Dameon

A former employer of mine, Chris, runs an MMO news website. It has regular podcasts for various MMOs, he gets GREAT news, articles and interviews, and I feel he is vastly under appreciated. That said, I'm posting a link to his website and some of his PAX interviews. mmoreporter.com/‎ vn76kqlJm-Y QHJUnB-rMgI

Classic Japanese side-scrolling action, evolved and transformed by Keiji Inafune, an all-star team of veteran Mega Man devs...and YOU! 日本のファンの皆さんはこちらから Mighty No. 9 is an all-new Japanese side-scrolling action game that takes the best aspects of the 8- and 16-bit era classics you know and love, and transforms them with modern tech, fresh mechanics, and fan input into something fresh and amazing! You play as Beck, the 9th in a line of powerful robots, and the only one not infected by a mysterious computer virus that has caused mechanized creatures the world over to go berserk. Run, jump, blast, and transform your way through six stages (or more, via stretch goals) you can tackle in any order you choose, using weapons and abilities stolen from your enemies to take down your fellow Mighty Number robots and confront the final evil that threatens the planet! Note: All images on this page are concept art and not actual in-game screens. Every aspect of development—art, level design, music, programming, etc.—is being handled by veteran Japanese game creators with extensive experience in the genre, and with Mega Man in particular, all the way up to and including the project’s leader, Keiji Inafune himself! Backers will have unprecedented access to seeing this team at work through blogs, podcasts, videos, concept art—the works! Mighty No. 9 is being developed for the PC with gamepad support (of course!), and will be made available through Steam and DRM-free digital distribution methods. Other platforms, including home consoles, Mac, and Linux, are a high priority, but only if we can afford them via stretch goals. Should we reach those goals, anyone funding the project will be allowed to choose which version of the game they would like to receive. The estimated release date is spring 2015.

Login Issue Update I know many of you are still affected by the World login and character creation restrictions, so I would like to give you all a brief update on the progress of the measures we are taking to alleviate this situation. Current Server Status To ensure as many players as possible can log in and create characters on existing servers, our development and operations teams are monitoring server load and population around the clock, placing and removing restrictions with even the slightest fluctuation in numbers in order to maintain near-full capacity on each World. We are still experiencing maximum concurrent connection numbers of over 230,000 users. This number, however, has taxed some of our instance servers, and is causing unexpected down time here, as well. Scheduled Maintenance for Wednesday, September 4 (Japan Time) The addition of new Worlds, as well as the adjustments to the duty finder servers, will be complete as of tomorrow. We will then enter our final internal testing phase of these features in preparation. If the results from these tests are favorable, we will conduct an extended all-World maintenance on Wednesday (Japan time). Once the new Worlds are implemented and the duty finder server load has been redistributed over smaller World server groups, we believe that many of the login issues that players are currently experiencing will clear. When Worlds do finally reopen after the maintenance, we expect a rush of players trying to log back in. To prevent any further login issues, we will be using the utmost caution when restarting each World. Please understand that there may be some congestion at this time. The development and operations teams are currently dedicating their full resources to alleviating the issues at hand and providing all of our players with a stable environment in which to experience the realm of Eorzea. Free Trial Extension To apologize to our loyal fans who may not have been able to login or create characters during early access and the days immediately following launch, the development and operations teams are currently considering providing all player accounts with an additional seven days to their free trials. This includes non-legacy players from 1.0, who will be given new seven-day free trials. Trial extensions will be awarded after the aforementioned server maintenance on Wednesday. Details on the trial extension, including the extension period, will be released in a separate post as soon as they have been solidified. We thank our fans again for the overwhelming support you have shown us over the past week. The response to FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn has well exceeded our expectations, and unfortunately resulted in our inability to provide the service which we originally intended. We humbly ask for your continued patience as we work to alleviate the issues as we truly appreciate all of our fans. We are very sorry for the frustration that has resulted from these problems. FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn Producer & Director Naoki Yoshida

Yeah, it's pretty clear they mean to give us servers that can handle the increased number of players.

I know deep tissue massage, I can teach someone to work that out for you.

Part of me feels like this isn't enough compensation... but at least it's something; so I am ignoring the part of me that thinks that. You lost out on days, you get days back. Seems like the perfect compensation to me. Not like there was pain and suffering, or loss of any data.

