New Vanafest incoming.

[Tsuneo]

SE can't release a hard copy expansion for PS2 because PS2 is discontinued, but I don't see why they couldn't release it digitally like all the add-on's were.

[xopher]

Or discontinue PS2 support especially since the JP 20GB hard drives are full.

[Krazy]

The only big announcement I can actually expect is that they're lowering the monthly subscription fee. Level cap raise isn't happening (no main FF game that I remember has ever gone past level 99). MAYBE 2 new jobs. But a full on expansion? Yea, thats not gonna happen.

You could go over 99 in Final Fantasy VIII. All the way to 100.
edit: And I just saw it was already mentioned. Meh.

[Qeomash]

Maybe they're announcing a full stand alone single player version?

[Auspice]

I haven't read every post but ideally I'd love a new boxed expansion. There are 3 places I could see it going; Orcish homeland to the north, Mithran homeland to the south, and Tenzen's homeland to the far east.

I doubt we'll see another boxed expansion at this point but I do recall SE saying something that they COULD add new zones to the game which contradicted some dat mining people had done in the past(something about there only being X amount of zones left in memory and they were close to filling it).

To the people talking about high res fonts/etc; I WANT TO KNOW WHY WE DON'T HAVE AWESOME INDIVIDUAL ICONS like we've been using for years with Brandson/FFXIStyle/etc. I'd love for there to be an official icon set I could use instead of dicking around with patching my dats every update.

Also, token butthurt about there being another year without a Fanfest in the US. I went to all 3 of them and would love to go again!

[Julian]

No, they're the ones that said they are reaching their limits. It's true, there's only like 8 or 9 or so empty zones available based on current formats and limitations.

This doesn't mean they can't change their format to allow for more zones (they can, will just require work they probably don't want to bother with)

[miokomioko]

Maybe they should just reuse zones and just change the textu- oh wait.

[Buffy]

I'm optimistic the way any addict is. The last time we had a major vana'fest announcement, didn't they announce the level cap to 99 and abyssea?

I would happily pay another $30 for content as broad as abyssea was. Obviously most of it is used up now, except for empy building and exp/merits. It was a solid year - year 1/2 content for $30 though, I'd continue to pay that on a regular basis if needed.

In reality, it is probably remakes of the first 3 add-ons that give us augmentable 99 gear that is situationally useful. It will suck, because SE seems DETERMINED to troll the game the last 4-6 months.

[Draylo]

I have faith, we will get some nice stuff.

[Lucavi]

^ You always do, regardless of the result.

[miokomioko]

Except when it's their other, Blue Mage-less game.

[Lordender]

So much hope in this thread, just remember, its SE we're talking about so one of two things are going to happen.

1. They will blow your mind with something so epic you'll pre-buy crazy amounts of crysta.
2. You'll be so disappointed that you wonder how this game is still online or how Tanaka has evaded a Katana to the knee.

If it is a full blown expansion everyone goes ape shit until everyone rages when the following is found out:

1. All the new missions are JP-midnight.

2. HNM is hydra-like with some really shitty gimp gear that only jp's will use and be laughed at.

3. The first content patch 6 months after release only brings voidwatch to those areas and everyone gets lagged because the crystal is right next to a campaign 2.0 outpost.

[Qeomash]

Didn't they once say they had something planned for the unused "The Last Stand" zone?

[Alkar]

Maybe they're announcing a full stand alone single player version?

This would actually be better than an expansion but I doubt this is gonna happen until servers go offline if ever.

[Robertfb]

Didn't they once say they had something planned for the unused "The Last Stand" zone?

That's already being used for legion now on the test server.

[Khamsin]

No, they're the ones that said they are reaching their limits. It's true, there's only like 8 or 9 or so empty zones available based on current formats and limitations.

This doesn't mean they can't change their format to allow for more zones (they can, will just require work they probably don't want to bother with)

Weren't they the ones who said that they could change their format to allow for more zones if they wanted, and that player speculation that there was a hard limit on zones was false?

[Tsuneo]

Didn't they once say they had something planned for the unused "The Last Stand" zone?

Pretty sure that crystal zone is the dungeon crawling shit if that's what you were referring to.

[Spira]

No, they're the ones that said they are reaching their limits. It's true, there's only like 8 or 9 or so empty zones available based on current formats and limitations.

This doesn't mean they can't change their format to allow for more zones (they can, will just require work they probably don't want to bother with)

i believe they're working on this.. i think the only limitation is merely the fact that with more than 255 zones in the list, when someone pulls up a /search the memory cant pull all the names out.. or something. its a PS2 limitation.. but honestly theres an easy workaround. its just like the inventory memory limitation.

Even with like 9 zone slots left, theres a lot of things they can do. Abyssea was done with 10 zones. The whole ToAU expansion only took 28, of which 15 were BC/instanced areas.. so you really don't need that many zones for an expansion. They were also pretty clever by making Bhaflau and Caedarva a catch-all outdoor area for its region, and apart from BC/instanced areas, each zone was remarkably big. WotG came with 30 zones. Only 5 were instanced, but a majority of the rest were rehashed. Beastmen strongholds were designed to accommodate fake-instanced BC fights too.. At that point tho I doubt they were really maximizing usage.

Anyway...
Legion + Dungeon crawl will likely be out before June so thats -2 from that 9?

[Siatdiat]

This will never happen, but I would love it if they did some new server/s like EQ did where they start the game over at original level cap, and over time rerelease expansions and raise the cap. So the game would start at 50 cap, and over a period of a few years have expansion content added in along with level cap raises. Preferably though they would find a slightly better balance than just exactly duplicating prior patches, but instead this time at 50 cap, having all or most of the 50 cap content available. Lots of different ways they could do this and I think it would be awesome to start over with 50 as level cap with friends on a new server.

[Tagus]

idk how many people would be cool with that, now that so many of the challenges from that era have been obliterated by abyssea easy mode. It would be tough to go back to that. It would be fun to plan for the future knowing what would happen, as far as which jobs to level, etc... but idk.

While we're throwing ideas out that will never happen, I'd rather they did something like create a new game you could port your character to (which was ffxiv's fatal flaw from the get-go, not having that), or create some sort of ffxi easy mode server where every drop is 100%, everybody runs 12% faster, salvage & assaults can be entered solo, etc. that you could choose to switch to if you just don't give a fuck anymore. It'll never happen but its fun to imagine the different direction they could take this thing. 10 years is a long time for hoop jumps and rng cock-blockery.