Announced in 2005, Square Enix’s next MMO has been a mystery amongst Final Fantasy XI players for quite some time. As gaming events around the world come and go, we tip our heads curiously in anticipation of news, only to shrug our shoulders and move on once no such news presents itself.

In just one more week, another E3 convention will be upon us, and again thoughts of Rapture have begun to occupy our minds. As always, it was rumored Square Enix would finally unveil the goods this year, and really, it’s about time after five years of waiting. I’ve dug into the annals of the Internet, dusted off old magazines and looked high and low to compile this refresher course for Rapture fans-to-be.

Let’s cut past the guess-work and debate for a moment and take a look at the concrete information we have available to us. This article will present official comments from Square Enix and FFXI team members, press conferences with Yoichi Wada, information on Crystal Tools and analyze Hiromichi Tanaka’s development trends for an insightful look at the history of Final Fantasy XI and future of Rapture.

Read more »

I found these figures at the 鑑定団, a second-hard warehouse of all kinds of goods. They were part of a Final Fantasy Creatures Collection, which had several volumes and contained all sorts of monsters and bosses from throughout the entire series.

Read more »

There has been a lot of communication going on recently throughout the Final Fantasy XI community. If you are reading this, I am sure you have checked out the JP/EN Discussion that is currently in progress. At the same time, members of the North American Square Enix Community Team are taking part in a Podcast Tour in order to reconnect with the fans. Lots of questions are flying about, and as a nice change of pace, we are getting answers in return.

There was one request that came up, which no one has been able to answer so far: Why is one of the feet on Beetle-type monsters backwards? I can tell you I personally never noticed over the entire seven years Final Fantasy XI has been running, but it was recently pointed out to me as well. The front-right foot on every Beetle is twisted 180-degrees so that it points in the reverse direction.

How could this be?

Read more »

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use your cell phone to log into FFXI and check if something sold on the AH, do a little crafting, or complete other small chores? Unfortunately, the developers have already said the system is too complex to do anything like that. That doesn’t mean there is nothing for FFXI for cell phones though. For players in Japan, there are a number of nifty ways to geek out your cell phone with FFXI.

First off, I want to thank people that left comments about Part 1. I wasn’t sure how many people would be interested in this subject. However, now that more application-friendly and web-friendly cell phones are on the market in the US, Canada, and Europe, it makes sense that overseas players would want to see what they could do on their own cell phones to help make their lives in Vana’diel a little easier.

There are a variety of sites out there aimed at cell phone users in Japan. Maybe they’ll give some ideas to people working on their own programming projects. Here are a few interesting ones I found.

Read more »

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use your cell phone to log into FFXI and check if something sold on the AH, do a little crafting, or complete other small chores? Unfortunately, the developers have already said the system is too complex to do anything like that. That doesn’t mean there is nothing for FFXI for cell phones though. For players in Japan, there are a number of nifty ways to geek out your cell phone with FFXI. Over a couple posts, I’ll introduce some of the sites and tools out there.

Back in 2002 when Square Enix was still Square, there was an official cell phone site for FFXI.

Read more »

artwork by Shade

Vana’diel Population Boost

SE’s Ninja Nerfs

Read more »

One tough thing about running a site from Japan for English players is that I miss all the big news. The mass bannings due to the item triplication bug in Salvage had only begun to trickle in as Professor Layton and his incessant riddles lulled me to sleep. The next morning, I awake to find 58 pages of raging debate, plus several other threads going strong. Too bad it’s time for work and I must wait all day to finally delve into the discussion.

Well, now that the day’s done, let’s sit down and take a look at what’s going on here.

Read more »