VanaFest 2010 goes live at 2AM EST - 11PM PST!

[Nyosan~]

News from VanaFest 2010:

FFXI:

Level Cap will be raised to 99. This will happen in steps, beginning in the June update.
New job abilities and magic will be given to jobs to compensate for the effects of the allowing previously job-specific abilities to be accessed as a support job.
A new merit system may be implemented for those who reach the Lv99 cap.

Abyssea:
Three new high-level Add-Ons will be made available, beginning this summer, for $9.99 each.
"Vision of Abyssea," "Scars of Abyssea”, and "Heroes of Abyssea” will round out 2010. A third version of Artifact/Relic-style armor will be obtainable in Abyssea. These areas are intended to be completed with a party of six people.

Server Merger will take place on selected servers. The current 32 servers will be condensed to 24. Quetzalcoatl will be merging with Midgardsormr, but retaining the name Quetzalcoatl. Rest can be seen here: http://i49.tinypic.com/v8e8vo.jpg

New Notorious Monsters will be released, and the Evolith system will be expanded.

New craftable items will be added, for both traditional crafts and Synergy.

Chains of Promathia's level-capped areas will see the removal of the level caps.

WotG nation missions will be finished in the March update.

Job-specific emotes will be released.

A new branching quest system titled "Trial of the Magians" will be released. Direction taken during the quest will result in differing rewards. Players may actually be allowed to select the augments on current gear (including relics and mythics!) at the completion of the quest. 80 classifications of enhancements are planned.


Job Adjustments:

Beastmaster: Crafting HQ jug pets may be made easier. New jug pets and new charmable monsters may be added, as well as an ability to transfer enmity to a pet.

Black Mage: MEEEEE-TEEEE-ORRRR

Blue Mage: May receive spells from NMs/HNMs. Considering allowing access to the Dual Wield job trait through spell combinations.

Corsair: May modify the way a "perfect XI" affects Corsair's rolls.

Dark Knight: May adjust Dark Magic accuracy and spell cast times. May be given a way to more effectively recover MP.

Dancer: May see new methods of TP gain, as well as gaining the ability to use Waltzes on people outside-of-party.

Dragoon: Looking into ways to boost a wyvern's efficacy. May add an additional "Jump."

Monk: May receive a job ability which would boost accuracy and subtle blow, while reducing TP gain and restricting weapon skills.

Ninja: May modify placement of "Utsusemi" icon such that it is always on the far left, making it easier to cancel.

Puppetmaster: Automaton's Harlequin and Valoredge frames may be made more durable. Puppetmaster's Hand-to-Hand rating will be increased to "A."

Ranger: May add an ability to decrease enmity, or one to double damage dealt while consuming double ammo.

Red Mage: May add additional enfeebling spells.

Samurai: May lower the level of Sekkanoki, allowing use for those with SAM as a support job.

Scholar: May add spells at higher levels to define Scholar more as its own class, rather than a Black Mage/White Mage hybrid.

Summoner: Two new summons: Alexander and Odin, which can only be used in conjunction with Astral Flow.
Alexander's 2HR: Perfect Defense, reduces damage taken and provides immunity to enfeebles.
Odin's 2HR: Zantetsuken: Defeats all foes in an area-of-effect. Accuracy decreases as number of enemies in the area-of-effect increases. Deals damage to Notorious Monsters.

Thief: May see an enhancement to Treasure Hunter, and a new Steal-like ability.

Warrior: May receive an improvement to tanking ability for short periods, increasing versatility.

White Mage: May receive new Divine Magic and Healing Magic spells. Looking for ways to give more opportunities to use Divine Magic.


Campaign:
Castle Zvahl Baileys and Castle Zvahl Keep will be released.
Shadow Lord will make appearances in the Castle Z-related Campaigns. Pictures of players wearing the Shadow Lord's armor/weapons seem to imply that he will have drops which will be made available to players.

Campaign Allied-NPC weaponskills will become available to players, perhaps through obtaining special weapons.


Nomad Mog Bonanza:

Winning Numbers:
Rank 1: 59163
Rank 2: 8447
Rank 3: 524
Rank 4: 68
Rank 5: 7

Rank 4/5 prizes: Odin/Alexander statues.

FFXIV:
Beta (perhaps even late-stage Alpha) testing will be made available to those who attended VanaFest 2010. FFXIV Beta site goes live on March 11th.Beta testing may be made availabe to "loyal FFXI followers," and the first set of invitations have been sent.

