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 The Voracious Resurgence |
 
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| Prime Weapons • Ultimate Weapons • Ultimate Augments • Abjurations iL119 • JSE Necks • Divergence Augments • Escutcheons | |
| Reforged Armor Artifact: +1 • iL109 • iL119/+2/+3 Relic: +1/+2 • iL109 • iL119/+2/+3 Empyrean: +1/+2 • iL109 • iL119/+2/+3 |
Guides • Crafting • Trusts • Apex Monsters |
The History of Final Fantasy XI/2013
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Beta Information2013
This year Final Fantasy XI saw its final major expansion pack release; Seekers of Adoulin. The expansion brought with it powerful equipment never seen before in the form of Item Level equipment. The Rune Fencer and Geomancer jobs were added to the game, as well as the previously promised “play-as-a-monster” content Monstrosity. Originally part of Seekers of Adoulin, the Mog Garden system was also implemented.
Secondary SP abilities were introduced late in the year. The Trust Magic system was also created so players could more easily solo content and level without the burden of finding a party. Major quality of life improvements were created such as Home Point teleportation. These changes would alter the player experience of the game like never seen before.
| Jan. 1st, 2013 |  Happy New Year 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| From the 1st to the 10th, Fortuitous Leviathan roamed Vana’diel, followed by three Summoners.
Trading items to Fortuitous Leviathan may have awarded players the new Janus Guard. The enchantment granted players Saruta Oranges. |
 Like the year before, unmentioned Abyssean-esque NPCs were added for players to find. In Valkurm Dunes a Gleeful Gukumatz roamed the zone. Similarly, Celebratory Kukulkan walked in the Konschtat Highlands. Three Jubilant Peistes followed these NPCs. The function of these “NMs” were basically the same as the regular lucky animals added for New Year’s events; trading them items granted the same things as the announced event and NPCs did. The only difference was that if you did not receive an item, you instead were petrified, and a message appeared in the log similar to “I'll give you time to look back at yourself for a while.” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 29th, 2013 |  Batallia Downs leg of Meeble Burrows released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Meeble Burrows Additions
The items from the entire section of Batallia Meebles were added during the previous month’s update but were unobtainable as the content was not implemented until January 2013. Particularly, the Tenkomaru caught many people’s eyes due to the Pulse effect it gave on swings. Not to mention how powerful it was with the Occasionally Attacks Twice in front of an enemy, pairing well with Overwhelm. Compared to the previous installment, there were only three paths compared to the five that were implemented for Sauromugue Champaign. This caused boss gear to be more accessible overall, due to less clears being needed for each boss attempt. This was the first appearance of the monster family Giant Gnat. Naturally, it was met with comments such as “disgusting” when the picture of Melisseus was shown on the official website in the update notes image. One of the “loot” drops from this NM was the Daimonic Casing. This item would end up never having a single use until years later. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 29th, 2013 | Mog Bonanza Homecoming | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discussions surrounding Gacha games within the Japanese Government concluded, so the Mog Bonanza was able to return! The first returning Bonanza marble sales were from Jan. 29th until Feb. 28th. Results were announced on Mar. 12th.
Note: See the Mog Bonanza Homecoming page for details on the event such as prizes and results. |
 This Bonanza had classic prizes return such as Mog Kupons for Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean weapons along with the Defending Ring and Kraken Club. At this time, players were still excited about the Arc weapons. The Ark Scythe was a popular rank 5 choice for Abyssea procs. For Rank 3, Pulse Cells were a popular choice for either money or to save up for a Pulse weapon. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jan. 30th, 2013 |  Final Fantasy Vocal Collection CD released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released in Japan only, this music CD is comprised of tracks from all Final Fantasy games to-date that had vocal lyrics in them.
Final Fantasy XI was represented on the disc with Distant Worlds (CoP ending theme). Other examples of songs on the disc is “Suteki da Ne” from Final Fantasy X, and “Eyes On Me” from Final Fantasy VIII. |
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| Feb. 1st, 2013 | Valentione's Day Seasonal Event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: February 1st thru February 15th.
The Tender Bouquet was added beginning in 2013, along with the portion of the event to assist Chocobos to find their ideal mates. |
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| Feb. 1st, 2013 | Valentione's Day Mog House Decorating Contest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To coincide with Valentione’s Day, a Mog House Decorating Contest was held on the official forums. Like before, contests were divided between regions. JP/NA/EU players all had their own thread to post on, but there was only one set of winners across all regions.
The newly added Tender Bouquet had to be placed somewhere in your Mog House screenshot to be an eligible contest entry. The Opus Shelf, the rarest item in the game. |
Rare Furnishings
Like mentioned in the 2012 entry, the furnishings awarded for this contest were incredibly rare. Only two Opus Shelfs existed, and only 20 iterations of the Jewelry Case, Keepsake Case, and Gemstone Case were distributed at this time. This was the last time they would be given away util Screenshot Campaigns that ran in 2022 and 2023. When I previously created the 2012 history page, I mistakenly thought that each region had their own entry and own contest. This proved to be incorrect. While each region had their own contest entry thread, all regions were judged together. This means there were only two grand prize winners, and 19 runner-ups across both contests. The participation prize was the Wastebasket so you could throw away your crappy non-winning screenshot. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Feb. 8th, 2013 | A Vana'dielian Hunt | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For NA players only, another Test Server event was held at 6PM PST.
Community Team members hosted this event again. Everyone gathered in Lower Jeuno for a linkpearl, and community members would speak of a “Rumor” and post a “wanted” picture on the official forum. The event was solo-only. The first person to /check the community team member at the spawn location by solving the riddle and travelling to the correct spot was given the pop item. The first person to kill the NM would receive a prize. |
PS2-only players were yet again left out of this event. The prizes were not too good this time so there was not much of a loss. No event was held for EU players. JP players had their own Twitter event related to the Doll Festival, as detailed later.
Five rounds were played. The prize selection included a choice of one of: Behemoth Statue / Adamantoise Statue / Fafnir Statue. All players who participated received an Athena Orb. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Feb. 8th, 2013 | First Double EXP Campaign! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For the first time ever, monsters yielded double experience points during a short campaign. This type of event (albeit temporary) was unheard of before in FFXI. The most “bonus” experience someone could receive was 500 or so from usable Memoir items. Experience earned from completing content or via the use of items was not doubled.
The event only ran for a total of 72 hours: February 8th at 7AM until February 11th at 7AM. |
Reception
This first Experience campaign gave a flat 2x the potential experience yielded from defeating Easy Prey or higher enemies. Effects that gave the Devotion status from enchanted items were also doubled. The problem with this campaign was that it was more efficient to solo alone rather than group up and get chains. Due to feedback from this problem, EXP increase campaigns in the future were changed to increase the number of points earned from chains rather than base EXP amounts. This encouraged players team up. Unfortunately, it was still much easier to gain EXP in Abyssea. This campaign was nice to get up to level 30 on starter jobs, but not much more. It was welcome within Dynamis zones, though. Players also voiced concerns that Double EXP was “lazy” and that they could have thought of something better to give to players. Campaign suggestions included: Double Salvage Plans drop rate, Increased Combat and Magic skill up rates, and Greater chance for bigger Nyzul Isle Uncharted floor jumps. When the event started, many players ended up placing GM calls because they thought it was a glitch that so much EXP was being earned. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Feb. 19th, 2013 | Valentione's Day 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: February 19th thru March 4th.
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. |
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| Feb. 21st, 2013 | Hinamatsuri Twitter Event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For JP players, another Twitter event was held from February 21st to March 4th.
A screenshot needed to be posted with the hashtags #FF11 and #Hinamatsuri after following @FFXI_JP. |
An Athena Orb was sent to all players who tweeted. Only 10 players each day would get Pickled R. Tail x12.
It was debatable if the NA test world event was a better event or not due to the lackluster prizes from each of these. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Feb. 28th, 2013 | First Meeble Burrows Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first Meeble Burrows campaign was held from February 28th thru March 14th. The campaign was advertised as “Celebrating the release of Seekers of Adoulin”.
Some items exchangeable with Wizened Worms were replaced within this campaign for other, “more valuable” items. |
All of the items that were changed during the campaign were disclosed on the official forums, so there was no mystery on exactly what players could receive.
This was the first version of this event, and this one was rather lackluster. Besides Gold Thread being swapped for an L. Jadeshell, the other swapped items did not make much sense or were even worse than their original items. For instance, the Baalmuian Robe was swapped for the newly implemented Mass Chalemie which was just about worthless. Another example was the pulse weapon Adflictio replaced by the Zouave's Beret. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mar. 15th, 2013 | Springtime Egg Decoration Contest 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Open to NA, EU and JP players, the egg decorating contest returned. Players were instructed to decorate some type of real-life egg (or synthetic egg) in the theme of Final Fantasy XI and post their entries on the official forum.
The winning entries can be seen here on the official forum thread. The first place entry is shown on the right. |
Prizes were Chocobo Berets for 10 winners. All entries were combined and judged as one contest, so there were 10 Beret handed out across the entire playerbase.
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| Mar. 18th, 2013 | Egg Hunt 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: March 18th thru April 9th.
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. One thing to note was that the moogle vendors that were supposed to be dispatched to the three nations to sell the Nation Egg furnishings did not get implemented due to system issues. They were instead added during the Version Update on March 27th. |
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| Mar. 20th, 2013 |   Seekers of Adoulin Live Stream with the Community Team | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Community Team (with Camate on camera) broadcast a live stream on Youtube. In the video they live streamed features of the upcoming expansion pack. Showcased were the city of Adoulin, the Geomancer bubble effect while fighting Mandragora outside, and some Colonization Reive and Lair Reive battles. The team members also showed off the Chocobo Shirt and Destrier Beret pre-order items. The stream was around 50 minutes.
Player’s feedback was that Geomancy bubbles were hard to differentiate, even though the stream quality was lacking. There were also concerns about how much content there will be upon the game's first release. Many players also voiced their dislike of the Western Adoulin theme song. Even though the Japanese stream was much more luxurious as detailed below, it was probably thanks to Camate that non-Japanese players got any kind of a look at Adoulin before release. Is was speculated that this stream might have not even happened if he didn’t push for it. |
These videos were saved by fans before they were made Private by the official FFXI Youtube channel.
