New Vanafest incoming.

[fantasticdan]

Each one of those areas would have more than enough material for a full expansion. Why charge 10 dollars for something when you can charge 30?

You think they actually have the manpower to make 3 expansions worth of missions/content? I think the best you can hope for is a single normal expansion, or a couple of minis.

[Qeomash]

The reason Tavnazia is so idolized is because we have never seen it. We only hear descriptions of it being "the most beautiful city", etc etc. So, in your mind it is the most beautiful city ever. The moment we see the city and walk around in it, it is tangible and it might not fit the "beauty" we've built up in our minds and will thus be a disappointment.

That being said, I'd like for them to give it a shot anyway. If they take their time and really do a good job with it, it could be pretty good.

But in the end I don't really think it is Tavnazia.

[Destinye]

Maybe the zones aren't all in the same region. Perhaps, they'll be connected through Atomos or something.

To be fair, seems like lots of people who play MMOs want Instances! Instances! Instances! so if this does happen I would not be surprised at all because it fits with the disjointed world feeling MMO players these days like. SE does have to modernize XI after all lol. I just hope if this is an expansion they time it well considering the amount positive feed XIV 2.0 is getting, XI has been pretty disastrous and almost nothing planned for next year but pokemern.

[Kyte]

You think they actually have the manpower to make 3 expansions worth of missions/content? I think the best you can hope for is a single normal expansion, or a couple of minis.

Which is why they should just concentrate on one of those regions for now. Half-assing 4 would be stupid.

[fantasticdan]

It's not like they couldn't have a single expansion that takes place in a variety of regions, look at CoP.

[Kyte]

CoP worked because it was mostly just an expansion of the middlelands and more or less an extension of the RoZ story.

[arus2001]

To be fair, seems like lots of people who play MMOs want Instances! Instances! Instances! so if this does happen I would not be surprised at all because it fits with the disjointed world feeling MMO players these days like.

It's funny because of the concept of instancing isn't bad. Rather, it's often how a given company puts it to use. Without instancing, you get situations like in FFXI where you can have hundreds of people huddled in a single small room hoping for a single mob pop. Or you could be in a zone with only one other person in search, just to get where you wanted to be and see them there doing what you wanted to, and maybe even killing it if it was a rare NM. Instancing is good largely because it gives people the chance to play a given piece of content on their own time and terms.

Perhaps where a lot of MMOs fail is limiting progression to instanced content. I quit Rift because I don't raid. Never again will a company ever convince me that trying to organize 20+ people to meet up for a specific time to then fight over limited drops when they do drop is a good thing. And while I don't mind the occasional 6-man PUG dungeon run, you'll never get near the same gear. There was also no alternative progression. So, since I didn't do the T2 raid when it was the big thing, I'd never be able to step into the T3 unless a group was willing to take in an equipment-based gimp somewhere between T1 and early-T2 power. Instancing has been peculiarly perverted into exclusionary practices when its original intent basically thrived on inclusion and not keeping people away from resources.

I'd almost say the happy medium are things like ??? pops or quest-conditional things. You'd still have that open world feel with the chance to bump into other players, but it avoids the clusterfucks of old FFXI. Naturally, you'll get those who thrived on the exclusivity bitching about how casualfags and the like could dare get the same gear as they do and thus threaten their snowflake status, but that's almost always been a case of looking for difficulty in the wrong places (claim instead of the fight itself). And while you may occasionally get fights where only select groups can win, that doesn't mean they've done right, either. However, open-world also introduces balancing nightmares if there's no claim system in place. Tiamat was capped for an alliance (with maybe some people swapping, which I always thought dumb to allow), now imagine if everyone nearby could suddenly help. Flails and roars aside, without the mob scaling to challengers present, a spirit of difficulty can be lost through zerg fests. This gets even more complicated if PvP is on the table, as some will take it upon themselves to decide any given mob is theirs, hell or high water. And I can also see why PvPers hate instancing because it tends to remove easy targets (distracted/weakened players) from their kill pool.

Personally, I don't need to know there are five billion other people around me to know I'm playing an MMO. What matters is being able to find help when I need it, and that usually boils down to utilizing public/guild channels or specialized in-game features like dungeon/quest finders. They don't always work, especially in a timely manner, but that's a small price to pay when the alternative to breaking up clusters of players (Can consider "servers" giant instances of a game world as is) is overcrowding that slows everyone's progress. Making it so people can interact across servers is a good thing that companies seem to be working on these days, but I wouldn't say it's seamless or as it should be yet, either. I think some are reluctant as it could eliminate concepts like paid server transfers.

