Massively

The last "Return Home to Vana'diel" campaign ended in February this year, making the decision of whether to return to Final Fantasy XI a lot easier. Now, Square Enix is running the promotion again, giving former players the chance to restore their characters and making that decision a little less clear-cut. The campaign officially kicks off at midnight on Thursday, the 18th of December, and ends at 1am on April 15th. After that point, you'll be stuck with two choices: waiting for the chance of another campaign, or starting from scratch if you wish to resubscribe.

To sweeten the deal, re-subscribers will be able to obtain an Anniversary Ring which provides a 100% experience bonus. However, there are a couple of eligibility requirements:

- Characters who did not receive an Anniversary Ring during the Adventurer Appreciation Campaign in May 2008.
- Characters who were created before Wednesday, May 28, 2008 and have logged into the game at least once since then.

*Note: Characters meeting the above requirements are able to receive an Anniversary Ring even without participating in the Return Home to Vana'diel Campaign.

That's right -- if you're already a subscriber and don't have an Anniversary Ring, this will be your chance to pick one up as well (this offer also ends on April 15th). Be warned though that deleting your current ring doesn't mean you can get another one.

This is a great opportunity to get back into FFXI, and we can't deny that there's a lot going on in the game right now -- but such a campaign would not be necessary if characters weren't deleted after 3 months. Is such a practice acceptable for today's MMOs?