If you would like to watch this stream, you can see them on a playlist here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mar. 26th, 2013 |  Vana TV (ヴ ァ ナ TV) Seekers of Adoulin Broadcast | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vana TV (ヴ ァ ナ TV) held a 3 hour+ livestream on NicoNico the evening before the Seekers of Adoulin preliminary update, which was sponsored by Alienware. This stream was hosted by voice actor Katsuyuki Konishi (小西克幸) and voice actress Emiri Katō (加藤 英美里). Towards the end of the stream they were joined by Kazuyoshi Mochizuki, lead Square-Enix community planner.
This stream was above and beyond the stream offered by the NA community team. Shown during the stream were upcoming weapons (and stats) and armor sets (and stats) such as the Karieyh Armor Set, Orvail Armor Set, and Thurandaut Armor Set. Additionally, a lot of Seekers of Adoulin concept art was shown during the stream including upcoming shields, the Chocobo Suit, August, and much more. An in-game contest was held on stream where the hosts logged into random worlds, and players had to find them quickly in-game based on their surroundings. Finding them first gave them the opportunity to buy custom in-game signed level 1 subligars and Pickled R. Tails. Many real-life prizes were also given away to viewers of the stream. These include random past FFXI merchandise like the Goblin and Mandragora plushes, lanyards, magnets, as well as Alienware t-shirts and even an Alienware PC. The video was archived on Youtube by a fan. It is embedded on the right if you wish to watch or skim through it. |
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| Mar. 27th, 2013 | Seekers of Adoulin Expansion Pack Released! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Expansion Pack was released simultaneously on March 26th/March 27th throughout the world. Only Japan saw the PS2 version of the game. Some Western players thought the reason was due to the PS2 HDD running out of space, however, the actual reason was that at this point in time Western stores no longer carried PS2 games so there were no means available for retail distribution. The Xbox 360 did see Adoulin release outside of Japan. The Xbox 360 was still a current system, so real estate was available to stock the disc in stores. Naturally, many western PS2 players ended up migrating to either Xbox 360 or to PC at this time to have access to the expansion pack including new equipment and content.
Service for the game did not start until March 28th. This gave players worldwide a chance to find and install the expansion disc as well as download the preliminary update on March 27th. Seekers of Adoulin Release Trailer
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Click on an image to enlarge.
Seekers of Adoulin Box Art Ultimate Collection Seekers Edition Box Art   Purchase Bonuses All players who purchased either version of Seekers of Adoulin from the Square Enix E-Store received a bonus digital music soundtrack called “FINAL FANTASY XI – Musicbox Adventures”. This album included five tracks, all of which sounded like they were played from a real-life music box. All five tracks can be listened to via this SoundCloud link.  The Chocobo Shirt was introduced in the preliminary version update, and it was made available to players who purchased the Ultimate Collection Seekers Edition or the Vana’diel Collection 4 (Japanese version of the Ultimate Collection). The Destrier Beret also came with this version as well. Many players found themselves buying the more expensive Ultimate collection just for the Chocobo Shirt.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mar. 27th, 2013 | Seekers of Adoulin OST Released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released alongside of the expansion pack Seekers of Adoulin was the OST music disc. Included on the disc were 13 songs total.
Two of these songs are the Provenance zone songs “Where it All Begins” and “Provenance Watcher”. These were referred to as “Bonus Songs”. The other songs on the disc are:
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Included in the first edition print of the OST was a sleeve case insert featuring the below illustration from Yoshitaka Amano. A Geomancer and Rune Fencer are illustrated featuring Arciela in front.
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| Mar. 27th, 2013 | Seekers of Adoulin Preliminary Update | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Seekers of Adoulin First Impressions As with all prior expansions, players had nightmares downloading this update. There were reports of players investing over 15 hours into downloading the update files via POL’s traditional means, which included over 50 failures between the “check files” phase and the “downloading” phase. Downloading a RAR or ZIP file of the update was almost essential to play the same day after server maintenance was finished. Besides the download nightmare, Ulbuka was exactly what level 99 players were hoping for: new zones, new battle content, new jobs, and new lore to indulge in. The new zones were particularly fun to explore. It did feel like you were “colonizing” an unexplored area. With the monsters being a challenge and have a sense of danger, you could not expect to just walk in with Perle gear and obliterate everything. The entire expansion felt fresh and exciting, something that FFXI was not able to achieve in quite a long time. Reives gave players a way to pass time while solo/grouping up with others outside of their party, even though jobs were unbalanced at first while participating in the content. EXP and Bayld rewards seemed to favor Melee damage upon first implementation. This was adjusted a week later because the developers “realized it was possible to attack more frequently than expected”. It was a disappointment that only a handful of missions were initially added, but it was expected with the developer’s track record for previous expansions. Mass confusion resulted from the convoluted time gate of the mission Life on the Frontier. The combination of Imprimaturs and Fame needed to progress left some players convinced that this was the end of the missions until the next update. Adoulin’s story was purposely made to be very heavily lore based. Throughout the years to come while missions were being implemented, bits of the story and art based around the characters of Adoulin were released on the official website at least once a month, sometimes more. Besides the lore heavy missions, there are many multiple part Questlines in Adoulin that have large stories of their own. These stories span longer than even the Add-on Scenarios. Exploring Ulbuka involved obtaining the Survival Skills to bypass the annoying corridors. Players could not figure out why they were “hitting the wall for 0 damage”, as Logging was not flat out explained to players. This would prove to be a frustrating and confusing experience for new adventures setting foot in Ulbuka for years to come. The fruit’s of the exploring adventurer’s labor came in the form of super convenient Waypoints. Such an easy way of transportation was never seen before in the game, but before Adoulin’s release the Proto-Waypoints were added to existing areas. This hinted that Waypoints would probably come to Ulbuka. The demand for Crystals and Clusters shot up, as they were the source of Kinetic Units used in transporting between Waypoints. New Jobs With the addition of another main tank job, Rune Fencer was enjoyed by many players. Petrified Logs skyrocketed due to them being needed for the Rune Fencer job quest. Some worlds saw the price increase to 1 million gil each. Rune Fencer was a very niche job upon first release. It was not a good tank, even though it was designed to be. It was also not a damage dealer, because it was designed to be a tank. It would take a few updates for developers to narrow down RUN to be the job they intended for it to be. Geomancer was predicted back during the days of Abyssea. The NPC Tian Tian in the Assault mission Lost and Found was supposed to be somehow related to Adoulin and Ulbuka, as well as the art of Geomancy. When Adoulin first released, the only places to obtain Indi plate scrolls were via vendors or Skirmish. As described below, hardly anyone did Skirmish. This left the vendors as the only source. Indi-Vex cost 504,000G, and Indi-Paralysis was 103,040G. According to Dengeki PlayStation Vol.541, p147, it seems that the developers assumed the magic would be plentiful in Skirmish and distributed at the Auction House, causing the price to stabilize. This did not happen until more updates down the road increased the Skirmish drop rate for segments as well as alternative methods to obtain the plates. In the interview, the response to the overpriced indi plates was “If you can’t wait for it, please clench your teeth and buy it [from the npc]”. Geomancy’s bubble effect caused massive lag for players with lower end systems. Developers had to scale back the effect, which made the bubbles even harder to see than they already were. The ability Cardinal Chant caused old Synthesis rumors to resurface about directional synthesis and if there was a significance or not. An interview in mid-2012, SE mentioned that RUN and GEO were not going to be placed on existing Ultimate Weapons. This did imply that they would have their own weapons later. The reasoning they were not added was that those weapons “were balanced around existing jobs”. This included the Kraken Club. Skirmish The skirmish content was first announced at VanaFest 2012. Basic information was provided, like how players were going to be able to set the difficulty, area size, rewards, and ability to enhance new equipment. It was also announced that settings could be changed by rearranging the statue parts that were obtained in various ways. Skirmish was introduced in FFXIV 1.0, so it is possible that the developers got the idea from there. Means of obtaining the segments, the low drop rate, high difficulty of the content itself, and low probability of good augments caused this content to be pretty much abandoned and forgotten. All Delve equipment surpassed Skirmish. Not to mention that Delve’s equipment had guaranteed statistics rather than the random augment needed for Skirmish weapons to be improved. Players often referred to Skirmish as “Adoulin’s Purgonorgo Isle”. It made no sense to Skirmish instead of Delve, and the content was dead a month after being added. Equipment At the time of Adoulin’s release, Item Levels were not yet introduced. Instead, developers used the term Content Level to refer to different events and equipment coming from those events. Regardless of that, the equipment added this update was very comparable to Level 99 HQ Abjuration gear. For instance, the Thurandaut Chapeau was on par with the Khepri Bonnet. The first version of the Tlalpoloani had more base damage than the Level 99 Spharai. When Skirmish augments started being discovered, players knew that REM weapons needed to be boosted to keep up. The new crafting rings were thought to come from Inside the Belly due to the Enmity and Defense Adjustments On February 18th, well before the update, A developer post was made on the official forums that discussed Enmity and how it is calculated. At this point in time, some said it was the most information ever disclosed to players from the developers on such a specific scale about game mechanics. This post closely resembled testing and information released by a player named Kaeko. This player’s findings were widely used at the time when discussing Enmity. It was neat to see their findings amost exactly matching information disclosed by the developers. The Defense adjustment was needed at this point to make tanking more relevant. Players were too used to the safety net that Atmas provided and lack of any required MP management. Old "hate tools" were balanced around level 50 game play values. With such powerful new equipment on the horizon, jobs could generate so much more hate via damage that the old tools became practically obsolete. Defense mattered now after this change. Before, it was hard to tell a difference with damage taken if defense was stacked. After this update, strange enmity issues arose around Pets and Avatars. Pets essentially generated no enmity. Garuda could perform a 4k attack, and the master could pull hate back from casting Aquaveil. This issue was later remedied. Twilight Scythe There were complaints on the JP forms that the Twilight Scythe was OP, but the reasoning they used was pretty dumb. The JP argument was basically that the scythe allowed DRK to bypass physical shields in ways that the job was never meant to be able to do. That's it... literally just a few people complained about something they didn't like, and SE caved in to the JP playerbase (as usual). The nerf happened because a few JP were upset that DRK was able to Weapon SKill through invincible (and the still relevant at the time) Cerberus boss on the second to last floor of Zhayolm Remnants II which had a damage reduction mechanic. Neither of these scenarios really matter anymore in this day and age. Twilight scythe didn't put out amazing numbers, and its damage wasn't higher than other options at the time. It just allowed DRK to tear through some bosses in a unique way that other jobs couldn't, and some people got butthurt over it. It was disclosed to players on March 15th that the Twilight Scythe would be changed to an enchantment instead of an effect that is always on the weapon. It is obvious that by them making this change, they admitted that it was a mistake to implement such a powerful weapon I the first place; and making it so easily accessible. The Murasamemaru had a similar effect, but it is much rarer, and the effect was only active during weapon skills.
