http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c9...uncleGroup.jpg
Alright, so the event was pretty fun. After getting all stressed out the night before trying to find more volunteers a few friends of mine pulled through, and we ended up with the time of our lives. We all woke up around 8AM and got all dressed a ready. Left the apartment around 10 to pick up Bryan and headed out to Netzone a bit before 10:30. Not knowing what to except, we see this huge white tent set up to the left of Netzone and a bunch of early comers to the event. Mingled with a few of them, and I heard someone talking about being 0/6 for Valkurm Emperor...This group ended up forming a group called Sneak Attack (I nicknamed SAnTA) to win the hero's combat vs 1 and 3. I coached the RDM, Luces from Bismarck, on what he should do to win against the other parties. Sorta biased, but Takk and I had a competition on who's side would win. Inside Netzone Shido, Takk, Kayn and myself got our staff event shirts and signed in with the front desk. The first 100 people that came to the event had a choice of whether to get a copy of FFXI, Chains of Promathia PC, or Chains of Promathia PS2. Not a bad way to start an event, though I was wondering where the DVD version of the game was.
Around 11, we had a meeting with Square to detail us on what to expect and do for the day. Basically it was us just getting people signed up for PvP, refereeing, hanging out with the mithras to print out the pictures, etc. Afterwards, just went to eat at Fazoli's and some random guy went to our table asking where the hell Netzone was. I found that amusing. Walked back over to Netzone to see the line finally start forming. Wasn't as big as the other events, but bigger than I ever imagined to be. I ended up being the referee on the A side and Takk being referee on the B side. The party vs party was setup with 6 level 60 characters with no jobs. They had all full af2 and some decent gear but by no means anything outstanding. First team of the day was Sneak Attack who I coached a little bit like I said above. A few of the people I met today were pretty questionable, but I guess you get that with any kind of convention you go to. Anyway, Sneak Attack won their first 3 matches and then went on the Heroes Combat where they chose to take on only one of the Heroes. They won with great ease and won one of the biggest prizes, x6 nVidia 7800 gtx graphic cards. Rest of the PvP matches were alright. Many didn't know how to play their jobs, but it didn't really matter because it was all in the fun. It was kind of funny though that a really experienced group of players would go up against a bunch of scrubs. Btw, someone talk to Luces about not being a level 50 melee rdm, please? Lol, just kidding with ya.
As the day progressed, more and more people in costumes were showing up. Saw a Shadow from FF6, a Rude from FF7, a Squall from FF8, and a various FFXI costumes. I talked to some guys who I thought it looked more like PLD AF2, but ended up being some sort of WHM tunic. They didn't know. The goblin was hands down the best I saw. The black mage was kinda iffy on the outfit, but he did wear a pair of Tonbans. Saw a few tarus, albeit a bit huge for being a Taru Taru, running around. Chick with a moogle hat, a guy in BRD AF, and some city aketons are all I can remember. Oh wait, there was a Taru on a Chocobo outfit that was pretty funny.
The major costume that came a few hours into the event were the mithras. Talked with a few of them saying they were hired on just to take pictures. The tall blonde one was talking to me about how she researched the game and tried to do her homework for it, but the game was too complicated. I just laughed inside. Pictures were being taken throughout the event and being printed out by Kayn. All the printouts were put in a frame and given out to free for the people who took pictures.
Around 5:30, we all headed outside to the tent to listen to the State of the Games Address. It wasn't much of an address, but trivia questions fielded by the online community relations guru, Matt Hilton, and the mithras. Just simple questions by date answering what major event happened at that particular moment in time. Level cap risen, Fenrir, PS2 release, etc. Those who got correct answers were given a red ticket to participate in the Tarutaru Cure Marathon later in the evening. After tickets were given out, we started the Discussion Panel with Sage Sundi, Yasu Kurosawa, Matt Hilton, and Chris Burgan from Stratics.com. They answered a bunch of questions before the event that were given by the people on the message boards of ffxi.stratics.com. Not sure why it was that message boards, when Allakahzam and Killing Ifrit are much bigger. I asked the question about the server shutdowns and maintenance and why we were left out in the dark about everything that has been going on the past two years regarding updates. I didn't get a direct answer on if they are going to start giving the players more detailed reports, but we did learn that it takes a minimum of two hours to do even a minor thing to the servers. Adding ram to all the worlds, replacing bad equipment, etc. In the middle of restarting all the servers, they find one of them had something wrong with it, they had to start all over and extend maintenance. In regards to the long maintenance day of 13+ hours, they moved all the servers from the 3rd floor to the 5th floor which took quite some time. There's a good chance that there were problems that arose that they didn't know about.
Some people asked questions that were answered already. But a few interesting ones was a question about "What does Deodorize actually do?" Apparently, a few monsters track you by scent after the initial aggro and if someone casts deodorize on you while you are trying to escape, the monster will lose interest and return home. An interesting note about MPK was the rebuilding of the monster mechanics to maybe the style of WoW where the monster will go home before being aggroable again. A treasure hunter 2 question was asked only to be denied by Sage Sundi yet again. Though, I'm almost 100% sure it's the party that gets the killing blow with the thf in it that gets the effect of TH. The wait time between Dynamis was discussed about being limitations on the server and the spacing out of different linkshells trying to enter each and every day. Granted that would be awesome, but think of the problems of new and old Dynamis shells competing to get inside Dynamis. Another limitation of the game is the PS2 itself. The reason they can't expand the mog house anymore is because if you expand it 10 more, that means, hundreds of thousands of players will be expanding it to 10 and the ps2 won't be able to handle that data. They are trying to work around that like having NPCs that can store equipment like the event NPC, the armor AF2, etc. Hopefully they are working on the rare/ex NPC. A new strategy guide will probably be published by the time the new expansion pack is out.