Credit to /u/Drop_ YoshiP just posted this over on Lodestone. Salient points include: Concurrent connections of 218,000 which is a new FFXIV record. Explanation about the Server Player Restrictions and Character Creation Restrictions. Load Balancing / Adding New Worlds. Optimizations are almost done and we'll start seeing the effects by next week. additional free playtime (several days) added due to server inconveniences. Here is a translated Summary from DualShockers Edit: Alothia changed the title so it won't look like you're shouting. ^^

Pretty expensive to completely redesign an infrastructure after launch.

Some people on the other forums I go to are still getting 1017, so I suppose not =(

Ok they clarified it: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-to-Increase-the-Capacity-of-our-Data-Centers Regarding Preparations to Increase the Capacity of our Data Centers Hello everyone, We've noticed not just a few threads on this, and comments from many players, and so wanted to be sure to clear up a sincere misunderstanding regarding the recent announcement to up the capacity of our data centers: Originally Posted by NOC_NA We would like to make a clarification regarding our previous announcement “Regarding Congestion in Japan Data Center Worlds (Aug. 27)” in which we stated that we are preparing to increase the capacity of our data centers. The first half of the announcement regarding login and character creation restrictions was directed towards our players who would be playing during peak hours in Japan data center Worlds. However, the second half of the announcement regarding increasing the capacity of our data centers was meant to also encompass North American and European data center Worlds and not just be limited to Japan data center Worlds. We deeply apologize for causing concern amongst the North American and European community due to our lack of clarity. Capacity will be increased for data centers in all regions. Once again, thank you for your understanding and cooperation to help us welcome more players to the game. As mentioned in the previous announcement that this clarification refers to, this process is looking to be finalized come early next week and we will keep you updated once we hear more about its implementation. Thank you very much for your patience while attempting to login to the game.

Check the quote at the bottom of the post.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Center-Worlds-(Aug.-27)?p=1083457#post1083457 [NA]Regarding Congestion in Japan Data Center Worlds (Aug. 27) Thank you very much for playing FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn. Currently, an extremely high number of players are enjoying the game. Should the number of players continue to increase at the current pace, there is the possibility that our expectations and server capacity will be greatly surpassed. Therefore, in order to maintain a stable gameplay environment, we are implementing login and character creation restrictions. In order to be able to welcome a drastically greater number of players, we are starting as early as this week with preparations to increase our facilities, to be ready by early next week. Until that time, we will be continuing to implement these restrictions as required, and we ask for your understanding and patience. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and once again thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this matter. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/70022-NA-Regarding-Congestion-in-Japan-Data-Center-Worlds-%28Aug.-27%29?p=1083457#post1083457 To clarify, here's some extra information from the OP. I believe this is for the NA datacenter. This was posted by NOC_NA with the NA tag and there's another post similar to this one specifically for the Japan data center. It looks like they just copy and pasted the message and didn't change the title.

If we had to do another thing like Lightning where we get gear? I'd probably want characters that fit a bit better into this universe. Maybe Kain and Rydia (Since we have Dragoons and Summoners) But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want Cloud/Aerith gear.

I dunno, they cover just about everything in the realm of D20. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Steam Punk, Modern, various combinations thereof. What specifically do you think would be the problem?

I adjusted the title to encompass Early Access for clarity. This podcast isn't about bashing the game, they actually all seem to like it.

Did you listen to the segment? And it's a bad launch if you include the problems with EA. I mean, I'm all for defending Square's efforts, but when I think 'smooth launches' I think closer to GW 2. This isn't as bad as I think a lot of people's rage is making it, but I wouldn't call it 'smooth'. Unless that was sarcasm =P