Players absolutely did not want the Proc system added to Legion. It was enjoyable to have tough content instead of easily conquer monsters with procs. On the other hand, the change to Bhaflau Remnants was overdue. It was ridiculous to not see any NMs spawn from ramparts for 10+ runs at a time. The Embrava nerf was expected since it was already done in certain content in the game. This complete spell change was due to the potentially overpowering effects of stacking the old Embrava buffs with new Geomancer buffs. Not to mention Corsair and Bard. Yell changes This update gave birth to yell wars and trolling. Shout arguments were already a thing, but why not involve the entire world instead of a zone? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Mar. 28th, 2013 |  Square Enix Software Token Smartphone App Released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| As an alternative to the hardware token released years prior, Square-Enix developed their own free app to work with iOS and Android devices in lieu of the hardware token. This app was a great alternative for those worried about losing their token, or those worried about the battery dying.
Before the release of this App, players had to purchase a physical token to have access to this storage method. Although the software token was released on March 28th, access to the Mog Locker was not possible at first. Later, on May 13th, software token users could now have access to the Mog Locker if you enabled the software token on your account. Many players would download this app within the first few days of its release and then immediately deactivate it for the benefit. The Mog Satchel remains active indefinitely on accounts that do this. |
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| Apr. 1st, 2013 | Square-Enix Member Points for Subscription Fees | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| From this day, Square Enix members can now earn member points in accordance with their subscription fee paid. This amount took into consideration any additional characters that you paid for, and more points were earned depending on your total monthly subscription paid.
DQX Online and Final Fantasy XIV also grant member points. |
It appears that member points can only be earned on Japanese Square-Enix accounts. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 1st, 2013 | FFXI Premier Guide 2013 (Famitsu Strategy Guide) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Famitsu released their last strategy guide for FFXI. This book included details on 3,351 weapons, 6,133 pieces of armor, 678 food items, and 178 types of potions.
Vague items that the community were unable to test had details disclosed in this book. A few examples include:
These are only a few examples. A lot more information that players now have was from this book. |
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| Apr. 5th, 2013 | Second Double EXP Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The second Double Experience Points Campaign was held in celebration of the release of Seekers of Adoulin
The event ran for 72 hours again, like the last one. |
Nobody seemed to care about the event this time around, wondering how the last one got enough traction to warrant another iteration. EXP could be gained quickly now with the new events offered in Adoulin. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 7th, 2013 | “Rune Fencers & Geomancers” Twitter Event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Open to NA and EU players, a Twitter contest was held to showcase the two new jobs added to the game. Players were told to post a screenshot to Twitter showing them levelling the new jobs. The hashtags #FFXI and #GEO_RUN had to be used to enter, and the entry timeframe was from April 7th until April 14th.
Japanese players had their own Twitter contest that ran from April 1st thru April 7th. Their theme was “Adoulin” instead of specifically GEO/RUN. The prize was the same. |
The prize was a single, pitiful Copse Candy which granted a Leafkin costume. 111 posts were chosen to win.
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| Apr. 24th, 2013 | Feast of Swords 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: April 24th thru May 8th
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. |
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| Apr. 24th, 2013 | 1st “Bento Box” Decorating Event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To coincide with 2013’s Feast of Swords (also called Children’s Day), Japanese players had a real life event to decorate a キャラ弁 or Kyaraben. A bento box (弁当, bentō) is the Japanese iteration of a single-portion take-out, or home-packed meal. A Kyaraben refers to the contents of a bento that imitates characters such as manga, anime, or mechas such as cars or landscapes.
Naturally, players had to create Kyaraben in the style of FFXI. The event ran from April 24th until May 13th. Other players voted on their favorite entries on the official forum.
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All of the winners had incredibly creative entries. It is certainly worth looking at the winning entry thread here.
The first place winner is pictured below.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apr. 30th, 2013 | De~lve killed the R-E-M star | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Please do not throw it away.
Reactions to the new Delve Boss weapons:
With the release of Delve came the most powerful equipment added to the game since implementation. At the time, this was still a few months before the Item Level system was added to equipment. Considering this update was only the second update of Adoulin, nobody knew what to expect in the future. Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean weapons were stuck at level 99 strength. Upgrade materials (from HTMBs) were not yet implemented in the game. Planner Masaru Taniguchi, in a developer interview with Dengeki Playstation (Vol. 541), said the following: Q: What if ordinary weapons go beyond weapons such as relics and mythics, and they are no longer the strongest? A: Taniguchi: That’s right, they will not be the strongest in the future. Later, producer Matsui corrected the statement and said, “It will not be the strongest weapon, but I am thinking of a plan that will not waste the trouble of acquiring it, so please do not throw it away”. High performance equipment that surpassed REM weapons at the time continued to be implemented in future updates, one after another. The official forums were flooded with criticism such as “is it going to be a garbage weapon? I want to throw it away.” On May 9th, Matsui explained there was a plan to reforge REM weapons and the performance will be like Delve weapons. Example statistics for Excalibur and Burtgang were shown in this post. Players even questioned this statement. Why should they put so much time, effort, and money into a weapon when they can get an equivalent weapon as a drop? From April until November, most jobs did not use their ultimate weapons. It is not clear why the Trial of the Magians system was abandoned in favor of Oboro. Players enjoyed the tasks and it created great social interactions. Why couldn’t we continue to have 5-level incremental upgrades via Magians? Plutons/Riftborn Boulders/Beitetsus should have been implemented right away, and Delve should not have come out only a month after Seekers was introduced. There should have been more of a gradual introduction of higher Item Level gear. Making players wait seven months to upgrade their Ultimate Weapons was unacceptable. Many players were upset by the entire Delve equipment situation and decided to quit around this time, and anxiously awaited FFXIV:ARR’s release in August. The decision to add such powerful equipment in this way was regarded by many to be one of the worst choices that the developers have ever made. It was around this time that the “elitism” mindset of players who posted on BG forums changed. Suddenly, everybody was on the same playing field after Delve equipment became the goal. Everyone had access to the same equipment for the next six months. FFXIAH.com took over as the primary discussion location for FFXI. BG-Wiki would rise up and become the new to-go place for endgame information. Delve As mentioned above, all the equipment that was added to Delve was so much more powerful than everything previously in the game. Armor included. There was no test server update, and players were blindsided by the strength of this equipment. This update felt that FFXI was turning into a vertical progression model. Wildskeeper Reives and Skirmish equipment were now out of date, but Wildskeeper Reives remained a good stepping stone for players at 99 to get higher strength equipment to have a chance to contribute to Delve. The downside was that the Wildskeeper Reive fights sometimes lasted around 4 hours before the Delve update. Upon first release, all the Delve augmentable armor was It was neat that they added the ability to fight the individual Notorious Monsters via force spawn or choose to have a larger group and enter the fracture to fight all of them. While entering the fracture had a time limit of 45 minutes, there was no time limit set when force spawning the monsters in the field. The downside to popping in the field is that the NMs would become enraged if fought for more than 15 minutes. Prolonged fights frequently occurred while players tried to figure out each NM’s gimmick to defeating it. Because there was only one spawn point per NM, a large backup of groups waiting to fight the NM would often occur. The drop rate totally ruined this experience, however. Unlimited entry into the fracture was well received, unlike the old 15 minute repops of old Sky/Sea gods. Everyone loved being able to purchase gear with the key item, but the Plasm earned vs the cost of items ruined the longevity of the event. It was far too easy to buy items by just farming all day. This update may have been the birthplace of “minimum strength weapons” to join PuGs. This was what happened in WoW. Some players would /yell “Delve weapon DD only” to participate in Delve plasm farming. Yes, the weapons were strong, but if you suck, you'll still suck (you're just likely to suck less). Due to the extreme nature of new Delve weapons and no change to Elemental Magic, Black Mage was now left to the wayside in favor of melee jobs. On July 7th, equipment was introduced with “Magic Damage+” on it. This caused magic damage to increase by a set value, which caused Tier I and II spells to be more beneficial than the MP consumption and greater resist rate of higher tier spells. On May 9th an update was performed to change Delve behavior:
On May 31st, Ryota Iwagami (a developer) made a post on the official forum informing players of worldwide progress defeating the Delve bosses. The first group to beat a boss was on May 21st. As of the post, Tojil and Muyingwa were taken down. Dakuwaqa was not yet defeated. The party composition to defeat the two included GEO, RNG, SCH, and DRG. Iwagami said he was watching everything with a lot of interest to see the difference in strategy, and where emphasis was being placed on the fight. A neat glitch upon implementation allowed Galkas to be out of the Doom aura of the Aberrant Uragnite, yet far enough away from it to melee at the same time. We all knew Galka were fat. The weapon that players mainly focused on as a comparison to other weapons were the Oatixur from Tojil. Towards the end of the year after various adjustments, Monks became tanks as well as main DD. Eventually it became more efficient to enter Delve with support and a few Monks. Merit Weapon Skill Adjustments The strength adjustment per upgrade level was announced before this update on the official forums, and players were looking forward to this change. This allowed players to pick multiple weapon skills to unlock, rather than max only a couple of them all the way. This update was not a nerf. The upgrade tier changes were almost regarded as too good. Some weapon skills such as Exenterator became more powerful than others such as Evisceration with just one upgrade. When 1-Handed weapons were buffed later in the year, it became bonkers. Later after that things were scaled back, and[ [Exenterator]] went back into obsolescence. Enmity Adjustments This was the second big Enmity adjustment update. Players were getting fed up with these constant changes, but it was a necessary evil to get to the end goal that was in mind. If they wanted players to kill something quickly, they did not yet go far enough with enmity changes. Job Adjustments The notable adjustment here was Ranger’s Recycle buff and Scavenge buff. After this update, Ranger was not nearly as expensive of a job. Ammunition prices plummeted due to much less of a demand, and it was no longer a viable source of Gil for Woodworkers or Alchemists. Rune Fencer’s abilities had their timers greatly shortened, but the job still had problems mitigating physical damage. Gear did not offer enough protection to stay alive. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| May 16th, 2013 | Final Fantasy XI celebrates its 11th anniversary of service | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| On May 16, 2013, FINAL FANTASY XI celebrated its 11th anniversary of service. The main in-game celebration happened shortly after the anniversary date, but many more contests and special events were scheduled to take place throughout the year. New events were planned on or around the 11th of each month (JST, typically on the 10th in North America). These events consisted of in-game, as well as events on the official forums.
