I did not expect it, but today Square Enix announced a new expansion for Final Fantasy XI, called Wings of the Goddess (but I like the Japanese title - something along the line of The Holy Warriors of Altana - more). There’s also a trailer available on the main PlayOnline page.
From what I can see it looks like a time-warp expansion, set back in time in the Crystal War, but the images are scarce. It’s been announced for Winter 2007, I’ll see how it will be. I hope it’s not like Treasures of Aht Urghan, which was a disappointment all along.
3 Comments
Write a Comment»ToAU a disappointment? Why would that be? In my opinion it was a very good expansion which breathed life into FFXI.
Because ToAU attempted at being different things, but in the end it did not well in any. Also due to SE’s reduced staff working on the expansion, there were shortcomings:
- First of all, there’s little to do in ToAU itself. Aside the special events (Salvage, Assault, or Besieged) there aren’t any noteworthy things to do. In CoP, RoTZ and the regular FFXI you could do quests, go around, find NMs, or simply explore. None of the sort here.
- Assault is a nice concept but built around repetition. Also, getting to do high ranked Assaults is a problem because most people do them for the items, that means spamming always PSC or PFC Assaults. In addition, some Assaults are totally luck based.
- The missions are a joke. Some of CoP were really too hard (8-3 I’m talking about you), but others provided fun and a challenge. Now you just do some weak BCs or Assaults. Where’s the challenge?
- Besieged, another nice concept totally broken due to lag.
- New jobs: nice stuff. Here it’s the playerbase’s fault, and not SE’s, because not many take them as they are “useless” for “endgame”. They are mostly undervalued in my opinion.
- New HNMs: there are three, but at least on Asura nobody bothers to do them. Also they’re the only noteworthy NMs around ToAU. Why not making lesser NMs as well?
- Salvage is an interesting side activity but alone it’s not enough.
In the end, what you do mostly in ToAU is idling in Aht Urghan Lag-gate or do experience points in the areas around. Not much more. Also, don’t forget that some features were either put on hold (where’s the adventuring fellow in ToAU? or the colosseum?) or delayed to lengthen the time of life of the expansion (think about the December and October updates, which provided very little in content).
True, I can see your point really, and yes 8-3 was a massive pain :P thats probably why I liked ToAU so much after finishing the CoP missions lol