There are no possible ways of getting Dynamis currency faster than what's already out there. Though, they did add a fishing cap quest that you can fish up dynamis money... A huge audience response was given to the question about nomad moogles and Mhaura and Selbina. If any should arise there, it's College Station that got a huge response to it. All the questions and answers were being recorded on tape so they will be posted on the net soon. A lot of questions were asked about summoners, and they are getting a huge lift. Smiles were given at new avatars and new bloodpacts. Also an answer about Avatar Enmity on armor was that it's enmity minus for the avatar not the summoner. BLM nerf is coming, probably with the rebalancing of the game come the expansion pack. Nothing new was shown about the expansion other than the video that was already out there. They played the DVD quality feed of the video and the audience went crazy. Also, someone asked when FF7: AC was going to come out, and they couldn't given an answer due to not being part of that team. DUH! But, Yasu asked the audience if we've seen AC and nearly half the room raised their hands. Following that, he said "HAH! Now you owe us 44 thousand dollars!!" That was a huge laugh. The taru cure marathon was then next.
We then set up all the computers in the store to tarus and a few galka cameras. Shido and myself controlled the galkas that acted as cameras during the event. It was hilarious! 64+ tarus were lined up to run across Miseareaux Coast and Lufaise Meadows with a paper map. The map had a couple markers on it designating starting point, bazaar, and goal point. The object of the race was to reach the bazaar, buy cure, use it, and race to the end to use the cure spell on the goal and win. Got some pretty good kill shots, but then for about 10 minutes the entire taru team was lost past the way to the old city of Tavnazia. If you ever see "Battle Debug No. 1" on your screen, you are then granted full invincibility from magic and physical damage until the GM takes it off. Thanks, GM-Bobby! :D After the race, speakers were given out to the top 5 and the costume contest was in full gear. I didn't watch most of it, because I spent that time talking with Sage and Franco. The server switching will hopefully be implemented by March or April of next year once the new billing system is in place. The four new Dynamis are in the system for a reason, but nothing else was given out about it. The new expansion pack will be player progressive instead of adding a lot of end game material which is a sore disappointment. The goblin costume won the contest, with the chocokid at 2nd, and I think Rude at third.
Grab bags, wireless controllers, sound systems, Intel E.E. motherboard ($1000 dollars worth), CoP computer ($3000 dollars with 4 gigs of ram) were given out. Congratulations to Totien of Bahamut for winning the computer. Before the night was over, people were bugging team Sneak Attack that they didn't deserve the videocards for choosing such an easy Hero Combat. They shut up all the disbelievers by coming back and beating all three of them at once. Sleep doesn't stick very well, and kiting is the way to go. First the hero of Windy, then Volker of Bastok, and last Trion of San d'Oria. The night was over for the event, but not for the staff. Talked with many of the SE people and took pictures and got autographs. One big surprise to the workers was the man Daishiro Okada being there. We were all wondering why this old man was being treated like royalty. I asked Bobby who he was and he was like "The President of SquareEnix of North America. We all gasped and then asked if we could get a picture. Eventually we got all the SE people to sign our posters and mouse pads. We all got home with the biggest smiles on our faces.
Other miscellaneous happenings..
Aggie football team won! Whoop! Gig 'em Aggies. Astros lost a very sloppy first game. Became friends with Pete from Odin who also helped work the event. Got business cards from a lot of the SE staff. Bryan won the staff raffle for a Logitech sound system. Takk is going to restart playing FFXI from scratch. Food was pizza from Papa Johns and a bunch of soda in an ice chest. Talked with Ondori, Peng, Berticus, Bittwin of The Order of the Blue Gartr The Order of the Blue Garter for a while about their private interview with Sage Sundi. Didn't grab a chance to listen to it, but a transcript and recording of it will be posted on their website. The only Carbuncle people there were Draconix, Kevmon, Lumos, and Pinku, and of course my group of Takk, Shido, Kayn, and myself. The city t-shirts sold fairly well. About 100 of them were out the door. I'd say maybe 150 people were in and out of Netzone throughout the day. Talked with Franko and he was very enthusiastic of the female situation at College Station. He was like man, everywhere you look, cute women all over the place. I was like that's right, that's why I go to Texas A&M because I'm the proudest member of the fighting Aggie class of 2008. The atmosphere was just amazing. Clear weather on a perfect day. Haha. I can't remember much more minor details, but if I do, they will be posted here. I'll have a better Carbuncle group picture up later when I have time to scan the one that got printed out. I'll be getting a copy of the 4 hour video sometime to maybe splice it and post.
-edit-
It's been pointed out to me about KI and Alla not being chosen for questions was that Alla was chose for the iGames tour in Hawaii, and KI is not affiliated with SE.
http://dl010.filefactory.com/get/i.php? ... ca7d74bd6a - Video of Sneak Attack 1st Attempt at Heroes Combat
Noteworthy pictures:
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/vadeffxitour/ - All the pictures I took at the Event.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... t/PVP1.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... ittwin.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... ithras.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... APanel.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... ience1.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... Debug1.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... uCure2.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... ienCoP.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... TShirt.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... e/Rude.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... inMonk.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... hocobo.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... deTakk.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... eSundi.jpg
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c99/v ... eBobby.jpg
Vade, Carbuncle
http://www.livejournal.com/users/vadeffxi/ - Livejournal