Welcome back! In the last part I went over the first half of the Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood live letter at E3 and in this part I will cover the Q&A as well as the announcements at the end.

They started the Q&A by addressing some of the concerns about the potential state of White Mage: many people have cited the lack of utility in its kit and their new mechanic favours mana inefficient single target healing over more powerful healing spells such as their potent regeneration abilities and area of effects in exchange for reduced cooldowns on the cooldown based abilities which White Mage has traditionally based their spell usage around already. The developers were clearly of the mindset that the complaints were overblown and asked fans to wait to try it at level 70 for themselves (and also pointed out that a decent portion was born from an old press build which is almost two months out of date at this point).

The next question was asking for clarification as to the new dungeon cycle. There had been rumours that there was only going to be one new dungeon in odd numbered patches, something which was confirmed here. They went on to explain they would rather release one new dungeon at the same item level as the previous ones and use the freed up manpower to work on other new content and sited data indicated that players ran dungeons less on odd numbered patches.

Next the developers were asked yet again about a glamour log, similar to Guild Wars 2 or World of Warcraft’s and reiterated that it would be extremely difficult from a technical viewpoint (they have previously stated it due to legacy code from 1.x ) but said suggestions of being able to cheaply buy glamour items that are unlocked by achievements may be a possible alternative.

The penultimate question they answered was about bringing back scrapped ability animations as emotes. They were very to the point about this and simply stated it was a maybe, if there was fan feedback in favour of it.

Lastly they were asked if there were any plans to mark certain servers as official roleplay servers, something they said would be trivial from a technical viewpoint but were hesitant due to concerns about existing non-roleplayers on those servers, pointing out that since it was four years after the relaunch of the game there were fairly concrete communities of the such even on the most RP heavy of servers such as Balmung. The end result was them saying that if something like a survey heavily favoured it they would consider it.

After the Q&A they talked about the post launch content and reiterated the timetable: Early Access for those who preordered the expansion starts this Friday the 16th, the expansion releases properly on the 20th and then there will be a two week gap before the normal difficulty of the eight man raid’s first wing is released on the 4th of July. Then there will be another two week gap to July the 18th when Omega savage (the harder difficulty) is released alongside The Lost Canals of Uznir – which is the level 70 of the Aquopolis, a mini dungeon type instance you sometimes find portals to when doing treasure maps in the open world – as well as the weekly capped Allagan tomestone: Creation. The uncapped tomestone of Verity will be unlocked at the start.

They then ended by showing off a few new merchandise as well as a new system to reward people who subscribe instead of the current veteran rewards which are no longer being added to.

As part of their E3 livestream Square Enix hosted another Live Letter for Final Fantasy XIV yesterday going over one of the new trials, another look at swimming in both old and new areas, post launch content and a short Q&A.

They started with one of the new levelling trials: The Pool of Tribute which is where you fight Stormblood’s original primal: Susano, Lord of the Revel. The normal version was level 63 which implies we will be headed to Orthard (a previously mentioned continent which will pay a pivotal role in the expansion) relatively early on which runs counter to prior expectations where the transition will be around level 65.

Game Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida was going to demonstrate the fight with debug mode… but they forgot to turn it on so he died in three hits several times before moving on to the next segment after it was stated that the success rate of their E3 challenge against Susano had about a 50% success rate, presumably in part due to the slew of combat changes that are taking place with the 4.0 patch as well.

Next they moved to one of the new zones: The Ruby Sea. As the name implies it is a fairly aquatic focused map consisting of a scattering of islands connecting Orthard’s two major landmasses above the waves and various reefs and underwater settlements below.

They explained that surface swimming will be automatically enabled for everyone as soon as the patch hits in all valid bodies of water before they started swimming around the sea and showed off several emotes have been tweaked to also work underwater as well as sprinting.

Next they dived underwater and swam around a bit and explained there was a blue circle on the surface of the water that got bigger the further down you were to help you figure out how deep you were before mentioning the rippling water effect that distorts the screen when underwater can be minimized or turned off.

They then showed fof one of the new mounts which had previously been mentioned to exist: a tiger which for reasons they didn’t explain can fly and swim.

They rounded off the swimming segment by heading over to Costa Del Sol in East La Noscea which as players may remember to be a beachside resort which with 4.0 has been expanded with an array of new islands and a large portion of the sea there has been tweaked to allow for surface swimming. It was here they showed off a few new minions before showing a video titled “Eorzea Collection 2017S” which consisted of player characters performing emotes and abilities in both new and old zones as well as various different minions and mounts some of which had never been seen before.

They briefly showed off the gear from the first raid wing: the Genji set which is inspired by more heavy armour worn by Japanese samurai (as opposed to the post-Edo era inspired gear that Final Fantasy XIV’s samurai will use) before moving on to the Q&A segment, which due to the length will be a separate article.

