[Malacite]

http://www.playonline.com/pcd/topics...30/detail.html

The Final Fantasy XI development team showed off a lot of exciting new details for Wings of the Goddess and the upcoming version updates this past weekend at Fan Festival 2007 in Anaheim, California. We've rounded up some of the juiciest tidbits and have collected them here for everyone to enjoy!

Wings of the Goddess:
- New artwork showcasing the Cavernous Maw and a mysterious female character!
- Headhunting will give players the opportunity to recruit characters to join their nation's campaign – even including Maat from Jeuno!

Upcoming Version Updates
- Adventurer Recruitment Campaign
New items will be added to the rewards for recruitment

- New Guild Support Items
Signboards will be introduced for each of the crafts
The signboards will contain bonuses to the craft, as well as reduce the chance of items breaking during synthesis

To Be Determined
- Private Dungeons
The development team hinted at the possibility of a function that would allow players to design their own dungeons. These adventurer-created dungeons could then be attempted by and traded between friends. However,this idea is still in the early planning stages, and there is a chance it may not come to fruition.


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WOOT! We all knew about the recruitment thing, but Maat?! That's awesome!

[Omniblast]

I had a picture up showing that you can recruit Maat. I'll look for the pic at home and link it here for ya. It's on my flickr account.

[Pai Pai Master]

Moved to the front page, even though SE should know this isn't news to us.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Private Dungeons... sounds kinky.

Seriously, though, it would be something interesting to see. I hope it comes through.

[Yellow Mage]

From Fan Festival = everybody knows already.

As a heads up to Malacite, he's old 20 years ago.
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As for the Private Dungeon thing, I think it's a wise move of S-E to not be making any promises. Leads to less disappointment if it turns out to "not come to fruitition."

[BurningPanther]

I think the smartest thing they did was to disclaim that it might not happen.

[LilithAngel]

Has anyone else noticed a pattern with this game and the abundance of female leads in terms of story lines? Prishe, Cornelia, Aphmau, Naja, Eshta'narl, Shantotto, Ayame... It seems that there's more leading ladies than leading men (sorry, Balthier) in XI, but I'm certainly not one to complain. However, with the placement of Cait Sith's picture next to the initial statement, is SE hinting that this version is female, or are they speaking of a new, as-of-yet unseen individual (perhaps one of the new NPC dats found by the miners)?

Very interesting.

[Ziero]

Originally Posted by LilithAngel

Has anyone else noticed a pattern with this game and the abundance of female leads in terms of story lines? Prishe, Cornelia, Aphmau, Naja, Eshta'narl, Shantotto, Ayame... It seems that there's more leading ladies than leading men (sorry, Balthier) in XI, but I'm certainly not one to complain. However, with the placement of Cait Sith's picture next to the initial statement, is SE hinting that this version is female, or are they speaking of a new, as-of-yet unseen individual (perhaps one of the new NPC dats found by the miners)?
Very interesting.

There are a lot more male leads in game actually. Not having gotten too far into any of the storylines, I don't know all the big players yet, but off the top of my head,(ignore the horrendous spelling of some names) Trion and his brother, Volker, Cid, Zeid (Iron Eater and Naji are just as high up as Ayame if you wanna get technical), Ajudo-whateverudo(the blm/rdm taru), Karuba Baruha(the smn taru), Tenzen and the 'mysterious boy', Nag'moldy(the blond guy in CoP), The Grand Visier, Luzaf, Gen. Ruggy, and so forth and so on.

And I don't see Shantotto and Ayame as 'leading characters' personally, especially considering they're both lower ranked then other males in their respective stories (Ajudo-whateverudo and Volker).

[IfritnoItazura]

Originally Posted by Ziero

And I don't see Shantotto and Ayame as 'leading characters' personally, especially considering they're both lower ranked then other males in their respective stories (Ajudo-whateverudo and Volker).

lol. I can just hear the women grumbling at "typical male attitude" with that. Screen time may be the better simple indicator of "lead" than a character's title in the story, IMO.

In a perfectly written story, of course, every character is important to weaving that magic spell we fall under--leaving fans to debate uselessly about which character(s) was the true lead/central whatever.

p.s. The Chains of Promathia came close to that for me; I'm grumbling at all the traveling it's taking to complete the final cut scenes because I can't wait to find out the "endings" for each of the more than half-a-dozen "main" characters. The ring would be sweet, but the true reward of CoP is the story. ^_^b

[Feba]

FFXI isn't about a single person, trying to put any single character as the lead is silly. Even the player character has a fairly minor role when you look at it, they just tend to kill things that are in the way, but not actually effect the world around them.

There are so many different parts of the storyline that there is no single entity that everything can be traced back to. I mean, hell, you could probably make a better argument about Star Wars being about C3P0 and R2; or Anakin; than you could about FFXI being about Raogrimm/SL or the Zilart.

The only main character in FFXI is Vana'diel. Everyone else is just a part of the larger machine.

Also, FFXI does have a lot of females with power. As well as men. As well as robots. FFXI has a metric ton of characters. Of course some are going to be female and some male.

and as for FFXII, Balthier wasn't the leading man, Ashe was. Balthier was flashy, though. They were all bad guys, however.

[Mhurron]

Shantoto is only 'lower rank' then the 5 ministers because she's retired. You tend to give up a lot of day to day crap when you retire. She has a little more to do with the active world in the past then in the present whereas the 5 ministers of the present are all either working their way up the ranks, or are children.

[Malacite]

I don't care if he's still old back then, he still kicks people's asses today.

And going by the CS, technically you are the main character (this is especially noticeable upon beating the SL)

Though for CoP I'd have to say Prishe pretty much stole the stage.

[Mhurron]

You're only the main character in the same sense you're the main character in your life. You're only going through normal life in Vana'diel in FFXI when you play.

[LilithAngel]

Originally Posted by Feba

and as for FFXII, Balthier wasn't the leading man, Ashe was. Balthier was flashy, though. They were all bad guys, however.

The quote is attributed to him, however, and thus the reference. And yes, they were technically the villains of that game, one of the many reasons I loved 12.

[Omniblast]

Hmm. More main female roles? I guess it's determined by the audience for which it is intended. The majority of FFXI players seem to be male based. Would that fall in line with what they are trying to accomplish by giving us guys something to stare at to go through the storyline?

Hey Windurst's leader is a female, I have no complaints for that. Eventually all straight males will need to listen to females every so often. T_T. lol