http://superbestfriendcast.com/ Episode 3 - 51 minutes in.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn launches tomorrow on PS3. To celebrate the launch, PlayStation.Blog sat down with Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida to talk over A Realm Reborn’s long gestation and epic ambitions. PlayStation.Blog: Which element of A Realm Reborn is most going to surprise PlayStation players? Naoki Yoshida: I think one of the big things will be the amazing graphics, which really push the limits of PS3’s technical capabilities, as well as the fact that this is an MMORPG experience. Also, MMORPGs are most usually controlled using a keyboard and mouse, but our Cross Hot Bar system we’ve developed specifically for the DualShock allows for smooth and exciting play, so that’s another area of interest for PS3 players. PSB: What improvements have you made since the original PC release of Final Fantasy XIV? Yoshida: I think that improvements can be roughly split into three areas: to regain the trust of the players, to fundamentally rebuild the game experience from the ground up, and — most importantly — to complete the PS3 version while maintaining the high levels of graphical quality and play. To put it simply, every single aspect of A Realm Reborn has been redeveloped, improved, and upgraded since the original Final Fantasy XIV launched, so I’m fine with it if people want to think of A Realm Reborn as a completely new title in its own right! PSB: You announced at the Japan Expo in Paris that Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII will appear in the game. Why Lightning? Yoshida: With Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, we’ve actively taken efforts to cleverly incorporate elements from across the whole series to date into Eorzea — the setting that forms the game world. I think there will also be many more elements included as the game develops in order to make players from all across the world feel like they’re a part of the Final Fantasy experience. There’s a solid backstory for why Lightning is visiting Eorzea, and it will certainly form a chapter in the Lightning Saga that I hope everyone can enjoy! PSB: How regularly do you plan to update A Realm Reborn, and what sort of content can we expect? Yoshida: We’re planning on doing a major update every three months once the game has been released, and continuously adding large-scale content. Ongoing support for the game will be included in the monthly subscription. We’ve already begun work on the first update that is currently called patch 2.1 and will introduce a large-scale housing system, as well as “The Wolves’ Den” — the first ever PvP content in the series. Furthermore, the update will include new dungeons, a new daily quest system, new Primal battles, extensions to the main story, and loads of other new content to enjoy. There will be a significant update every three months, so everyone will be able to continue enjoying the game for a very long time! Of course we also have long-term plans to release full expansion packs, so watch out for future updates on those, too. PSB: Some players like to customize their interface menu, like various meters and displays. How is this handled? Yoshida: We’re trying to attract a large number of new players who are trying out the MMORPG genre for the first time, and an overwhelming amount of customizable features like aggro meters and DPS meters can put pressure on those kinds of players. We’ll of course have these included in A Real Reborn, but will not be making them generally available for a while. By the time everyone has grown accustomed to the game and the interface customization options available at launch, we’ll introduce more customizable options with updates on official patches and as Add On tools to open up options for a more dedicated MMORPG interface. PSB: Will it be possible in the final version of the game to switch a player character from one server to another? Yoshida: Yes, we’ll be providing an optional world transfer service! PSB: Voice chat wasn’t enabled in the recent beta. Will it be integrated in the full version of the game? Yoshida: We do not plan on offering official support for voice chat. To explain that decision, the idea of talking directly to other players with your own voice and making it a requirement to do so will not necessarily be a good thing for beginners, and many will see it as imposing pressure or causing them unnecessary stress. I am personally a veteran online gamer, so I completely understand the importance of voice chat, but if we were to make it an officially supported feature then there is a chance that some players would start to demand that others use it just because it is an “official feature”. Of course, we will not be prohibiting external voice chat via Skype etc., so individual player communities can still sort out their own preferred means of communication! PSB: The game currently supports four languages: English, French, German, and Japanese. Are there any plans to include more European languages? Yoshida: There is indeed scope to expand the number of supported languages if player numbers and customer demand reaches a sufficient level. We await word from various communities as to what people want to see. PSB: What are your thoughts on PS4 as a developer? Yoshida: I have an extremely great appreciation of the PS4’s hardware architecture and memory capacity. Production of the PS4 version of A Realm Reborn is well underway, and going according to plan. I hope to be able to unveil this awesome PS4 version as soon as possible! PSB: What will the PS4 system allow you to bring to the development and production of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn that hasn’t been possible so far? Yoshida: The PS3 version supports an interface specifically designed for controllers, but PS4 offers a huge variety of different interface options and also has the capacity to render an unbelievable number of player characters simultaneously. Both of these are really great features for the future development of the game! PSB: Was it your requirement that PS3, PS4, and PC gamers play on the same servers? Yoshida: Yes, of course. I think it would be very sad indeed if say a player with the PS3 version invited a friend to play with them but they could not do so because that friend happened to have the PS4 version. So I really do believe that whatever hardware is being used, all players should be able to play together across platforms. I think that splitting the community down into different segments is something that we should avoid, even if it may look like it makes for a temporary business success. I am incredibly grateful to Sony for making this kind of cross-platform play possible. PSB: Will the PS4 version of the game contain exclusive content compared to the PS3 version? Yoshida: That’s not my intention. As I said already, if different platforms give their players a different game experience, then it will inevitably lead to the splintering and division of the community, and that’s really not a good idea for an MMORPG. So I want all players to have a stable and fun experience, regardless of which platform they choose to play the game on, and without worrying about which version is the best.

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Pinched from Reddit

I'm thinking 1, 3 and maybe 12?

Got family out that way.

I came across this video on FFXIVRealm.com, and was wondering if anyone had posted it here. Also, are you guys planning to have a back and forth at some point? This seemed kind of like a PSA.