Live 7th Umbral Era world changes of 1.23 (a surprise inside)

[Rutelor]

I don't think the decision to release the game was his to make.

On the contrary, this seems to confirm that it was. I have always assumed it was obvious to everybody that much of the storyline leading to the 7UE, and the advent of Dalamud, was planned from the beginning. Its details seems too consistent with early aspects of the narrative, and even the opening cinematic scene, at launch, had hints of the disaster to come. Tanaka himself mentioned some obscure references to the disaster, and scant hours after his assumption of Tanaka's Mantle, Yoshida released the prophecy verses, as a teaser to elicit our interest, so that we knew the game's best part was yet to come. I highly doubt he and his team came up with the entire fleshed out scenario in such a microscopically short time.

I think Tanaka's mistake was to assume the eternal timelines and the glacial pace he had tamed his audience in FFXI to begrudgingly accept as part of the deal, were going to be swallowed whole by a global audience well into the 4th generation of MMOs. I think he really, really thought that people were, once again, going to be satisfied with just the basics, and this would buy his time to slowly continue developing his large master plan. We were supposed to repeat his meager 4 levequests for two years, while he perfected his game.

McQuaid (Everquest & Vanguard), Garriott (Ultima Online & Tabula Rasa), and Tanaka (FFXI and FFXIV), they all had the same nemesis: Their own legendary status had them convinced that they could really controll the cycles of an industry which accelerates at almost gory pace and that, Saturn-like, sinks its hungry fangs on its own children. Hiriomichi Tanaka, I've always felt, was far too revered, especially by his own company, that he would've been surely granted 2 more development years if he had really pressed the case for them. On the contrary, I will continue to guess, he felt bound by his word and his own status to keep the timeline he had established, thinking the audience that adored him would give him the slack he needed to complete his game.

R