No big shocks here, but a fun bit of trivia. Recently, Famitsu surveyed people who purchased Final Fantasy XIII and asked them what other Final Fantasy titles they have played in the past. The winner appears to be Final Fantasy X with 67.4% of respondents indicating they played it. Final Fantasy 1-6 are bundled together and have 65.9%, which the article says includes any and all ports/remakes, so it’s hard to tell if people jumped in during the NES/SNES eras or simply picked up a title on the DS. 8.3% of respondents, or about 10 people, put Final Fantasy XIII as their first foray into the series.

The article mentions that Final Fantasy XI pulled in relatively smaller numbers, and it does look a bit like a black sheep among its family of titles. Seeing as there were only 132 responses to the survey, it’s hard to count this as a knock against it, but it does serve as another indication that XI simply hasn’t been very accessible, even to established fans of the series.

Recently, IT Media Gamez posted a list of video games characters they dug up from browsing Twitter. A few of them are legitimately run by their respective companies, but the vast majority are fan-made.  Their list contained but a few Final Fantasy characters, including a Shantotto bot, but hinted that more were out there — I got curious.

Apparently, bots are somewhat popular on Twitter in Japan with many accounts created to mimic personalities from comics, movies and gaming. If you’d like to see what Japanese fans have done with your favorite characters, I searched and scoured and tried to collect a good amount of recognizable names from throughout Final Fantasy in the list below! Many of these accounts are programmed to spout familiar phrases, act in character and also respond to followers.

Keep in mind these are all in Japanese, so probably only useful for those with reading ability, or fans who would welcome the practice.

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Who thought we’d get some news before Vanafest?

To commemorate the 8th anniversary of Final Fantasy XI, Square Enix is putting out a music “best of” CD for FFXI.  It will be called “Final Fantasy XI 8th Anniversary – Memories of Dusk and Dawn”.  The twist to this new CD is that players will be able to vote for their favorite songs.  You are allowed to vote for 3 tracks from each of the previously released soundtrack albums for FFXI.  Voting will end on March 8th and the CD is scheduled to be released on May 12th for the very reasonable price of 1800 yen.

Please note that if you want to participate in the vote you have to have a Japanese Square Enix Members account.

So far this is only listed on the Japanese PlayOnline site.  We’ll have to wait and see if a similar project is in the works for players in other countries.

What?  An update on JPB?  It’s been a long time since the last update when we talked about the WorldPlay Initiative.  Since there, there hasn’t been much to talk about.

Surely, Vanafest 2010 is coming up.  People who want to keep up to date on that should check out Elmer’s coverage at ZAM or the live event presented by Pet Food Alpha and Limit Break Radio.  Information on that can be found on their respective websites or at Eorzeapedia where they do a joint FFXIV podcast. There is also a chance that something might appear on JPB in the days to come.

Of course, for official information, follow the new Vanafest2010 twitter accounts (presented in English, French, and German) or watch the Vanafest page.  According to Destiny on the Creator’s Voice blog, there should be streaming live video of the event, including a mini concert from The Small Onions.

While separate from Vanafest and yet also a big part of it, there will be a version update soon.  This isn’t terribly surprising since they have done something similar in the past.  Also, the Nomad Mog Bonanza entry page said prizes would be distributed after the next version update, so you know it had to be coming up.  Perhaps it will give us lots of interesting things to talk about.

In the meantime, I stumbled across an interview with Sage Sundi featured in the March 2010 issue of Connect!On magazine.  Sage Sundi, as the majority of you already know, is the Global Online Producer for FFXI.  This particular interview is about Sage Sundi’s personal experience with online gaming and community building.  After reading it, I got a better understanding for why certain things are included in FFXI.  It was also like seeing a softer side of Sage Sundi compared with the one we normally see talking about GM tools and fighting RMT.  Let’s take a look at what he shared with the interviewer at Connect!On:

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Creator’s Voice Z has just posted a few pictures of the Shadow Lord in-game statue prize.

As part of her post, Destiny does a parody of the well-known 年末ジャンボ commercials. In fact, the title of the post is a little pun: “Year-end Jumbonanza.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the commercial online to post here, but this one from the “Summer Jumbo” lottery has the tune in the middle and contains the requisite amount of wackiness.

