The Voracious Resurgence

I mean, SE themselves have described weapons and gear being above ilvl 119 already, so we already have ilvl 125+ gear. Not entirely sure why said gear is listed as 119 instead of SEs internal denotion of its "actual" ilvl, but thats how theyve done it.

Likely due to trusts. Their level is determined by your avg iLvl. Keeping gear at 119 keeps them where SE wants them, while still allowing us to grow past that.

Ra'Kaznar Entrance? Can it be foreshadowing to Tartarus?
Tartarus?!?

Can it be?? We are entering August's Realm.. and he will give us the final armor upgrade... (This is my story-line theory..) This group of warriors will meet with August...wow... this will be incredible if it's true....

If there is an endgame content for this expansion, it's probably where Empyrean upgrades are done. I do feel like the art art is just that art, and not to read too much into it. As they appear to be representations of gear that already exist and may simply be an easier way for devs to depict characters without tipping people off on any new gear that may or may not be added.

That said any guesses on the giant peak featured in the key art?
I want to say new zone, but could be bearclaw pinnacle, though it seems too tall to be that. Maybe Mount Kamihr but we only see it in cutscenes so hard to judge if it's a good fit.

possible, but I really feel strongly that empy+2/3 will come with the 20th as the last "major" new content. Coincide with Empyrean gear being the "last" JSE-related armor that was quest-based.


Can't argue that we're all guilty of wanting to find that Easter Egg in anything these days- that little hidden message that we all can feel like "we've found something no one else saw". At the same time- SE has always been very specific with anything released regarding their games, from console to online. If something is depicted in release art (also something they've been a fan of for quite a while), its not random. That doesn't mean its important, but it usually will show up in some way.


As far as the tower/mountain that is central in the art, I personally like a former poster who said it may just be a visual of what Jeuno truly looks like from a distance...a view we're never given, yet we all know that Port/Lower/Upper/Ru'Lude are "stacked".

This is pushing.

All the reference to Al Zahbi and Tavnazia are suposelly in real scale.

The suposed rakaznar entrance reference is on the same ground of the characterss so that detail has a foot size.

It could be just a subtle reference to rakaznar, but most likely some rock sitting in the ground.

I finally let my FFXI sub lapse last year... but perhaps I could re-activate it just to see what's what in this not an expansion story update...

Unless, of course, it's just content only really accessible to those who've stuck around, grinding for grinding's sake.

Black Relics look pretty ballin' never was a fan of the big fat gold look.

In an interview several years ago they said that they had to scale back the development team significantly just to keep the game profitable. Infrastructure and direct-personnel costs aside, there are others that we don't think about.

For instance, this new storyline would have had to go through legal, trademark scans, copywriting, translation, amongst others -- I'd wager none of this is done by the FFXI team. All of this incurrs costs (even if only internal existing resource assignment - in most companies would appear on the P&L for that department) to keeping Final Fantasy XI online.

FFXI isn't as cheap to operate and maintain as most of the community believe.

They see private servers and think "it's that easy."

The problem is, the game gets its funding allocation in advance.

So if a million people all came to play FFXI right now they would still have no more money to do anything above and beyond (all the known revenue streams when the budget was setup go straight to profits for the base company and are not given to the developers), they would be in a much stronger position next budget allocation to ask for more money since it was doing well though.

They seem to be getting creative lately to pad out the budget and pay for extra things though. This mobile game was a chunk of cash from Nexon (that probably paid for the outside artists and modellers for rhaps), the extra storage spaces, the merch etc. I assume since those are not planned things when the budget was assigned those goto them to make content anyway.

Works the same as movies or video games that end up making massive amounts of money, all that money goes to whoever took the financial risk. The creators got paid a set amount before it came out (although some get bonuses if something does really well).

So, a thought. The whole "Making a relic" process is Rebuilding. and "Relic " implies age. What if "Dark Aegis" (and all the others) were the original and the Golden Aegis is just what we modern day adventurers have turned it in to during the Restoration process. Remember "The Antique Roadshow" where people take their old ***to be told that they ruined it buy washing it with dish soap? "Well this would be worth 1B USD if you didn't do that, now it's worth 13 pesos, sorry friend." Or in this case "Your Aegis would have shield skill, but you covered it in gaudy *** gold paint..."

On the other hand, thats really more an Asura/ENG-only stupid.
And it used to be a LOT worse. Now there's tons of weapons that while objectively "inferior", are just as serviceable to the Ultimate Weapons.
And some of them are even preferred over their REAM alternatives. (Like Crocea Mors for RDM.)

The 99 era where a REM was basically nearly 2x the base DMG of the "next best thing"... that was the worst time for a new person.
Things are a lot more balanced than they were then, at least in terms of DPS between Ultimate and nonUltimate weapons.

I think the black relics signify a different timeline/dimension.

Since this is a tie-in with RoV, it's possible that these relics are from the "future" after the Empty has taken over almost all of the world (since, the world is basically a monochrome version of itself now, why wouldn't gear be the same?)

More like "We don't want to carry others, so we will make stupid high requirements that will allow us to be carried instead."

FFXI is like the Terry Schiavo of MMORPGs, and I am thoroughly impressed.

Actually this makes sense though.

Old relics because plot says something like legendary beastman. And eggs.

Its almost like hinting some legendary beastman revival in current age.

Though then this plot gonna be like some shonen jump magazine

so do I want to get a relic before this starts or not?

Depends on the relic tbh.

I'm still working on relic horn, I highly doubt any new "dark relic horn" will beat it.

/slap

Why not? They're dirt cheap anyway. Just make Anni or Apoc they're still decent

honestly, the more I look at it, and think about it...the less I think this will do ANYTHING for relics and will be probably 95% story with some underpowered storyline fights that at best will be along the lines of the final RoV fight, and at worst could be nothing more than token engaging of a storyline mob and beating it down while afk.

The ONLY thing I could see feasible regarding changes to relics is that since R25 is in the .dats already, they have 4 of these little expansions planned, and each will "unlock" that ability for one of the families of Ultimate weapons. Or possibly a way to unlock Relic WSs with the "Dark" Relics, which we'll see are basically just RoE trial weapons.

They're NOT going to release a new line of weapons off a free mini-expansion that will top existing weapons connected as the top-tier reward from their 4 major stand-alone expansions...hell, they tried to make something more powerful than RMEAs once with Delve (yes, just RME then) which was at that time really hard content, and THAT was meant with vitriol the likes I hadn't seen related to FFXI before.

Just grab shitz you want while you can.

Because everything tends to become increasingly harder in the future, my guess.

Storyline will be accessible. It won't be CoP or Zilart era hard where it was a prestige thing to clear the missions. That said RoV gave us a whole new tier of grind and end game content / Aoenics so It would totally fit for this story to lead up to such content. As it will be released in installments the new battlefield may not arrive until December which would fit the pattern of previous battlefield releases

BTW wasnt there a talk about nation missions werent finished?

Maybe now is the time to finish the main storylines?

Rank 11-15 exist in the dats for nation ranks.

So, beat the new story line, unlock relic WS for all classes that can use?

More specifically, the graphics for the ranks exist, nothing else was found.

Yea just the little pop up when you rank up.

Give us Campaign Weaponskills!

werent there only 2 campaign weapon skill and they were both sword?

There's a staff WS, Tartarus Torpor. Uriel Blade and Glory Slash are the sword ones.