[Spira]

gywn> only in the test servers. most of the time stuff we find in advance on live servers go up the next or following updates.. rarely past 2-3 (in the old version update cycle).
test server has generally been the same as well. usually its monster dats that get held back this way, but in this case the test server is also holding zone dats.

ive been reading a lot of what everyone has to say in various places and it seems like people really want this expansion thing to happen. based on what i've seen to me its more of something thats inevitable. the huge response that people are giving also goes to show that many people have been holding out on the hope that FFXI would deliver something like this, even though it seemed totally unlikely after the disappointing year that 2011 was.

moving on to speculation, if we list the regions we know from lore and the like, theres actually quite a few places to go..

Spoiler: show

these are the ones that seem most unlikely to be what we've seen so far

1) far-east. its seems like the far east is similar to the near east in terms of climate. based on lore, its influence should be pretty asian, and so its architectural layout (not even textures) aren't likely to line up with what we've seen thus far from prontera and stairstown.

2)the frozen north (Rhazowa). because what we've seen thus far is more temperate/tropical.

i'd like to throw support for Tavnazia, but at the same time, i don't think this would be it because we know too much about it already. Its possible that not the entire expansion would focus on just Tavnazia but lore-wise it's not supposed to even be inhabited anymore and i highly doubt they'd work in the time-travel or parallel dimension angle since they already did that in WotG, and Abyssea.

this leaves 2 regions of greater possibility.

1) the Mithran lands to the south. (Olzhirya - Tsahya / Zhwa / Garhada)

why its likely.
-they're a set of islands where the mithra originated from.
-jungle for sure, based on mithra lore and items like garhada teak and tsahyan mask.
-we know little of the place, and the stuff we know is based on the crystal war era.

why its not.
-during the crystal war i believe this land was undergoing civil war. don't know if they ever resolved this
-the layout of the town doesnt match the style of mithran civilization
-the waterfall cliff zone seems a bit dry and also a bit big in relation to what we probably come to expect from the mithran islands, (probably not this expansive)

2) the far west. (Ulbuka - Adoulin Isle)

why its likely
-Adoulin is an island.
-Ulbuka is said to be an expansive land with tribes. (encampment could be a tribe thing)
-we know little of the place, the stuff we know is based on some WotG NPCs and a seasonal event.

why its not.
-jungles. theres never been any mention of the climate, but it comes across as more native american land than anything.
-much of what we know of the far west is based on seasonal event NPCs. while they may still be canon, they usually arent meant to be taken seriously.
-if they're mainly a tribal community in the west, the layout of towns wouldn't match the lore as well, but we know next to nothing about this.

If the way ToAU was announced was any indicator, I'd say its either one of the 2.. but I honestly wouldn't know which has more foreshadowing within the last 3 months since I haven't been playing.

whichever the case I expect it to be vastly different from what we know about Vana'diel, and (for the towns) what we've seen so far because most likely they'd have their own textures applied as well..

[Alkar]

This is exciting and it would probably explain the total lack of decent content in the past year or so. If they announce a new expansion I'll start playing again, that's for sure.
I'm also smelling another port otw if that's the case. Maybe a couple jobs as well? Who knows..

[Yugl]

Whatever this place is, the area better have

1) City-City Teleports
2) Multiple Mog Houses
3) Multiple AHs
4) Guilds
5) Synergy Pots
6) Abyssea Warps

[Eurell]

The wife and I were looking at the pics, and she thinks its gonna be the mithran homeland. We both thought the cities seemed sorta Englandish, and she thinks the male mithra from WotG had an outfit that would fit in perfect there lol.

Tons of options though, I'll be happy as long as it isn't another alternate universe again.

[Damane]

This is exciting and it would probably explain the total lack of decent content in the past year or so. If they announce a new expansion I'll start playing again, that's for sure.
I'm also smelling another port otw if that's the case. Maybe a couple jobs as well? Who knows..

I really doubt we would and will see new jobs. They are in the process of "Balancing" the current jobs, while this doesnt have to be an argument, but alot of job balances happened after dnc and sch were added. Yes you had your nerfs pre dnc and sch, but not the like we have seen now every major update, besides what jobs would there be left that could fill a special spot? This point aside, adding new jobs would mean huge work, since they would need to add them to existing equipment.

I'm really hopeing this expansion thingy is happening ._., atm I really dont care on which content/area it would play, as long as it happens

[Spira]

well. we dont have an official announcement but heres what we do have.

-continually updated UI for 10 year old game. many of which were things people never really complained about or asked for. the upcoming macro bar icons for windows is one of those things

-PS2 partition nearly doubled. yes it was nearing cap but if they wanted to raise it they didn't have to increase by that much if they weren't expecting to add that much more stuff.

-ROM9 folder and new zones in the dats.

-SE apparently hired 10-15 new devs for FFXI in October last year (just read this off a post in ffxiah. number of employees uncertain, but they definitely were hiring).

-in VanaCon 111111, Naoshi Mizuta mentioned he was still making new music for FFXI, "just completed one yesterday". could have been the Provenance stuff, could have been more than that.