Those golden things falling from the sky are 夢 “yume” , which means “dream.” In other words, winning the lottery will make your dreams come true. Or, at the very least it will rain golden 夢s that you can sell for cash.

The current Mog Bonanza is called 初夢ボナンザ. 初夢 refers to one’s first(初) dream(夢) of the year. That particular dream is supposed to set the tone for the year to come. Hitting it big in either the Jumbo lottery (top cash prize of 200 million yen) or the Mog Bonanza would certainly be an auspicious omen.

Starting December 14th, people with Japanese Square Enix Members accounts will be required to either convert their information into a Square Enix Account or roll it into an existing SE Account.

As most FFXI players are aware, if you want to secure your PlayOnline account with a security token, you must first register for a Square Enix Account.  These account are “region-locked” in that your SE Account region must match the region of the software you used to first create your FFXI/PlayOnline account.  These same security tokens and SE Accounts will be used in the future by people wanting to play FFXIV as well.

Currently, the site does not say that Japanese SE Members accounts will need to match up with a Japanese SE Account but it is highly probable that is the case.  For those people that use the SE Member site, take heart. All existing SE Member services, like the custom avatars and blog areas, will be available for people to use after they convert their accounts.

Along with the change to using SE Accounts, the Member Coins used to purchase various things like clothing for avatars or items from the SE e-STORE will turn into Square Enix Crysta.  People will be able to purchase the Crysta using a credit card online.  The Crysta then can be applied to any number of services linked to the SE Account system.

The NA SE Members site doesn’t currently seem to have any information about required change overs on that end.  Perhaps after they see how things go with the Japanese accounts, they will do a similar conversion on NA accounts as well.

The Square Enix newsletter just landed in my inbox and it has some really interesting details about a tournament currently running in Japan. Players can go to one of many participating internet cafes around the country and take on the Serpent Generals in the Mercenary Camp BCNM.

First, you must find a participating location here. Once you arrive at the location, you login and head to the Stellar Fulcrum. Here, there will be an Event Moogle whom you can talk to and activate the BCNM. After completing the fight, snap a photo of your time, and fill out the form here.

ワールド名 – WORLD NAME
チーム名 – TEAM NAME
キャラクター名 – CHARACTER NAME
代表者お名前 – REAL NAME (person filling out the form on behalf of the party)
代表者フリガナ – NAME IN HIRAGANA (since they’re expecting names in kanji)
代表者連絡先 – ADDRESS
メールアドレス – E-MAIL
画像アップロード – PICTURE UPLOAD (only 1 is required)
その他 – COMMENTS

Only one player in the entire party needs to be at a net cafe, and the others can all tag along. I see nothing barring foreigners from participating barring the fact that one party member must live in Japan to be able to get to a net cafe. According to the contest ads, the entire team will win prizes!

So, let’s read on to see what you can win!

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This piece of artwork was recently posted over at Creator’s Voice Z. It was done by Fumio Minagawa to celebrate the release of A Shantotto Ascension, the latest add-on pack for Final Fantasy XI. Minagawa was the artist behind the add-on’s cover art.

Along the top: “Congratulations on the release of A Shantotto Ascension!”

Shantotto is squeezing her Moogle Rod, letting out a “giri giri” sound. Besides being a squeezing, grinding noise, “giri giri” also means “just barely” as in “just barely making a deadline.”

The Moogle warns, “You had better make that deadline, kupo…”

Along the bottom, Minagawa admits, “This is an illustration that I forgot to enter into the FanArt Competition. (true story)”

If you enjoy Minagawa’s artwork, you can see much more at RGB230.com

While it’s not FFXI specific, I came across an article that I thought was kind of interesting.  It has to do with how Japanese fans refer to the Final Fantasy series.　This news was reported not just on gaming websites but regular news sites as well, proving how famous the Final Fantasy series and Square Enix is in Japan.

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Hello, everyone. I hope you’re all enjoying Final Fantasy XI. I think they released an expansion recently… something about pants, I dunno.

Thought I’d share a few interviews with you having to do with Square Enix and localization. They center around Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder, two freelance translators who work together as Kajiya Productions. Kajiya (鍛冶屋) means “blacksmith.” 鍛冶師 (ka-ji-shi) will be the name of the class appearing in Final Fantasy XIV.

Read on for the interviews!

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