Let me start off by saying this, just to get it out of the way: For VanaFest attendees in Japan today, it was announced that Final Fantasy XIV's beta begins March 11th. This says nothing about when the beta begins in the west, but we can safely assume that's its not far off for western participants.

That was all that was said about FFXIV. As should be expected, VanaFest was all about Final Fantasy XI.



Tales of Final Fantasy XI's demise have been greatly exaggerated. It lives, much like Basch fon Ronsenburg yet lives, so don't believe fanboy lies. Its gonna keep on moving forward into 2011 as FFXIV gets off the ground.

Today at VanaFest 2010, SE unveiled that the level cap will finally be lifted from 75 to a whopping 99. For those of you wondering why this is earth-shaking, allow me to explain.

For years, we have been kept at the 75 cap for balance reasons. Unlike most MMOs, FFXI allows your character to be any of the game's 20 jobs and allows you to add additional abilities from another job you have leveled to whatever main job you presently are. The "subjobs" as we call them, when applied, are applied at half the level of a main job. So a level 20 Warrior can also add the skills of a level 10 Monk.

A lot of impressive skills like beyond the level 37 subjob cap and have remained as such since early 2004. That seems like a long time on the surface for an MMO, but it kept much of the endgame content vital for the next five years. When the population began to diminish last year, these events started to become more difficult to sustain under their existing structure, but preparations to the mid-game and the addition of new job adjustments were already being laid out for this big change, apparently, we just didn't realize it at the time.

I was actually really surprised SE was going to raise the cap this late in the game, but it now makes a bit of sense.

FFXI has never tried to be WoW, but its never lied about the nature of needing people to get things done, either. So the future adjustments will just be letting us handle the older stuff without the need for large amounts of players since that has become less sustainable.

Even more encouraging was that the three Abyssea expansion scenarios were announced. They would have new endgame content that was also less demanding, requiring only about 6 players to partake in any of the content there.

And a new tier of artifact armor, naturally, lies within (artifact tends to represent a job in its classic iconic appearance (think FFV's Red Mage, our Red Mage looks similar in artifact, but fancier).

So yeah, lots of stuff and all this content is set to roll as the year progresses. If you'd like to read more on it, here's a link:

VanaFest 2010

And for the Abyssea expansions:

Abyssea

Not much on the Abyssea site yet, but I'm sure that will change within the week.

Lots of other miscellaneous info there as well, such as job adjustments, server consolidation and other events. And for those who must know what Summoner is getting - Alexander and Odin. Badass.

I don't know if this will get me to resub, but I'm reinstalling it again anyway. Its hard not to be tempted when all my friends from that game are so pumped about it. It sounds like endgame might finally be something I can do with my actual friends rather than have to enlist with a bunch of self-serving pricks to get anything done.

Well, one can dream, can't they?

All the same, awesome to see SE isn't just going to drop FFXI like a bad habit and keep on supporting it. They could have used the show to hype FFXIV and they really didn't. Instead, they are going to keep standing behind FFXI and FFXIV. I can't even begin to imagine how much work it is for one team to sustain two MMOs. These are the folks that made FFIX have been doing since FFIX.

Big thanks to Limit Break Radio, Pet Food Alpha and VanaChat for teaming up this morning and covering as much of it as they could.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to resist the urge of reviving my power-mad Ranger, Corsair and Scholar characters. Part of me wants to stay away, but the other of me wants to see how this unfolds, at least until FFXIV is out.