-VanaTV, a JP youtube show to generate interest in new players taking up FFXI.. after all this time.

-SE / Tanaka would like to bring FFXI over to PSVita.

none of the signs were anything more than conclusive compared to ROM9.. but before this.. could we have seen it coming at all?

edit:

Damane > they did pretty major balancing pre WotG too. and at that point the job balancing seemed pretty set in stone.. but then they announced SCH and DNC which were totally unexpected. In any case, i'd say job balancing is an ongoing pursuit so no matter how much they balance it now, you can be sure they'll balance it again not too far down the road

[Damane]

Damane > they did pretty major balancing pre WotG too. and at that point the job balancing seemed pretty set in stone.. but then they announced SCH and DNC which were totally unexpected. In any case, i'd say job balancing is an ongoing pursuit so no matter how much they balance it now, you can be sure they'll balance it again not too far down the road

yes job balancing happaned pre SCH and DNC, but not on the large scale as we see it now. ok I give in that after such a huge lvl cap increas from 75-99 you need huge job adjustments, but we are major and minor job adjustments every update. Compare some jobs how they are now and how they were before 1 year for example. Just look at SCH, embrava and kaustra fundamentaly changed the jobs apearance and acting role in endgame totally (more so embrava). Or PUP with the new automaton changes. Hell the revamp of the category 2 merits changed a few jobs drasticly.
Job changes after DNC and SCH were nothing on the huge scale compared to this. Most job changes then affected DNC and SCH as main or Subjobs, with the exeption of the big revamp for WHM. Tough one can never know, but I really really doubt that new jobs would come.

[Alkar]

They'll never finish balancing jobs, there will always be something left to do.
If they can come up with fresh and new ideas for a job I don't see why not, both SCH and DNC kinda fit the "fresh and new" part until they stopped caring about Dancers curing altogether.

[Spira]

another way of looking at it is that they already know that they'll need to do job balancing in future.. so if its already not in equilibrium, they can afford to throw in more jobs to the mix..

not that i want them to.. i think i have enough of leveling lol.. and then acquiring AF/Relic AF/Empyrean lol..


I fully expect them to be doing job adjustment discussion at Vanafest, especially the new 2hr abilities (which will be coming much sooner anyway).. so thats got potential to be a huge game changer. i dont foresee less drastic job changes coming so soon..
it'll take at least a year imo

[Ophannus]

Not Tavnazia.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m61JN_lF_T...vc/s320/2d.jpg

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/7210/tav.png


Tav isn't surrounded by water at all, at best it has a river beyond the outskirts. Tav is narrow with no 'town square' really the structures are flat. There's also stone barrier walls surrounded the city. The castle thing is on the top of the right mountain peak.

[Septimus]

See, you put far too much faith in developers.

I'm a developer, and I can't even tell you how many times I've committed something I shouldn't have to a repository. It happens to everyone. If anything, the 'here are the files to upload for the latest patch' is probably nothing more than another branch of their repository for the game. One dev accidentally includes an incomplete build of some files, boom, they wind up shipping.

I am counting on cynicism more than faith. Look at how things have exploded in a day. As so:

it seems this news is spreading like wildfire lol. its pretty much everywhere now. ffxiah, guildwork, petfoodalpha, somethingawful (lol), fb, twitter and the usual japanese blogs / bbs. (edit: everywhere except the OF XD )
if this isn't something SE had foreseen i just hope they don't throw a C&D at me lol.

News is everywhere, I am sure it is trending on Twitter and the like. Suddenly a week until Vana'fest seems like a very, very long time. They have a whole bunch of publicity and can play coy about it while we twist in the wind waiting for news and they didn't pay a cent to do it- we made it go viral. Even if this was an accident, I guarantee that the higher-ups will be told that it was all part of their master plan to garner more interest in the game.

[Ophannus]

Judging from the architecture it looks very civilized, more along the lines of something you'd seen on the Quon Continent(Selbina/San'Doria/Bastok/) vs shacks like in Khazam/Windurst. The style also looks very European which would rule out far east/expanded TOAU zones/Southern Continent/Western(Native American) areas. It could be the continent where Achetelle was from. The 'Stair City' place reminds me of ancient greece, with the pantheon at the top of the hill or something Hume/Bastok-like, soem kind of Bureau or Government building at the top, not like a castle or fortress but something more Republic/Democratic-like. Far East was an Empire/Tavnazia was a Kingdom/Southern Continent was a Chieftainate. This looks something more like London/Rome/Greece.

[Kaisha]

On a side note, with how bad the update server is during our basic monthly touch-ups, I can't wait to see how bad it'll be when everyone has to download 300mb+ worth of stuff for a new expansion.

[EDIT] On second thought, I'd be damned if SE isn't planning this expansion to be out in 6 months time or so (which gives time for the current roadmap to finish), and just trickling the completed assets into our usual monthly updates during that wait.