Final Fantasy XI: Wings of the Goddess Tour Report Part II

The fine folks at Square Enix North America invited me to join them for another tour of Final Fantasy XI, this time to see the latest additions to the Wings of the Goddess expansion. The tour consisted mainly of seeing some of the cutscenes that tell the tale of time travel featured in Wings of the Goddess. I also got to see the new named monster spawning system and beat up a brand new monster sure to excite any Final Fantasy fan.

As we saw in the previous tour, the Wings of the Goddess expansion is set in the past and players travel through Cavernous Maws to enter the historical setting of Vana’diel during the Crystal War. The enigmatic Cait Sith greets your character as you travel back for the first time. The scenes I saw in this latest tour introduce a few new characters, including Lilisette, an elvaan-eared hume that is part of a dancing troupe. As soon as I saw her, I was reminded of Prishe, from the Promathia storyline.

The cutscenes were, as always, very well made. The quality of animation continues to grow, though only for the unique characters like Lilisette. I remember sharing a chuckle with the tour team when one cutscene, full of unique animations, ended with ‘normal’ characters using the familiar /joy emote. That said, the animations in the last cutscene I saw, involving combat between unique NPCs, was really a cut above most of the scripted battles previously seen in FFXI missions. Clearly, FFXI continues to improve with each content addition.

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The new game system we saw was a method for spawning notorious (or named) monsters, commonly known as NMs. Players of FFXI have struggled for years with long, random spawn times for NMs, and trying to get one to spawn can take hours or even days. The new system allows players to earn special points which can be traded in for special items. These items, when brought to NM spawn points, can cause the NM to spawn, allowing players to fight the monster with no waits. Furthermore, each NM spawned in this manner drops a special item which can be turned in for another spawn item for a stronger version of that NM, leading to a ‘leveling up’ system of fighting more challenging NMs and getting better rewards. This system receives hearty approval from me!

Finally, we got to see the new epic NM: Sandworm! This monstrosity has plagued hapless adventurers since the early console incarnations of Final Fantasy, and now returns to the past of Vana’diel to once again devour countless adventurers. He even retains his ultimate power, doomvoid, which teleports players into battle with high powered NMs that cannot be reached in any other way. This makes their loot particularly difficult to acquire!

Once again, I had a great time on my FFXI tour and I’d like to extend my thanks to the Square-Enix NA team for showing me around. See you next time in Vana’diel!

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