The 11th anniversary marked the beginning of the Repeat Login Campaign, starting in July 2013. All events will be detailed as this article continues. |
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| May 16th, 2013 | 11th Adventurer Appreciation Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Due to the pun of 11 years of service for FF11, the adventurer appreciation campaign was slightly larger than previous iterations. Many new items were implemented such as:
New for this year’s event many NPCs turned into moogles, and many new moogle npcs were added for the event itself. One of the events to obtain the HQ shields were to interact with all 8 Proctor Moogles in an area and pass their examination. Examinations are of various types including answering questions about Vana'diel geography, identifying locations, knowing monster strengths and weaknesses, etc. There were no penalties for answering incorrectly, you just had to re-take the exam. After completing all 8 questions in all three nations, players could speak to the Oblivious Adventurer located near the mog houses whi will ask questions about his recollections and a type of equipment he may hand out (club, headgear, or furnishing). He would then reward the player with one of those kinds of items you select. Items of note included: Nomad Moogle Rod, Redeyes, and Rolanberry Delightaru. |
 For unknown reasons, moogles placed for the event wore sunglasses.
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| May 16th, 2013 | “Let’s talk about memories of Vana’diel” contest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Japanese player only event was held on the official forums. This event was held from May 16th thru June 6th. Players had to download the “thought bubble” image to the right, and upload it along with artwork, a screenshot, or some other kind of text. The entry should have been about memories that adventurers had.
Rewards were like the North American player’s version of this contest (as explained later), but the structure was different. Rewards for this event were:
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| May 16th, 2013 | First Shield Design Contest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
To coincide with the 11th anniversary of Final Fantasy XI, a player shield design contest was held. One winning entry was chosen by the development and operation teams and was implemented into the game. NA, EU, and JP players all were able to enter the contest. Entries were accepted from May 16th until June 6th. Winners were announced on July 5th.
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The winning entries can be seen here.
The winning entry was implemented in the game and is called the Glinting Shield.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| May 16th, 2013 | 11th Vana’versary Mog Bonanza | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sales were from May 16th until June 27th. Results were announced on July 16th.
Note: See the 11th Vana'versary Mog Bonanza page for details on the event such as prizes and results. |
It was nice to see new prizes for Rank 4 & 5, but players were expecting Delve weapons to be in the bonanza. Instead, the Delve armor was added as a Rank 2 kupon. Additionally, they still did not learn from past bonanzas. For some reason they put empyrean +2 armor in as a Rank 2 selection. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| May 27th, 2013 | XI Years of Final Fantasy XI | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A trivia contest of sorts was held on the official forums for North American players. European players did not receive an exclusive event.
From May 27th thru June 7th, a trivia fact related to each year of Final Fantasy XI’s history was posted on the official forums. The question/fact required players to post a screenshot pertaining to that topic, along with their character name and world. Many of the required feats took some time and effort to accomplish. Additionally, the “Bonus Objective” reward was a new statue, compared to the previously obtainable statues for the grand prize. This caused players to take their time and get a good picture instead of a rushed one. Prizes included:
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Examples of the trivia/facts include:
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| May 31st, 2013 | Twice the Double Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A third Double Experience Points campaign was held in celebration of the 11th anniversary of service. During this event, Salvage plans were also doubled.
The event was like the last two, in that the duration was 72 hours. New to this event was double Experience Points for Adventuring Fellows. |
Too little, too late
Newly released Delve equipment greatly surpassed the statistics of anything obtainable from Salvage II. Players still anticipated that +1 versions of Salvage II equipment would be coming, so they stocked up on salvage plans from this event for that reason. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jun. 11th, 2013 | NPC Popularity Contest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A “contest” of sorts was held which included all players. A form was created for players to submit their favorite NPC in the game, and what story or quest they would like the NPC involved in. There was no reward or incentive for submitting an entry.
In retrospect, this could have been collected to show developers which NPCs to focus on for Trust magic that was implemented at the end of 2013. Winners were announced on August 15th.
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| Jun. 25th, 2013 | Celestial Nights 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: June 25th thru July 9th
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. |
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| Jun. 25th, 2013 | “Wish on a strip of paper” contest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| To coincide with the Celestial Nights 2013 event, a contest was help for Japanese players.
Players were asked to download one of three “bamboo strip” images (pictured to the right), each strip was colored and themed after one of the three nations. They had to write a wish on it, and then post it on the entry thread on the official forum. The example image to the right says “May you win first place in Mog Bonanza”. The reward for participating was only a Cracked Nut, but many people participated in this event due to the cultural significance. See the entry thread here if you wish to look at the entries. Tanabata (or 七夕) is a southeast Asian festival part of the larger festival called Obon. Nationwide, it is common practice to write a wish on a strip of paper and decorate it with bamboo leaves. The custom of decorating strips of paper on bamboo grass began in the Edo period. |
   
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| Jun. 27th, 2013 | Square-Enix Member Avatar x Final Fantasy XI event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| During the event period of June 27th thru September 18th, a crossover event was held for Japanese players. This event was with the Japanese-only Square-Enix Member Avatar service which was part of the Square-Enix Members system.
If you had all six of the original FFXI job’s Artifact Armor outfits and all six head armor pieces placed within your “member closet” for your avatar, you were emailed two Campaign Codes to redeem for the Korrigan Beret and an Anniversary Ring. A total of 3,660 Crysta was required to purchase and arrange the required digital items. |
 This service was like today’s “Bitmoji” where you could customize a digital avatar. Naturally, most of the clothing was from Square-Enix IP. This portion of the Square-Enix Member account service ended on March 29th, 2018. Square-Enix Members is still an ongoing service. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jun. 30th, 2013 | Nanaa Mihgo’s live performance at JAPAN Game Music Festival 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 The band Nanaa Mihgo’s performed at the JAPAN Game Music Festival 2013 starting at 3:00PM. The venue was the Zepp Tokyo. Even though the festival was June 29th and 30th, Nanaa Mihgos only performed on June 30th. Like before, the members of the band were:
The songs played were the following:
Yoji Fujito was also present at this concert. He posted a report on the official forums, including pictures of the performance. The post and pictures can be seen here. Four pictures posted in the link above are also posted on the right. In early 2022, the entire mall that Zepp Tokyo was part of (Palette Town) closed because of a massive redevelopment plan happening in Odaiba. |
 
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| Jul. 9th, 2013 | The Great 1-handed Weapon Buff | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
One-Handed Weapons
Ranged Weapons
Hand-to-Hand
Interesting fixed issues
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Delve Updates
Delve’s difficulty was not adjusted this update. Instead, developers wanted players to continue to try and overcome the difficulty settings for each boss. Matsui posted on June 25th that they continuously check on how Delve boss battles go each day, and that they are OK with players using strategies that involve Stun. He also reported that Tojil had a significantly higher rate of defeat than the other two thanks to strategies involving Stun. Information was disclosed about the states of glowing that the NMs go into and provided a hint that knowing how to break that state would help players emerge victorious. This update intentionally made it easier to re-challenge the foes rather than reduce their strength. This was done by lowering the cost of entry. Around this time, a post was made by developers that told fans to “Please bring adventurers who have yet to experience the content!”. This caused a lot of outroar in the English community. On one hand, players said that it is Square-Enix’s fault for releasing multi-level content too quickly alongside new jobs that many players focused on. The other hand saw players not paying attention to the “suggested progression tiers”, and instead skipping directly to Delve for all the best gear. The third hand? Seekers zones were pretty useless for progression... Reives felt like a downgrade from Campaign. Wildskeeper Reives could drag on for hours. Outdoor Delve NMs were not worth doing for drops, only for Plasm or clears. This left full Delve runs. Reive Adjustments Beginning with this version update, the reward for defeating a Colonization Reive was a fixed value of 700 EXP and 700 Bayld. With the further change of narrowing aggression in this update, it caused players to neglect reives. All you needed to do was place your character at the edge of a reive and AFK. You would get the completion benefit without touching any monsters or the blockage. In addition to EXP/Bayld, you could also receive completion credit for Coalition Assignments. Japanese players referred to this as “Reive Neglecting”. It was most prominent in Ceizak Battlegrounds due to the close proximity of Adoulin. No official opinion was expressed from developers whether this act was against the terms of service. Rules were expressed in the past regarding summoners gaining EXP in Abyssea on Chigoes. It seemed that Square-Enix was inconsistent with what they viewed as a rule violation. The adjustments to Reive difficulty caused them to become much more manageable. This allowed players to begin soloing them rather than having to group up. This was perfect timing for the new JSE cape introduction. The Reive JSE Capes were added in this update. While looking at the .DAT mining threads the clear winner was Samurai with Store TP+10, but all the capes targeted jobs perfectly. There was some type of use out of every single cape, even though some were clear winners over others. Initially these capes were GEO/RUN Adjustments There was disappointment surrounding some of the merit categories added for GEO and RUN. The GEO recast time made sense but was super vanilla, and the GEO Group 2 traits seemed totally useless. RUN was slowly coming into its own, but at this time there were issues with defense. These merits allowed players to now spam foil and flash for tons of hate… and then die. Players were comparing it to this expansion’s PUP. Skill+ on Weapons?  