Past Anniversary events..

[Noxifer]

Fun fact of the day: Most people who hate XIII haven't actually played it.

(Note: There are a good chunk of people who have legitimate complaints about the game who have played it, but 80% of the hate is "I heard it's a hallway simulator and Lightning is a girl I'm not playing as a girl gross ew")

Hiding my response to that since it's a complete off-topic sidenote to this thread ^_^

I didn't mind that Lightning's a female protagonist at all; the more of those we get, the better. I far preferred Fang, though, due to personality and colour scheme.

I did mind the hallway simulation part of it. I know that a lot of games tend to be indirect hallway simulators, basically saying "here you have a huge room, but there's only one entrance and only one exit", but I far prefer that type of illusionary freedom to the narrow "no exploration, we don't want you to explore" hallways of the first 10 or so chapters of the game. Especially that first part. They could "easily" have added one or two other walkways, with possibilities to jump/swing/climb across, still have kept "entry A, exit B" but allowed a little bit more choice in how to get to the exit (do I want to go to walkway 2 for this stretch to avoid that group of enemies, or do I run everywhere and kill everything?), and it would have made it a lot more bearable for me personally.

I also minded the personalities of pretty much all the characters (whinge, whine, complain.... 180-turn let's do this... 180-turn omg we can't), which is a harder thing (IMO) for a game developer to change without changing the plot/story altogether.

According too the wiki it was listed as part of the anniversary event last year.

In a way it was. In a way it wasn't.

Originally, the Lightning event came to Eorzea when they released Lightning Returns in Japan (around November/December 2013, IIRC). Then it reoccurred when Lightning Returns was released in the west (around February/March 2014, IIRC).

Then, possibly due to how many people begged for them to run the event again, possibly due to wanting another shot at promoting that game series, they decided to have the event one more time during the Anniversary event. So yes, it was part of the Anniversary event, but that's not the origin of it, so to speak. =)

(The FFXI and DQX events were also released prior to the Anniversary events, both of them around the end of January 2014.)