 

[Xalioniaf]

Links!
The official VanaFest website has a link to a live stream of the events. The stream is in Japanese:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafes2010/
The Community Team is running Twitter pages in English, German, and French to translate what's going down:
http://twitter.com/VanaFest2010_EN
JPButton is running a live blog of the event:
http://www.jpbutton.com/?p=3797
Pet Food Alpha is doing a live podcast of the event:
http://petfoodalpha.com/
aaand there the Vanachat at irc.ffochat.com #vanafestlive

Let's get it on!

 

[Nyosan~]

JP Button gets through! Awesome, thanks Xal.

 

[Jeska]

Er what happened to all the discussion posts here in this thread, they seem to be all gone?

 

[Nyosan~]

QCDN's been down for the last day or two. Seems like they had to revert to a previous back-up.

 

[Raesvelg]

QCDN's been down for the last day or two. Seems like they had to revert to a previous back-up.

News from VanaFest 2010:

FFXI:

Level Cap will be increased to 99.
Increasing of the level cap will take place in stages, beginning as soon as June. New areas and monsters will be introduced to allow players to level beyond current limits, as well as additional monsters in current areas. New job abilities and magic will be given to jobs to compensate for the effects of the allowing previously job-specific abilities/spells to be accessed via a support job.
A new merit system may be implemented for those who reach the Lv99 cap.

Three New Add-Ons:
Three new high-level add-ons will be made available, beginning this summer, for $9.99 each.
Visions of Abyssea, Scars of Abyssea, and Heroes of Abyssea will round out 2010. A third version of Artifact/Relic-style armor will be obtainable in Abyssea. These areas are intended to be completed with a party of six people.

General:

Server merger will take place on selected servers. The current 32 servers will be condensed to 24. http://i49.tinypic.com/v8e8vo.jpg

New Notorious Monsters will be released, and the Evolith system will be expanded.

New craftable items will be added, for both traditional crafts and Synergy.

Chains of Promathia's level-capped areas will see the removal of the level caps.

WotG nation missions will be finished in the March update.

Job-specific emotes will be released.

A new branching quest system titled "Trial of the Magians" will be released. Direction taken during the quest will result in differing rewards. Players may actually be allowed to select the augments on current gear (including relics and mythics!) at the completion of the quest. 80 classifications of enhancements are planned.


Job Adjustments:

Bard: Exploring new methods for Bard to continue in its current role.

Beastmaster: Crafting HQ jug pets may be made easier. New jug pets and new charmable monsters may be added, as well as an ability to transfer enmity to a pet.

Black Mage: MEEEEE-TEEEE-ORRRR

Blue Mage: May receive spells from NMs/HNMs. Considering adding Dual Wield to the list of customizable job traits.

Corsair: May modify the way rolling a "perfect" XI affects Corsair's rolls.

Dark Knight: May adjust Dark Magic accuracy and spell cast times. May be given a way to more effectively recover MP.

Dancer: May see new methods of TP gain, as well as gaining the ability to use Waltzes on people outside-of-party.

Dragoon: Looking into ways to boost a wyvern's efficacy. May add an additional "Jump."

Monk: May receive a job ability which would boost accuracy and subtle blow, while reducing TP gain and restricting weapon skills.

Ninja: May modify placement of "Utsusemi" icon such that it is always on the far left, making it easier to cancel.

Paladin:

Puppetmaster: Automaton's Harlequin and Valoredge frames may be made more durable. Puppetmaster's Hand-to-Hand rating will be increased to "A."

Ranger: May add an ability to decrease enmity, or one to double damage dealt while consuming twice the ammunition.

Red Mage: May add additional enfeebling spells.

Samurai: May lower the level of Sekkanoki, allowing use for those with SAM as a support job.

Scholar: May "come into its own," with more SCH-specific spells at higher levels.

Summoner: Two new summons: Alexander and Odin, which can only be used in conjunction with Astral Flow.
Alexander's 2HR: Perfect Defense, reduces damage taken and provides immunity to enfeebles.
Odin's 2HR: Zantetsuken: Defeats all foes in an area-of-effect. Accuracy is lessened with increasing foes caught in the effect. For Notorious Monsters, damage will be dealt rather than an instant-kill.

Thief: May see an enhancement to Treasure Hunter, and a new Steal-like ability.

Warrior: May receive an ability improving tanking ability for short periods, increasing versatility.

White Mage: May receive new Divine Magic and Healing Magic spells. Looking for ways to give more opportunities to use Divine Magic.