This was the first update that introduced a large amount of “Skill+” on weapons. Due to the wording being incredibly similar to other “combat skill+” or “magic skill+” gear, players assumed it was a straight increase. Because of the random number “188”, many players thought it was a glitch in the tools used to .DAT mine update files. Lack of communication on Square-Enix’s part did not help the confusion. It would have also been better to have the wording slightly altered… Matsui released a post discussing the stats and what they are. It was clearly stated that these skills are not the same as combat and magic skills that were received under Item Level 100. They were added so that if Accuracy+ and Attack+ were adjusted, the adjustment would not conflict with dual wielding. Accuracy+ and Attack+ would always apply to sub weapons, so if they continued to add a lot of each to future weapons, Dual Wielding would always become the best choice. This also was the case if they were to adjust one or two handed weapons. Moving forward, rather than adding Accuracy+ (or RAcc+) and Attack+ (or RAtt+) to weapons, they will be favoring the “Combat Skill+” statistic based on the Item Level of the weapon in question. Additionally, for hand-to-hand weapons, since the DMG value rises with increasing skill+, the DMG rating itself was reduced slightly. The final calculated DMG was not impacted. Elemental Magic and Magic Damage With the alterations to the Elemental Magic formula added with Magic Damage, it became much more beneficial to spam Tier 1 and Tier 2 spells rather than large nukes. This also caused MP to no longer be a concern if this was done repeatedly. Black Mages were able to easily solo Colonization Reives while remaining out of harm’s way, so that was the go-to method for JSE cape farming. You would now see many solo Black Mages running around in Marjami Ravine while nuking their hearts out. On the other hand, this is the update where Magic Evasion on equipment could begin to be significantly stacked. We did not yet have armor with beefy magic evasion, but it was a start. Yorcia Weald No longer was Yuhtunga Jungle the king of mazes. Yorcia Weald was a complete clusterfuck to navigate. The map was virtually useless, and to make things worse it was not properly aligned in-game. Looking closely, you could see paths existed on the map, but character markers were not aligned where they should have been. The timed obstructing bushes caused even more confusion. On a positive note, the BGM amazing. Yorcia Weald felt like a classic Final Fantasy dungeon maze due to how confusing it was to navigate. The atmosphere was perfect and felt like a completely unique zone. Even though many players complained of the useless map and getting lost, that is the perfect definition of a “Weald”! “a heavily wooded area” or “a wild or uncultivated usually upland region”. It is obvious from a lore standpoint that this area was supposed to be an unexplored part of Ulbuka. Yumcax was a death fest, but the drops were highly desired. It quickly turned into the longest of all Wildskeeper Reives. Avatars & Pets Now that Pets and Avatars could level beyond 99, massive damage was able to be done with offensive attacks. Beastmaster and Summoner were new META DD jobs in many instances. Avatars observed an increase in damage from 1300~1900 without a sash, up to 3500~4000 with one equipped. Testing revealed that this much of an increase gave avatars +70 INT. Beastmaster enjoyed the benefits of very powerful jug pets based on their main hand weapon’s Item Level. Because of their large amount of HP and the expendable nature of pets, this update paved the way for Pet zergs in a lot of content. Mog Garden Besides the awkwardness of seeing yells on your “secluded island”, the Garden gave players another daily task to do. Monster Rearing was not implemented until later, so the Garden felt like Abyssea Gold Pyxis 2.0. Many craftable items came from the Garden, and these helped stock Auction Houses immensely. It was a more friendly system than the old Mog House Gardening was, but many players did not see a point in it and neglected the entire system. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jul. 11th, 2013 | First Eleventh Vana’versary Continuous Login Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The first login campaign debuted in July of 2013. When it was first announced nobody expected the login campaign to be a continuous, monthly feature of FFXI. This campaign evolved over time to what it is today, but the first versions had needlessly complicated point accruing benchmarks:
The rewards for the first campaign were very promising: Statue Furnishings, Sea pops, Sky pops, Ark weapons, and even Behemoth/Fafnir/Adamantoise pop items. The king pop items were hyped mainly for Black Belt items and a slight chance at a Defending Ring. Date: Jul. 11th-Jul. 31st Featured Item: Chocobo Masque/Chocobo Masque +1 Complete exchange list: can be seen here |
 The first login campaign was very well received amongst the player base. In 2013, many items could not be delivered to main accounts. It was not yet popular to have mules dedicated to logging in every day for points. It would become more mainstream after the Savory Shank became available monthly. Daily Active Users is relatively new or neo logistic in nature, that became important with the rise of the commercialized internet, with uses in communication and social networking. Adding a reason to have players log in every day was a great idea to continue to show shareholders that Final Fantasy XI was still an active and healthy source of revenue that can concurrently operate alongside the up and coming Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jul. 13th, 2013 | 9 hr+ Maintenance | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| On this day, there was an emergency maintenance conducted with only a 10-minute warning that the servers were going down. After multiple maintenance extension warnings, it was later disclosed that the issue was unintended items were dropping from Horlais Peak BCNMs, and unintended items were being procured within the Mog Garden. The maintenance ended up being over 9 hours long.
Players cleverly used ffxidb.com to look up the drops from NMs that spawn in Horlais Peak. Drops included the following items:
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At the time these items were dropping, nobody knew why or what caused this issue to happen. Later in October, the first iteration of the Additional Seal Battlefield Spoils Campaign was held. These same items dropped from this BCNM as well as others during the campaign period, so it was clear that this event was implemented in the July 2013 version update, and it must have been on by default. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jul. 19th, 2013 | Summertime Comic Creation Contest | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Open to North American players was the Comic Creation Contest. This contest had players take four screen shots, upload them and post them with a caption to essentially make a 4-panel short comic story. The topic was based around sunshine and the summer.
Five grand prize winners chosen by the community team received an Atomos Statue. All participants received one Cracked Nut. The entries are entertaining to read. If you are interested in looking at them, the forum thread can be found here. |
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| Jul. 31st, 2013 | Discontinuation of ClickandBuy payment option | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ClickandBuy was no longer accepted as a form of payment. Most players had issues registering their payment cards with this service, notably players who had international forms of payment. Issues went back to the beginning of the FFXI service. | The nickname this company had amongst the FFXI playerbase was ClickandFail. The company was shut down in 2016. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 6th, 2013 | Monstrosity Update | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Forefront & Bayld Equipment
Given the ease of acquiring this new equipment, it became the first step for fresh Level 99 players. These items effectively allowed you to skip from Level 99 to “Level 106”. It allowed the first three Wildskeeper Reives to be more trivial, and gave a jump start to Delve Tier 1-3 bosses. In particular, players were impressed how much HP and MP these pieces gave after augmenting them. Skirmish Tier 1 was all but forgotten now. Item Level Equipment Many of the existing pieces of armor had statistics enhanced to better differentiate their Item Level strength and differences. This update is when “Stat Barf” became a term because the idea behind Item Level is to effectively raise a character to levels above 99. Before this update, Item Level equipment did not give all base statistics and they were only given typical increases to stats that benefited a job. Now, all base stats are on armor that is Item Level 100 or higher. This included STR, AGI, VIT, etc.for mages and INT, MND, CHR, etc. for melee. Many FFXI players never thought Item Level would be in the game. It was first seen in WoW and mocked at by the XI community. While the rollout was very messy it turned out to be well received when it came to fruition. GEO and RUN Artifact RUN Artifact Armor had no Accuracy and no Enmity on it. Most of the pieces turned into macro swaps. Particularly the Artifact Weapon was significant because it was Item Level tier. GEO was treated very nicely compared to RUN. It was a huge surprise that Movement Speed was placed on the AF Feet. Monstrosity The play as a monster system was finally implemented in this version update. It was a wonderful breath of fresh air added to FFXI, and it felt like you were playing an entirely different game. The only downside was that it choked on the motivation component. Levelling species for the novelty was fun, but there wasn’t anything useful to get from doing so. It was a shame that the entire Monstrosity system did not blend further into regular play. How fun would it have been to alter boss fights by changing the difficulty? Imagine morphing into the boss you just popped and destroying your fellow linkshell members by spamming that high damage move? Ninja and Utsusemi Even if they tried throwing Ninja a bone, it did not help much. Attacks from most SoA NMs were AoE/TP which just wiped shadows anyway. It did not seem that Ninja tank would return. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 6th, 2013 | The Fantastic Fraulein Mumor Superheroine Stage Show:
Performers from Another Land | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Mumor event returned between August 6th and August 27th.
There were changes made to the event itself and to the targets that players needed to use emotes towards. Other than that, no new equipment was added this year. A bonus could be obtained from syncing your dances appropriately if you wore correct outfits. |
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| Aug. 11th, 2013 | Repeat Login Campaign #2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The unique item for this login campaign was the Chocobo Suit/+1. Players really liked this suit and were anxious to get it. It was very different than other armor added in the game so far. The suit matched the chocobo masque item added in the previous login campaign. Other than the suit, some seeds were added for 10 points. Also the Glinting Shield was added for 10 points.
Month: August 2013
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| Aug. 11th, 2013 | 11th Vana’versary Abyssea and Atma Axtravaganza | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The first Abyssea campaign ran for two months - August 11th until October 11th. This campaign gave players five different things:
This campaign ended up being permanently placed in the Monthly Adventurer Campaign rotation, and usually runs once or twice a year now. |
 Players were excited to receive the Atmas because they were still rather difficult to obtain in 2013. Otherwise, not many people didn’t already have Abyssea. This campaign was obviously targeting players who were returning to the game. At the same time, Abyssea was still rather difficult to understand and do on your own at this time. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 11th, 2013 | Vana TV ☆ Festival 2013 (ヴァナTV☆フェスティバル2013) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A four-hour video broadcast was streamed live on NicoNico from 10PM-2AM JST, following the radio Nanaa Mihgo broadcast. Again, this broadcast was sponsored by Alienware. The theme was “Festival”. Many events were shown, these include:
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 The video broadcast can be watched on this youtube playlist. Since this event immediately followed the Nanaa Mihgo’s live podcast, it was a total of 6 hours across both events. Unlike the Vana ★ Festival events, this event’s star ☆ was not filled in and instead hollow. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 20th, 2013 | Skirmish v2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Roadmaps? Where we are going, there are no Roadmaps.
The reasoning behind no longer releasing a year long roadmap was to avoid delays and disappointments. They dropped it to six-month roadmaps instead. With this update’s portion being delayed from previously scheduled dates, they could not even follow a two-month roadmap without getting it wrong. Any future roadmaps were completely unbelievable. Skirmish v2 Rather than niche uses, Black Mage worked well in this version of Skirmish. The same could be said for GEO, SCH, BLU, and to a lesser extent, RDM. The event was much easier than Skirmish v1. The base statistics on the new Skirmish armor were good by themselves and adding augments to the equipment made them even better. The armor was received much better than the first round of Skirmish equipment, which was basically ignored. Players did participate on a regular basis due to the armor being very good. Base weapons were inferior to Delve Boss pieces, but if you received a lucky augment they could be almost on par with them. They got attention from players who were reluctant to try Delve. Because of the attention Skirmish got (and increased drops), the prices of Indi spells declined. The Augment stones, especially the +2 versions, ran for almost a million gil each. This lasted until the Augment paths were figured out. The stones that gave desired augments remained costly while the rest fell drastically. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Aug. 22nd, 2013 | Discussion of the New UI resurrected | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Before Tanaka… “left”, he unveiled a new User Interface that was supposed to be implemented within Final Fantasy XI. This interface was designed to improve the aesthetic of the game, and make it feel more modern for the time. The best part of the proposed UI that Tanaka mentioned involved manipulating the layout of the overlay windows and move them to wherever the player wanted. Additionally, it was stated that the GUI scripts would be announced for players to design their own interface features.
