Letter from the Producer, XIII (07/08/2011)

[Kensaki]

Hello everyone! Yoshi-P here with another post for all you FFXIV-ers.

I apologize in advance for the brevity of this letter, but wanted to inform you all right away that we are planning to release patch 1.18 on July 21 (PST).

All that’s left is the balancing and debugging of the two instanced raids. (There’s no guarantee all future instances will fit the definition of “dungeon,” and it’d just be ridiculous and flat out wrong to call something that isn’t a dungeon a dungeon, right? But even a small party of people can raid a given location, dungeon or otherwise. Just sayin’.) But things are preeetty tight, so there may be a 1- or 2-day delay.

Sorry to all of you who are waiting, but we want to make sure the debugging is done right before releasing this content, so bear with us just a bit longer. That’s it for now. Time to get back to work!

See you soon!

So no 1.18 before the 21st.

[Reapz]

Was expecting next week sometime but oh well, hopefully the patch is epic so the huge amount of time everyone has spent waiting for it pays off.

Oh and:

So no 1.18 before the 21th.

Before anyone else points it out :D

[Kensaki]

Not everyone has English as first language douche.

[Hiroishime]

Oh well.
/10char

[Kensaki]

If 1.18 doesn't revitalize the game they better just put it down. This much delay on one patch they must have a tiny dev team on the game.

[Sephiroth]

Man I was like two days out with my prediction of July 19th! I knew this patch would come when I'm on holiday, they all do. But I stopped looking forward to the patch weeks ago. Let's just hope the dungeon isn't so easy that my LS has cleared it by the time I'm back on the 24th.

[Meko]

If 1.18 doesn't revitalize the game they better just put it down. This much delay on one patch they must have a tiny dev team on the game.

Yup.

[Karinastar]

Yeah, I'm a bit concerned with the progress of the dev team at this point as well. I'm wondering if it's due to the obtuse engine requiring far more man hours to get anything done, or SE shifting staff off the game due to their recent financial woes. I'm really hoping that after they get the engine changes and groundwork down that content will start rolling in a lot faster. Regardless, they really have to get it together. I don't see their promise of all this new stuff like Jobs, Chocos, Airships, complete stat system remake, and so on being in by September's end as very likely with the constant delays.

[Meko]

Exactly. If this is taking this long, putting them weeks behind, adding massive content will take 6 months or more. It just doesn't add up. If it's not the engine, I don't know what it could be.

[Gulkeeva]

Patch looks like the 22nd? ( I can't read japanese but it kinda stands out as "this is patch day")

http://www.neko-sentai.com/images9ruf/up122441.jpg

[Jamison]

If 1.18 doesn't revitalize the game they better just put it down.

Don't get your hopes up. They've been quite clear that the patches that will reform the game will be 1.18, 1.19 and 1.20. While there's hopefully a lot of good stuff coming in this round, we're not "there" just yet. In fact, they've said during this transitional time some things might be a little wonky while old systems are still interacting with the new ones.

[Waraji]

Patch looks like the 22nd? ( I can't read japanese but it kinda stands out as "this is patch day")

Gotta adjust for the time zone difference, hence the "22nd". Also gotta add 1/2 for delay adjustment. Optimistic: 21st, Pessimistic: 23rd, Actual Release date: August 8th.

[Shuichi]

Short letter. Man is busy working that's for sure. Kudo's to him. I'll be watching.

[Corrderio]

Kind of sucks, but I'd rather have this patch pretty solid before the release it. At least I should have my MRD to 36 by then.

[Hyan]

Damn, my guess was 3 days off!

7/11 (optimistic)
7/18 (realistic)
7/25 (pessimistic)

[Reapz]

Damn, my guess was 3 days off!

Back when you made those guesses I thought no chance, they can't keep us waiting THAT long for an update :/

[Hyan]

I see that Yoshida has no clue about what their QA team can accomplish and in what timeframe. Hopefully he can guess better for 1.19 (or not guess at all).

Also there can't be a 2-day delay!

[Jamison]

Hopefully he can guess better for 1.19 (or not guess at all).

Yeah.. the "we're sorry for the delay" line only really works a couple of times...

[Lucavi]

Anyone nail it on the head? I was waaaaay too optimistic with my date (imagine that!).

[Kurokikaze]

Likewise. lol