shiny new functioning server, leveling without fatigue + Inns, job quests, quests in general, the three existing Primal fights + at least two new ones, an entirely new main quest line, at least two low-mid level dungeons, three endgame dungeons with the speed run requirement gone, Hamlet Defense non-instanced thanks to a server that can actually handle it, Relic weapons, one new class at launch with SMN following shortly after, Free Companies which act like a LS which can summon a beaten Primal in a far more spectacular manner than SMN, the ability to buy a house in three separate areas ranging from small to large (iirc) and you can even work together as a group to build a LS HQ, Chocobo Breeding, reworked battle mechanics, PvP in a separate zone with separate spells/abilities to not impact game balance as a whole, Crystal Tower which comes off as an alliance based Nyzul and Grand Labyrinth of Bahamut which is alliance based and set to be expanded upon for at least a year after launch (similar to how they continued expanding on WoE but that's as close a comparison to WoE as I hope to make).

That's all off the top of my head so of course I'm probably missing a few things, but that still comes across to me as the most content in a MMOs launch ever, the first major update after launch should be releasing SMN and possible raising the level cap, too.
If ARR fails it'll be because SE has jaded too many people over the past couple of years and as usual fail completely at marketing (for the life of me I do not know how anyone would find the information I just listed from the relaunch site). I don't quite know why this thread has shifted so much towards XIV discussion, but if you go looking there is plenty of information to hopefully remove any skepticism you have about XIV, meanwhile there is absolutely no information to remove any skepticism I have over SoA being another WotG shaped trainwreak. We got monster concept art with Voidwatch, didn't make that event suck any less.

Considering ARR has not been released yet how is anyone able to deduce that it is now good?

Well, probably because of what they've managed to achieve with XIV as it currently stands. Even with the shitty server it was good, if not great when you played with the right people. Since most of that is coming back in ARR and we already know the development team is competent this time around, why should anyone expect ARR to be anything less than what they've already shown us they can do? There's already alpha footage and leaks too which I've not heard much negativity about so far, and thankfully even if there was a lot of negativity from alpha they're not releasing the game the week after they start it this time so they've got plenty of time to fix any problems they do find.

[Vivik]

Well, probably because of what they've managed to achieve with XIV as it currently stands.

The mere fact that it has to be put up against a game almost a decade older says it's not good. It was horrible on release and it was still horrible when they shut it down a week ago.

I love how people who play FFXI "got use to it" but the same does not seem to hold true for the FFXIV crowd. Maybe you people should look in a mirror.

[Sotek]

Where exactly did I say XI players "got used" to playing XI? I played XI because I liked the Final Fantasy series and a MMO was appealing at the time. I moved on to XIV because recently XI become so unenjoyable, I was practically already subscribed to it and I'm still a fan of the Final Fantasy series and a MMO is still (if not more) appealing because of the friends I've made in XI.

If I compare XIV to XI it's because, surprise surprise, people here primarily play XI and not WoW. It doesn't have to be put up against XI, the only reason it is is because this is a XI forum.

And for the record, I don't think I even played XIV long enough to get used to it. A month or two at best and I didn't have to get used to Garuda or the Raven battles to enjoy them, they were simply enjoyable from the start. At best I had to get used to the shitty server, but that's gone with ARR so I don't quite see the issue here. Yes when they shut the servers down it was absolutely abysmal, unplayable even, but again, that's an issue with the server, not gameplay.

[MarkovChain]

Why do people still think AAR is going to fail? People must literally have no information on it to believe that.

Because WotG was released with no content, because the 2 jobs that they announced don't have empy, one of them being a DD.