On August 22nd, 2013, developers made a post on the official POL website with a link to the new UI which showed off screenshots of the new menus. The UI was even worse than what any kind of fan made .DAT mods offered to improve what we already had. Even though the menus were like what was already in the game, they somehow managed to make them much more complicated. Everything felt very cluttered, and overall, the new UI looked like an old school DOS program. It seemed like they were trying to make FFXI feel more like FFXIV:ARR, which was to release the next day. Draggable windows and timers on macros were a big part of that game. This new UI was available on the test server for a period of time. A few years later during the Reddit AMA, it was disclosed that the development of this UI was paused without notice for development to focus on Rhapsodies of Vana’diel. As of May 2022, there is still no word about the fate of this UI. |
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| Aug. 23rd, 2013 | Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A Realm Reborn has now released. Many players were frustrated at the development choices of Square-Enix and FFXI. Many players switched gear and picked up XIV. It was soon realized that XI and XIV:ARR could co-exist together as totally different experiences, and it was no longer Tanaka’s “XI-2”. Many players would leave XI and have their full attention dedicated to XIV. Some would play both, but many continued to be dedicated to XI. Due to how easy it was to pick up and get into XIV without much of a time investment, it would become Square-Enix’s new flagship MMORPG and thrive for years to come. This would push XI to the wayside and it was no longer Square-Enix’s focus.
With major upcoming changes to XI such as Trusts and Home Point warps, players would continue to realize that the XI that they knew and loved has started to evolve more than passing the 75 cap. It would take years of quality-of-life updates to see the vision Matsui had in mind to modernize the experience of FFXI. It was around this time that players started wishing for legacy 75-cap servers. Player run private servers would start to come and go for years to come, attempting to re-create the Final Fantasy XI we all fell in love with. |
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| Sep. 11th, 2013 | Nanaa Mihgo’s “Stolen Hearts” Album Released | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Due to the well-received reception of the Nanaa Mihgo’s band at their live performances, an album was released featuring the following 8 songs. The sale price was 2,800 yen.
The first print of the disk featured a Campaign Code to redeem for the Nanaa Mihgo Statue. |
The entire album can be heard on soundcloud here.
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| Sep. 11th, 2013 | Square Enix LEGEND WORLD x Final Fantasy XI event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| This crossover event added nothing to Final Fantasy XI itself. The crossover only added Shadow Lord into the browser-based game LEGEND WORLD. This game was part of the Square Enix Members Avatar feature for Japanese Square Enix Members. As mentioned earlier, the Members Avatar service ended on March 29th, 2018.
LEGEND WORLD was a browser-based Flash type game where your avatar was plopped into a point and click browser-based game. This was like how Miis could be used in some Nintendo Wii games. The game took assets and music from almost all other Final Fantasy games, and you were pit against popular boss fights. Footage of the game can be seen here on youtube. |
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| Sep. 11th, 2013 | Repeat Login Campaign #3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| One of the best statues, the Goobbue Statue was first added in this campaign. It reproduced the scene in one of the very first game trailers where a Goobbue is eating a Mandragora. Additionally, the Cardian Statue was also available for the first time. The Cardian Statue was added back in May 2012 to the game files, but this was the first time it was available. The Chocobo Masque +1 came back for those who missed it, but to receive the +1 version you needed to spend 20 total logins on two copies of it. Players were disappointed that enough points could not be accumulated to purchase both new statues as well as the Masque +1 if it was missed.
Month: September 2013
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| Sep. 12th, 2013 | Blazing Buffalos 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: September 12th thru September 26th.
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. |
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| Sep. 19th, 2013 | FFXI “Appearance” at TGS 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Final Fantasy XI made an appearance (if you want to even call it that) at Tokyo Game Show 2013 alongside DQX and FFXIV. FFXI was incredibly overshadowed by the announcement that FFXIV was coming to Playstation 4 soon. Square-Enix’s focus was on the FFX/FFX-2 HD Remaster and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
On September 21st, Matsui was on a panel with Yosuke Saito and Naoki Yoshida. This panel was only 50 minutes long, and nothing of significance was discussed about FFXI. Along with a quick little trailer of the opening cinematic, this whole appearance seemed like it was just to remind people that FFXI still existed. |
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| Oct. 8th, 2013 | Quality of Life Updates | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Quality of Life Updates
Mog Case - Almost the entire update was overshadowed by the new Mog Case. Inventory woes started to become intense after Skirmish v2 and Delve, since there were so many pieces that were beneficial to players. The Mog Wardrobes were not yet released. Window Effect – Turning the window effect off took some getting used to, but once you turn it back on it was a crazy difference how much faster menu navigation was. A (perhaps, unintended?) perk was that this made Synergy much easier. Some recipes that took two people to feed element alignments could now be done alone. Multi-page Gear – This was the update where Login Screen Config – Before this update the login screen music could not be adjusted. Naturally, by default the music was always set to maximum. With the new Config button on the login screen, this could now be lowered or turned off completely. It was infamous to be on Ventrillo or Teamspeak with your linkshell when logging in or switching to a mule, and their login screen music would be blasting in the background. If you used speakers, you would need to use the mute button while logging in or switching characters. If you used earbuds, you would destroy your eardrums if you didn’t take them out.
Delivery Box - The ability to send items from your Mog House was one of the greatest quality of life improvements in quite some time. The main use that players wanted this for was to send equipment more easily to mules. If your Moogle could warp his ass back home to check your plants, why couldn’t he have been bothered to stop at the delivery box on the way back? Job Adjustments All job adjustments made in this update continued to pave the road to Matsui’s vision of the Item Level era. All of the jobs that were boosted by having item levels in main slots just made them better. Because of the constant Item Level changes in every update, it is hard to get a player’s perspective between each change. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 11th, 2013 | Vana’diel Tribune III Debut | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Vana'diel Tribune III was the third installment of an online newspaper that was set within the world of Vana'diel. It should be noted that it often broke the fourth wall (i.e., acknowledging its audience as the players of FFXI and not citizens of Vana'diel) and cannot completely be considered canon.
Six articles were released in Japanese to commemorate the 11th Vana'versary of Final Fantasy XI. Even though no official end was announced, it is safe to assume that no further articles will be released. All of these articles were released only in Japanese and focused around the new Adoulin expansion. |
 A new article was released on the 11th each month from October 2013 thru March 2014. In total it resulted in six articles. Links to each of the entries can be found on the Vana'diel Tribune III page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 11th, 2013 | Collaboration with ARTNIA Cafe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A survey event was held from June 11th until July 2nd, and it involved a questionnaire for SE Account members to fill out. The topic was “Vana’diel sweets you want to eat!”. Players needed to think up a new dessert item they would like to see in Vana’diel, as well as eat in real life.
The survey questions included:
Players could submit up to three selections. The development and operations team picked two of their favorites, and one was implemented in the game. The synthesis recipe may have been altered slightly based on the game’s economy and ingredients. The winning entry was the Fruit Parfait, submitted by Hula of Sylph.
 ARTNIA is an official shop of Square-Enix. The grand opening was celebrated on December 22nd, 2012. It’s operation is located on the premises of Shinjuku Eastside Square, which is the same area as the Square-Enix headquarters building. The shop sells goods related to Square-Enix games, and it has a café and bar inside. The name is a coined word of ART + AREA + NEAR, and it has the idea of “a place that acts as a bridge between customers and goods”. The shop changed themes every 2-3 months, always rotating to a different Square-Enix game or franchise. The shop is still running to this day. It is an extravagant place, and I highly recommend going there if you visit the Tokyo area. The official website is here.  |
The following items were available at ARTNIA during the collaboration with Final Fantasy XI. The event ran from October 11th, 2013 until November 10th, 2013.
This is what the real-life version of the Fruit Parfait looked like that was created and sold at ARTNIA  A gorgeous fruit parfait with a "crown" motif, featuring five types of fruits: kazham pineapple (pineapple), fairy apple (apple), saruta orange (orange), pamamas (banana), and yagudo cherry (cherry). Sale price: 980 yen The runner up entry was the Loran Pancakes created by White Chocobo of Leviathan. This item was not created in the game, but it was made into a dish served at ARNIA  A luxurious pancake with plenty of loran berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries). The cute Moogle brand of "FINAL FANTASY XI" is branded. Sale price: 980 yen A drink called the Shadow Lord was also released during this collaboration. There was an alcoholic version (below on the right) as well as a non-alcoholic version (below on the left). The price was 630 yen for non-alcoholic, and 840 yen for alcoholic.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 11th, 2013 | Final Fantasy XI merchandise at ARTNIA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Alongside the food products above, ARTNIA had a few other pieces of merchandise to buy in the shop from October 11th to November 10th, 2013. These items were limited edition and were only available during this time.
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If you ordered a hot drink from the café, you had the option to have a moogle drawn in your latte foam.
 Although not for sale, during the event an exhibition was available to see where original drawings from illustrator Mitsuhiro Arita, who drew many FFXI pieces, were displayed in the shop. The exhibition included a wide range of illusrations, from the nostalgic pieces featured in Vana'diel Tribune II all the way to the latest illustrations used in Seekers of Adoulin. Some examples of this art can be seen below.    | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 11th, 2013 | Repeat Login Campaign #4 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The new featured item this month was the Bomb Masque/+1. The Chocobo Suit/+1 came back for players who missed it the first time. The price of both items was lowered to 1,500 points each rather than 2,000. A player still could not earn both +1 versions in the same month, though.
Month: October 2013
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| Oct. 11th, 2013 | Another 3-Day Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| From Oct 11th – Oct 14th, another three-day only campaign was held.
Like last time, Double Experience Points returned. Monstrosity was not affected by this campaign. Two campaigns made a debut, this included an increased BC Seal exchange rate at 2:1 instead of 3:1. The new Additional Seal Battlefield Spoils Campaign was first run at this time too. |
Reception
This was the first time that Kupon I-Seal was easily available to players. The BCNMs were trivial to solo, and many players burned their stock of seals. This kupon saves a lot of time farming Abyssea. It allows players to obtain Empyrean Armor +1 very easily. Every time this campaign returned in the future, it was recommended for new or returning players to take advantage of it specifically for these seals. The orb battlefields caused prices of scrolls to completely floor. One example was on Bahamut, Phalanx dropped from 3 million to 90k gil overnight. Arise and Meteor were also drops from this campaign, and they saw price declines too. As far as crafting items, the Scarletite Ingot used to be a big money drop but dropped in price from this campaign. Players were still interested in the level 99 -1 hexed items. Even though Delve and Skirmish outdated most of the gear, there were still some pieces that were good to use at the time. Players were disappointed that Monstrosity was exempt from the advantage of double EXP. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oct. 18th, 2013 | Harvest Festival 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: October 18th thru November 1st.
