EN/JP Talking Points Discussion

[Stiker]

I was curious about this too. It could be that despite what Square Enix said, many players were still ignorant of the fact. Or, more likely, players assumed that international releases would come with their own separate servers, and not necessarily dumped onto existing ones.

I have a feeling it was this. I mean, turn it around. Let's say we got FFXI before Japan. Yeah, we've heard that the rest of the world would be getting the game, but SE wouldn't possibly through a bunch of players that don't speak the same language and have completely different cultures together right? I mean, why toss in such a huge monkey wrench into the game when everything was working so fine before?

We had a completely different mindset when we all started FFXI. We knew JP players were all over the game and all servers. I sure when the game saw its release state-side, they were all indeed quite shocked.

[Lordwafik]

Very great read. Rate up!

I find it funny, the part you mention where they want us to adapt to them, yet not vice versa. Japanese really do not like straying away from their comfort zone it seems.

Very nice work bridging a gap, hopefully more JPs will have more courage to join pickup groups for stuff

PS Elmer : Leave it as "Question of the week" , anything else will take too much effort and become stale after a long time. 1 Question of the week from JP 1 from NA and do as you did Or bi-week, month, etc.

[binahel]

This is maybe one of the most interesting thing!

It's really wonderful that a game can help us to understand a little bit more such a different culture.
I was always interested in JP culture, so I already knew they're sensible to things we don't find important, but now at least I have a general idea on how they see us, and that's really important since we can show that "foreigners" are not only blasphemy-throwing dead corpse in sarutabaruta but also polite people
^_^)/

thank you very much Elmer for your efforts!

[orinthia]

Now it makes sense what they mentioned about player lists. Go and visit any server forum (like on alla or KI) and back track a few years. You'll likely spot a thread about good/bad players, akin to BG's gimp/confused/wtf player thread. I remember people making threads like that in 2004 (and infact it was described exactly in that ConnectOn! article).

[Guyverarmor]

Elmer has certainly earned his spot as being one of the greatest tarus in history of FFXI. I salute you sir, keep up the good work. JP button and your articles here on /BG/ keep me sane during work when I am taking supervisor calls from idiotic customers

[arshesney]

Thank you for the awesome work Elmer!

[MoogleAura]

Thank you Elmer! I have been following this since the beginning and it has been very interesting reading all the responses! I guess I won't take it personally next time I receive a JP ONLY response. =)

[Correction]

http://i37.tinypic.com/eswbgh.jpg

He speaks for the JPs!

Reposting my earlier work. Elmer rules.

[Maestro]

Someone else made that pic back in the JP answers thread, but thanks for the sentiment all the same. Whoever it was will probably come by and claim ownership eventually.

I made it and posted it cause it just seemed funny to me how common the answer Ultramarine was. I am curious though Elmer, what did they think of picture?

As always thanks for the hardwork, was an interesting read and fun to see the similarities and differences between the 2 communities.

EDIT: I wonder if they knew the "ULTRA" was from Killer Instinct.

[Khayre]

I really enjoyed reading through everything! It was really great to see the opinions on both sides. Hopefully a bit of understanding came through on both sides.. ^^ Thanks for doing this!

[Purrrfect]

Since /check has been known for quite a few years now that it is a more negative jp connotation than the na phrase, why hasn't SE addressed this? Unless they intentionally meant for /check to be as offensive as it is perceived, and then their fix would be to make the english version harsher...

Most excellent job on the conversation^^

[Scorp]

Testimonial.

"I used ELmer's work and had the best jp party ever the other day"

This has really changed the way I've been trying to talk to JP players. I figured using phrase book level language would just wind them up so I've stuck to the auto translate.

I'm suprised at the amount of historic bitterness but it appears to be mostly SE's fault for poor communication around the NA release.

Check is odd, I'd like to check people's bazaar's but now I feel i'm being rude... SE shouldn't have ever phrased it that way.

[Lampoon]

Thank you, Elmer.

[Bakthi]

Thanks a ton for all your work, and the PS2 in the rice cooker auto-translate phrase was hilarious. This was a great learning experience.

[Tomiko]

Thank you for all the great work Elmer, you're truly a great asset to the FFXI community.

If you're up for it, I think the 1 question a week would be a good thing to have. I'd be up for asking each side the question about what the other side can do to make things better for getting along.

[LinktheDeme]

Testimonial.

"I used ELmer's work and had the best jp party ever the other day"

This has really changed the way I've been trying to talk to JP players. I figured using phrase book level language would just wind them up so I've stuck to the auto translate.

I'm suprised at the amount of historic bitterness but it appears to be mostly SE's fault for poor communication around the NA release.

Check is odd, I'd like to check people's bazaar's but now I feel i'm being rude... SE shouldn't have ever phrased it that way.

They don't really care if bazaar is up its more if nothing is up and you just check em.

[ringthree]

I was curious about this too. It could be that despite what Square Enix said, many players were still ignorant of the fact. Or, more likely, players assumed that international releases would come with their own separate servers, and not necessarily dumped onto existing ones.

In my opinion I believe it is the former, and it would kind of be in line with their opinions about the game in general. I guess I could envision a scenario in which SE didn't emphasize the global nature of the game to the Japanese market, but did so in the US market. As worldwide play is likely to be more attractive to US players than JP players, I could see why SE would take this tact. I do specifically remember that IGN's previews all noted that you would be able to play with people from all over the world though, and that FFXI was initially derided for not being able to pick servers. I wish I could say that I wasn't at least slightly bothered by the nature of the JP responses to this issue.