Blizzard, The Evil Within 2 and Xbox One X dev kits – your news update!

MMOs are very big games, so there’s a lot more to go wrong. It seems that Final Fantasy XIV is no exception.

Friday was the launch day for Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood’s Early Access, and players piled in but unfortunately it wasn’t without its problems. The main issues stemmed from the increase of player numbers, as you might expect. Quests that throw people into instanced dungeons and battles have been the most affected, and have meant some people have been unable to complete quests and stranded them at a point where they cannot access the further quests down the line that Stormblood offers. One of the big offenders is a quest in the main line which flings players into their own single-player instance, and it seems players are catching onto this so they’re queuing to speak to him so as not to force the servers to generate too many new instances at one time.

Producer Naoki Yoshida responded to the problems with a post; “As announced earlier, there are a huge number of players currently playing Stormblood, and as a result, the servers continue to experience a large amount of stress. For this reason, we are currently limiting the number of players that can enter instanced content so that it does not lead to major server crashes.”

A second even stranger issue has occurred when players who leave or disconnect during the Susano Primal fight have found themselves unable to log back into their characters. The cause has been nailed down to, oddly, players emoting as they enter ‘The Pool of Tribute’. A community representative asked that “users please finish their emote actions before entering ‘The Pool of Tribute”. Fortunately it does seem that while each case of this bug must be sorted out individually, it is possible for it to be fixed as some affected players are now able to log back in again.

Never thought I’d hear of the day when in-game emoting caused you to be locked out of your game account…

This week was a bit of a strange one. While I made the standard amount of progress with Bodeclaw, Teddired has hit a point where I had to stop for a bit…

Not that I’m stopping playing her.

Wait, I Can Do These Myself??

Last week saw Bodeclaw in the midst of a burning landscape, having just been given a task from the nearby outpost. To smash black dragonflight eggs. While the mother of those eggs slept pretty near by. I’ve played enough games with similar tasks not to be incredibly wary, as a lot of these missions end up with you being attacked or chased by the angry mother…

… Thank god that wasn’t the case here though.

Eggs smashed, I finished running around the Charred Vale to scoop up the remaining tasks before carrying them back to the quest givers. And then… I was done. No more reason to be here, in this place full of my own race. Very sad. I moved on, but not before I got a nice shot overlooking the fiery Charred Vale.

And witnessing the fierce battles between the defenders of the outpost and all oncoming attackers.

All oncoming attackers…

… Yeah.

I continued on towards my next quest marker and set of tasks, and after running down the path a little while found myself in a place called Desolace. Fitting name really…

Ah, the smell of wet dog… >.<

Eventually I found myself at Nijel’s Point and picked up a task to check out three Elune relics in a nearby era overtaken by satyr. Getting there I headed towards the three relics, only to find special quests – for cleansing rituals. Now this was a surprise, I’ve played gatherer for ritual materials in the past, but never conducted any of myself.

Mind you, I am a Druid so I got down to it immediately.

Those satyrs stood no chance. I am a fierce Feral Druid cat. I completed all three rituals and gained my rewards. But when using the melonfruit to wash my face… well, suddenly I could see the past.

… Spooky.

I Hate Minigames…

Teddired had left off last week having just been tasked with infiltrating a pirate crew planning to take over Booty Bay. To get in though, I needed the head of the Bay’s fleetmaster. So a fake had been made to take back and hopefully get me in. A brave cow died for Booty Bay that day…

So I took the head back to the recruiter and…?

Well, that was easy. Guess these pirates really are that racist. Or blind.

Having been told where to go, I raced along the same beach I had torn up and down last week, slaying the same pirates who now let me pass without any hostility. I almost felt bad for them.

Eventually I found my way to the ship and took the chance to get a photo of myself, mounted and ready to go. My boar was obviously aware of just what was at stake too, as he did a great job at playing the wild, feral beast the crew would want him to be. I’m so proud.

Photo taken and pirates fooled (probably), I went inside and descended the stairs to find the Captain Keelhaul I was supposed to be crewing under for this act and also the end of my quest marker and…

A goblin. Of course he’s a goblin. I shouldn’t really have been surprised.

Speaking to Keelhaul finished my quest marker but then gave me a new one… and it was a deck swabbing minigame type task. Now I’ve played a few games over the years. And a few have a similar minigame element to it. I have never ever enjoyed a deck swabbing minigame. Never the less I tried.

And tried. And tried.

I only had three goes but then I decided I’d had enough. I really hate deck swabbing minigames! Next time I might ask that ‘Pretty Boy’ for help, I saw that option when I was picking up his quest…

That’ll have to wait though. I hear a voice in my ear. Lone’s inviting me along for some fun.

How could I say no?