Campaign:
Castle Zvahl Baileys and Castle Zvahl Keep will be released.
Shadow Lord will make appearances in the Castle Z-related Campaigns. Pictures of players wearing the Shadow Lord's armor/weapons seem to imply that he will have drops which will be made available to players.

Campaign Allied-NPC weapon skills will become available to Players, perhaps through obtaining special weapons. Feed shows a player using Uriel Blade.

Nomad Mog Bonanza:

Winning Numbers:
Rank 1: 59163
Rank 2: 8447
Rank 3: 524
Rank 4: 68
Rank 5: 7

Rank 4 & 5 prizes: Alexander and Odin statues.

I stole this post to use on my LS board anyway.

 

[Celvantes]

Really?

99?

....

Is it just me or does it seem like they're breaking the game?

 

[Xalioniaf]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=20039015&postcount=651

I felt like tling the Famitsu interview. I should probably put this somewhere of my own, but I don't have that.

-- It's been six and a half years since the last increase to level cap. Are you planning more "Limit Break" quests (quests which increase the level cap)?

Matsui: We don't plan on having quests like the previous ones. I guess we do need to continue them somehow, but we plan on lowering the difficulty. Raising the level cap changes up the balance and is tough on the adventurers. Thus if they can just go and release it--. It's not like we do it to be mean (laugh).

-- You say you'll be raising the level cap step by step. What will the next cap be?

Matsui: We'll start with 80. It's been a long time since we set the cap to 75, so we want to make lots of changes level by level on the way to 80. We haven't decided whether to raise by 5s or 10s after that.

-- Once the level cap is removed, will the current HNM (an abbreviation for "high-level notorious monster", monsters designed to be fought by many players at once) be adjusted?

Matsui: We're considering not making major changes. We don't think it's bad that the fierce enemies and endgame content up to now can be taken on with fewer players. Instead, we plan to add new enemies to fit the new level cap.

-- With the increase in level cap comes an increase in support job level cap. Powerful magics and abilities like Refresh and Convert will become usable without having to be one's specialties. Are you planning to adjust their effect when used as a support job?

Matsui: Personally, I like the idea of getting Refresh from a support job. I'd like to see Red Mage gain an even stronger Refresh, making battles even more flashy as he tells everyone to "Go for it! Spam your magic!".

-- With how long the level cap has been 75, I think there have been a lot of people who worked hard to get "ultimate gear". How do you plan to follow this up?

Matsui: Using the "Magian's Trials" system we plan to implement, we believe they will continue to be useful at higher levels. We'd like to see them mixed with new equipment.


* About the expansion battle area "Abyssea"

-- You can get the third type of job-specific equipment ("AF3") in Abyssea, but will you need to buy all three Abysseas to get it all?

Ito: You can get it all from a single package. Depending on which you have, different materials will be available for "Magian's Trials", and its objectives will differ.

-- What are the major differences between the three packages?

Tanaka: They each contain different areas, and the monsters that appear are different. You can choose between them according to your goals.

Ito: Unlike Dynamis, a single area one must reserve, Abyssea can be entered freely by anyone. It can even be soloed.

* About "Final Fantasy XIV"

-- You announced "Final Fantasy XIV"'s α and β test participants, but can you give us a solid date?

Tanaka: They will be displayed on the β tester site that goes live March 11th. We're currently making major adjustments, so the dates may change one way or the other.

-- How long will the α test be?

Tanaka: That depends on the response from the testers.

-- The cheers were quite impressive when you announced the "FFXIV" β test. How did that feel?

Kawamoto: I was overjoyed. I didn't expect them to cheer that loud. (laughs)

 

[naue]

lol now that FFXIV is going into beta...i think the devs are just having fun with ffxi.

I mean really...increasing the level cap this late? lols

Meh...who knows...I mean it sounds like theyre just adding some random interesting shit, and making the old shit easy.

 

[Raesvelg]

I explained my thoughts on this elsewhere, but it won't hurt to repost them here...

Basically, in my opinion, a lot of this is in preparation for the expectation that FFXIV will steal a lot of the player base from FFXI. So they raise the level cap, (thus allowing small groups of people to complete all the old content that used to require full alliances), they add in a comprehensive gear upgrade system (thus allowing the old content to still form the basis for useful gear), and they add in entirely new areas designed specifically for small groups (thus giving new challenges to people who have beaten all the old ones). I also expect that, ultimately, there will be a handful of HNMs that require level 99 alliances to defeat, just to give something to the game that still requires large groups of people.

Now if they'll just instance Dynamis already, it'll all be good.