Massively^™

Give it up for the holiday weeks that involve stuffing our gullets with chocobos and consuming new MMOG expansions for dessert. The next FFXI expansion, Wings of the Goddess, is hitting desktops tomorrow. I recommend current players clear some room -- you know, for the bird.... We didn't completely miss out on the FFXI Fan Festival either, one of our very own Jasob Dobson was able to meet up, and toss a few questions at some FFXI devs.

If you haven't been in the Vana'diel loop over the past few years, some deleted characters were reverted to the back-burner. Meaning former FFXI players with inactive character(s) that were marked for deletion may be retrievable for play now. I don't know who is keeping the naughty or nice list, but the hits seem to be random. One hit occurred to fellow Massively writer, Dave Moss, his high-level Paladin wasn't spared, but his other lower-level character made the cuts. As for another friend who played FFXI, all his characters that were, according to Play Online, "permanently deleted," magically reappeared when he checked in several weeks ago. This is definitely worth looking into if you are thinking about playing FFXI again.

One big feature upcoming in the new expansion, aside from the two brand-spanking new jobs: dancers, scholars; or the plethora of fabulous FFXI expansion information that 1up covered, which made Massively writers look like a bunch of MMOG nubs, (I challenged that writer @1up to a duel in EVE -- my Mining Corp versus The Scope, still waiting for a reply) is get ready, it's coming, cue the trumpets... The Allied Campaign! This one will be more epic than its predecessors, the last Besieged system was epic too, but this one is the epitome of epic... until... the next expansion!

The new battle-system can be divvied up into four categories: Campaign Battles; Campaign Ops; Headhunting; Tactical Assessment. I summed up the deets after the jump, or you can check out the official word on the FFXI website.

[Sincere Thanks, Xan!]

• Campaign Battles: Disputed lands and territorial control – reap special campaign loots. No experience loss when participating in the campaign crusades.

• Campaign Ops: Special Ops -- requires a certain amount of special points that are automatically accrued daily. Other players may participate without spending their own points and receive the same shiny rewards. Many Ops are available and will vary on what "medals" payers have. (Fools, I'll show you some metal.)

• Headhunting: Renegade NPC drifters ("freelances") with ties no nation may temporarily be brain-washed into serving in the Allied effort. Not only will they participate directly in combat but they may influence the armies and countries they serve, and may even rise to form their own ranks.

• Tactical Assessment: Data-mining. Nations will take military polls on policy and every week prevalent views will be spear-headed into action. Your own actions will have a reaction. Craziness.

Sounds interesting, any readers excited about the new FFXI expansion?