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. |
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| Nov. 5th, 2013 | Freshly Picked Vana’diel #01 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 English players left in the dust The first iteration of Freshly Picked Vana’diel was aired on this day via Youtube Live. The broadcasts always had/have Producer Matsui and Director Fujito, along with Mocchi acting as a host. The show would eventually air on both YouTube and NicoNico. The show featured a deep dive into the upcoming version update. It would air on regular occurrence, but it is only in Japanese. At first, the broadcast was monthly. It usually took place a day before the version update, but sometimes was a couple days before depending on the weekend. Eventually Freshly Picked became a bi-monthly event in which they summarize the next two months of updates and even show off some upcoming gear. The hashtag #mogivana was used on Twitter for viewers to comment on the stream, and sometimes the hosts would read comments and answer questions from Twitter for those who tweet with the hashtag. Even though the Freshly Picked is translated to English in summarized form, the translation always came 1-2 weeks after the Version Update which rendered the information generally useless. Sometimes tidbits of information (such as game secrets) proved useful, but for the most part English players were always left out. Matsui tried to do his best by giving everyone a version update summary around a week before updates hit… but the Freshly Picked always had vast details not in the version update summary or even translated later. Freshly Picked would continue to run well past the game’s 20th anniversary, and English players always made it a point to do their best to translate the contents for all players to stay informed. |
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| Nov. 5th, 2013 | Ultimate Weapons Return | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Ultimate Weapons
The entire goal that developers had in mind with Ultimate Weapons was to make them “comparable to Delve boss weapons”. Although for the most part this goal was finally met, the elephant in the room remained: Why go through the difficulty of getting an RME and upgrade it when a Delve weapon can simply drop and be used immediately? Most Item Level 119 Ultimate Weapons had less base damage than Delve boss weapons. The reasoning was that “Aftermath will make up for it” and “they get unique weapon skills”. It was pointed out that the power of these abilities was insufficient compared to some Delve weapons. There was a large disparity between weapon types. Surprising everybody, the upgrade items were not Excalibur wielders always had an issue receiving en-spells, as they overwrote Excalibur’s massive additional effect damage. It was finally addressed in this update so that this didn’t happen anymore. It was said that this was not done already because “lol too broken”. Additionally, Item Level Nirvana now gave Avatar Level +2. This effect stacks on all other Item Level+ equipment, so it made the Nirvana highly desirable for career Summoners. SKCNMs With the creation of SKCNM fights came recycled Level 75 era content, but with an Item Level era twist. This would be the first of many “Rehashed” pieces of content we will see make a comeback in an Adoulin era world. While some players voice opinions that it was “lazy and uncreative” to use age old ideas, it did offer quite a feel of nostalgia to be re-challenging the old BCNMs that many veterans grew up with. Sacred Kindred Crests were hard to come by. It took well over an hour to obtain enough seals for one Orb. Reforged Artifact Armor It was clear that most of the Reforged Artifact Armor caused developers to rethink each piece’s usefulness. Not all of them became full-time material, but they added a lot of unique and interesting stats that we did not think we would see. As an example, Warlock's Gloves had DEX and Parry Skill on it, but the Item Level 109 version added “Increases enhancing magic effect duration”. Many reforged pieces tailored nicely to each job’s utility, and at least became great macro pieces. The ability to skip Artifact Armor +1 and go straight to Item Level 109 was a nice perk as well as surprising. Limbus would have been clogged up with players frantically trying to upgrade their armor to 109. This would have caused a time gate that nobody would want to deal with. New SPs The new SP abilities were implemented onto the test server for players to see before the update rolled out. Players first assumed both SP abilities would share a timer. For the most part they were not anything to write home about, with the exception of a few: PLD, DRG, SMN, and DNC seemed the best on the test server. The usefulness of many, such as Stymie, would not be seen until more content was released. Bard’s Clarion Call was very impressive, but this was the age before song buffs. It was hard to find a worthwhile fourth/fifth song to place on your party. At first, players did not realize that the song given with the ability did not wear off if you kept the buff active. After it was discovered quickly on the live servers the ability had a second thought given to it. Summoner was not yet used for zerg fights. Astral Conduit’s first use came in the form of Stun locking with Ramuh rather than a DD ability. Empyrean Weapon Skills The idea behind unlocking the Empyrean Weapon Skills was given to the developers from feedback on the official forums regarding the future of Ultimate Weapons after Delve’s release. Walk of Echoes became a popular place as adventurers flocked to farm materials to unlock their weapon skills. Players began thinking about how many new skillchains they could make with access to these powerful new weapon skills on their upgraded Ultimate Weapons. Now that players were spoiled with some much better weapon skills, discussion around buffing Relic Weapon Skills started to resurface in order to compare. Survival Guides The change to Survival Guides was not what we have today. This was simply a way to teleport directly between outposts instead of having to first go back to town. Survival Guide teleportation would be added later. Maps Changed as a quality-of-life update targeted towards new players, all Magical Maps were added as purchasable via NPCs. Some maps were only obtainable via completing Quests. In particular, the Map of the Crawlers' Nest was from the Quest An Explorer's Footsteps. This quest was notoriously difficult to complete back when it was released in 2002. The quest was changed in the November 2002 update to not require the Batallia Downs or Sauromugue Champaign stone monuments to be examined. You needed to trek through The Eldieme Necropolis and Garlaige Citadel, both of which could not be done alone. Regardless of the change above, it was still a very rare map to have until it became purchasable via NPCs in this update. While we are on the topic about Final Fantasy XI maps, why not a completely off the wall fun fact? In June/July of 2007, the Disney Ambassador Hotel in Tokyo used the border design found on FFXI maps on one of their event pages. There was an advertisement for an event called “Pirates Taste Treasure” where the poster advertised a special menu with a pirate themed event at the resort in honor of Pirates of the Caribbean. What was peculiar was the edge of the poster. Looking closely, you can see the map-like bindings, numbers, and alphabet that resembled a Final Fantasy XI map. Japanese players immediately recognized the familiarity of the advertisement and took to 2chan to rant about the plagiarism by Disney. Oriental Land, a parent company of Disney in Japan, apologized on the Disney Ambassador Hotel website on July 31st, 2007. The image in question is below. An actual in-game map was overlayed for comparison. The image used on the Disney website is in the background.
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| Nov. 11th, 2013 | Final Fantasy XI XIth Anniversary Keyboard released by Hori | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A luxury keyboard was released by Hori in Japan in commemoration of the 11th anniversary of Final Fantasy XI. The FFXI original font is used on the keys, and a Moogle face is used as the Enter key. The keyboard used Topre’s “REALFORCE” technology, so it had high end performance at the time for a keyboard. It came with an original design cleaning cloth cover, and the keyboard retailed for 27,800 Yen. At the time, it was around $278 USD. This continued to be the price rate of other Realforce keyboards made by Topre, so it wasn’t overpriced due to branding.
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| Nov. 11th, 2013 | Eleventh Anniversary Special Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eleven campaigns were held on November 11th – November 25th. Even though at this point the campaigns did not have these official names, for simplicity they will be called what they are today. The campaigns themselves remained largely unchanged since this time, except for the Mog Garden. These campaigns were:
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 Double Synthesis Skill Up Campaign By far, the most discussed (and perhaps controversial?) campaign during this time was the Double Synthesis skill campaign. Many players were unhappy with such a handout. Many players took advantage of levelling sub crafts, as well as their main crafts during the campaign. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nov. 11th, 2013 | Nanaa Mihgo’s LIVE “FINAL FANTASY XI: XI YEARS -Stolen Hearts- 2013.11.11” Concert | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The concert was held at the venue called Akasaka Blitz. On September 22, 2020, the venue was permanently shut down due to COVID-19. Tickets were 6,000 yen each, and an additional required drink fee of 500 yen. Attendees received a colibri tenugui, a concert pamphlet, and a Campaign Code to redeem for the in-game item Nanaa Mihgo S. II.
Songs played include:
Due to the number of applications for advance ticket sales, it was decided to also carry out a live broadcast on NicoNico. The broadcast was a paid format, so those who purchased attendance also received the Nanaa Mihgo S. II, but they did not receive a tenugui or concert pamphlet. The stream could also be watched for free, but free attendees did not receive a statue code. The statue is pictured below.
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Nearly the entire concert can be listened to on this youtube playlist. Some songs (such as Distant Worlds) are missing. I could not find a recorded broadcast, please contact me if you know of one!
 Concert swag is pictured below.  Leading up to this concert, the Nanaa Mihgo’s band members held promotional live streams as well as a podcast.
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| Nov. 11th, 2013 | Repeat Login Campaign #5 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The newly featured item was the Alliance Shirt/+1. To go along with this item, Alliance Pants and Alliance Boots were also added which made an aesthetic set. There were no +1 versions of these items, though. The Alliance Shirt +1 has a hidden effect that increased vendor purchase price, but it was not as significant as maximum fame in a starter nation. These special items were lowered to a price of 500 points each.
Month: November 2013
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| Nov. 27th, 2013 | FFXI LOUNGE Live Broadcast | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A live event was broadcast on NicoNico live from 10:30PM-1:00AM JST. The theme was “Future Vana’diel!”. Katsuyuki Konishi joined again alongside Tomomi Isomura as hosts, and Producer Matsui joined as a guest. Again the stream was sponsored by Alienware.
The content of the stream were as follows:
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 During a portion of the live stream a well known violator of the rules that had been repeatedly banned ranted to Konishi. This was accidentally aired on the program. Watch the entire stream here on this youtube playlist. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 10th, 2013 | Mog Pell (Gold) Distribution | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Players that had an active FFXI service account between October 1st, 2013 and November 30th, 2013 were emailed a Campaign Code to redeem for a Mog Pell (Gold). After redemption within their Square-Enix account, they could obtain the pell from a Festive Moogle. It was exchangeable for one of the following:
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 Free items! Even though the Ridill was long past useful now, it was still regarded as a “Trophy Item” to many players. Many players also chose the Nocturnus Mail due to the difficulty in obtaining it, albeit also not useful anymore. This was still the time before lockstyle was added to the game, so players did not take that into account in their decision. This was before the time of “overall item level” being displayed on the equipment screen. The most popular, and slightly useful choice was the Hauteclaire. Item Level weapons were beginning to be required as content got harder. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 10th, 2013 | 11th Vana’versary Return Home To Vana’diel Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| For the first time since 2008, the Return to Vana’diel Campaign made a comeback. Following this campaign, there would be a minimum of two free login periods every year. These would typically be held in May (Original game release month) and November (11th month of the year).
