On today’s show, Rubicon and Frei are out, Calaera is hosting, and she’s stuck all alone with Orophen. A triple whammy! We start things off by talking about the New, New World Merger plan by Yoshida. Second time’s a charm? Food and medicine get revamps, while we get more details about Private Player Residences. Love is in the air with the Valentione’s Day Love Letter Contest and we wrap it all up with a bit of Dev Tacking.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:23 — 40.9MB)

In a recent interview with Videogamer.com, Yoshida talked about the development of Version 2.0 of Final Fantasy XIV. During the interview, he actually admitted that he hadn’t tossed the notion of F2P completely out the window.

“Of course I am very interested in F2P as an alternative business plan, and I will continue to look into it,” Yoshida says. “However adopting a F2P model means changing certain aspects of the game design in order to fit to the model since the prices customers have to pay for F2P are different to those they pay for subscription-based games. Therefore, if we do decide to change the business model in the future, it will also be necessary for us to adjust the game design so that it works accordingly.” (more…)

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In order to improve the player experience, we will be merging Worlds on Tuesday, March 27, 2012.

We have reevaluated the World merge system based on the large amount of user feedback we received in response to the World Merge and Character Transfers update of February 9. Now that the details of the new World merge system have been decided, we recommend that all players review the World Merge Summary and Notes Regarding the World Merge and World Transfer.

This World merge is intended to improve the player experience during the period up to the launch of FFXIV Version 2.0. New Worlds may be added in the future, for example after the relaunch or when player numbers increase. (more…)

Want a moogle plushie, but your boyfriend is a cheap bastard? Want a guildleve plate strap but can’t be bothered to scour the internet or YesAsia? How about a set of FFXIV posters to decorate your mom’s basement with? Well all you have to do is poo all over the heart of your favorite NPC. This Valentione’s Day (Not Valentine’s Day, you smart-alecky peoples), the Community Team over at the Lodestone want you to write a love letter to your favorite NPC. That’s right. They want you to toy with a person’s emotions. A fake person, but still. And you’re a cold-hearted heel if you go through with this.

Having said that, join the contest! Choose any NPC you like, then go to this thread and post your love letter to that NPC there. The more creative or humorous the letter, the better chance you have of winning. But the letter has to be 500 words or less and can’t be too naughty. No dirty fanfics if you know what I mean. The contest starts on February 14, 2012 (8:00pm Pacific Time) and ends on February 21, 2012 (11:59pm Pacific Time). All entries must be received by February 21, 2012 (11:59pm Pacific Time) so you better get cracking.

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When Yoshida’s plans for player housing were released in late 2011, they sounded very ambitious. Things mentioned included an actual interior and exterior complete with a garden that you could place things in, the ability to customize the look of your home, the option to build a stable and raise chocobos, and even a trophy system where you can display trophies in your home crafted out of drops from powerful monsters. Now who knows how much of that will be included in the final product, or just how well developed those features will be, but we’re still playing a waiting game since that vision of player housing won’t pop up until around the release of 2.0.

In the meantime we’ve got Private Player Residences to keep us busy. You know, until we get actual player housing. Details were released yesterday, and although there are very few features to be implemented in private residences, more is promised to be added in the future. As of right now, a main feature is the ability to replay event cutscenes, excluding scenes from inside raid dungeons or other non-event scenes.

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Yeah, so, I planned on creating a FFXIV based comic here a long while ago. But with how busy I am these days, that probably won’t happen. More than likely this section will be removed from the site some time soon, so no one will read this section and get their hopes up anymore >_> So sorry for the not-having-of-the-comic. It still might be possible that the comic may appear elsewhere as part of another project some time in the future. We’ll try to keep you updated if that happens.

Last week, the FFXIV Dev Team released their plans for an upcoming world merge designed to improve player populations for each world. The crux of the plan was to create 10 new worlds and allow players to choose which world they would like to reside on. Meanwhile, anyone that hadn’t chosen a server by the deadline of the world merge would be randomly sent to one of the 10 new worlds. This was all set to take place on March 27.

Well now those plans have changed. Due to feedback on the original plan, and despite Yoshida’s lengthy explanation of the reasoning behind the decision, the devs have decided to scrap that and start over again. Players complained about having to move and coordinate entire linkshells to new servers, and the possibility of being separated from the server community that’s developed up until now. Perhaps the biggest complaint is the fact that players who opted not to play the game in it’s current state would be forced to either pay for a month in order to be able to move to a desired server, or allow themselves to be sent to a random server without any say in the matter at all. Many complained that once those players returned, they would be effectively separated from any community they had known once before. This was even seen by some players as a way to force people to come back to the game, and if not that, a severe oversight from the developer team.

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Yelta Sumasu joins us today as a guest. Be kind to her because she’s a great gal. She even put up with all of our crazy shenanigans. We tried to have a talk about Gamer Safety Week. Yoshida decides we need more jewels and rings. And crafters get a revamped HQ item system so they can craft more HQ items while they craft their HQ items with their HQ items. Then we start feeling a bit slighted about the upcoming world mergers. Then we get weird with horses and voice chat on Dev Tracking.

Note: Although we complain about the world merger here, Yoshida actually changed his mind hours after we recorded this episode. Don’t worry, it’s all explained here.

Those of you who subscribe to us on iTunes! Leave us a freaking review! Email us at the usual goteamderp@zantetsuken.net if you have any questions/comments/beratings.

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In order to improve the player experience, we will be merging Worlds on Tuesday, March 27, 2012. After the merge is completed, there will be a total of ten Worlds, down from the current eighteen.

To ensure that the World merge is fair for all players, character transfers will be required for all existing characters. Players must select a new post-merge World for their characters, and will be reassigned automatically should they not do so by the established deadline. We urge you all to review the World Merge Summary and the Notes Regarding the World Merge.

This World merge is intended to improve the player experience during the period up to the launch of FFXIV Version 2.0. New Worlds may be added in the future, for example after the relaunch or when player numbers increase.

[World Merge Summary]

Key Dates

March 1 (Thursday) to March 19 (Monday), 2012: Character transfer selection period. *
March 27 (Tuesday), 2012: World merge maintenance to be carried out.Information regarding the time required for the merge maintenance process and other details will be released at a later date.
* The character transfer selection period will consist of two stages. For details, see Selecting a Transfer Destination below.

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