Letter from the Producer, XXIII (01/23/2012)

Hello again, FFXIVers everywhere. Yoshida, here, back for my 23rd letter, and first of 2012.

Incidentally, it hasn’t been a great year so far. I think all the crazy hours around the end of last year finally caught up with me, and for the first half of last week I came down with a nasty fever that really laid me out.

This year, FFXIV service will continue as usual, and we’re going to be surging forward with version 2.0 even more than we did last year to try and meet all of your expectations. Some of you on the forums have been kind enough to express your concerns, however, that all of this effort will be for nothing if I overwork myself into a hospital bed, and you’re absolutely right. So I’ll try to take a little better care of myself. (On a positive note, though, I did find out that the drips they hook you up with at the hospital really get you back on your feet quick!). We’ve also started our subscription billing, so we are more determined than ever to head into another year of putting our all into developing and running the game, and most important of all, to have fun while we’re at it.


Well, work started back up on January 4th, and you know what that means—the planner gang all headed out together to Sensōji in Asakusa (the same place as last year) to get our hatsumōde on. That’s the tradition of going to offer the first prayers of the new year here in Japan, btw.

I splurged a bit on the offering last year (our two project managers failed to snap a picture for evidence…), but since it’s the prosperity of FFXIV that I’m praying for, I figured I’d let my wallet take another hit this year.

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(Don’t worry, I made sure it got into the offering box :p)</center>
Asakusa’s Sensōji is famous for having “cursed” as one of the possible omikuji (strips of paper with fortunes written on them) you can draw there, but I pulled a “small blessing.” It said, “Work hard and all will go well,” so I’ll be working like a man possessed!

Before leaving, we had a nice young woman who looked to have a few drinks in her snap us a group photo. Thank you young woman, whoever you are!

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This pic is just the members of the planner team, but not even all of the planners are in this one. Still, I hope this gives you some sense of how huge the FFXIV team is.


And remember that pic of that guy last year that brewed up all those forum storms? Weeeeeell...

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Last year’s pic showed Komoto getting a sermon or something from Matsui, but this year he was rocking a red necktie as a headband for reasons that still aren’t altogether clear. The tie was actually a gift given at the New Year’s party (actually a piece of Hitman promotional merch). But since nobody on the dev team ever wears a tie, we all seemed to agree that there was nothing else to do with it but wrap it around a head (sort of another Japanese tradition). And so this happened. The dev team really gets on well with one another, and everyone’s enthusiasm for ridiculousness like this is second to none!


Despite this start to the year, it will be strictly business as we carry on FFXIV’s development and operation. And as we work towards the 2.0 relaunch, for which we know you have big expectations, the dev team and Square Enix will be going all out in the effort to create something legendary!

I hope that the support and encouragement we have been receiving from all of you continues in 2012, and that you all continue to enjoy playing the game as well. See you next letter (I’ll be updating the 1.21 list of changes to the game soon) or on the forums! See you soon! :)