Following this campaign, the game could now be downloaded from the official website and easily re-installed without needing the original discs, but you still needed to purchase a Seekers of Adoulin registration code to play the expansion. Players would continue to take advantage of this download for years to come, but the version of this download did not change for a long time. This caused the file download requirement to increase drastically every year that passed. The installer would only be refreshed years later. Due to the slow nature of the update downloader via POL, it became popular around 2015 to start supplementing this installer with a giant .rar update rollup made by TehKrizz. |
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| Dec. 11th, 2013 | Freshly Picked Vana’diel #02 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Dec. 11th, 2013 | Trust Magic Introduced | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting resolved issues
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Due to the major game changing features in this update, a trailer was created to advertise to potential returning players that were taking advantage of the free login campaign. Current players were more excited for the old POL intro music at the beginning of the trailer, rather than the trailer itself.
The Trust System Before Trusts, a player’s reputation was very significant in the player community. If you did not know how to play your job, if you left a party without warning, fake D/C’d, or were generally an asshat… you would not be invited back to a future EXP party. Upon its debut players could only summon 3 Trust NPCs to fight alongside of them but counting your Adventuring Fellow made it 4. This means you would need at least one player to form a full party. It was not until Rhapsodies of Vana'diel would players have the ability to summon an entire party of Trust NPCs. Players could still find others to team up with, but rarely was a full party of only players seen earning Experience after this update. Coinciding with players no longer partying up came conflicts at popular levelling camps. Competition for monsters was at an all-time high. It was obvious that SE intended Trusts to only fill a couple spots in a party, but it was easier to just summon three trusts and fight DC-EM monsters rather than wait around for two other players. Records of Eminence objectives and Trial of the Magian goals were the top fought over monsters. The Trust system made solo activities easier, so was a great system for everyone at first glance. By making it easier to organize parties using NPCs, solo-oriented play increased drastically. Gone were the days using the seek party flag and sitting in Jeuno waiting for a tell, you could make leeway on your own. No more did you need to use the command “/sea all inv” to form a party before making progress. Search comments nearly all disappeared. You could easily log in and make significant levelling progress on your character. Social interaction between new/low level players dropped dramatically. In Wildskeeper Reives many trusts would be crowded together since they could be used in the content. This would cause an obstacle for players walking through them all. Targeting was another issue all together when you had to cycle through many targets just to get to a monster. There was no /ignoretrust implemented yet. At first, trust’s damage did not scale past Level 99 based on your main hand weapon. Only their HP and MP did. This caused DD trusts to fall behind while fighting higher level content. They could also be killed easily in Adoulin areas from AoE attacks. Over time, the focus of players caused dispersement across the ever growing amount of content that continued to be implemented. Without Trust Magic, the game would be nearly impossible to enjoy today. The advantages of implementing this system far outweighed the disadvantages. High-Tier Mission Battlefields More recycled content was implemented in the form of the first of the High-Tier Mission Battlefields. Instead of the traditional orbs/seals required for entry, Merit Points were instead used to purchase the key item for entry. This was an incredibly well received decision in the community. Merit Points had no additional use until this system was implemented, and players would always just sit on capped merits. Voidwatch was a popular way to earn merits back then due to the lack of EXP boosting methods. Players would also use Phase Displacers to cap their merits more quickly for repeat fights. It was also easy to “accidentally get 20 merits” in Adoulin areas, but at least you could earn some Heavy Metal with Voidwatch. The Seraphicaller was coveted by Summoners after they saw how big of a difference the Sash made previously. Paired with Nirvana, Avatars could now be level 121. On top of this, “Blood Pact Delay II” was able to break the 15 second recharge cap. Summoner became a very powerful DD with such simple changes. This day was the day that Novio Earrings were no longer on the ear of every Black Mage. The Crematio Earring finally replaced it (or at least gave it a companion on the opposite ear), which came from Divine Might II. Reforged Artifact Armor +1 Most of these pieces were still trumped by Skirmish Armor and the newly implemented High-Tier Mission Battlefield armor. At the very least there were many macro pieces for players to use for abilities/spells. One major change they made beginning with this update was the EXPLICIT statistics on armor. Rather than “Enhances “Fast Cast”” we would now always receive “Fast Cast+5%” for example. Home Point Teleportation To compliment Survival Guide teleportation to Outposts from the month prior, Home Point teleportation was created. Suddenly, the world of Vana’diel felt much smaller. Airships became ghost towns. Gone were the days of White Mages teleporting people for Gil. Chocobo rental at the Crags no longer cost thousands of Gil. Players would now take a Pilgrimage to collect all Home Points throughout Vana'diel to be able to warp there forever. Developers said that their goal was to be able to have players “reach any destination within 5 minutes”. Most video games coming out at this time were much less time intensive, allowing players to play for only an hour a night and feel like they made progress. Final Fantasy XI needed to continue to adapt to keep up with video game trends by “respecting the player’s time”. Solo Salvage & Assault Thus began the slow grind of being able to solo Salvage without the need for anybody else. When the requirement for three party members was in place, players sometimes shouted “Salvage Entry – D/C reward”. What this did was allow one person to enter. If the other two fake disconnected, they would remain in the undersea ruins without their tag being used. A small reward was often given to people to assist in this task. Players would now constantly farm Salvage to earn gil selling Alexandrite, or to put towards their own Mythic weapon. Even though Assault could be entered alone, some Assaults proved too hard to solo. Assistance was still needed for some clears. Movement Speed The change to base movement speed of PCs and NPCs was often forgotten. This update increased the base movement speed of players, pets, and monsters by +25%. Nobody voiced disapproval of this change. Upon Wings of the Goddess release, the Sprinter's Shoes were a big deal. Players commonly changed jobs to Bard, Thief, or Dancer just to get around to their destination and then change back. Records of Eminence With this new system it was neat for players to obtain rewards for tasks that they normally did. It was also nice to have more constant log updates on your progress and be able to check within the menu. Trial of the Magians required you to use the Magian Specs. to see your status as updates were few and far between. It was very surprising just how many objectives were implemented all at once. Players kept very busy while checking off every objective they could. Dislikes included non-repeatable objectives, and objectives where you received a piece of equipment as a bonus for a first-time completion… but only sparks/exp for consecutive completions. At first, the cap for consecutive objectives was 15. It was nice that qualifying objectives could stack. Players were not used to being able to complete multiple tasks at once. When purchasing items with accumulated Sparks, the menu would disappear, and you would need to navigate all the way back if you wanted to purchase another of that item. Players would quickly build third party scripts to avoid having to do this tedious task. This would not change until September 2016. The limited time task “Gain Experience” was set at 10,000 Experience Points from the very beginning. For unknown reasons, this amount was never adjusted by the developers to accommodate EXP bonuses. The objective remained 10,000 Experience. Because this was not changed, this objective was soon referred to as “Gain Money” due to the vast amount of Sparks that can be acquired with quick kills, and then exchanged for gear to sell to NPCs for Gil. The invention of the Copper Voucher was also a great move. Being able to quickly exchange a few for various types of points when you were in a pinch couldn’t be beat. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Dec. 11th, 2013 | Repeat Login Campaign #6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first of many Trust ciphers were added to the login campaign. First up for grabs was Cipher: Zeid for 500 points. The rest of the login point items were pretty bad. None of the artifact upgrade items were worth 2,000 login points each. Sacred Kindred’s Crests were not in the campaign yet, but you could now exchange other seal types at a 3:1 ratio.
Month: December 2013
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| Dec. 11th, 2013 | Anniversary MMO Collaboration Event | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Anniversary MMO Collaboration event first was held from December 11th, 2013 thru January 14th, 2014. Both the DQX and FFXIV portions of the event ran consecutively. This gave players the opportunity to obtain the Monstrosity Instincts for the Slimes and Spriggans, as well as other unique equipment based on both games.
Within Final Fantasy XIV, Shantotto was able to be fought within a FATE. If you defeated her, she could join you as a minion. Shantotto also showed up within Dragon Quest X. If you helped her find materials for black magic, you could get a chocobo hat in the game. |
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| Dec. 13th, 2013 | Adventuring Primer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Adventuring Primer was released as a “trial version”. This website was meant to assist new and returning players with the changes in the game since the level cap was increased past 75, and to explain different aspects of the game.
The primer did help more than the total lack of information that was previously available, but fan websites and wikis have always provided much more game details than Square-Enix ever have or would. |
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| Dec. 17th, 2013 | The Starlight Celebration 2013 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: December 17th thru December 31st.
No changes to the in-game event were made this year. The only exception is that a Buche des Etoiles was placed on the table in the Mog Garden during the event period. |
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| Dec. 19th, 2013 | I Dream of Mog Bonanza 2014 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bonanza returned with Delve weapons as a Rank 2 prize. The Gil prize for rank 2 was a measly 2.4 million Gil. Rank 4 was more of a mystery, as the new SKCNM orbs were a choice alongside the previous few months of featured items from the login campaigns. Essentially, there was nothing of major value unless you won Rank 1.
Note: See the I Dream of Mog Bonanza 2014 page for details on the event such as prizes and results. |
Surprisingly, the Ark weapons were removed from Rank 5. They would have been a much better option than the statues, event bcnm entry items, or rem’s tale 1~5 options. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dec. 19th, 2013 | Linkshell Community Returns | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Due to the occurrence of a system failure issue on the release of Seekers of Adoulin, the Linkshell Community became unusable. It is unclear if it was an oversight on Square-Enix’s part and that they forgot it existed, or if there was a deeper problem at hand. On June 24th, 2013 three months after the failure occurred, an official announcement was made saying that the failure was due to the addition of new jobs.
About 9 months after the start of the “maintenance”, the system was finally resurrected on December 19th, 2013. |
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| Dec. 26th, 2013 | Supplemental Update | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting fixed issues
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Christmas Update
This update was mainly for bug fixes, and implementation of Trust NPCs that were delayed due to further testing and balance. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Augments. It was mentioned that the augments would be randomized.
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